It is February, and, unexpectedly, the sun is shining – a lot. I’m not sure if this is a good or a bad thing.
It is good because I’ve been riding for both the pure enjoyment of it and for work, despite needing to use gallons of bike cleaner and FS365 after every ride.
It is bad because all this riding makes me spend even more time looking at maps and working on the question … Where Next?
Where First?
If everything goes according to plan (Yea. Right. Like that ever happens ~ Ed.), April the 30th is the day I’ll be standing at the Docks in Harwich waiting to sleep my way across the English Channel to The Netherlands.
It is strange to think of the Harwich Docks as my “happy place”, but the blend of anticipation and excitement at the start of a tour puts a stupidly large grin on my face.
Other than big targets such as The Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Italy and perhaps Liechtenstein, there are only a few specific destinations in mind.
The Harz Forest, a visit to SW-Motech and riding the Grossglockner are on the list as I work my way to the ferry at Split and across the Adriatic to Italy.
In Italy, the ferry docks at Ancona, and if I’m that close, a stop at Tavullia to visit Rossi HQ seems sensible as it is all but on the road north to Bologna.
I was once told about a sequence of roads not too far from the Ducati factory that were used to test the Multistrada, hence the bike’s name, “Many Roads”. So if I’m passing the factory gates, it would seem remiss not to ride the Multistrada test track. All I need to do is find out which of the glorious stretches of Italian tarmac are involved.
From Bologna, the natural choice is the Stelvio Pass, but only because I need to get across the Alps. Unfortunately, Stelvio appears to have lost its mystique and turned into a coach-laden tourist attraction with knackered road surfaces.
I’m told that getting to the top early is how to enjoy the 48 hairpin bends without needing to play chicken with a succession of 12-meter-long buses, each weighing 20 tonnes and all coming the other way.
Once over the top and back into Austria, I’ll keep heading north into Germany for the B500, a lap of the Nürburgring and then back to The Netherlands for the ferry home.
An excellent way to spend a few weeks while trying to write and edit videos using hotel WiFi.
Where Next?
After that, the plan is a return to Scotland, where there always seems to be somewhere else to visit.
Can you ever say, “I’ve done Scotland”? Sometimes it feels like it, but I don’t think that will ever actually happen. Most of the places I’ve ridden in Scotland, I’d cheerfully go back and ride again.
I’ve never ridden the NC500, having always found somewhere else to ride that wasn’t littered with camper vans or tourists pointing at things and not paying attention. And then there are the outer islands.
My colleague Roger has a strong desire to take the Diagonal Pennine route to Moffat and then onto Oban via the ferry at Gourock. The road from Dunoon to Oban is 100 miles of motorcycling bliss, and it passes by one of the constantly lowest-priced petrol stations in the UK – just outside Dunoon, where the A815 and A880 meet.
His plan is to catch the ferry from Oban to the island of Barra. The ferry takes about 6 hours and is the start of a two or three-day island hopping journey around Barra and then on to South and North Uist, Harris, Lewis and finally the ferry from Stornoway to Ullapool and a return to the more traditional Scottish road trip routes.
Hopping between the islands is a mixture of CalMac Ferries and paved causeways. The CalMac website isn’t the easiest to work your way around, but they have an Island Hop ticket for this route. Island Hop 8 Barra, Uist, Harris, Lewis | CalMac Ferries
I like his idea, and I’ll try and sneak on the road trip with him. After that, someone will suggest camping, at which point I guess I’ll have to man up and get a tent.
Where Else?
Back in late 2020, we had a good idea. The Five Nations Motorcycling Challenge. Then this annoying thing called Covid turned up, and the definition of an epic tour became riding 20 miles without stopping. Petrol was – at one point – 99p per litre, which just deepened the frustration.
The idea has sat on the shelf for a few years. There is even a Facebook Group, but without highlighting it, only a few people stumbled across it.
When it came to riding it, there always seemed to be something else that needed doing. Somewhere else we needed to be, and this year is looking as if it could turn out the same unless we make a solid plan to do it.
There are so many excellent motorcycling roads in the UK and Ireland that I occasionally wonder why spending four days getting to and from Spain is so popular. Yes, the sun shines, the roads are quieter, and there is more throttle freedom than at home.
Even so, I wonder if we are not missing excellent motorcycle roads right under our noses.
The Five Nations Motorcycle Challenge – as the name suggests – provides an excellent excuse – as if we need one – to discover some of the best roads the UK and Ireland have to offer. We came up with one solution, but I’m sure some local knowledge would improve our route.
And perhaps that was more the idea than simply suggesting somewhere to ride to. A place on Facebook to highlight UK and Irish roads that people would enjoy riding. If anyone has any improvements to our suggested route, we are always happy to hear about them.
Acknowledgements
The Stelvio hairpins photo is an original work by Jarco Penning and used under license.
