1000 Km of Cols and Dust 1.

1000 Km of Cols and Dust.

The track gets rougher and rougher as it climbs up over 2,400m. The gravel of the lower altitudes has given way to melon sized rocks which lie scattered over the trail, sharp and threatening. The handle bars of the laden 250kg BMW buck and wrench from side to side pulling its bulk alarmingly across the 2m wide track. I am repeating my mantra given to me by my enduro trainer: ‘Keep your head up, look beyond the obstacles, keep light, and let it move underneath you. Don’t grip hard.’ At no other time, on no other ride, and on no other 2-wheeled machine, has this been more important to me than it is right now. On one side of me there is a solid rock wall hand cut by long dead Italian troops, and on the other side? A huge drop off. A 200m cliff. Beckoning, spiralling, crashing, fireball, imagined oblivion.

I am riding The Ligurian Border Ridge Road a 19^th century monument to a more tense period of European history when France and Italy were more likely to have been trading bullets and territory than pleasantries. Today it is increasingly frequented by a growing band of adventure motorcyclists and I am pretending to be one of this growing tribe; although I have to say I fancy myself more as Ewan than Charley. Exactly one year ago to the day on a cold wind-blown Industrial estate in Inverness, I was handed my full motorcycle licence. Call it a mid life crisis - the other symptoms are definitely there - but whatever trigged the journey that I now find myself on, I have no regrets and only adventures that await my twisted throttle progress.

V-Strom to BMW F800GS

^{The yellow-coated examiner handed me pass certificate and then it got real. I had already lined up  second-hand Suzuki V-Strom and now I had to pick it up. In the pissing rain from Kincraig to Forres I suddenly realised what this was about. I know nothing, yep I can pooter around a city making sure I don,t become bus food, but driving without instruction, on the open road at 60+ I do not have a clue. Whilst the 650cc bike purred away though the rain back to base, I felt there was something missing. However nice the bike was, it neither had the image or the character that could take me to the outer reaches of my journey. It was a bit more Hairy Bikers cookery machine, than Jedi Master continental dirt slugger. But before Obi-wankenobi became the true master of his realm he had to learn a few tricks. Dropping the bike and dumping my pillion (girlfriend, moll, life-partner- what do you call a lady friend who you love and live with?) on the tar at a 0mph, only reinforced the statement of the friendly traffic cop, that I am a minnow in a sea of sharks. Its time to get some teeth…}

The new BMW F800GS at the top of the Col du Petit St-Bernard 

^{Inspiration, if you could call it that came from watching a few re-runs of the Long Way Round, nope, not the Charley Boorman bits, or  Ewan McGregor' s more engaged interactions but from the bikes. But the 1200GS's are just too big, so I found myself edging towards BMW dealers in Inverness and Edinburgh. So I took the plunge, and without having ridden one, I traded in the Suzuki for the F800GS demonstrator from BMW Motorrad in Dalkeith. Two days later a few shekels were exchanged for the gleaming new machine. But before the dreams of the mongolian step became reality I had to learn to ride...}