#Motorcycle road trip planner how to#
#Motorcycle road trip planner plus#

Plan each day’s ride around time in the saddle. The trick is not to focus on how many miles you’ll cover in a day. So no 12-hour marathons, no endless slogs down dull motorways, no relentless bumping down goat tracks… unless that’s your idea of a good ride, of course! It’s also important to be able to enjoy the roads: too many long, tiring days can leave you too knackered to make the most of the final half of the holiday. READ MORE: UK to Europe Transport CompaniesĪ bike tour is all about riding – and that means riding the kind of roads you enjoy.

#Motorcycle road trip planner how to#

READ MORE: How to Transport Your Motorcycle From the UK to Europe READ MORE: How to Ride Long-Distance in Comfort You might have to put a couple of hours into pulling these rough-but-reliable routes together, but what else will you do on a wet Sunday afternoon? It will let you rule out the impossible and focus on the achievable. Don’t forget to reduce daily mileages if you want time off the bike to go sightseeing – and decide whether you want a rest day (or two) in the trip. Be honestĮven at this daydreaming stage, be honest with yourself about how long you’ll spend in the saddle each day – and remember that 250 miles is a morning on motorways but a long day on mountain roads. There are pros-and-cons to each approach: it’s easy to have shorter, more relaxing days with a base hotel (and pillions can have a day off the bike while the rider does more riding, if they like) but you can go further and see more if you move on every night. Once you’ve established a practical beachhead for the start of the trip and a logical final night for a sensible return run, you can play with possible routes between those points to see what’s genuinely practical.ĭecide whether you want to find a base hotel somewhere, so you can stay a few nights and ride loops through the surrounding area, or whether you’ll want to move on to a new place every day.

#Motorcycle road trip planner plus#

My advice is to work out in a fair bit of detail what would be sensible first and last days of any trip – allowing for the time it takes to get from home to the port of your choice, the time spent faffing around making the crossing, plus the time difference when moving between the UK and mainland Europe. More particularly when landing in Calais, Zeebrugge, Rotterdam or the Hook of Holland, rather than in Spain. The big decision here is about how much motorway you’re prepared to put into the first and last day (or days) of any trip. That’s plenty of time for all of Europe, depending on how you build your route. If you have one week off work, that’s nine days on the road if you go from the first Saturday and return the following Sunday. This is best done with a bit of Google maps, just working out the reality of whether you can get to your desired area – and have enough days there to enjoy it – within the time you have available for the trip. Will there be a vaccine? Will greater travel be allowed to save those economies that rely on tourists? It’s still too early to say – so there’s no harm in staying at this vaguest daydream/planning stage and working up ideas for a couple of possible European trips… Then if we get a better idea of what the touring situation will be, you can develop the one most likely to be do-able in 2022.Īfter the “ooh, I want to go there” stage you need to address the crucial feasibility stage of planning.

You may not want to commit to bookings just yet, while we’re waiting to see what’s likely to happen with the continuing coronavirus restrictions. Certain ferry services can get booked up a long way ahead as well – notably the services to Spain around the time of the massive Faro rally.

Traditionally, the benefit of planning early is that you get a better choice of hotel and you sometimes get them cheaper than if you leave things to the last minute, when the better hotels in the most popular destinations are fully booked. That’s the advanced-daydreaming stage: drawing up your short list of destinations you’d like to visit, finding a bit more out about them – probably just with our friend Mr Google at first but perhaps with a quality guidebook once you get serious and settle on a destination. There are a few very distinct stages, though – and the first one is the most relaxed and the least demanding. It’s never too early to start planning your next European motorcycle tour.

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