day 6, thursday 5^th august 99

It rains overnight, but has stopped by the time we get up. We pack and are ready to get off at 9:00 a.m., so off we go. Yesterday, marvin's speedo packed up (broken cable) so he nips off to the local Yamaha dealer for a new cable. They don't have one. Arse. "It's 'cos FJs are so bloody reliable, they never need spare parts" claims marvin. He continues without a speedo, not that this slows him down.

We head into the Alps. The roads get twistier and twistier and much more demanding. Stopping for breakfast, we have an obviously hung-over waiter who completely screws up our order several times.

Andy the Pugh buggers off before we've finished breakfast and is not to be seen for quite some time. We worry gently about this, as he only has a small map book of Europe to guide him.

The roads are very complex and not in the best of condition. Jeremy leads and sets up a reasonable distance between us and him. Jim and I come round a sharp corner to find him leaning against the Armco on the left hand side of the bend, gibbering slightly. He's been pushing it so hard, the Tiger's front tyre washed out completely on the gravel-strewn bend and he very nearly went down.

Jeremy, Jim and I stop off at a bridge to drink, pee and watch some lunatics bungee jumping off the bridge into the ravine. I try to persuade Jim and/or Jeremy to have a go, but the long walk up the ravine puts them off. There is no way I'll ever do it! Iain, Crispin and Jeff arrive just before the three of us leave.

The roads become even better - to my astonishment, and they are combined with scenery that is awe-inspiring. The mountains are truly vast, reaching up on either side of the valleys as we wind through them and over the low passes. Living in England and looking at the things we call mountains seems to devalue these craggy monsters.

French roads seem to be mixes of poor quality patched surfaces and newly laid tarmac - without road markings. There doesn't seem to be any in-between roads. The Trixie handles everything much more easily than I do, but as we get higher she becomes more rev-happy.

We go up to L'Alpe d'Huez, with its 21 hairpins on the way up. As I work hard to keep going fast, I see those mad bastards from the Tour de France have been here before us. True heroes, if you ask me. At the top, Jeremy, Jim and I find marvin and Iain, who are patiently waiting for us. No Andy, though. When we set off again, we see Andy waiting just a little down the road. He's been there an hour and lunched already.

The road we are taking down this mountainside has a sign just by the start. It says "prudence is required". Too right. It's narrow and has a terrible surface - except for the places where there is no surface at all! A stream has, in one place, worn a yard wide hole in the tarmac! To our right are four or five hundred foot drops. The road has no defined edge, it just ends at the drop. There is a sign about half way down warning of gravel. I expect a bit of loose stuff here and there, but the French mean that the road has long, wide areas, particularly on the hairpins, that are several inches deep in gravel! In places, these cover the entire road for a yard or two. We weave through all this and finally reach the bottom, worn but exhilarated, and head for La Grave, where we lunch. At lunch, marvin realises that we just upped and left this morning, without paying for the campsite.

As I write this, to my left is the road. Across the road is a river and a small meadow, followed by an almost sheer cliff. Two glaciers hang over the side of this craggy mountainside. Awe means that I cannot find the words to adequately describe this sight - and yet people live here and see it every day. How ordinary it must seem to them.

Andy arrives and says "you know that road on the map that just sort of ends? Well it really does that." He's been getting lost again. As he and Iain leave before the rest of us to head towards the Italian border and the end of today's journey, I hope that they don't get lost again. Having brought no maps whatsoever on this journey, I'm keeping a close eye on the rider in front, whoever that may be.

More mountain roads and passes lead us to the base of the highest we've seen so far. Closer inspection of this grand beast, as we pause to admire it, reveals that our road winds its way up to the very summit - or damn near. Shit! The road winds left and right, with no form of barrier on the edge. I get many appalling glimpses of a drop that is measured in thousands of feet. A curious and macabre thought occurs to me - if you went straight over the edge at a hairpin, how long till you hit the ground and would you think to switch the engine off?

At the top, bizarrely, there's a minor traffic jam as people try to park so they can gaze in awe at their surroundings. I stall the Trixie and she won't go without a serious handful of throttle and I also realise that I can hear myself panting. The air is incredibly thin, for we are up over 8,000 feet. We start down into the valley with much traffic and incredibly sheer drops to accompany us. A queue of German bikers going very slowly holds us up for a while. We overtake and they seem less than impressed.

After some tedious and slow roads through French industrial nastiness, we head back into the mountains. We come out into an Alpine valley surrounded by massively dominant mountains, whose grandeur takes my breath away. Our road through the valley is dead straight and I can see a car, almost a mile away, waiting to turn onto our empty road. As we pass, they are still sitting at the junction - perhaps as astonished as I am by the overpowering sight of these mountains.

The last Col is the highest, and surprisingly the one with the most traffic. We stop very close to the top at a small snow-bank (no more than 20 feet wide) where we see that Iain, Jeremy and Andy have been there before us - IXION ;) is marked in stones set into the face of the snow!

Jeff's GPS (borrowed from McFrame) shows that we are at 8,750 feet and the top of the Col is at least 100ft above us. I'm tired now, and the thin air isn't helping. On the way down, I notice that my lines are all over the place, which is not an overly good idea when one mistake could mean a long drop and sudden stop...

At the bottom of the Col, it's only 24km (about 15 miles) to Bourg-St Maurice where we camp. Crispin's bike won't pull properly, so he cleans out the air filter. He was unable to get the ZZR to go over 5,000 rpm when up in the thinnest air.

Jeff trims his beard with a pair of electric beard trimmers. As I've been sweating hard in the hotter places, I ask him to give me a #1 haircut. Unfortunately, the clippers run out of charge half way through the job. Much laughter. Bastards. Many photos taken. Complete bastards. I wear a hat all evening while the clippers recharge and Jeff promises to finish the job in the morning.

We nip over to the refreshments area where we ogle French teenage totty, eat really tasty pizza and drink huge bottles of 1664.

Mileage: 259