Stuart’s GoldWing Blog

Although 2008 was a very busy year because of the Light Parade, I did manage to get to Germany twice on the bike; both trips were very good ones and also very different, illustrating the wide spectrum of what is possible on a Wing in the way of continental touring.

The first trip was with Elite Wings, or rather with Winginit Tours, which is what Ian Cardwell, one of the Founders of Elite Wings, calls himself when he is doing a private tour of his own. We were all riding GoldWings, mostly white ones as it happened, so we looked a bit like a parade of ice cream salesmen.  Many of us were revisiting Ohringen, a mediaeval town near the Black Forrest because much the same crowd had been there in 2005, to see their Town Festival.

This was a combination of a spectacular carnival procession, illustrating the long history of the Town (except for the period 1933 to 1945, which they decide to miss out) and a large scale Beer Festival. We were there to help present a gift from Wickersley, South Yorkshire, which is twinned with Ohringen. One of the group, Jim Shirt (referred to in Germany of course as Herr Shirt) used to be the Town Clerk of Wickersley, hence the connection and how we got the invitation to Ohringen in the first place.

It was a bit of an effort for me, a Lancastrian, to assume the role of Honorary Wickerslian (and therefore temporarily a Yorkshireman) while we were there but I rose to the challenge – primarily by being as slow as possible to offer to buy anyone any drinks and, if cornered into it and they accepted, suggesting that would be cheaper if I bought them a small one. There were several real Yorkshiremen there too, so none of them noticed what I was up to at all. Anyway I managed to get really quite fond of German beer and food while we were there, so one or other of us must have cracked and bought drinks at some stage. The Weiss Bier (white beer, because it was cloudy with yeast) was particularly good.

While ordering beer was not at all difficult, buying food from the stalls was more of a challenge. There was a man in a catering van roasting chickens on a spit and I saw that he was serving half chickens with a chunk of bread on a paper plate which looked attractive. But when I went up to him pointing to what I wanted and offering Euros he directed me to a cashier’s desk a few yards along. The cashier served several food stalls so it was necessary to say what you wanted – and I hadn’t a clue what the German for chicken was. So I resorted to wagging my elbows and clucking, to get the message across, to which she responded by saying, with a broad Yorkshire accent and a big smile “Do you want some chicken then love?”. She was from Rotherham.

So I got my chicken and very good it was too. I was spotted eating it by two other bikers from our group, so they came over to ask how I bought it. So I told them they would have to tell the Cashier precisely what they wanted – and then suggested helpfully they wagged their elbows and clucked, same as I had.

But the best bit of all of that trip, my first to Germany, was my first exposure to those gorgeous German biking roads, of which there seemed to be an endless supply. Living close to the River Ribble, which marks the border between Industrial Lancashire to the South and the Bowland Forrest and the West Riding of Yorkshire Moors to the North, I count myself lucky to have decent biking roads on my doorstep. But these German roads were something else; combinations of lovely twisties of the sort I had never seen before, daunting at first but also a source of huge satisfaction as you get the hang of taking them smoothly and at pace. Not that I was all that good at taking them at pace or taking them smoothly, but I did get the odd one or two right eventually, since the German roads gave me plenty of practice and I was in the company of some very good riders, so I could watch and learn. The trick is of course by all means to watch others and learn, but always also to read the bends for yourself too.

Management, as she is known in our household, was on the back for that first Ohringen trip and she did squeal a bit from time to time as I climbed the learning curve of the twisties, but we both enjoyed a really good time and it gave me a real appetite for Germany and German biking roads. The standard of road maintenance was conspicuously better than ours too – lovely smooth tarmac, miles and miles and miles of it. I had a few buttock-clenching moments but at least I didn’t it anything or come off, and it was more a question of riding with full concentration than riding in a state of terror.

By 2008 I had gathered a lot more experience of European touring, including the Alps, and I was reasonably confident about riding Continental twisties without getting myself into trouble or out of my depth so I was really looking forward to it. Management was staying at home too, so I would have to do without her helpful suggestions over the intercom, but I thought I could probably just about cope without them. Our second visit to Ohringen coincided with the Town’s annual Wine Festival, but fortunately they had plenty of beer stalls too. The whole of the Town Square was full of food and drink stalls and there was entertainment laid on for the whole weekend too; these town festivals are certainly worth going for.

While spending the weekend in Ohringen was very pleasant, the main purpose of the trip was to ride there and back on the bikes and Ian Cardwell is very good at choosing routes. His standard approach is to leave his home South Yorkshire early in the morning to ride the 300 miles or so by motorway, with two refreshment stops, down to Folkstone, then take a pre-booked lunchtime Eurotunnel train. The train is a completely painless way to cross the Channel (you don’t even need to tie the bikes down) which also gives you a complete rest from riding of about an hour altogether, so by the time you get to France you can face another 150 miles or so on the motorways to get to somewhere like Rheims by about 5pm for the first night stop. This makes for a long first day but it has the advantage of getting the necessary motorway slog out of the way, so you can then start motorcycle touring proper from the second day onwards, doing something like 200-250 miles per day (or sometimes a lot less) without going anywhere near motorways, on roads chosen for their riding or scenic value.

Ian plans the routes in advance for use on his Garmin satnav and this allows him to distribute to the group by email, so we can download them into our own Garmin before we set off. Since most of us have CB radios as well we are well placed to keep together – and even if we do get separated we all have the wherewithal to find the next hotel under our own steam. Ian often plans a choice of two routes for the day, one being longer or twistier or more challenging in some way and the other easier and more direct, to allow for adverse weather and personal choice. The overall pattern of one of Ian’s tours is one night stops on the way out and back, with two or maybe three nights stay at the destination. It is very much a riding holiday and this type of schedule requires you to do the planned miles on wet days as well as dry ones. Ian chooses good hotels rather than the very cheapest, so his is a very comfortable way to go motorcycle touring. The same approach can be taken using cheaper hotels too and it can even be done camping for the overnight stops if you are into camping or on a tight budget – although with this type of holiday fuel costs mount up too because you are riding all day every day. It may therefore cost you as much if not more in fuel as for accommodation. This fundamental idea, of a series of one night stops as you ride some lovely roads meandering across Europe each day, nevertheless has much to commend it and I really enjoyed this trip.

Having said that I discovered that Ian, whom I had hitherto found trustworthy in all respects, was not above a bit of kidology when he was leading the ride and I was behind him, trying to keep up. Ian is a very capable rider (play your cards right and he will show you the ROSPA Gold Star he has tattooed somewhere) and he has usually been able leave me for dead anytime he wants to. But on this holiday I was lacking Management supervision, so my bike’s centre of gravity was a bit lower, my power to weight ratio was improved and I wasn’t getting help via the intercom, so as we were riding briskly through a lovely long twisty section, I was actually managing to keep up with Ian for a change.

Ian used to be a Kart Racer and it doesn’t take much to get him into competitive mode. I remember one time we were riding in a slow procession down a steep and twisty road, being held back by traffic when a push bike rider overtook us one by one, mostly by taking seemingly suicidal risks to cut seemingly blind bends. When this cyclist had picked us all off and caught Ian up and then had the cheek to overtake him as well, Ian was having none of it and promptly started riding defensively to block him – but he still got past. I couldn’t see what was happening from further back in the line but I did hear Ian’s commentary on the CB and it wasn’t long before Ian had got back in front of him again.

So when I was keeping up with Ian on this year’s Germany trip I wasn’t surprised when it got more and more difficult to continue doing so. He confessed later than he had resorted to engine breaking in order to deny me information about when he was braking on the approach to each bend. As I said, by all means watch the better rider in front of you and take note of his line and braking point, but don’t make the mistake of neglecting to read the bends for yourself as well!

Please don’t get the idea that continental touring involves full-on fast riding all the time because nothing could be further from the truth, certainly in my experience. But there are some lovely sets of twisties and the traffic is generally much quieter, so every so often there is an opportunity to flex your riding skills if you want to. It takes time to build up the skills to ride quickly but at the same time safely, so that you don’t get those buttock-clenching moments when you have underestimated (i.e. misread) a bend and have to make desperate corrections. Alternatively you can ride at a more leisurely pace and see more of the fabulous scenery, which is what I do most of the time.