Italy 2019 Part 6 - Pass bagging for beginners..

Mandello to Grindlewald - 171 miles - 10 July

This day was one of the finest days of motorcycle riding and scenery in my life. We got moving from Mandello fairly early and filled up, then rode north up the lake to Varenna for the ferry to Menaggio. When we got there we found we had missed the ferry by about 5 minutes, so had nearly an hour to wait. The good news was there are worse places to stand around than on the shores of lake Como. While we were there a geezer turned up on a V85TT with a aftermarket exhaust. I said  “that must sound great” but apparently he was too cool to talk to the likes of us riders on old Guzzis….The ferry ride across the lake was pretty amazing, wonderful scenery and a lovely start to the days adventures. It was going to be another hot day. We climbed out of Menaggio and rode through the hills and a past a lake until we got to Lugarno - back in Switzerland and out of the Eurozone. Lugarno was frankly a pain in the behind, road works seemed to be everywhere, and it was damn hot. I have to face it; I don’t like riding in cities and I don’t think Jeff does either. Finally we were free of Lugarno and taking the old road that runs alongside the main road to Bellinzona and Airolo. It was good riding surrounded by the hills, well they were more mountains really, but it was stinking hot in the valleys where we were. We stopped in Quinto for lunch and had a great plate of mixed cold meats and cheese, and cold soft drinks. It was good to be in the shade. While we ate lunch we noticed a strange noise coming from the mountain, like hammering such as caused by a pneumatic hammer drill, which in fact it was. Half way up a vertiginous rock face a bloke was dangling from ropes and drilling into the rock. We asked the waitress what he was doing and found out he was drilling anchors for steel netting, as rocks were crashing down into the houses. Fair enough.

Shortly after starting out from Quinto we noticed even more dramatic mountains rising up around us, and we approached Airolo and the St Gotthard Pass. We took for a time the old cobbled route up, and how the hell cyclists raced up there in the time before the new road was built I’ll never know. We switched to the new road and climbed up on a perfect road, beautifully radiused bends out in space, with magnificent views. We pulled into the café car park and it was another of those “what an amazing place” moments.

 Three views from Passo San Gottardo

The café views were special, but we took our coffees down to a bench below the café and luxuriated in the mountain air and scenery. A strange noise immediately brought thoughts of Ski Sunday - it was cowbells! The cows were hundreds of meters below us and the sound drifted up on the wind. There were many tunnels all around (actually we had noticed them all over the place in Switzerland) and the café owner told us they were old military works from more than 100 years ago. He also said there were tunnels between towns on different sides of the mountains, to be only used in national emergency times. The military commanders and the mayors have the keys. We also spoke to some British bikers from Up North  - these Northerners get everywhere! Setting off again we crested the pass and then on the other side passed through tunnels open on one side with cascades of water pouring down the mountainside. Eventually we got down to Andermatt, which in summer seems to be a Mecca for motorcyclists, and for good reason. But not because its cheap - that’s for sure! I needed petrol there and not only did the bloke in the servo charge me quite a lot of Swiss francs for my fuel, but he filled the tank. We considered camping there for the night as it was such a great location, and we did see a few bikes camping, but as we didn’t actually have a tent, just a tarp and bedrolls, and the clouds were threatening, we decided to stick to the Grindlewald plan and push on. Through the valley on the secondary roads and we reached the turn off  to the Susten Pass. This seemed to be almost exclusively used by hooning motorcyclists, and all the better for it. Its fast and has good sight lines, the road is naturally perfect, and there are a lot less camper vans, buses, and 4WDs than we found on the Stelvio a few days before. When we got to the top there was nothing to see as we were in the clouds. There is a pub, but we didn’t stop, the day was getting long... The ice / snow at the top of the pass would have been 10-15 feet thick at least - in the middle of one of the hottest summers ever. Down off the pass and we headed for Meiringen and then Innerlaken along the Brierensee - all rather beautiful. The turn to Grindlewald was found and soon we were parked up at the tourist lay by on the outskirts - trying to find accommodation - which we found. I had to take a picture as ever since I had read The White Spider more than 10 years ago I had wanted to visit Grindlewald. Despite the fact I am possible THE most terrible mountain climber in the history of the sport. I am to mountain climbing what fly screen windows are to submarines, or ejection seats in helicopters…..but I enjoy reading about the exploits of the classic age of mountaineering.

We arrive in Grindlewald

We set off the find our hotel, and due to road works it was like a scene from Police Squad, up one way streets the wrong way, through caravan parks, farmers driveways, etc…until we found Hotel Alpenblick apparently a 2 star hotel but we found it to 5 star for our purposes with friendly staff, great food, good rooms and the roof terrace views were out of  this world. After my first ever meal including spatzle (a favourite straight away!) we retired to the roof terrace at the suggestion of the staff and drank a bottle of wine. Watched the sun go down, and lights come on up the mountains, including one tented camp at altitude. Satellites passed over…and sometimes just contented silence was the correct response to this most awesome day…and we were without doubt contented. Our trip was proving to be all I had hoped it would be. I think I fell asleep at once I hit the sack. 

View from the roof terrace...