Well to Start with we nearly didnt go. In the week before the Elefants I must have spoken on the phone fifty times with my buddy Oscar. âSo have you seen the forecast?ââ¦âYeah, so what do you think?â...âI donât know, what do you think?â. Finally the weather seemed that it was going to smile on us, at least in Baveria, that and a little bit of sound advice from a friend and that was it. Decision made, we were going to do it! Yeah! Oscar and I have done trips together before, in the Picos de Europa (it snowed then as well), the alps (it snowed then as well), the Stella Alpina so no problems there. Neither of us have any special needs or are very fussy. We both like eating and drinking well. We both snore. I keep loosing my keys, but you get used to it. As any of you have done a big trip will know preparation is key. So on the night before leaving I was still trying to find out where the hell this treffen was. First problem, there are two elfant treffens, theres the alt elfant treffen (www.altes-elefantentreffen.de), which takes place at the Nürburgring and is in a camping at the end of February. The other one takes place at the end of January at a place called Solla/Loh/Thurmansbang (www.bvdm.de). The first one claims to honour of being the original event, but from what we could see the bavarian event was much more âauthenticâ and the snow is garanteed. Although this year there was snow at both. I just put a route into my GPS that would take us to the junction where we had to leave and look for the signs that would take us to Solla. Easy! Well not really no. Donât try to search the location by the place name Loh, there are at least twenty one in Germany. Solla and Thurmansbang werent even listed in my Garmin software. Still I found the motoway exit the organizers mentioned and routed to that instead. Finished packing that evening, some warm clothing, some booze, some more warm clothing and so on. The trip to Orange, our first stop was pretty uneventful, apart form the fairly typical tramuntana wind which starts at around Figueres and finishes just before Montpellier. People who come from this area are famous for being nuts (due to the wind). We stopped at âle Glacierâ hotel, nice and cheap and the owner has a Ducati ST4 and a Garage. In general you get really well treated if you are a biker in France anyway, but it always helps if the boss is a biker. We parked up the bikes and I lost my keys (they were in hidden in my pocket). If you haven´t been to Orange, I recommend it, pretty place, enormous Roman Theatre (only bettered by the one in Bosra, Syria) and Touratech France are there. After a good nights sleep we set off at 9 am to go shopping at Touratech France. Fortunately we speak fluent French so it only took us about two hours to buy one thing each and off we went, the mechanic (who thought I donât understand any French) called me a rosbiff (roastbeef, ie British), but I was feeling fine and let it go ;-). First sign of bad weather; a warning at the toll, amber alert for the road heading north to Valence. To be honest we were expecting pretty bad weather and we thought that it would start now. The temperature dropped quite quickly and it started to snow and it carried on snowing, until near Geneva, but the roads were pretty good and very well prepared and salted, in fact there was so much salt on the road you could see waves of it move around with the wind. You just needed to be careful filling up at petrol stations, losts of snow and ice which made a pleasant change form sliding around on diesel! Funny I usually wear black cos I think i looks good, hides the dirt and makes my arse look smaller. ...anyway it sort of hides the dirt. Stop at the bordar to buy a Vignette, which allows you to use Swiss motoways for a year (see green and gold stickers on front of bike). Costs â¬30, they are obligatory (for motorways) and a lot better than trying to get a credit card and ticket out of your tank bag or pocket with three pairs of gloves on. A quick lap of lake Geneva and we head north. It was starting to get colder, down to -4ºc, -6ºc. We decide to stop in Zürich as its getting dark. We find an Ibis hotel and park the bikes in the worlds coldest parking, it had some sort of micro climate-I was shivering so much I couldn´t take a decent photo. The bikes were now covered in salt and our black clothes and boots were white. We couldn´t start before 9 am any of the days, just too cold. We left after I lost and found my keys again and so the coldest day of the trip began. For some reason the stretch from Zürich to the border was especially cold, dropping down to below -10ºc. Entering Austria near Bregenz we had to buy another vignette (for Austria, four days this time cost us â¬4) and then very quickly into Germany. The combination of Dainese Altas jacket and HG winter trousers, with windstopper and lots different layers was working. The needle is between -10 and -20ºc. We didnât have any heated clothing, but in general we didnât need it, the most important thing was to stop frequently. You relax a little, which is important as we were concentrating much harder than in normal riding conditions, you warm up a little, have ein caffe mit milch (I would have killed for a real café con leche though). The biggest problem were our feet, they got cold very easily, even though we had skiing socks and gore-tex boots, after 45 mins they were hurting. Next time heated socks! The best, most important item we fitted were bar muffs, they are cheap and really keep you hands warm. Up until Munich, we hadnt seen a single bike, not one. We started to see quite a few HDs, russians bikes, all sorts of trials bikes, BMWs, Guzzis even a guy dressed in bearskin on a R1. The problem was they were all going in the opposite direction. We found out later from some Spanish guys we met later that the temperature the night before had been -20ºc, they probably had just had enough and headed home. By the time we got to the exit we hadn´t seen a blade of grass for 700kms, just snow. We start looking for the signs the organizers promised, there weren´t´t any, so we stop some bikers and ask them the way and off we go. We are now in the forest. Beautiful twisty roads (we are taking them pretty slow), through lovely old villages, it takes us a while to find Solla. We get directed down the closed road to the site. The last 2 kms is bikes only, no cars and no quads. We parked as close as we could and started carrying our stuff to the camping area. The first thing you notice is the bikes. Some modern bikes likes ours, even some sports bikes, but an amazing amount of ancient bikes, sidecars, all sorts of bikes towing sleds, filled with wood to burn or crates of beer or people even. I have never seen so many sidecars, Dneprs, Urals, Chinese bikes, Check bikes, and scooters! Then came the homemade bikes; bikes that were made with RD350 engines, car rear wheels and axles and a sidecar made from a wheel chair! Having paid our â¬18 entry fee and bought a sticker or two we enter the encampment. I try to take a photo, whilst walking. Doesn´t work, which is probably why I never chew gum. Its quite impressive, the end of the valley is deep in snow and covered in tents, fires, people dressed in furs and bikes everywhere. Its hard to describe, but its something like a a cross between the Lord of the Rings and Apocalypse Now on ice. We put the tent up quickly and head off for beer, mulled wine and some curry wurst. Every now and again a firework goes off and we get a view through the darknesses of the scene, there must have been several thousand people out there in the darkness. Whilst we are there the candlit procession of the site begins, it is made to honour our motorcycling buddies who are no longer with us. In fact there are small shrines made with candles that are kept lit during the whole weekend. I loose my keys again (left in the ignition again). Oscar has whiskey. We drink it and watch the fireworks, we must be the only people in the valley who didnât bring fireworks, which is a surprise as Oscar brought pretty much everything else with him. Around the campfires sit lots of figures dressed in animal furs, some talk, some drink, some even sing American songs from the 60s and 70s. People walk past and shout âHelga?â and fifty people replay âover hearâ, soon a couple of thousand people are doing it, quite odd. Being novices we feel a bit like outsiders. Itâs the kind of event that is best if you come in a group, you can sit around talking rubbish and eating and drinking forever. We sit and watch for a couple of hours more until we get cold and decide to sleep. Even though we are still wearing lots of layers and have alpine 4 season sleeping bags and a quality tent it is still very cold, below -12ºc, we were told later, we cant sleep. We found a fairly flat place to pitch the tent, but we realise that night that it isn´t that flat and Oscar keeps sliding to the bottom of the tent. Im designed with this in mind and Im too big to slide anywhere in this tent. My feet are very cold, I know that Oscar has some thermal bootes on, for and hour or so I consider smacking him about a bit and taking the boots, but eventually let that one go as well. At three am some Italian woman starts screaming âtranquilo!â at her boyfriend who was so drunk the last time we saw him, he couldn´t be any more tranquilo. The party finished at around 5am and people start packing up to go at around 8 am. We take advantage of the morning to have a look at the bikers and their bikes. Fully faired sports bikes, covered in animal fur with skis. This guy was cool. Bike stated first time. He loaded up and gassed it all the way to the top without stopping. He must have covered about 2kms though to get up that 500m slope! A Kawazaki GT550/ Peugeot car trike (called by the owner a âHeavy Dieselsonâ). Made me proud to be British! A guy on a Honda CR 250 pulling wheelies trying to tow a huge sled behing him. Lots of guys with sidecars trying get up the slope to the road. Looked like caos so me and Oscar went to eat some more wurst. We ended up pushing fat boy up the slope: The snow quickly turned to brown slush, but there was a good few inches of ice underneath just to keep things interesting! What is amazing is that here pennytech solutions would look extravagant! Plastic bottle bar muffs, home made crash bars, fur as an alternative to paint, animals skulls and horns everywhere! One thing about these temperatures is that batteries donât work well, cameras, MP3 players, phones, even bikes. Bobs bikes fired up, but Oscars didnât. Oscar got help from the fire service who had truck batteries to help start bikes (these guys are organized!). Italian chic : Its pretty alternative. There are no bands. There are no burnouts. The only prizes are for things like the best home made bike (shame I dont have a picture of the guy on a lawn mower, with a 650cc V-twin engine and a full (fully vertical) remus system! The people who go are very friendly. Most people come form nearby (ie Germans, Austrians and Czech Republic). The Italians attend in numbers (you can spot them easily, â¬1500 leathers under the bearskins!) and are good fun. I´ll be going again I think maybe. Next year is the 50th anniversary so might be a good year to come.
You're nuts!! It's been a long time since we don't pay a visit to Mr. Flann O'Brien. Fancy a pint (or two) one of these days? :slurp I'd like to hear the whole story straight from the horse's mouth (no offence here) Also want to show you my "new" 200, 4th hand and sixteen year old urban assault vehicle Saludos
