Part One
The lads travel from Rotterdam – 1,100 miles via the Black Forest, Lake Konstanz, the Alps and the Dolomite, reaching the Austro-Italian border on day 6.
Part Two
The lads meet up with Steve the Pilot for a 6-day romp around Slovenia and Croatia, travelling down the beautiful Istrian coast, visiting Zadar, Zagreb, Ljubljana, Lake Bled and the amazing Vrsic pass … oh, and a secret cold-war airbase en route.
Part Three
The lads continue valiantly across Italy and France, visiting San Remo, Florence, Pisa, Seborga, Nimes and Carcassonne along the way, and passing through the Gorges du Verdon, the Route des Cretes and Mont Ventoux … amongst others.
Part Four
The final leg of our odessy takes the lads through Andorra to the Pyrenees, crossing between France and Spain and visiting Pamplona on the way to the wonderful Picos mountains, before heading back to the UK and the Isle of Man by ferry.
The BigUn, a bucket list motorcycle adventure covering 20 nations and 5,000 miles, in just 5 weeks.
This is Part Two. Join Mike and I, and our friend Steve the Pilot, for a run round Slovenia and Croatia, before Mike and I head westwards through Italy, France and Spain in parts 3 & 4.
Music Attributions, with thanks to ….
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Secret Agent Rock by John Bartmann
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I Walk With Ghosts by Scott Buckley | www.scottbuckley.com.au
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[Music] [Music] it all starts like all trips do uh full of braderie in the pub alcohol is a factor and um a trip was born uh um as I’m now working class still uh it was difficult for me to join in for the five week um Adventure so I offered to parachute myself into the middle of Europe somewhere and hopefully join the fun for a week so huge shout out to British Airways Logan a at all who got me there uh into Venice where I was able to pick up a higher motorcycle and join the fun and while Steve was just joining in the fun Mike and I were by this stage six days into the tour having started in Rotterdam and made our way down to the austro Italian border ready to jump on our bikes and meet up with Steve if you want to catch up with our first six days we’ve included a link to the bigun part one in the video description below so far we’ve covered around 1100 mil and had traveled through eight countries in Europe plus our start locations of the a of man and England respectively the grand plan on day seven was to set out from our hotel and put in a few Motorway miles so that we could meet up with Steve in the car Park area of the scotch and caves in Northwest Slovenia we set a target of 12ish but we were expecting to settle in and have a leisurely lunch while we waited for Steve to sort out his higher bike work out how to ride it remember to ride on the right and wrestle with the minuscule satin of Atlant him as things turned out Steve completely surprised Us by not only only turning up on time but by pitching up at the car park immediately behind us this meant we had time to go and explore the caves a world heritage site and a must seat on any tourist visit to [Music] Slovenia for some reason I don’t know I can’t explain why I presume this would be some sort of choo choo train that would take you around the caves no effort ice creams at the end maybe a cream tea all that kind of stuff uh what load of bollocks that was yeah um so we started the tour when then we were then told oh by the way if you need to go for a pee too late it’s a 2hour tour and we’re going down 150 M yes yeah I I I’m not normally crossrobics of the Willies just got like what happens if you fall ill yeah yeah because you didn’t really know what to expect and it wasn’t in the end very claustrophobic because it was quite a they were a very large G Big W wasn’t it [Music] yeah [Music] [Music] the journey down into the cave took a little longer than we had planned so we set out for our overnight stay in labin further down the coast as soon as we could the planed visit to Pula to taking the Roman Amphitheater on the way had to be organized on the Fly and we didn’t have much time to stop and stair this wasn’t too much of a problem as when we turned up the amphitheater was all but closed and the parking around it was crushed so Steve and I left Mike guarding the bikes and we rushed over to take a few Hasty [Music] snaps the village of labin was a complete Delight the host of our B&B phoned ahead to reserve us a at the cafe V which I assumed would provide us with some fairly basic grum how wrong I was as the V turned out to be a posh Italian restaurant for which we were significantly underdressed great food though even if Steve upset the waiter a little by ordering a light red with the [Music] fish beating a hasty Retreat from the village of labin to avoid the wine police day eight of our grand Adventure saw the three of us headed down the coast to zadar our southernmost pointing [Music] Croatia the Coast Road is reputed to be a beautiful ride and it was but with some reservations the next day was the trip down the dalmatian or istrian Coast yes to zadar yeah so some of it was a bit disappointing I thought because there were just lots of Road works and you were kept away from the the sea yeah but then suddenly you were along the Sea and the and the views were fantastic and the roads were very good there were the the the the long sweeping curves along the coast Road there with the occasional sharp Bend but nothing like what you we were experiencing up in the mountains and of course the occasional homicidal road [Music] crew the road crew incident was a bit of a wakeup call and a reminder that as a biker you should always expect the unexpected especially when it’s a gang of Blas Road workers who regard warning signs as a nicity and who lurk around blind bends just to see what’ll happen we halted briefly to make sure that Steve who was bringing up the rear had cleared the blockage and then continued on our way but I noticed afterwards that we all treated blind Corners a bit more [Music] carefully some of the roads in this region of Croatia seemed a little trigger happy when it came to speed limits changing them sometimes every 50 yards they varied from around 90 kph on the open road to as little as 30 kph which translates to just 18 mph and that’s unnaturally slow before we reached the fun stuff we found ourselves on a stretch of dual carriageway which was of course mostly straight but even then the views were stunning once we’ve reached the main Coast Road we all just chilled out and enjoyed the sunshine and of course the views here’s a couple of minutes dedicated to capturing the essence of our ride down the Croatian [Music] Coast [Music] n [Music] [Music] [Music] he arriving at zadar we headed for the harary to check out the setting sun and the famous sea organ and yes that noise is the sea organ in full [Music] song It’s a giant musical instrument played by air being pushed through low pitched whistles by the action of the waves confus Steve with his technical pilot brain had to get in close of course to see what it was all about I was rather amazed to see the crowd watch the sun go over the horizon and then applaud it when that doesn’t happen every day but that’s okay once the sun had set another tourist attraction revealed itself called the sun salutation is a series of luminescent circles which react to the sound of the sea organ and which of course light up the areas of the harbor side after a trip into town for our evening grub we returned to the harbor for a while to watch the circles and Tak in a last peaceful view of the sea before setting off on our visit to a secret Air Base in the [Music] morning day nine of our grand Adventure saw us leaving the Croatian Coast at zadar and heading in land to the capital city of zreb with a stop off on route to the Zava airb base a military Relic from the 70s and yes it does seemed everywhere on our route begins with a Zade something that had led to a bit of confusion and even a little detour on the previous evening I won’t reveal who was leading at the time suffice it to say that there were three of us I was at the back and Steve was just in front of me me for the run into Zagreb we chosen roads that were efficient as opposed to the slower and more Scenic tourist routs that led through Croatia’s National Parkland this was one of our more difficult choices but on a tour designed to cover a lot of ground you can’t stop everywhere and I knew we’d be riding through some truly dramatic scenery later in the week and so we duly arrived at Zava a military facility which was previously hir highly secret although active for just 20 years being built into the base of a mountain it provided hidden hangers for aircraft and boasted five runways which allowed for Rapid deployment with minimal risk of interference before setting out for the tour I checked out the area using Google Street View and so we headed for the location of an abandoned Douglas Dakota which marks the outer perimeter of the air base when I checked the Dakota stood alone but when we Three Musketeers pitched up we found a welcoming Cafe right next to the aircraft free enterprise at work after letting Steve revert to his default Captain roll for a while in the Dakota we set off to the hangers and were really surprised to be greeted by A Rush of cold air as we approached so we went to find where the the the Jets would come out of the secret air base and amazing thing there was it was really hot and as we drove to the entrance or the exit of one of those caves the temperature pled on the bike 30 to 40 yard out of the entrance the just you were just chill oh that was amazing the air base as a whole is open to the public but with a Stern warning not to stray from the runways as the surrounding Countryside is still carpeted with landmines oh and it’s only a few hundred MERS from the border with Bosnia herzo and wandering Too Close will attract the attention of the police it’s enough to keep you on your toes officially I did cross the border because my phone latched on to the herzan uh local cell uh and I sent a text it was actually a text from the um Dakota uh and uh with a picture and it cost me £750 and then for no apparent reason we decided to form an impromptu formation team and Ride Along The Runway a little well it seemed like a good idea at the [Music] time white helmets watch and [Music] learn after a quick run on Croatian a-roads we in the city of Zagreb our lodging for the night the Sund Boutique Hotel was a bit of a surprise a nice one I booked it at short notice and hadn’t expected too much based on their online description but it turned out to be a fantastic Hotel comfortable friendly affordable and with great food and drink on offer the following morning we checked out of our rooms but we were allowed to leave our bikes in the car park while we explored the city in addition the reception staff stored all of our biking gear for us which lightened our load considerably and led to our being able to explore the city in [Music] Comfort our first Port of Call on our Tourist Day in Zagreb was to a rather enigmatic Museum the Museum of broken relationships his displays are dedicated to the material remains of relationships that have ended whatever the reason sometimes funny often rather sad the exhibit is certainly thought-provoking and it was great to do something other than Pound The Rose after 10 days of solid riding it had to be said that this Museum wasn’t universally appreciated by all of the group that was quite thought-provoking you know the irony of some and the detritus after a relationship breakup is quite uh remarkable right yeah I I know it wasn’t your cup of tea I could tell that by the way you were Consulting your phone halfway through well I but Steve and I read some stuff read some stuff as well and I just thought okay so you you you met somebody you fell out you your relationship didn’t last and this is a a piece of memorability which means a lot to you as the person who’s left it in the museum yeah and I can see that if there were if you were uh perhaps I don’t know maybe going through a breakup of a relationship and you went there you might be able to sort of empathize with what was there yeah didn’t really didn’t really um strike a big cord with me but and so we found ourselves killing a little time downtown getting in some essential shopping Steve was drawn to a shop selling stuff that we couldn’t get at home but I had a more pressing need after 10 days of wearing earplugs all day and sometimes at night to keep Mike snoring at Bay I had an urgent need for some earplug lubricant this is quite a specialized product which I normally order onl line before a tour but this time around I simply forgot after some difficulty tried to describe what I needed to a succession of beauticians and pharmacists we struck gold of a sort it didn’t fit my description exactly but it did the job perfectly as noon approached we made our way up the hill from the Town Center via a funicular Railway to the lotra tower home of the Gritz Cannon which after a Year’s absence returned recently to duty namely sounding a daily [Music] salute to be honest I wasn’t prepared for the Canon being quite so loud hence the shaky footage we then took a fairly lengthy walk out of the Town Center finding ourselves at the Nicola Tesla technical Museum in contrast to the auto museum at marxel that we visited in our first week of the tour the Tesla displays were extremely well organized and immaculately presented however I was expecting some interactive exhibits possibly including dramatic lightning bolts of static electricity and there were none in fact on entering we were told that the museum had a strict no touching policy for all of the exhibits still a very interesting walk around prompting a number of technical discussions amongst the three of us petrol heads after a few Motorway miles which I didn’t bother to record we ended up at our next overnight location bana a little north of [Music] zarre we were on a tight 6-day schedule for this part of the tour but if I have a regret it’s that we couldn’t stay longer in this exciting and vibrant City our taxi driver for the evening took us to the center of the town right by the famous Dragon Bridge he recommended a restaurant to us and it was a winner the soall restaurant represented traditional Slovenian Fair we sample the restaurant’s homeb beer and then a variety of Slovenian dishes which we ordered from pictures on the menu founded in 1850 the restaurant has become a tourist attraction in its own right and it’s a great place to get a feeling for the real Slovenian culture we stayed quite late enjoying the atmosphere and a few beers um so we we got back to the hotel the aums again in Liana had ourselves a a lovely of Brey whatever this morning found a pat of butter that had gone off the lady that owned the rooms had noticed that we’d left a pat of butter or a pack of butter on the table that was obviously not right and immediately went into fits of apoplexy trying to explain that it was a complete mistake absolutely frightened to death that we were going to put a bad review on trip yeah I thought she was going to get us to sign a disclaimer to say that we wouldn’t leave a bad review about the bloody butter that nobody ate other than you uh before we released yes from Liana but other than that A really lovely lady and actually a nice place to stay day 11 saw us leaving the big cities behind and heading for the hills the Julian Alps in fact unsurprisingly The Villages had a rather Austrian feel to them as we traveled very close to both the Austrian and Italian borders as the day progressed it felt great to get off the motorways and onto roads that were relaxing and which offered breathtaking views of the surrounding Countryside they were almost traffic free unless of course you count the old tractor and some cyclists around mid morning we stopped off at the SC Viewpoint that featured a prominent monument and which told a story of a very different time at the time the monument seemed perhaps just another site to take in along our route but afterwards I found myself revisiting The Experience an uneasy tale of the futility of War set against the most peaceful of [Music] backdrops [Music] as if to add further contrast our next stop was at the truly beautiful Lake bled a Scenic destination that transcends its touristy feel and it’s well worth battling through cues on the RADS to get to yeah once we parked up our bikes we took a pla higher boat to bled Island only human and electric powered boats are allowed on the [Laughter] lake the island boasts a church with a tower that 170 ft and which is accessed by a significant number of steps the church is often used for local weddings traditionally it’s considered good luck for the groom to carry his bride up the steps on the day of their wedding before ringing the church bell and making a wish it might of course just be a clever way for the local chiropractors to drum up some extra business there’s not a huge amount to see on the island but it’s beautiful in its own right so we simply took our time to walk around taking the sights following a relaxed ride back we had lunch at the Lakeside Cafe then set out for one of our most interesting and challenging roads the ver each pass on Route we stopped for a coffee at cran Gora yet another idelic spot in Northern Slovenia and yet another reason to make a return trip to the area as we stopped for coffee Steve realized that his wallet was missing he dropped it somewhere in Lake bled we considered going back to find it but but decided against as Steve said there wasn’t much cash in it thanks very much for this Steve to add to the pressure the day was getting on and we still had a mountain to climb the ver pass is the highest in Slovenia and was transformed from a logging Trail during the first world war I’m not sure when the straights were t the standout feature is definitely the seemingly endless supply of cobbled hairpins which caused some consternation in the ranks not to mention a challenge to my suspension Steve and I armed as we were with our adventure style bikes made short work of the cobbles but Mike didn’t find life quite so easy on his big Sports Torah which is much heavier and has rather less forgiving suspension trial riding SP as far as I tried a trial ride on a GTR 1400 being connected to Mike by an intercom system I found myself being treated to his running commentary on the corners and it wasn’t polite I guess I should have been more sympathetic but that’s not really my strong point we did wait for him at the top though give Michael a moment to assemble his thoughts yeah well that would have been fun in the wet wouldn’t it interestingly the ride down the western side of the pass was much less fraught with the dreaded cobbles although Steve did have a little moment of his own he discovered the Perils of damn cobbles as he entered a blind tunnel and then there was one moment when we entered a tunnel at the end only to find it was cobbled in the tunnel attention getter when you find yourself on that Cobble I guess the phrase attention getter is typical of Steve’s understated approach to ch ing moments the remainder of the ride down the mountain was simply glorious and deserves a little musical [Music] [Music] accompaniment [Music] [Music] [Music] our stop for the night was at a hamlet in the mountains log pod mangam where we stayed at a hotel called Joe’s Place confusingly our host wasn’t called Joe at all but Ronaldo there’s only one place to eat in the whole village but luckily the grub was [Music] excellent oh and they had Pub games to keep our Steve out of [Music] trouble day 12 the last in our mini tour of Slovenia and Croatia so I was first head north for a bit to take in the dramatic scenery afforded by the mangot saddle near the Italian and Austrian borders before putting in some miles Southward to finish up just outside of Venice the lower level the saddle offers a fantastic Panorama as it rises to just short of 7,000 ft above sea level the road itself leads nowhere other than up so once you’re done you have to come down again oh and you have to pay a toll charge for the privilege that said it’s not particularly expensive and the views are truly of bucketless quality we stopped halfway up our Ascent of the saddle and I took a moment to include a shout out to one of our friends who suffers from vertigo and who really isn’t keen on mounting views yep we’re rather mean that way He Lovely and yes Andy White this is for you what we do that an almost infinite ability to fall down the Gap don’t look down a couple of those Corners in first gear I know the road does get a little congested at times and it’s used by tourists of all types but the vehicles generally give each other some room and we progress quite quickly to the [Music] top the way down was in some ways even better than the upward Journey as the panoramic views opened up below us continuing downward as the morning progressed the road got a bit busier and whilst most vehicles coming up kept to their side a notable few didn’t my helmet mounted GoPro doesn’t really do justice to the amazing views but a quick look at my satinav screen should tell you all you need to know about the twisty nature of the Saddle road I was perhaps enjoying the view a little too much though as I got caught out momentarily by the appearance of a homicidal Volvo driver who had incautiously overtaken a cyclist just before entering a blind hairing Bend and it was squarely in the middle of the road as a result I’ve blanked out parts of my running commentary to spare the blushes of our viewers still no harm no foul we continued on our merry way come out despite the somewhat crowded roads and a distinct lack of protective barriers the saddle was a definite hit with the team did I mention cars taking up too much room it is a fitting High Point to Mark the end of Steve’s time with Mike and I and a clearly delighted Steve has already signed up for our next adventure [Music] trip once we’ completed our run up the mangot saddle we found our way to the police station in bovet where Steve tried to report his missing wallet we weren’t expecting an investigation in return but an incident number was needed for insurance I did the talking he did the listening and said what do you want me to do about it I said I’d like you to record it in case I have to make an insurance claim or something and no dice there then after making the right noises it was obvious that the police weren’t actually going to do anything so we chalked it down to experience and Soldier on and so onto one of the best roads in svenia and one of the most disappointing moments of the tour if you don’t like flashing images Look Away now my GoPro decided and not for the first time to switch to Frozen image mode the video collapsed leaving us with just an audio track very frustrating you’ll have to take my word for the quality of the route the sr646 was one of the best roads I’ve ridden in Europe I guess I’ll have to go back with a more reliable camera on my next tour in the area in the event that wouldn’t be the greatest of hardships the rest of the day was spent on the motorway so as we play some outgoing credits here are some of the highlights of our run around Slovenia and [Music] Croatia [Music] oh join us in part three of the big where Mike and I make our way westwards by some great roads to carass on and then into Spain for the Pyrenees and the Picos to round off the [Music] tour