Our friends at Malle are nothing if not adventurous. When Robert Nightingale and Jonny Cazzola aren’t designing impossibly stylish motorcycle luggage from their London HQ, they’re out on the road testing that gear during the myriad events they organize annually. Events like the epic Great Malle Mountain Rally.
The Great Malle Mountain Rally is a supported 2,000-kilometer [1,243-mile] regularity rally, stacked with around 100 riders of custom, classic, and modern-classic motorcycles. Running over six days, the event starts in Austria and ends in Monaco. But what makes it so ambitious, is that it runs across the entire Alps mountain range—from east to west, and north to south.
Filmmaker Charlie Bristow joined the Malle team for the most recent running of the Mountain Rally, to capture the scenery, camaraderie, and madness associated with traversing the Alps with 99 other like-minded loons. His 12-and-a-half minute-long short film [above], which was screened last night in London, is a breathtaking snapshot of a ride that currently sits high on our to-do list.
Charlie documented the event from three wheels, strapped into a Malle’s radical rally-spec Morgan Super 3. That meant he could get closer and lower to the riders, immersing himself in the Rally as it crossed the Alps.
This edition of the Great Malle Mountain Rally was stacked with everything from a highly-customized Harley-Davidson Pan America, to other new and old Harleys, Royal Enfield 650s, Nortons, classic Paris/Dakar BMW boxers, and a handful of Triumph Scramblers and BMW R nineTs. Riders covered around 300 to 350 km [186 to 217 miles] each day while crossing five checkpoints and being timed by Malle’s team of marshals.
That sort of daily mileage doesn’t sound too nuts, but once you throw the highest roads in the highest mountains in Europe into the mix, along with unpredictable weather, and it soon becomes an endurance adventure. Riders compete in teams (some of which are put together on the starting line), where the focus is not only on completing each stage but taking care of each other too—all while enjoying some of the world’s best motorcycle riding.
As a regularity rally, the goal isn’t speed, but rather consistency. Speed limits must be adhered to, so the trick is to complete each stage as close to the allotted time as possible. A minute early or a few seconds late, and your team loses points.
“On paper, it sounds like a very strange idea—strapping 20 liters of petrol between your legs, then setting fire to it slowly as you embark on the largest game of hide and seek across the entirety of the Alps mountain range,” says Robert. “But when you find yourself 2,500-plus meters up on the side of a mountain, in some remote checkpoint, staring across snow-capped peaks, downing strong Italian coffee and swapping rushed stories from the stage before, with a load of motorcycle-obsessed friends from all over the world… the camaraderie is like nothing else!”
“All of us are in it together, working towards one single goal—to get every man, woman, and motorcycle across that finish line with as much fun and adventure as possible. For that one week, we get to escape the world, we just ride and ride. With a long-distance adventure like the Mountain Rally, it becomes so mediative—body and machine become one and your mind gets into this flow state, taking on 57 hair-pin bends back to back.”
“It takes pure concentration, but you get proper time in your crash helmet to think. Then to see the Alps through the eyes of new riders each year is amazing. When riders from downtown Los Angeles or Tokyo see some of these tiny rural places, it can be pretty mind-blowing.”
The Great Malle Mountain Rally takes on all of the well-known mountain passes, like Stelvio, Furkha, Splugen, Gotthard, San Bernardino, Col d’Iseran, and Passo Rollo, but also connects many lesser-known roads and Alpine passes. “The famous passes like Stelvio are great,” says Charlie, “but most people just do the famous hairpin bend section on the south side and then go back down the same way again. If you carry on to the ‘dark side’ of Stelvio it becomes really wild, with huge alpine forests that go on forever.”
“When we were coming down the Maloja pass, we just caught the golden sunset at the top. Nearly all of the teams were back at the camp by then, but as the film team, we’re usually the last ones in, with the marshals and support crew. We were coming down to Maloja, and suddenly, as we turned the bend, there was this huge perfectly flat sheet of cloud, maybe 500 meters thick, in the valley.”
“As we plowed into the thick cloud layer beneath us, temperatures and visibility dropped dramatically, and we blindly followed the distinct sound of the three custom Malle Rally Royal Enfields to navigate the way. As we hit the lake on the valley floor, the cloud gave way slightly and I got these amazing shots of the final team all coming into camp. Riding above the clouds is something pretty wild.”
Several custom motorcycle builders also joined the Malle Rally team, including Alec Padron from Revival Cycles and Calum Pryce-Tidd from deBolex Engineering. “I feel really privileged to be a part of the Malle Rally crew,” says Calum, who’s been the lead engineer on the Rally for seven years now. “It’s one of the best weeks of the year, where I finally get out of the workshop and get to really ride bikes.”
“There are always mechanical challenges and very little sleep, but a big highlight for me was the 2022 Mountain Rally where we had two of our custom bikes on the adventure—a dB25 Ducati and our Kawasaki ZRX1200R. Being tucked up behind one of our projects and watching it dance around each bend was a really special moment.”
The Malle Rallies also attract their fair share of classic motorcycles. Alex Coco has now completed three Malle Rallies on various vintage machines, choosing a 1980 BMW R80/7 this time around. “I wasn’t on the oldest bike this year,” he says, “but it’s two of my favorite things: motorcycles and mountains.”
“There’s a stillness in the mountains that you just can’t get anywhere else. Mountains make you think. One’s riding improves with every bend or switchback. Nothing feels better than the stillness of the mountains against the noise of a classic motorcycle.”
We’re certainly convinced—which is why we’re marking our calendars for The Great Malle Arctic Rally in 2025.
Malle London | Facebook | Instagram | Images by Shane Benson | Short film by Bristow Films
