Down the Dolce Vita
Could this be the end of a dream?
“But they cost £175!” I protest.
“But they’re nearly five years old” he counters.
“I’ve got some BMW gloves that are ten years old and the index figure on these hasn’t worn through. Surely, Rukka will offer at least a gesture?”
“Nope” is the final word from my man in the shop on Great Portland Street and so I flounce out. I’m just about to go to Italy in late May so not about to buy a pair of winter gloves…
Digging my K1600GT out of four-inches of snow just off the old Brenner Pass a couple of weeks later with hands protected only by dainty BMW ‘Summer Rain’ gloves, I was starting to question the wisdom of this decision. And it had all started so well…
I’ve never ‘done’ Italy, only spending the odd night or two on business or weekend breaks in Venice and Rome and occasionally straying into it on the bike. But as a long-time admirer of much that is Italian, I was keen to see more. It’s a long way there, so in the words of the World’s most notorious dead disc-jockey, I decided to let the ‘train take the strain’ by riding to Paris, depositing the bike at Bercy station and then wandering over to the Gare de Lyon to get the TGV and pick up my bike in Nice the next day.
Booked in advance, 1st Class tickets are about £50 each way and with the bike costing around £100, it’s a great way of cutting out two days slog and squaring off your tyres on the Peage. Tearing through the Auvergne, Avignon is less than three hours away but Nice takes another three. Even so, at nine-thirty I am sitting on the quayside in Nice enjoying a Petit Bouillabaisse washed down with some weak but tasty Provencal Rose.
After breakfast in the sunshine the next morning, I go to claim my bike back and there it is, still on the transporter and stuck behind four Mercedes. Much shrugging ensues as various blokes in SNCF boiler suits amble off for a coffee and a fag leaving a harassed Madame. She pulls the usual stunt with a linguistically-challenged Rosbif by declining to offer any explanation. I phone a friend who has the benefit of a schoolmarm demeanour combined with having lived in Paris for thirty-years and so is well used to putting up with all this Gallic nonsense. It transpires nobody knows which keys are for which car as they have all been slung in a bucket like some bizarre automotive wife-swapping entente. One by one, the blokes saunter back and by process of elimination work out which keys go with which car and I get on my way, two hours late.
I’m heading for Alba in Northern Italy across the San Remo mountains meeting two companions who have slummed it down in an Aston Martin Vanquish and Ferrari 360. We have a wine-tasting at a vineyard in the Langhe Hills and then dinner at the celebrated ‘Ill Duomo’ restaurant. I’ve been before when the young chef had just been awarded his first Michelin star. It was very, very good and now he has three stars, expectations are sky-high. Ill Duomo is fantastically unprepossessing being on the first floor over a bar accessible through a small door down an alley. Sadly, such a quaint location means they are not in control of every part of the experience and the evening is marred - no, make that ruined - by truly hideous pounding techno music being played outside the bar until midnight interfering with all sensory perception. An unbiased comment on the restaurant is all-but impossible but I don’t think it was any better than last time and did cost three-times as much. Good but not great is the verdict and not one to hurry back to.
Next morning, we set out towards Turin with two specific routes in mind. A pricey Italian clothing dynasty (Ermenegildo Zegna) much favoured by our man in the Aston originates from Trivero. They have used some of their considerable fortune to sponsor and maintain the SR232, now known modestly as the ‘Zegna Panoramic Route’. It is magnificent; manicured to perfection in the lower reaches and affording staggering views of the Alps to the North with far reaching vistas looking south into Northern Italy. It great fun too with third and forth gear blasts between the various twist and turns a welcome contrast to the Autostrada. A quick motorway blast and a pit-stop for food and fuel where a garage attendant lovingly frotts the bugs off the headlights and windscreen from two Ferraris with a devotion bordering the sexual. He haughtily ignores the Aston.
The Grand St. Bernard pass beckons but two problems emerge. A smash towards the Mont Blanc tunnel has closed the motorway and so everyone is funnelled off to go over St. Bernard. The top-section is not yet open and the single-lane toll-tunnel is the only way into Switzerland. It takes the cars two hours to pick their way through while I skip to head of the queues. The descent down the St. Bernard remains glorious in the late afternoon sun and I arrive at our overnight stop in good time and am rested, showered and sipping a beer by the time they show up.
Martigny to Davos does not look like much of a route on the map but it’s easy to underestimate these seemingly straight routes and focus fruitlessly on searching out something with bends. As a general rule, if it looks twisty on a map, it will be really hard work hauling a big touring bike up and down it and it sometimes makes sense to trust the Satnav, even the hopelessly over-priced, profoundly-unstable, rebadged Garmin unit that BMW peddle.
If you punch in ‘Davos’ when starting in Martigny, after a bit of pristine Swiss motorway, you will be guided towards route 19 which leads to the Furka Pass. This is wide, fast and flattering motorcycling at its very best. At this time of year, the top section is still frozen but this is Switzerland so a man with a toothbrush moustache in a neat suit and cap sells you a ticket for a twee little train to take you and your vehicle through the mountain and out the other side. We are now in the canton of Graubünden, the area where you can hear the bizarre alloy of German and Italian that is Romansche spoken.
It is also home to the most obscenely-named village in the world. Yes, ‘that’ word but with a ‘y’ on the end. Type it into Google if you don’t believe me but don’t do this at work and do ignore most of the search results… More importantly, the superb route 417 takes you to Davos and then to the magnificent Fluela Pass, regarded by many as the finest driving road in Europe. It’s up there with the very best no question and as a further bonus, the most direct route to Bolzano from the end of the Furka will not disappoint either.
A wrong turn causes us to lose Mr. Aston who wisely ends up going the long but fast way to our overnight stop. The 360 and I hack it over the Gioven Pass as the weather closes in. A nasty, frustrating road at the best of times, today its slippery surface and savage turns go on and on offering little to the recreational driver. As we roll into Gries-am-Brenner in the late afternoon, we have really had enough.
Rewardingly, the Gasthaus Alte Post is as wonderful as ever. The first time I went, we were ‘welcomed’ by Gerhard, the ‘Jolly Austrian’ who now he has got to know us a bit is charm and helpfulness personified. He can cook as well so after Knödel (heavenly garlic and parmesan dumplings), grilled Bambi & Chips, Apfelstrudel, a superb Austrian Red (don’t laugh; the Austrians wisely keep 95% of wine production for domestic consumption) and a local Schnapps, he tells us that there may be a little snow on the way but as it’s very late in the year, it will surely be melted by morning…
Welcome to the Winter Wünderland that is Gries in late-May. The cars are heading home today so Gerhard digs them out and they set off unsteadily down the Old Brenner Pass towards the motorway: all zero traction control, massive road tyres and a combined 1000 horsepower between them…
Meanwhile, I ponder my fate. The weather forecast changes hourly and it’s all going Pete Tong with the temperature set to drop from midday and then TWO more days of snow. Although Italy is only 2 Km. away, it’s starting to seem as remote as the other side of the world. At 11:30, I decide to make a break for the border and get all kitted up. In the intervening time, the road becomes blocked. No matter, I’ll go the other way and pick up the motorway at Mattrei where it should be moving with all that traffic on it. But it isn’t. Snow is settling around the cars and trucks and starting to freeze again. I’ve never seen the market appeal of the ‘Slush-Puppy’ and less inclined than ever to try one after this. An hour and a half of filtering later, I am now on the same latitude with Gries again. Back where I started in other words. Another hour and the snow turns to sleet for which I am pathetically grateful. At 15:30, I’ve done about 70 miles and am shivering, miserable but slightly amazed I’ve escaped without binning it. Although not marketed as a selling point, a fully-laden K1600 is probably the ideal bike for these conditions as the Herculean weight combined with the low center of gravity gives a minimal but crucial amount of purchase.
I abandon any thoughts of visiting the magnificent Grossglockener (literally ‘Big Glacier’) and pick a way past Cortina on my way to Cormons near Trieste. My regular touring companion has a pathological loathing of Italy and with great foresight has wisely decided to go to sunny Croatia instead and is now making his way back home. We have agreed to meet in this obscure corner of Italy having read about a place lyrically described by AA Gill in The Sunday Times. It does not quite live up to expectations but it’s the grisly conditions that have soured the experience more than the place itself. Definitely needs another go but it’s a long way from anywhere else you might want to visit.
A blat around the Venetian Gulf in warm sunshine gets me to Bologna by early afternoon and so with time to kill, I swing by the Ducati factory to see if I can join a tour and museum visit. There is no uniform for the security guard at this Holy of Holies but a Ducati-branded polo shirt, Diesel jeans, red Ducati sneakers and the obligatory sunglasses and cigarette. Improbably, this get-up manages to convey great authority and gravitas as he solemnly explains I am welcome to join the tour but there is no way I can park my BMW motorcycle inside the gates. “I used to have one before it got stolen” I blub but he’s having none of it, shaking his head without a trace of sorrow. There’s nowhere to park and it starts to rain again so I abandon the plan and head into Bologna.
It’s a strange place, quite forbidding with many of the streets covered by extensions to the first floor of the buildings creating canopies making for a dark, claustrophobic atmosphere. The B&B owner recommends the oldest pub in Bologna dating from the 15th century. It’s a complete dump, frankly, and full of students who have brought their own food and drink. The barmen don’t seem to care about this or anything else so I down a bottled lager and try out another of AA Gill’s finds and this one is a gem.
I had tried to make a reservation at the Drogheria Del Rosa for 20:00 only to be told they don’t open until 20:30 so will see me then. I turn up at 20:30 on the dot and the place is rammed, clearly having been open for an hour or more. They have no record of my reservation but of course I can have dinner, the owner seeming offended that I think he may turn me away. So they put me on a table in an alley and randomly bring me things to eat and drink. No menu is offered but read out so I order. I ask what wines they have by the glass and am told to choose from any bottle on the list.
A good Sangiovese is plonked down with the instruction to help myself. Grappa is bought without request and when I’m trying to pay a stupidly low, unitemised bill (€40) for a truly superb meal, the owner mildly bollocks the waiter for giving me a Grappa he considers inferior to his preferred distillation so I have a second ‘Grappa Barrique’ with him. He has been overrun with Sunday Times readers for the last few years and proudly displays the review over the bar.
The B&B owner suggests I take the ‘Futa’ to Perugia as this is Italy’s most famous road. It should have been memorable but rain, fog and cloud conspire to make it memorable for the wrong reasons. Perugia is delightful though, an elegant Umbrian town perched on top of a hill with large open squares and avenues with few visitors at this time of year. Next morning, I wander into a shop specialising in truffles and buy a few little pots and bottles of the stuff in various guises. What is it about truffles? That elemental, elusive, elegiac whiff of diffused perfection that confounds the senses. Like a piano playing in a faraway room, faint yet distinct, then gone.
It’s only south of Perugia on the way to the seaside resort of Pescara do the weather and roads improve. I don’t think SS17 and SS153 have a special name of sorts but they are fast, dry, largely traffic-free and snake through a series of wide valleys from Terni before becoming SS153 for a final, swoopy ten miles until the Autostrada to Pescara on the Adriatic coast.
Slightly out of season seaside resorts tend to feel a bit forlorn. Pescara is no exception as it appears completely deserted. I eat at Cafe Des Paillottes, the best place in town and straight out of Goodfellas or The Sopranos. Everything about it is ‘heavy’: the art, the furniture, the abundance of mirrors. The locals are all dressed to the nines, immaculately coiffed, groomed and smelling divine. And that’s only the men…There is even a cabaret singer, a stick-thin, pouty girl looking like a witness in a Silvio Berlusconi trial who warbles her way through some Lana Del Ray covers accompanied by a Karaoke machine.
I feel a little out of place as the owner at the door eyes my jeans and floral shirt with thinly disguised contempt while making a series of intemperate phone calls, all of which are dialled for him by a waiter as he seems incapable of using a mobile phone other than to shout into it. The food is excellent but the reverence with which the diners are treating the whole experience is borderline comical. I leave before I say something stupid and end up in the foundations of a local estensione autostrada.
Back on the wonderful SS17 the day after, I make fast progress towards Sorrento on the Amalfi Coast. The famous road through Amalfi and Positano is something to behold. It has to be ridden but it’s torture. Even out of season, it’s busy like you cannot believe with innumerable Fiat Viano, a stupendously ugly people carrier styled on a furniture van and driven by hen-pecked, ancient and incompetent Neapolitans, sucks the pleasure from the experience. However, Sorrento is pretty and bustling and dinner at Il Bucco is superb. There are not many Michelin-starred restaurants where the public amble through the dining room - albeit an outside one - with their dogs and kids in tow but this is Italy after all.
The next day, I extricate myself from Sorrento and realise I’ve done it the wrong way round as the best views are if you ride anti-clockwise from Naples. Regardless: I’m heading north towards Rome then Tuscany and a destination I have been looking forward to for nearly twenty years…
I’m heading north towards Rome then Tuscany and a destination I have been looking forward to for nearly twenty years...
In the late-nineties, I was having Sunday lunch with some friends and their neighbours at the American Hotel in Sag Harbour, Long Island. Two of the group were boyhood friends of Billy Joel. He lived nearby and called during lunch to invite everyone round for a drink at his home afterwards. Now I have heard that you should never meet your heroes but based on this single encounter, I must disagree. I managed to avoid squeaking “I’ve-got-all-of-your-albums-on-both-vinyl-and-CD” and it turns out he’s a down-to-earth bloke, a keen biker and generous wine-buff. There is no denying there is an aura that surrounds him although he did his best to dim the obvious wattage that comes with selling 200 million albums and holding audiences of up 1000,000 rapt for two hours over the course of half a century.
The afternoon progressed and he suggested we go down to his local Italian for an early supper. Before leaving, he disappeared into his cellar and emerged with two magnums that were presented to the restaurant owner with a request that they be served. Don’t try this at your local Pizza Express, by the way. I had one sip of what was poured and it was like no wine I have ever tasted. I turned to my friend and said: “What on earth is that?”
My mate knows a thing or two about vino and replied: “It’s a Brunello di Montalcino. There’s never very much of it and when it’s good, it’s very, very good. And that’s about as good as it gets.” so as I pass the road sign for Cite de Montalcino, I wonder if the town, the food and the wine can live up to the weight of my expectations.
Osteria Porta Al Cassero is a simple trattoria that offers the opportunity to try - by the glass - various vintages from a selection of producers of the fabled stuff. Two couples from Dudley at the next table discuss, in the West Midlands vernacular, the presence of a bidet in their respective hotel bathrooms (“Wove nuvver rully yoused uh bouyday uv we luv?”...“Now, now, we uvnn’t”) as the first of three glasses is poured...
So did it live up to the memory of that first encounter? Given the extraordinary circumstances of that first sip, the answer would have to be ‘not quite’ but all are magical and match the rustic simplicity of the food. Il Poggione 2010, in particular, has a grace and power that is humbling and takes me back to that Scene from an Italian Restaurant all those years ago and I walk back to my hotel contented on all counts.
Montalcino to Portofino looks good in print, sounds good to say and is good. Gently undulating roads across the rolling Tuscan Hills towards the coast, a sprint up the Autotrada and then off on Via Aurelia. That it’s called SP1 gives you a clue that it’s brilliant in the same way that California’s Route 1 is. Shame the UK’s very-own A1 ruins this otherwise profound observation but there you go. SP1 really is one of THE great European biking roads. It might lack the spectacle of Stelvio or the Grand St. Bernard but these are proper corners; lots of them and not a car in sight.
The view from the terrace of the Cenobi dei Dogi at Comogli near Portofino is almost CGI in its improbable perfection. Sipping a Negroni as the sun goes down is one of those minor highlights that you know will linger long in the memory.
Portofino itself is undeniably lovely and it would be churlish to complain about the Billionaires’ yachts (strike that: small ocean liners) blocking the view. It does put one in mind of the late, great Jim Bowen’s rejoinder on Bullseye (“Look what you could have won…”) in terms of assessing one’s own modest achievements. This is not having your nose pushed up against the window but being thrown through plate-glass and coming face-to-face with a degree of extreme wealth that is otherwise unimaginable. Weathered, teaked, miserable-looking men in the autumn of their years, hair sprouting from most visible orifices, grunt their thanks to deckhands as they shuffle down the gangplank in creased leisure-wear leaving behind them lithe, leggy, tanned girls who can “open doors with just a smile” to strut around the top deck in insouciantly non-matching bikini tops & bottoms. They have so many, you see, it’s easy to get them mixed up…
Skirting Genoa the next day on the way back into France, the excellent A8 swoops round the Ligurian Coast. I’m still undecided about Italy as it’s always promised more than it actually delivers. I’ve been lulled into thinking it’s a heaven on earth. After all, any country that can spawn Venice, the Ferrari 458, the MV Agusta F4, Zegna shirts, Brunello di Montalcino and Reggiano Parmesan must be perfect, right? But it’s just not.
To a degree, Italy is a victim of its own export success in that many of its charms are too readily available without needing to actually visit the place. Take the food for instance. In most restaurants, it’s not deceptively simple, it’s just simple and combine a trip to Waitrose and Majestic Wine with the River Cafe Cookbook and you are 90% there. OK, the ingredients might not be quite as good as you can get fresh from an Orvieto market stall but it’s close enough for jazz. At the other end of the scale, like the haemorrhoids that nearly form while you’re waiting for the last of twenty-two amuse bouche to be served at Il Duomo, these restaurants are so far up their own fundament, the experience is more of an irritation than a pleasure. Only the bottom-end occasionally brings up the side: some Ciabatta and Bresaola, a few bits of Ruccola and a good slosh of olive oil at a deserted road-side cafe near L’aquila had me almost in Meg Ryan mode.
The iconic destinations like the Amalfi Coast and Portofino are weepingly beautiful. They must be seen but are, inevitably, year-round busy. The rest of it? Well, much of it looks a lot like any other middling European country trying to support an ageing population from a dwindling tax base so even the not-so-picturesque places are busy - maniacally busy - and often drab. A bit like Britain actually; perfectly pleasant overall but not the Promised Land.
And then there’s the driving. It’s a cheap jibe I know but it really is atrocious with the Autostrada being particularly gladiatorial. Everyone thinks they’re a lion and everyone else a Christian. Near Naples, a blacked-out Jeep flashed past me at over 150 Km/h followed by a Fiat Panda two metres off its rear, like a pair of feral dogs with the smaller runtier one trying to sniff the larger one’s bottom. At the same time, one of those scooters that are ridden half lying-down snaked its way in and out of three lanes of traffic like a viper…
Predictably, there’s carnage. In the same short stretch, four collisions bring the traffic to a grinding halt as we all file past. Three of them seemed minor enough, just a lot of Italians milling around shrugging in a manner that suggests that this is to be expected on a Monday morning but one of the shunts had taken out a whole crash barrier and the scene looked like a war-zone. In Britain, this would be a hi-viz jacket-wearers love-in, all tape-measures, road-closures and Radio Two’s Sally Traffic lowering her voice by at least half an octave. Here? Just two sad-looking blokes with brooms presided over by a brace of Carabinieri admiring each other’s uniforms.
As a motorcycling destination, it comes up slightly short on pretty much every count apart from the wide availability of AGIP’s 100- octane rocket-fuel that makes your bike go like stink. Specifically, it lacks the expansiveness of France, cannot hold a candle a Germany’s shiny perfect road network, does not have the Trumpton-like charm and efficiency of Switzerland and gets the fag-end of the mountains compared with Austria. At all price points, the food is not up to Spain but this is more a reflection of Spain’s excellence on this measure at the moment than being an outright criticism. The roads are on a par with the UK which means occasionally brilliant but mostly poor in terms of grandeur and maintenance.
The Regent Cinema in Cranleigh is long since gone but I remember being transfixed there by Fred Zinnemann’s 1973 film of ‘The Day of the Jackal’. I’ve seen the film countless times since and it’s become a minor obsession. It’s peerless: a masterpiece in linear story-telling with an economic script letting the Kodachrome-hued, 1970’s cinematography do most of the talking.
There is a pivotal sequence midway through where Edward Fox’s white Alfa Giulietta comes to a halt where the ‘Midi’ and ‘Grande’ Corniches meet, high above Menton on the Cote d’Azur near the Italian Border at Ventimiglia. A road sign points one way to Italy and the other to Paris. He swings the car towards Paris, never to return.
Like many other not-terribly-useful categorisations of the English as a divided nation (those who like Lord or the Rings and those that don’t; those that like motorhomes, those that don’t etc. etc.), I’d always felt most people had a moderate to strong preference for ‘France’ or 'Italy' over the other and I was firmly of the Italian persuasion. As I head back onto the A8 towards Nice and the Autotrain back to Paris, I’m no longer so sure.
