Are you ready for the ride of your life?

If it wasn’t for the amount of bikes on the car park so early in the morning, it would be possible to ride straight past the entrance to the notorious Nürburgring without noticing what it was. You’d see the big bronze thing in the middle of the roundabout, but if you were concentrating on getting through and out the other side, you probably wouldn’t even realise it was a metallic representation of the legendary track. In the car park that contains the entrance to the revered race track are two clean, recently-constructed buildings. At a glance neither give much of a clue that they are in fact the gateway to what must be the wildest biking playground in the world.

One of the buildings is a restaurant and toilet block that has a plate-glass annexe housing a couple of flash 3-series BMWs. The other, positioned at the opposite end of the car park, is a one-storey, off-white structure with one door and a couple of windows. Inside is a small, bald German bloke who sells something as addictive as crack cocaine. Give him DM25 (about £8.00) and he’ll give you a ticket with a smile. The ticket looks nothing more exciting than the slip of thin card that would get you out of a car park, but it’s a pass to what might be the most insane ride in biking, a permit to tackle the Nürburgring.

” You only thought you’d ridden a bike until you come here, ” says Jonathan Cooke as he leans on his R1 with a look on his mug that’s a mixture of self-satisfaction and shell-shocked bewilderment. It’s 7.55am and he’s just returned to the car park after his first lap of the day. ” I’ve come with a bunch of mates for the week. A few have been coming for years and I finally decided to make my own pilgrimage. On my first lap it scared the heart clean out of me. I was thinking of packing my bags, but your confidence builds. I’ve done track days at Donington and Kirkistown in Ireland, but they’re nothing compared to this. ”

” The Nürburgring totally recalibrates your mind, ” says Stephen Wylie, a mate of Cooke’s and another of the contingent to have ridden from Northern Ireland for a week on the Ring. It a cliché to say stuff like they’ve come for a fix and I’ve already succumbed by comparing the Nürburgring to a Class A narcotic, but I’ve never seen motorcyclists so obsessed with a place and that includes the Isle of Man.

The magnet, the Nürburgring-Nordschleife, is officially designated as a one-way toll road. It doesn’t go anywhere, just leads you back to the car park you set off from ten or so minutes before. In those few minutes you cover 20.8kms and around 70 corners. It’s this mix of these three elements, no oncoming traffic, track length and number and variety of bends, that ensures people from all over Europe come back time and time again. As one old hand puts it, the Isle of Man TT circuit is a road they hold races on every now and then, but the Nürburgring is a race track they use as a public road.

The car park is the hub of the activity. This is where the dealer hangs out. This is where all the laps start and the majority, but certainly not all of them, finish. It’s very early on a Wednesday morning at the fag-end of August, but there’s a constantly moving, buzzing group of as many as 70 European riders either just coming down from, or preparing for, a lap. Number plates show they’ve come from Norway, Italy, Holland, Switzerland and, of course, every corner of the British Isles.

As the day wears on things just get busier and the early-rising hardcore of riders knew what they were up to when they arrived early to get their kicks when there was nothing but bikes and a handful of cars on the Ring. Today is a public day. Despite being a public road companies can book the track. It’s popular with tyre companies, car manufacturers and two- and four-wheeler race schools. The free days are called tourist days and anyone who can afford a ticket is allowed out as long as their vehicle can do over 60kph and would pass the German Equivalent of the MoT. Such days are called Tourist days. Some of the instructors call them Terrorist days.

By mid-morning. I stop talking mid-sentence to stand slack-jawed as four coaches, proper coaches not minibuses, turn up, pay the toll and crawl out for a walking pace lap. Then Ian Davis from Manchester climbs off his Varadero and shouts, ” I passed someone! And he was on a sportsbike! ” In his excitement he narrowly misses getting run over by the Ringmini. This ‘thing’ is a scruffy, old Mini van fitted with a Honda VTEC engine (the motor that powers very fast Integra’s and Accords). The owner of the evil jalopy is a local who uses the tatty old Austin to totally embarrass and demoralise drivers of exotic supercars.

This small area is a gearhead’s fantasy, but it’s also the most dangerous car park on earth. By mid-morning there are Porsche 911 with Le Mans style double-decker spoilers everywhere. Then Michael and Ralf Schumacher’s dad turns up in a classic Mercedes reputed to be worth close to £500,000.

By midday the car park has turned into it’s own little principality, the Rider’s Republic of Nordschleife, with it’s own language and laws. The vocabulary is made up of bizarre words like Schwedenkreuz and Quiddelbacher-Höhe. The laws of the land are: overtake only on the left and only when you’re sure the geezer in front knows you’re coming past.

A gung-ho clown in a Lotus Exige chooses to ignore the rule and it nearly ends in disaster. Ex-Manx TT racer, John Minchell, was out putting a few day’s worth of tuition into practice on his BMW R1100RS. As he was shaping up for a left-hander the sportscar appeared on the racing line after nailing it down one of the straights. Instead of biding his time the driver stuck his car on the apex just as Minchell peeled in. The scars on the BMW’s cam cover and the piece of fibreglass from the car’s rear wheel-arch lodged in the bike’s engine illustrate how close everything was to going shit-shaped.

Despite hearing tales and warnings I’m still keen to get out and sample the track myself. The recurring piece of advice for first-timers is to follow an experienced Ringmeister. On a day like this it’s easy to find someone willing to share some of their knowledge and lead you on a lap. I start talking to Barry Salmon, a 51-year old from London who’s a part-time instructor at the Ring.

‘I first came here in 1984 with a pal who was an instructor for groups of car drivers. I went around in the car and that night got talking to a German who was here on a bike. I asked if he’d take me on a lap as a pillion. By the first complex of bends I thought, ‘Barry, you idiot.’ When I got off I thought there’s got to be a better way, so I bought a bike. ” Since then Barry has ridden in excess of 600 laps. ” Every year I get more enthusiastic. This is my fifth visit this year. ”

I fire up the ZX-12 that me and my mate and experienced road-tester, Tom Bedford rode down to Germany on. The big Kawasaki was great on the Autobahn cruising at 130 and then stayed planted through the smooth 80mph sweepers that lead to the circuit. As I push my ticket into the slot and wait for the black and yellow barrier to lift I wonder how it’ll behave on the track.

We set off down towards Hatzenbach, the first series of corners. I’ve got one eye on Barry and his BMW R1100S and one past him on the corners coming up. I stick in his wheel tracks three or four bike lengths behind and try to mimic his every move. He hugs the white line and seems to turn into corners impossibly late. We’re going at a reasonable speed. It couldn’t be described as fast, but let’s not run before we can walk. We pull over to the right as bikes and 911s howl past. After another ‘late’ entry that works out perfectly it becomes obvious the corners are deceiving. You can see where some go, but the apex and exit points of others are an enigma. On the incredibly long lap there are sections of shade caused by the tall evergreens, steep drops and climbs, bumps that levitate the front wheel and evil ripples on corners. The ZX-12 is so grunty I don’t have to worry what gear I’m in, it just pulls out of bends. It feels stable and at these speeds it’s not even too much of a handful, but a sharp 600 would probably be my ideal choice.

There’s every conceivable type of corner. It’s a clockwise circuit, with more lefts than rights, but there are fast sweepers, hairpins, kinks, chicanes, all your favourites rolled into one hair-raising lap.

As we approach the infamous banked Karrussel I see Barry throw his hand out as a sign of despair at exactly the same moment as I spot the cause of his disgust, a coach parked on the racing line. Seconds later the yellow flags are out warning of a Porsche that’s spun onto the grass. I think the lap must be nearly over then pass the 12km marker. Only eight more clicks! Another Porsche has lost the plot and buried itself in the gravel, lucky to choose one of the very few areas with any run-off to speak off. It’s a jungle out there.

As we slow down at the end of the lap lots of words ending with ‘ing’ enter my head. Initially intimidating, but exhilarating and ultimately exciting. Anything but boring. There are dozens, no, hundreds of scare stories and in the macho world of motorcycling it was a surprise to hear so many people say they were scared by their first ride. But if you keep a good eye on your mirrors and don’t try to do a fast lap before you’ve familiarised yourself it doesn’t have to be dangerous.

” You have to be an idiot or unlucky to have an accident,’ believes Roger Furness from Newcastle who is over for his third two-week holiday at the Ring. The sight of Ferrari with a smashed front end limping into the pits stops us – like so many occurrences in the Nordschleife’s car park – mid-conversation. There can be a little animosity directed from the two-wheelers to the car drivers and a few German riders laugh as the Testarossa meekly crawls by. But Furness is right. There are some very ignorant car drivers who want to pass when you’re learning the circuit, but if you go at your own pace, dangers are kept to a minimum.

As I’m interviewing all the Brits who’ve come to ride the Nordschleife, the big, blue Kawasaki is sat idle, but Tom keeps managing to dig a few more Deutschmarks out of his sweaty leathers and disappears out for another lap. He’s typical of the people visit the Ring.

” I came here on my CBR600 with friends a couple of years ago and it was the best thing I’ve ever done on a bike. I couldn’t wait to come back,’ he says as he tapes a video camera to the bike. ” The CBR was perfect, but the ZX12 copes much better than I thought it would. The suspension handles even the bumpiest corners and there are some rough ones. There’s lot of ground clearance, so there’s no danger of it touching down even through 90mph knee-down bends. It’s also easier to muscle around than other bikes in its class like the Hayabusa. And even though it’s got loads of power it doesn’t feel aggressive or intimidating coming out of corners. The brakes are also very powerful, good enough to match the engine. ”

Earlier in the week the Nordschleife was closed to the public because a number of groups from all over Europe had rented it for bike race schools. Honda UK Riders Club were one such group. In this particular week, Wednesday is a public day and at the back end of the week the track is booked by a German car club. If you’re thinking of visiting you’ve either got to attend one of the schools (highly recommended by everyone who we spoke to) or check the official website to ensure you’re not going to have a wasted journey.

” You can come and ride on a public day and there are organisations in Britain that run trips over here to do just that, but I think you should go on an organised course, ” says Chris Rossiter, another Nürburgring instructor from England. ” If you’re on a public day I would question how much of the track you learn. I think the difference between riding on public days and attending a school when the track is closed to the public is the difference between surviving and learning. ”

I visit the little man in his office for a ticket and prepare for another lap. I tag onto the back of Gavin Mason as he accelerates past a Lotus. Unfortunately I can’t check its rear arch for scrapes. The pace is already much quicker than my first lap and I’m trying to look further and further down the track, but because of all the blind crests and trees everywhere I still don’t have a clue where half of them are going.

Even when I’m doing a ton, bikes are coming past so quickly I don’t even get a chance to notice what make they are. Just as I think the lap’s nearly over the bloody 12km sign pops up again. It’s one of the few landmarks of the track I remember. At the end of the lap I just want to keep going until I run out of petrol, but the car club members are showing up early and in force. The car park is absolutely jammed, I can’t imagine what it must be like at the weekend. Because of this the circuit is too full of drivers, not all of them good, so it’s time to head off to the hotel.

That evening we stay in the swish Dorint hotel which overlooks the new Nurburgring’s start-finish straight. It’s one of the coolest places I’ve stayed. There’s a GT car on the first floor, an endurance-spec GSX-R750 hanging from the ceiling, a Trabant on the second floor and all the tables are made out of huge shock absorber springs. At £100 for a double room it’s not horrifically expensive either.

In the bar we have a couple of beers and stare at the walls covered in graffiti, posters, stickers, helmets, wheels and old photos of the legends and the track itself. The bar is full of bikers exuding the sort of bravado and confidence that only comes with spending two days on the most challenging race circuit in the world. ” Imagine if this was your local, ” says Tom with a smile. Then we both go quiet realising that if it was, the Nordschleife would be only down the road and we’d be able to ride it whenever we wanted. Heaven in Germany? I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.