Moto Giro information submited by John Lewis

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Moto Giro information submited by John Lewis

Postby JimF » Sun Aug 11, 2019 2:44 pm

Motogiro d'Italia

I did the Giro in 2016, my first ever competitive 2-wheeled motor sport event (aged 70) although before retirement I spent 40-years in rallying, driver (no skill!), co-driver (getting better!) and team manager (that’s better!), so I had a background to understand the requirements. I did the event on a modern bike in the Tourist class, I rode to and from the start (Terni, middle Italy), door to door 3680 miles, three days, two nights out and same back with five biking days on the Giro, we had a rest day in Bled in Slovenia, 2020 is a full six days. Although, as I am a glutton for punishment on the Sunday after the event when all others were going home I rode half way across Italy to visit the Italian Air Force Museum another 130 miles but well worth just biking to Italy to visit.

To do the Giro, in practical terms you need to budget for £2.5k, excluding bike preparation, accident damage and depreciation – not a cheap week away! The event was hard work, long days in the saddle (0830/1800), very hot (mid/upper 30’ies) and at times very stressful! But the event was seven days of; chaos, excitement, graft, frustration but after the event you could look back with a great sense of achievement – been there, done that!

It is not practical to ride a classic bike to/from the event, either drive it out in a van, trail it or find someone in the UK who hires out bikes for the event and pay for yours to go along. On my year there were three vans from the UK, two with classic and one with modern bikes.

Before my 2016 trip I had spoken to one person on the ‘phone who did the event regularly as he rented and transported bikes, he (obviously) was totally positive. I had a run up to Melton Mowbray to meet up with someone who did the event in 2015, three of them all on 60’s British bikes and they rode out and back – disaster! With the travel and the event itself he oozed negativity!

If you speak and read Italian you are good to go, if you don’t ………….. The event is organised by Massimo Mansueti and his partner (not just business – you know what I mean!) Laura Cosimetti both very amicable people to deal with but their understanding of spoken and written English is not “quite like she is spoken”, close but not always that close! I have included the text from the recent mail shot promoting the 2020 event.

Hotels were all superior 3-star and very well appointed, unless you travel with a friend all rooms are twins with an additional £40 per night for a single. I shared with an American guy of my age, we got on very well and as he was doing the serious Historic class I was able to give him some assistance. He had a charging issue so I carried a spare battery and his charger, a change at lunch time and then after the finish each day I rushed back to the hotel to get the dead one on charge. You can ask to share with a particular person, I asked if it could be the German lady, competitor number 84 – but so did six other people!

Scrutineering was mostly chaotic (normal for Italy) a few strands of wire were inserted and lead seals fixed but it appeared a little ‘half-hearted’, I did not encounter or see any helmet/clothing checks.

Daily you get bed, breakfast and an evening meal with at least one stop during the day when a buffet is provided, normally organised by a local motorcycle club. Varied daily but always good with free wine, although only the Police appeared to test that! Police – we had six motorcycle mounted Carabinieri as escorts, they would marshal you in and out of the start/finish locations each day and man any known difficult junctions etc. I was advised that there would be no road-side speed checks on the Giro route but they could not turn off town speed cameras, I only saw three of those and at each one there was a local manned Police car parked next to it indicating you should slow down at that point! I had taken to riding with a German guy on a BMW (well it would be!) F800 and one day after a visit to Lamborghini factory for mid-morning refreshments we set off with two Police bikes to cross Bologna to the lunch halt - the Police run their blues all the time and 2-tones at traffic lights, junctions and roundabouts with the lead as a rolling road block, I’m sure that there were speed limits in the city although perhaps not!!! But we arrived far too early and lunch was not ready.

Every day there are a couple of ‘special tests’ not speed related, well perhaps sometimes slow speed just handling skill tests. Finding out what was actually required was somewhat of a challenge! Daily the riding varied massively; couple of clicks of Autostrada, some duel carriage, the majority well maintained A-roads then up in the mountains always on surfaced roads but they could be ‘scruffy’ and broken (Italy has lots of earthquakes!) or km after km of pristine tarmac and endless hairpins up and down, really exhausting both physically and mentally and I now understand about ‘arm-pump’, of course you could slow down! To navigate you can use sat-nav, maps (all supplied via Google Maps) plus route changes are indicated by event arrows. Got lost a couple/few times, mostly on the first day but always got back on-route.

Daily all non-required luggage (two labels supplied) is left/collected at the hotel reception, system worked well even the day the truck broke down, but there was an extra ration of free wine that evening at dinner. I’m a vegetarian, in most Continental countries a meal without meat is not a meal but I have learned to cope. Although there is free dinner every evening on three occasions I went out to source my own supper, by nature I am a traveller and like the adventure, even if I don’t speak any foreign languages.

There is a ‘lantern rouge’ truck that follows the Giro route to collect up anybody who falls by the wayside, manned by two Dutch blokes who could probably fix anything! There also a couple of min-buses that do the route who also offer transport for any ‘camp followers’ who have joined the event.

John Lewis – August 2019

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Re: Moto Giro information submited by John Lewis

Postby Samurai » Mon Aug 12, 2019 6:03 am

Hey John, that's just the kind of info I was looking for, as my wife and I have just entered the 2020 event!

Answers a lot of my questions, so many thanks for that :D

Just got to find one of the people with a van that is going there from the UK now!

Cheers,

Jason.

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Re: Moto Giro information submited by John Lewis

Postby Lid » Mon Aug 12, 2019 12:55 pm

Great writeup, John! Thanks for sharing
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