Detours...

Days like today only happen so often in one's meandrance through life and the bike trip is often a good place to find them surreptitiously hidden amongst straight forward motorcycle rides, A to B, what could be more simple...? Tuesday took us from Grenoble to Turin, two fine cities separated by the small matter of the Alps. After yesterday's diversion you might be forgiven for thinking that we would have gone direct, one to the other. Err... no. But sometimes these things work for you rather than against and the 'let's pop to Val d'Isere for a beer on the way' was just the start of a day which, though full of the usual donning of wet gear, Rich going to Meribel because he was too busy once again picking his bike up from the horizontal to hear what was the actual destination (though thankfully he has perfected this to occur only when standing stock still), then turned into one of the best.

The road into ski country was a real edge of the tyres work out with more hairpin bends than one could count and post lunch was met with a three foot snow drift blocking our route to Italy. Being a bunch of smart arses we decided that just because one alpine route was blocked wouldn't mean that one a thousand metres higher would be too... Yep, you can guess the rest. A mere six miles from the Italian border a six foot snowdrift thumbed its nose at us and sent us packing back down the mountain whence we had come but the unremarkable sounding D1090 is a stunningly fabulous road with equally fantastic views and was the silver lining to the cloud as far as we were concerned, a head for heights required however. Ooh yes missus, what a cracker whether going up it... or down.

Three hours and an unscheduled 160 extra miles later we arrived in Turin which was instantly noticeable for it's loony traffic and later a lack of suitable 'museums'... not a bad thing I hear you say and, to be frank, typical of our experiences over the years