Toscana su due ruote (Tuscany on 2 wheels)
For those of you that want me to cut to the chase (you know who I am talking about, the same ones that turn to the last page in a Murder Mystery), I’ll tell you now, if there is one thing you need to do in life, it is tour Tuscany on a motorbike. And not any motorbike, but the motorbike that typifies the best of Italy -a Ducati. It is FANTASTICO.
Which is one of the reasons I am feeling pretty glum today. This time last week, my heart was racing, watching Troy Bayliss become 2006 World Champion -I was at the World Superbikes in Imola. Now I am looking at a speeding fine, collected less than 24hours back in Australia whilst enjoying a quick squirt up to Toodyay. Not that I am upset about the fine, what is depressing is that for 8 days we toured the twistiest and fastest roads I’ve been on in my life. We probably saw 1 cop once every 2 days and they thought we were piss week compared to the Italian bikers on the road. Those guys ride FAST. The Italian police don’t sweat the small stuff, to quote Dazza “unless you are involved in organised crime, don’t worry about the police”. Oh, well its lucky I didn’t buy that Armani bag after all, now I can feel virtuous that my donation to the WA government will make our roads and state a better place to live and ride .
Bayliss at Imola
Tour Organisation
So for those of you that are interested in a fleshed out story, how did all of this start? About 18months ago I saw an advertisement for Bike Tours of Tuscany in a copy of Cycle Torque. I showed my husband Jeff and it was like a light switched on inside his head, “we are going to do this” he said and pretty soon we were saving all our pennies and had recruited 4 other friends to come along. Jeff contacted Ross Naylor of European Motorcycle Adventures (www.europeanmotorcycleadventures.com) who has been running motorbike tours of Tuscany for the last ~4 years. Ross has sussed out some of the most beautiful areas of Tuscany to visit, the windiest roads to ride and an excellent 600 year old fully renovated Tuscan Villa that has been converted into spacious apartments to use as your home base while touring. There is always a certain amount of doubt when you organise these things, especially if you haven’t had anyone you know recommend it. We needn’t have worried, Ross knows Tuscany well, has plenty of local Italian contacts (which is crucial in Italy), and he is a really easy going bloke that loves motorbikes and biking –it was perfect.
We decided we would organise a 4.5week holiday in Italy. We arranged with Ross to start our 7 day bike tour a couple of days after we arrived in Italy. Our accommodation during the bike tour and for most of the 4.5 weeks was to be at the 600 year old Villa “Tana de Lepri” in the mediaeval village of “Colle di Val d’Elsa. We really wanted to get to know Tuscany, and there are sooooo many places to visit. The combination of staying mainly at 1 location, doing the bike tour and having a 7 seater van as backup transport meant we had an easy but consistent pace during the holiday without getting bored or burnt out.
Roma to Toscana
We arrived at Rome airport at ~7am on Sunday morning (03/09/06) and were greeted by a human traffic jam trying to pass through Rome immigration. All the normal airport staff must have been at mass. Three immigration staff were trying to “process” ~300 to 400 people jammed cheek to jowl after 24 hours of travelling at temps of ~300C –it could have got really ugly if it wasn’t for our excitement and optimism at starting our first holiday in Italy (at its worst it was just really smelly).
For the mathematicians amongst us you will have worked out that even if each immigration officer processed one person per minute, it was going to take ~2hours to get through immigration –and it did! Anyway, before we knew it we had found our luggage (after searching about a kilometre of luggage conveyor to discover as new flights arrive the uncollected luggage from the previous flights is thrown onto the floor in a room the length of an aeroplane hangar with hundreds of piles of uncollected luggage) & our car lease company, and we were being bundled off into a shuttle van to pick up our brand new Peugeot 7 seater which was to be our transport when we weren’t on 2 wheels.
The car lease company turned out to have its premises out on an industrial block wasteland next to a concrete works. It was when we arrived here that thoughts of the Italian mafia and organised crime crept into our heads. Would we be robbed, murdered and never heard of again? Was some Australian diplomat going to get the heads of 6 Ozzie tourists in his bed because he had snubbed a local crime figure? But we needn’t have worried (?!) Jeff quickly sorted out our van and the paperwork with the staff (he had done the most homework learning Italian, and regardless of what people tell you, unless you are going to spend all your time in major towns, you need to learn some Italian to be able to function in Italy), we had jammed the van to the gills with luggage and passengers (next time we’ll get an 8 seater or travel lighter) the GPS was loaded with the maps of Italy and we were ready to rock n roll.
And rock n roll we did, learning to drive a manual car with the gear shift and wipers on your right hand side and indicators on your left took a bit of getting used to. Because Jeff had organised the car and paperwork, he was the driver. Apart from giving the clutch a bit of a thrashing when first coming to terms with the car, and trying to indicate changes of directions with the windscreen wipers, he did a great job driving a team of tired but excited Ozzies towards Naples. What, Naples???, you thought Tuscany was north and Naples was south didn’t you. Well you were right. We missed our turnoff to Firenze (=Florence), because I hadn’t come to terms with the GPS before we headed off and the voice instructions were inaudible. Luckily for us, Stan saw an exit that would allow us to do a U turn (rarely possible on Autostradas and Superstradas in Italy due to concrete barriers dividing opposing traffic) and we were finally on the A1 heading towards Florence (Hooray!).
Colle di Val d’Elsa and Tana de’ Lepri
We took about 3-4 hours to get to our destination of Colle di Val d’Elsa and our villa Tana de Lepri. This was a pretty conservative pace, the Peugeot wallowed like an old sow in the corners with lots of weight in the back (Stan, Greg and ~180kg of luggage) and the roads are about ¾ the width of roads in Australia. The van didn’t have the slim lines of our sexy Ducati’s so with less than 50 cm separating us from traffic in adjacent lanes we didn’t test out the accelerator too hard. Also the GPS and I had a bit of a crisis trying to navigate the skinny one-way mediaeval streets of Colle di Val d’Elsa (Colle for short) and after a few trips the wrong way down the oneway streets we managed to find our way to our villa Tana de Lepri (Tana for short) on the outskirts of town (Jeff and I narrowly avoided a marital screaming match, although the atmosphere was a little tense to say the least).
That night we walked in to Colle (~10 minutes), found a restaurant (The Pisto) wolfed down some excellent pasta, salad and red wine like there was no tomorrow before returning to Tana and sleeping the sleep of the truly exhausted.
The villa Tana de Lepri has been renovated into 10 self contained apartments. Take a look on the website www.tanadelepri.com it was a terrific place to stay, well equipped, neat, clean and cheap (cost about $60 per person per night depending upon the exchange rate). The villa is run by 2 lovely Italians Enrica and Ilaria who communicate well in English and do all they can to help you with information about touring around Tuscany, good places to eat etc. Ross Naylor from European Motorcycle Adventures sourced this place out and it is a testament to Ross’s understanding of people, good sense and judgement, the place was great.
Colle di Val d’Elsa
The bike tour
Our bikes had arrived a couple of days before our tour was scheduled to start. We were all keen to get out for a ride -were we allowed to go before the tour guide arrived? too bad, Enrica (one of the delightful Italian ladies who ran the villa we were staying at) gave us the keys so why look a gift horse in the mouth? In the end we decided we should walk into the local town –Colle di Val d’Elsa first and get our bearings then get some supplies in the car. Then we’d take the bikes for a zoom either that afternoon or the next morning.
Well we failed to follow the first rule of life - never send guys shopping, especially not for grog. The residents of Colle thought that they had been invaded by the 3 foundation members of “I’m an Alcoholic and proud of it”. By early afternoon the tables were laden with antipasta through the shopping efforts of the girls and bottles of beer, red and white wine were being consumed at an ever increasing rate. In the end (~8pm), each person had consumed on average 2 bottles of wine and the boys also managed to get through innumerable bottles of beer. Needless to say there was no bike riding that afternoon and there were a few sore heads and green stomachs the next day, but the temptation of testing out our motorbikes was too great we had to get those babies on the road.
So what bikes did we hire I hear you all ask? Well, there were 3 Ducati’s –a Multistrada (For Jeff), ST3 (for Stan and Kerry) and ST4S (for me) and 2 wannabe Ducati’s – a BMW RT1150 aka Battlestar Gallactica (for Greg and Natasha) and a 650 single BMW owned by Ross (the tour operator who wasn’t due until that evening). I was particularly keen to try out the ST4S. I ride an 800 SS here in Perth (having only got my open motorbike licence in January 2006). The thought of that 996 motor had me licking my lips in anticipation –yeah baby, lets go!
Jeff led the group on a ride to Volterra –another mediaeval town, an easy ~20km on the main road out of Colle –piece of cake, last one there is a rotten egg. Well the first shock I got was how heavy that ST4S was compared to my SS, once she was going she was a dream but I had no chance of sitting on her and pushing her in any direction except downhill! Oh well, I just had to be smart when I parked and stopped her (or muscle up quick!). The road to Volterra was a typical Tuscan country road –narrow and twisty, but the surface was pretty good. Traffic was pretty quiet, although oncoming traffic was always a worry. The Italians don’t mind sharing your side of the road, indeed, they consider it theirs, which on a left handed hairpin made us realise pretty quickly that line huggers were going to be temporary Australians. And that road to Volterra had plenty of hairpins, chicanes and corner after corner that would make your eyes spin in their sockets. What did I say about rotten eggs, ooh I’m feeling a bit seasick. Lucky for me Jeff was more sensible about the ride to Volterra than I would have been if I had been leading (the throttle on that ST4S had my heart going overtime yeeehaaah). There were plenty of corners that I would have over cooked probably ending up as a bonnet mount or road kill. The secret to most of the Tuscan country roads that Jeff would repeat over and over was throttle and rear brake and most of the corners were 2nd or 1st gear.
Once we arrived in Volterra we realised the significance of the Italian scooter and motorbike population AND tourism. There were wall to wall bikes, regardless of the fact all of the signs seemed to be “No Parking”. Mega tour buses were moving cheek to jowl with pedestrians and 2 or 3 wheeled vehicles all trying to navigate at slow speed on cobblestones (aaaarrghhhh I should have hired a 749 or a monster, at least I could push it around). Anyway this was the moment of realisation for most of us, in Italy need was going to outweigh obeying road signs/ rules. We needed to park and if there was any available footpath we would use it, otherwise we would still be riding around now trying to find a legal park.
Volterra, like many of the Tuscan towns we visited can trace its origins back to the Etruscans –we are talking >700BC. This place was seriously old and there was plenty of evidence for this in the amazing archaeological ruins, existing buildings and trades here eg the goldsmiths and jewellers. Volterra is also known for its beautiful alabaster carving.
After spending most of the day in Volterra we headed back to Colle, feeling mostly pleased with our successful unchaperoned ride, but also a little guilty that we had taken the bikes out without the tour guide. That evening we met Ross in person, he had just spent the last couple of days riding his 650 BMW single from Brittany. We were soon to discover that Ross delights in imposing upon himself the impossible schedule. The fact that he had flown from Australia to Brittany, picked up his bike and then been riding ~non-stop for the last 3 days across Europe before starting our bike tour was business as usual for Ross. He is also a pretty fatalistic guy, although we weren’t supposed to have taken the bikes out, he recognised we got away with it unscathed and wasn’t going to make a song and dance about it.
Over the next 7 days we visited the beautiful mediaeval cities of Monteriggioni, Certaldo, Massa Maritima, San Gimignano, Sienna and Lucca riding over hill and down dale through forests and farm land on spectacular twisty country roads, venturing occasionally onto the superfast Autostradas and Superstradas. We also rode across to the Western coastline visiting beautiful towns like Castiglione della Pescala (where we went for a swim in the Meditteranean ocean), Porto San Stefano, Talamone, Viareggio and Porto Ercole where we spent the night feasting on more wonderful Italian food and wine and dreaming about all the amazing yachts in the harbour.
Porto Ercole
One of the highlights for me was our ride to Bologna to visit the Ducati Factory and Museum. If you ever get the chance to go to Italy you must go to the Ducati factory and Museum. Here the passion of the Ducatisti is palpable (and the stuff you can get from the factory outlet has to be seen to be believed!!!).
The other advantage to riding to Bologna is from here you can get on the road (SS65) to the famous Radicosa and Futa Passes, Utopia for all motorcycling enthusiasts. And I think everyone that owned a sportsbike in Italy passed me on that road the day we were on it. I rarely see bikers in Australia get their knee down on country roads, but every Italian on a sportsbike (and probably also scooter) was hammering into blind corners, knee down like they were at Mugello. I take my hat off to them, they can RIDE! At the top of the Radicosa Pass there is a triangulation of 3 roads with a café that provides an unofficial parking stop for bikers to stop, compare times up the pass, pose and perve. There were probably about 300 bikes there the day we stopped, so many that as soon as you stopped you became a needle in the haystack -invisible.
Radicossa Pass
Some of the other places of interest were San Galgano –the site of the famous “Sword in the Stone”; Bagno Vignoni, another town dating back to Etruscan times unique for the thermal baths that occupy the town square and of course Pisa –worth seeing for the tower and University campus (although the guys will tell you the prostitutes walking the superstrada going in to Pisa were worth the traffic and smog!). During the tour Ross also took us to a couple of small towns (Forcoli and Casole de Elsa) each with a shop owned by an elderly Moto Guzzi enthusiast. These guys were amazing they had vintage bikes they had raced and were restoring and although they could barely speak English they were keen to show us their bikes and tell us about their racing.
On the last day of the tour, Ross took us to the beautiful town of Lamole in the Chianti district and we had a lovely lunch at a spectacular restaurant on the top of a mountain. We procrastinated here a little too long and got caught in a thunderstorm –which was the only rain we had for the whole tour. But of course all of us (–except Ross, I told you he had been here before) had taken their wet weather gear out of their panniers days before because the temperatures were 30 to 35 and we had been positively melting -we wanted the pannier space to stuff our helmets and jackets in when we stopped. Needless to say we all got wet!
Lamole
At the end of the tour we were all reluctant to give the bikes back –we had had so much fun. So what were our thoughts on the bikes and bike tour. I think all of us would have given the tour at least 10/10, some of us would have given it 12/10 –it was fantastic. Unfortunately none of the bikes we hired had been looked after before we got them –all of them had signs they had been dropped and clearly keeping the bikes on the road was the hire companies first priority. Jeff’s Multistrada sounded like it had missed its 20 and 40,000km service and whenever it got hot it would cut out at low speed –too bad this always happened in hectic traffic when the last thing you needed to be doing was trying to get a bike started. Jeff also discovered the seat and seating position weren’t suited to him, so a Multistrada is probably off his “next bike wish list”. I had a lot of fun on the ST4S, it had the least km on the clock, it was stable and it was fast. However, in retrospect, the “touring” bike that I thought I would need for “touring” Tuscany was not the ST4. For me the best bike would have been something lighter and easier to throw around tight corners, so perhaps a Monster or 749 would have been more suitable –unless you are doing a lot of Autostrada riding, you are rarely going above 150km/hr because the roads are too twisty. And the best thing about Tuscany was those twisty roads. Greg and Natasha loved their “Battlestar Gallactica”. Greg has the strength to hold the heavy RT1150 and for pillion comfort, Natasha looked like the Queen of Sheba! Stan enjoyed the ST3, but it took Kerry a couple of days to get used to the acceleration and pillion position of the ST3 –which was completely different to Stan’s Harley in Perth. All in all a great time was had by all -
so don’t just sit there, start saving, biker Utopia awaits you!
