June- 2000
To see pictures of our 2007 trip please click below
A fairly grim June morning saw the club leaving London on this special Millennial Battlefield Tour. Twenty-six motorcycles of all shapes and sizes.
Once off, money was on one of the two Harley Davidsons breaking down somewhere on the trip, so it was perhaps from an unexpected quarter that the classic Laverda, met with a holed piston on the M2 to Dover!
On arriving in a rather overcast Calais, it was off to the Auto Rail Station with the Classic Laverda still in tow. This train would take the Club and their bikes overnight to Nice, cutting out a day or two of riding, to meet up with the support team and a tail lift truck who had departed a few days before.
At this point the Club split into four groups – two fast, one medium and one slow – and headed for the first campsite across the border in Pisa.
The Club arrived at Anzio the following day, after another tortuous navigational exercise, where frayed tempers could only be sated by the delicious local ice cream. The campsite was fortunately on the beach where British Forces had landed some fifty-six years before (a spectacular setting with the most wonderful weather).
The following morning, the Club rode to the slopes of Monte Cassino sixty miles away. The twisting approach road gradually gave riders the view and subsequent appreciation of the scale of what their predecessors had achieved. The sheer magnitude of the mountain, and the portrayal of the formidable nature of the Axis obstacles placed in their path, made it easy to visualise why it had taken four major assaults over a three month period for the Allies to subdue the enemy ensconced there. Once at the top in the crowded car park, Club members were shepherded into the imposing monastery to see from there the graphic details of possibly one of the bloodiest battles of the Second World War. It was certainly a sobering experience, and the visit to the Polish cemetery in the blistering heat gave even the liveliest of members something to contemplate. (It was the Polish who ultimately captured the monastery on 18 May 1944, suffering heavy casualties in the process.)
Back at Anzio it was time to prepare for the next day’s tour of the Beachhead and surrounding countryside, fought over so bitterly by the Allies and the Beastly Hun from January to May 1944. We then rode along a route following the Allied progression from the beaches, under the ‘Flyover’, past ‘The Factory’ and on up through the ‘Gully’ area to Campoleone Station, the furthest extent of the British advance. The whole area was very fiercely fought over, the Allies making rapid progress to Campoleone only to be pushed back by Jerry to the ‘Flyover’ where a dramatic last stand was staged, in some cases by rear echelon troops! Although nowhere near as spectacular as the previous day’s visit to Cassino, the Club got an excellent idea as to the ground contested by the British and Americans in their advance and withdrawal up the Anzio salient. In particular, insight was gained into the actions fought by the Grenadier, Irish and Welsh Guards along the route to and from the station, especially in the Gully, where Major the Hon W Sidney Gren Gds, earned the Victoria Cross.
The return route took the Club through France, via the Pisa campsite, and followed the spectacular Via Aurelia north along the Italian Riviera into France. On the way, the Club managed a brief stop in Monaco to hone their skills around the Formula One circuit – where one club member managed to have his bike confiscated for being stationary! The route then took riders north again along the Rue Napoleon (Napoleon’s route towards Paris after returning from exile in Elba), through Grasse, Grenoble, and Lyons and then on to Calais – a long haul for any motorcyclist, but helped by the immaculate weather and wonderful riding conditions.
To find out more about the
Thames Valley & Chiltern Air Ambulance
Please click on the picture below
