switzerland by motorcycle 2001

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Yes I did have a lot of holidays this year! This was a 10 day blast starting and finishing in Edinburgh, taking the ferry from Newcastle to Holland and using mainly motorways to reach our intended destination of Interlaken in Switzerland. Seven riders and bikes left but unfortunately one of the guys had a serious crash in Switzerland, so only six of us returned by ferry and one by air ambulance. The trip down was fairly uneventful, getting up to speeds of 100mph on the german autobahns - perfectly legal and some cars were doing much faster than that. I couldn't have gone any faster anyway, my Honda would only do that flat out! Our route took us down the Rhine valley and we stayed our first night in a cheap Formule1 in Strasbourg. We then continued down the road before stopping as few nights in Interlaken, in the Bernese Oberland. If you've never been to there before, book that flight now, it's the one of the most beautiful places in the world - simply stunning. Following a few days walking and lounging around, we continued on our trip when the crash happened ..

The accident happened on the Sussenpass, a high level pass, just east of Interlaken, just after the picture on the left was taken. Too much speed, twisty roads and over-braking were probably the reasons, but none of us saw Alasdair go down. His brand new Yamaha was written off and following a brief trip in a helicopter, a badly cut leg, mild concussion and a damaged wrist were diagnosed. This was very lucky, since there was a 100 drop on the other side of the road. The accident obviously put a bit of dampener on the whole holiday, speeds were reduced and we took things a lot more carefully.

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