Full Tilt (2 page)

I had planned a route to India through France, Italy, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Persia, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Departure Day was to have been 7 January 1963, but by then the freak weather of that year had reached even Ireland and I postponed ‘D-Day’ for a week, innocently supposing that these conditions ‘could not go on’. But of course they did go on, and in my impatience to be off I decided that to postpone departure from week to week would not be practical – though in retrospect I realised that it would have been a lot more practical than heading for Central Europe during the coldest winter in eighty years.

I shall never forget that dark ice-bound morning when I began to cycle east from Dunkirk; to have the fulfilment of a
twenty-one-year-old
ambition apparently within one’s grasp can be quite disconcerting. This was a moment I had thought about so often that when I actually found myself living through it I felt as though some favourite scene from a novel had come, incredibly, to life. However, within a few weeks my journey had degenerated from a happy-go-lucky cycle trek to a grim struggle for progress by
any
means along roads long lost beneath snow and ice.

At first my disappointment was acute, but I had set out to enjoy myself by seeing the world, not to make or break any record, so I soon became adjusted to these conditions, which led to quite a few interesting adventures. Also, I was aware of ‘seeing the world’ in circumstances unique to my generation. Should I survive to the end of this century it will be impressive to recall that I crossed the breadth of Europe in the winter of 1963, when every humdrum detail of daily life was made tensely dramatic by the weather and going shopping became
a scaled-down Expedition to the Antarctic. It was neat hell at the time – I cycled up to the Rouen Youth Hostel with a quarter-inch icicle firmly attached to my nose and more than once the agony of frozen fingers made me weep rather uncharacteristically – yet it seemed a reasonably good exchange for the satisfaction of cycling all the way to India.

I give full marks to Italy for the superb efficiency with which her main northern roads were kept clear during that January. Having been compelled to take a train from Grenoble to Turin, across the Alps, I found myself able to cycle, and enjoy it, almost all the way to Nova Gorizia, through a deserted and impeccably beautiful Venice.

At this bisected frontier town of Nova Gorizia the formalities for being admitted into Yugoslavia seemed diabolically complicated. Repeatedly I was shuttled back and forth through the darkness from Police to Customs Officers; then, while innumerable forms were being completed in triplicate, I stood shivering outside warm offices, trying to explain why I was so improbably entering Yugoslavia with a bicycle on 28 January. And every time I took off a glove to sign yet another document the bitter wind seared my hand like caustic acid.

Suddenly a policeman shouted to someone in another room and a tall, rugged-featured woman, wearing Customs Officer’s uniform, appeared beside me. I stared at her in horror, only then remembering that my automatic lay in the right-hand pocket of my slacks, where the most casual search would at once detect a sinister hard object. In the stress and strain of searching Gorizia for the open frontier post (there were four in all, but three were closed to tourists) I had quite forgotten my ingenious scheme for concealing the weapon. So now I foresaw myself being hurled into the nearest dungeon, from which I would eventually emerge, emaciated and broken in spirit, after years of negotiations between two governments who are not, diplomatically, on speaking terms. But alarm was unnecessary. The formidable female took one quick look at my intricately laden bicycle, my knapsack with its protruding loaf of bread and my scruffy self. Then she burst into good-humoured laughter – of which one would not have believed her
capable – slapped me on the back and waved me towards the frontier. It was 6.15 p.m. when I passed under the railway bridge with ‘
Jugoslavija
’ painted across it in huge letters.

Two miles from the frontier, having cycled along an unlighted road that leads away from Italy and then curves back, I came to Nova Gorica, the Yugoslav half of the town. Here, beneath the weak glow of a street lamp, a solitary figure was walking ahead of me. Overtaking it I saw a good-looking girl who, in reply to my questions, said, ‘Yes’ she spoke German, but ‘No’ there wasn’t a cheap inn available, only the Tourist Hotel, which was very expensive. Even in the dim light my look of dismay must have been apparent, because she immediately added an invitation to come home with her for the night. As this was within my first hour of entering Slovenia I was astonished; but soon I learnt that such kindness is common form in that region.

While we walked between high blocks of workers’ flats, Romana told me that she shared a room with two other typists employed in a local factory at £3 per week, but as one was away in hospital there would be plenty of space for me.

The little room, at the top of three flights of stairs, was clean and adequately furnished, though the only means of cooking was an electric ring, and the bathroom and lavatory were shared with three families living, in one room each, on the same floor. Arita, Romana’s room-mate, gave me a most enthusiastic welcome and we settled down to a meal of very curious soup, concocted out of some anaemic meat broth, in which lightly whipped eggs were cooked, followed by my bread and cheese (imported from Italy) and coffee (imported from Ireland).

I found these youngsters delightful company – vivacious, perfectly mannered and intelligent. They were simply dressed and it was pleasant to see their clear-skinned faces, innocent of any make-up, and their well-groomed heads of unpermed sanely-cut hair. I noted too the impressive row of books in the little shelf by the stove – among them translations of
Dubliners, The Heart of the Matter, The Coiners, Black and Red
and
The Leopard.

Anticipating a tough mountain ride on the following day I was
relieved to find that 9.30 p.m. was bedtime, as these girls rise at 5.30 a.m. to catch the factory bus and be at work by seven o’clock.

It was a deceptively fine morning when I left Nova Gorica. The second-class but well-kept road to Ljubljana wound through a range of fissured mountains, whose lower slopes were studded with tiny villages of brown-roofed, ramshackle farmhouses, and whose upper slopes, of perpendicular bare rock, gave the valley an odd appearance, as though it had been artificially walled in from the rest of the world. Then, towards midday, as I was revelling in the still, crisp air and brilliant sunshine, a violent wind arose. Whether because of the peculiar configuration of the mountains here, or because it was one more manifestation of freakish weather, this wind blew with a force such as I had never previously encountered. Before I could adjust myself on the saddle to do battle with my new enemy it had lifted me right off Roz and deposited me on a heap of gravel by the wayside. None the worse, I remounted, but ten minutes later, despite my efforts to hold Roz on the road and myself on Roz, we were again separated, and this time I went rolling down a fifteen-foot sloping ditch, unable to get a grip on the icy bank to check my fall. I ended up on a stream which happily was frozen so solid that my impact produced not a crack in the ice. After crawling cautiously along the stream for some twenty yards, to find a way up to the road and Roz, I decided that from now on walking was the only logical means of progress.

At the valley’s end my road started to climb the mountains, sweeping up and up and again up, in a series of hairpin bends that each revealed a view more wild and splendid than the last. At one such bend I was actually frightened by the power of the gale; I couldn’t walk against it, and for some four or five minutes I simply stood, bent over Roz, my body braced with all its strength in the effort to hold us both on the road.

Near the top of the pass, seven miles from the valley floor, things were further complicated by the reappearance of my old enemies – packed snow and black ice underfoot. On the west side of this mountain range there had been strangely little snow (although everything that could freeze had frozen) but now, going over the pass, I was abruptly back to
the too-familiar vision of a landscape completely white, each contour and angle rounded and disguised. Then yet another blizzard started, the flakes whirling round me like a host of malicious little white demons.

By now I was exhausted from the struggle uphill against the gale and the agony of frost-bitten hands and feet. My hands were too numb for me to consult the map, which in any case would probably have been ripped away by the wind or rendered illegible by the snow. Crawling along over the ice, I told myself that this was an advantage, because if no village was marked I would probably curl up by the wayside in despair.

In fact there was a tiny village, called 
less than two miles ahead, and on arriving there I thanked my guardian angel, as I blundered about among piles of snow stacked four and five feet high on either side of the road, searching for something that looked like an inn. At last I saw two old men emerging from a doorway, wiping their moustaches with the backs of their hands. This looked hopeful, so I dragged Roz over a pile of snow, propped her against the wall, and entered the two-storeyed stone house.

Obviously the primary need was brandy, yet my face was so numb that I couldn’t articulate one word. I merely pointed to the relevant bottle, and stood by the stove to thaw out, while a group of
card-playing
men stared at me with a trace of that hostility shown by all peasants in remote places to unexpected strangers. Then an old man came rushing in to inform the company that I had arrived with a bicycle – and, as I soon recovered the power of speech, friendly relations were easily established.

I now broached the subject of accommodation for the night and the landlady at once broke into excited discussions with her customers. In the middle of this the door opened again and a young woman entered. She was hailed with great relief all round, and turning to me introduced herself in English as a local social worker. She explained that tourists are not allowed to stay in any but Tourist Hotels – which meant yet another disruption of my plans, for I had intended, on crossing the frontier from expensive Italy, to settle down in some village such as
and wait there, living cheaply, until weather conditions again permitted cycling.

However,
pace
Government regulations, it was obvious that this particular tourist could not now be accommodated anywhere but at the village inn. The next step was to contact the local policeman, so that he might give his blessing to the irregularity. This formality completed, I was shown up to my large room, which contained one small bed in a corner and nothing else whatever.

When I came down to eat some bread and cheese by the stove in the pub I found a young girl waiting for me – one who was to prove a true friend and who provided me with the most congenial companionship during the following days. A daughter of the local postman and postwoman, Irena was a student of psychology at Ljubljana University, and was now home for the winter vacation, that is to say, the month of January. She was due to return to Ljubljana on 31 January, and she advised me to wait at
until then, as the road down to the plain would be impassable after such a blizzard. She added that she would smuggle me into her room at the University Students’ Hostel, where one of the five beds was vacant, thus saving me the expense of the Tourist Hotel.