The grim reality

Next morning the four of us had a fairly leisurely breakfast and continued to raid the coffee pot while we waited to see what if anything the dealer had managed to do. At about 10.30 Paul gave him a call and was told they were just finishing off fixing a rear wheel puncture on the bike. That seemed strange as the bike didn't seem have a puncture when it went off in the van the previous afternoon but the dealer said it had been flat when they came into the workshop that morning. So that was new chain and maybe sprockets needed, whatever could be done about the lump missing from the crankcase, and now a puncture. Our guesses at what the final bill would be kept going up. Mine had been the highest at €300 but that had been without knowing about the puncture. When Dave gave Paul a lift down to the workshop at around 11.00am to collect the bike the invoice totaled €360, but €40 of that was for the puncture. Painful but at least the delay had been minimal.

By 11.30 I was heading off down the autobahn with (according to the sat nav) about 60 miles to the rally site. It's the about bit that came to haunt me as the day progressed as although I had the exact latitude and longitude for the site I hadn't programmed them into the sat nav trusting that, as I got closer, other factors would come into play. Specifically the advice given on one internet site of "when you come off the motorway just follow the bikes" was something that had worked for me at previous venues and I was sure it would work again. Half an hour into the trip the others came past together in the "fast" lane just as I had tucked in behind a truck and was pleased at gaining my extra 5mph. This turned out to be my best tow of the entire trip and went on for over thirteen miles before the truck turned off at a junction. Soon after I started wondering about which junction I should turn off at. I had written it down but the piece of paper was buried deep in the luggage and I was reluctant to stop and find it. I thought I might recognise one of the names on the junction boards but when junction after junction went by without anything ringing a bell I finally gave in and tried to find one of the towns near the rally site whose name I remembered on the sat nav. When it finally found the satellites and worked out where it was it told me to turn off at the next junction in five miles time ...

You might wonder why I didn't have the sat nav running all the time and prevent all of this. The answer was down to the 6 volt electrics on the bloop being unable to power it so I only had the hour or so that the internal battery would last before it needed recharging from a mains socket and that usually meant a hotel. Actually I had tried to anticipate this and had made a small box of electronics that would run the sat nav from one of the 8.4 volt batteries powering the led spotlights. This had worked well in testing but it did run hot and fearing it would burn out with continuous use I wanted to keep it for times I might really need it such as finding hotels in the dark. As both of the spotlights had now stopped working their batteries were fully charged and available for stuff like this, running my tent light etc. Losing the spotlights wasn't that much of a problem at this point in the trip but it would come back to bite me later on.

When I came off the autobahn I had about twenty miles to go. The "follow the bikes" advice wasn't proving to be much help as there were none about. The only other vehicles on the roads seemed to be German van drivers all of whom seemed to want to read the details of the dealers name at the bottom of the numberplate or, if they didn't, were driving close enough behind me to do so. Eventually, at a "T" junction about five miles from the autobahn I saw a pink elephant. What else could it be other than a sign from ... the organisers, particularly as there was a direction arrow underneath. At least I was going in roughly the right direction.

Sadly the helping hand pink elephant signs seemed to have been scattered around almost randomly and a few junctions later I sat there with no idea whether to turn left or right. There were a few bikes around by now but going in both directions so that wasn't much help. Eventually I chose a direction at random and over the next fifteen minutes rode round the local town twice without having the faintest idea where to go. Towards the end of the second circuit I saw a group of loaded up scooters taking a side road that I'd previously discounted and decided to follow them. Within half a mile they'd vanished into the distance but a little later I saw another pink elephant so I guessed that this had to be the right road. The day had been almost pleasant when I'd left the motorway but as this road rose higher and higher into the mountains  the weather starting closing in. Heavy low clouds, fog, roads streaming with water and larger and larger patches of snow in the fields were now the norm. Eventually, as I finally approached the rally site, there was a long climb up through the woods that the bloop had to do in first gear and more and more bikes at the side of the road. Finally I arrived in Solla, a village about a mile from the site and a road barrier where bikes could go through but cars were prohibited. A couple of minutes and I arrived in Loh and the entrance to the site. Loh consisted of about three buildings and the entrance to what seemed to be an old quarry where the rally was being held

Just as I approached the entrance to the site I saw Dave at the side of the road. He'd been waiting for me and had managed to keep enough space next to his bike for me to park the bloop about fifty meters from the entrance. At this point the grim reality of the next few days was beginning to make itself felt.

Despite this being the twenty fifth time the rally had been held at Loh it was the first time I'd been there and I had very little idea of the layout. At the Nurburgring and the Salzburgring, the rally sites I'd been to previously, you could easily find somewhere to camp and get whatever bike you were on next to the tent. Loh was somewhat different. Most of the camping areas were on slopes of varying severity and while getting the bike in was not a huge problem, getting it out again, uphill, was more of a challenge. This year the usually frozen ground had turned into acres of mud and it was perfectly possible to sit there on the slope with the rear wheel spinning and digging a trench. Without help to push it out you could be there for some time! Many people decided it was easier to park the bike on the road and carry everything they needed in by hand.