Tuesday 13th May 6th Day

Besancon, which I didn't really get to see last night, as I was on the outskirts, is amazing on both sides of a major twisting river.  There are steep sides to the valley with a huge castle on the top of one side.  Almost immediately the road to Pontarlier begins to rise out of the valley along one side with amazing views back over the town.  

The vespa made off willingly enough, as the road climbed fairly quickly up to a height of 1050 metres.  A fair amount of gear changing required to keep the bike running well without it feeling strained, plenty of time spent in third gear.  All good practise for tomorrow's major haul I suppose.

It's amazing how quickly the landscape changes and it almost immediately has an alpine feel to it all.  Fields are smaller, and there's much more grass, and less wheat growing.  The farmhouses have a real Tyrolean look to them, long sloping roofs to master the snow that must fall up here.   Every house has huge long piles of split logs neatly piled up in readiness for winter.   The herds of cattle have changed as well, they are smaller, and all equipped with bells.

Roads are different as well, we are now on routes running north and south from France through Switzerland and into Italy, so I was expecting much heavier traffic.  There was a lot more than I'd seen previous days, but still small in comparisin with the UK and pretty civilised.  Even the big stuff powering past as I crawled along at 30mph gave me a pretty wide berth.  Closest I came to a problem was when I was off the bike taking a photo.   

In comparison with previous year's trips, I've enjoyed stopping whenever I wanted to take the odd photo.   All day long we kept slowly climbing up what at first I thought were the Alpine foothills, but only when I came to a vast area, probably 20 miles across at the top of the rise,  and completely separated from what I now glimpsed in the distance were the actual Alps.  From a distance they looked vast and with each passing mile, they got more impressive and I have to say slightly intimidating.  

Nearly all the tops are snow covered and really dramatic, and from my hotel, which I reached early in Martigny, now very close.  It's worth mentioning my slightly cavalier approach to hotels as it could have so easily gone wrong here. Although I have Phil's trusty Rough Guide to French Hotels packed on the bike, it's not so far been out.  Normally I get to where I plan to stay, ride around the town, and book into whatever I fancy.  Tonight however, the first three that I tried were full.  FULL..... didn't they know I was coming.  I'm not really sure what I'd have done if they'd all been full as unlike in a car, I could have neither have ridden on for more than a few miles, nor wound the seat back and kipped where I stopped.

I've been over the Grand Saint Bernard Pass, the first time I rode down to Italy about 16 years ago on an 1100 cc Yamaha, with enough "torque"  (Mini Addicts members will know what that is)  to pull the Alps down, and I seem to remember that there were two available routes.  The first original route is on a very swisty minor road, with about a 1000 hairpins.  The newer route has a long tunnel and hundreds of lorries battling along it.  Either way seems pretty difficult on the Vespa and I am both excited and slightly daunted by it.  Last time I went on the old road, cos I stopped at the monestry to get Grace a toy dog, which she's probably still got.  I remember he rode all the home on the handlebars.