Out & about
Overdue a European blast, Ben Miller turned a meeting in Milan into an unforgettable week away on his BMW R1250GS Adventure
In the Swiss Alps, high on the sublime Susten pass, I can’t stop smiling. The weather is perfect; blue skies, dry roads, and a balmy 23°C. Emerald lakes sparkle in the afternoon sunshine. Alpine flowers stud the grassy slopes with pops of candy yellow and purple. Birds wheel in the cloudless skies. And wherever I look – ahead, behind, below and on Waze – there are corners; crazed tangles of curves promising a really, really good time.
Politely, the R1250GS Adventure and I skip the queue waiting at the temporary traffic light, leapfrogging a line of loud but slow Lamborghinis and gliding in ahead of a bus to take pole position. Into neutral, hill hold on (like cruise control and the GS’s tank-top compartment for peage toll tickets, its handbrake is so useful that, one year into ownership, I’m not sure how I ever managed without one) and I clock another bike filtering into position behind me. Ducati Diavel? Interesting…
Light to green and we’re off through the roadworks. When we get clear I watch my mirrors through the first couple of corners, trying to get a read on the V4 Ducati. It doesn’t take long. He’s glued to my rear wheel, so out of another tight right-hander I pull to one side and wave him through. What follows is perhaps 10 minutes of the purest euphoria.
The Diavel’s a fantastic pacemaker – smooth, fast and yet clearly still well within himself. The Swiss plate confirms what the riding is telling me: he knows his bike, he knows the road and he knows the score.
Suspension in Dynamic, the GS feels fabulous – as serene here carving corner after corner as it did smashing across France and Germany on motorways. The Adventure’s confidence-inspiring handling – wide bars, slim tyres, towering ground clearance – alone is cause for wild celebration. But in cahoots with the ShiftCam 1250 motor (monstrous torque, impeccable manners, filthy soundtrack when you get greedy on the throttle) it’s a ridiculously addictive combination, and I’m soon laughing out loud as the Ducati and I carve onwards up the mountainside, the thunderous din of our hard-working engines echoing off ancient rock faces as our boots scuff smooth, warm Swiss blacktop. The Diavel’s awesome on corner exit but I can, if I’m really on it, use the taller BMW’s ground clearance to claw the time back mid-corner. In doing so I’ll hit a PB of 48º of lean to the right, beating my previous best by 3º. And I’ll find this out checking my phone in the sunshine outside a chalet café, drinking coffee, eating cake and blissed out at the prospect of not having to be anywhere in particular for another 24 hours. Has it been worth coming? Oh yes.
In truth, I knew planning this stolen adventure had been the right decision the moment I woke up on day one, stomach fluttering with excitement and a frisson of nerves. The plan came together fast when it became clear the window of opportunity to get in a proper ride this year was closing rapidly. I started to worry in late July. By mid-August a panic paced in my guts. Going into winter without the memories of a sun-kissed week on the road is unthinkable, like spacewalking without oxygen. Something had to be done, and those four hours spent gorging on Alpine corners, wildly three-dimensional views and fresh mountain air was 240 minutes of emphatic vindication. And that’s important, because wedging a week away on a motorcycle is never easy. Life fills days to the minute, minutes to the second, the atoms of routine so tightly packed as to look inseparable, the bonds that bind them apparently unbreakable.
But they’re not. A work event in Milan gave me a piton in the rockface around which to start hanging everything else. Helpfully, it also gave me a Eurotunnel crossing. Dinner plans just south of Munich provided further structure. To the front of the schedule I bolted the motorway miles required to get me to Bavaria. I knew Andermatt – gateway to a bunch of incredible passes high in the Swiss Alps – was the perfect stopover between Germany and Italy. And if I took three days to get home from Milan, rather than two, I could also take in the Route Napoléon, the first big European road I fell in love with but one I haven’t ridden for far too long.
‘Going into winter without the memories of a sun-kissed week on the road is unthinkable’
And so one Friday in early September I woke with that elusive giddy buzz, wandered downstairs and started a flat twin rather than a MacBook Air. By 8.30am I was loaded up and gone, scudding south for Folkestone under blue skies. And 454 miles later, after miles of hot filtering in the madness of the M25 at Dartford and an afternoon watching France scroll by on cruise control, I reached Metz. By Saturday evening (a further 318 miles, taking in bits of the Vosges and jumping off the motorway early for some Bavarian back roads) I was drinking dunkel beer in the evening sunshine with an old friend. After the aforementioned Alpine euphoria, a couple of days in Milan for work popped the bubble temporarily. But by Wednesday afternoon I was back at it, sweeping up from the glittering Côte d’Azur and 30°C heat into the foothills of the Alpes-Maritimes and on to an overnight in postcard-pretty Castellane.
A couple of days later I was home, deliriously high on nearly 2453 miles of almost entirely warm, dry and blissful riding. Winter is coming but at least now I am ready. Let it come.
KriegaOverlander-Ssoft panniers
» Having run heavy, fragile and expensive aluminium panniers on my Yamaha Ténéré 700, I knew I wanted soft panniers (plus a lockable aluminium top box) on the GS. The full set-up, which I bought from Sportsbikeshop, requires two OS-Platforms which bolt to the factory pannier frames (£189), an adapter (£35) to get around the exhaust, and the bags themselves (OS-32 panniers in my case, 32 litres and £279 each; 22s and 38s are also available). Expensive, then. But the system’s easy to fit (the frames took perhaps an hour) and highly recommended. The way the bags secure to the frames each morning is fiendishly clever. Buckles pass into the frames and then support their own weight, so you can complete the securing process without holding them up as you do so, and nothing so much as worked slightly loose in nearly 2500 miles, let alone went slack. Waterproof in an absolute deluge coming into Calais, too.