Planning a bike trip for 2022? Here are 6 expert tips on how to plan the perfect European motorcycle tour…
By Simon Weir
Former editor of RiDE magazine, author of Bikers' Britain and touring expert.
How to plan the perfect European Motorcycle Tour
It’s perfectly possible to set off without a plan. To tour by following your nose, going wherever looks interesting – chasing the better weather or just ambling around exploring. Certainly, that’s how I started discovering Europe. But the reality is that most of us now have a limited amount of holiday and nobody wants to waste it on a dull road when there’s a cracking one running parallel to it, or staying in dull or dirty towns when there’s a beautiful village just ten minutes up the road.
That’s why actually planning a tour will ensure it’s packed with biking brilliance. I’m not suggesting you set off with a schedule for every second of every day and every inch of the route planned out – but a bit of prep with (okay, every inch of) a well-worked route can remove uncertainty and make sure you don’t miss the things you most want to see. Here are six tips to help you prepare – and enjoy – a great European motorcycle tour.
6 Tips for Planning a Motorcycle Trip in Europe
1. Start planning now
It’s never too early to start planning your next European motorcycle tour. There are a few very distinct stages, though – and the first one is the most relaxed and the least demanding. 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.
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. 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.
Coronavirus
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. 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.
After the “ooh, I want to go there” stage you need to address the crucial feasibility stage of planning. 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. 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. That’s plenty of time for all of Europe, depending on how you build your route.
Putting in the miles
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. More particularly when landing in Calais, Zeebrugge, Rotterdam or the Hook of Holland, rather than in Spain. 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. 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.
Decide 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. 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.
Be honest
Even 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. 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. 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.
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2. Build realistic routes
A bike tour is all about riding – and that means riding the kind of roads you enjoy. 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.
The trick is not to focus on how many miles you’ll cover in a day. Plan each day’s ride around time in the saddle. Fast solo riders will generally beat a Google Maps estimate by 5-10 mins per hour, groups of four-to-six riders are likely to match the Google Maps predictions, while pillion couples or larger groups generally need six and a half hours to do what Google Maps says will take six hours.
Remember that any Google Maps estimate is just for the time it takes to ride a route… it doesn’t include the stops. As a general rule you can add two hours for lunch, coffee stops and fuel stops – but, again, bigger groups take longer at every stop so allow three hours on top of the route estimate if there are more than six people. A leisurely lunch is all well and good – but it will mean a later arrival at that night’s hotel.
For most riders keeping an unhurried pace, a route that Google Maps says will take six hours usually translates to setting off at 9-9:30am and arriving at 5:30-6pm. A Google Maps estimate of four-to-five hours generally means a relaxed day, setting off any time before ten, having a nice lunch and plenty of stops for coffee or pictures, then getting to the hotel a bit before six.
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3. Trust a paper map
Most carefully planned tours these days are done with a sat nav – or even with a navigation app on a phone. They’re great, but if you’re going to be following a pre-planned route then a paper map is invaluable. Especially in a group. Michelin maps are about a fiver each and most routes can be marked down on two maps – or only one if your tour is just in France or Spain. Making a few notes about each day’s planned ride as you finalise the route can really help as well.
It’s best to mark the planned route on your map with a highlighter. You can do this at any point but if you wait until a day or two before you set off you’ll subconsciously note some of the places around the route as you do that and when you’re on the road, you’ll have a much better sense of where you are and where you’re heading. You may barely need the sat nav for directions – and you’re much more likely to spot if it’s having one of those moments when it tries to lead you astray.
Missed opportunities
Marking up the map shortly before you set off on the tour will also refresh your memory about all those other potential roads you’d considered for the route. If you find a detour is necessary, a quick check of the map should make it easy to include some of those rather than just relying on the sat nav to find a route – which it might do brilliantly, or it might take you round the houses to get on a motorway…
A marked-up map can make a huge difference when a group is touring. It doesn’t matter if one person is leading the group – everyone should be aware of where they’re meant to be going even if they’re just going to blindly follow the front guy. If the group checks the map at breakfast, or in the bar the night before setting off, it can really help everyone enjoy the day – even those who are just following are likely to have a better idea about where they are, what’s coming up and how long it is until lunch. It becomes less of a magical mystery tour and just a magical tour.
Following a sat nav
If everyone in a group has a sat nav showing the route, but your nav suggests going a different way to the man in front… follow the man in front. Maybe try to get his attention and find somewhere safe to stop so you can check he hasn’t gone wrong, but don’t just turn off on your own. Sometimes navs will display different versions of the route when riding, even when they’re ostensibly the same units with the same maps. Sometimes the leader will put in a detour to go to a cafe, toilet, petrol station, Thai massage parlour or something else he knows about – presumably he’s leading the group because he knows the route or the area better than anyone else. It’s fine to stop him to check, but it’s not fine to detonate the group by riding off on your own.
4. Sort your Packing
Don’t pack the night before leaving: if you do, chances are you’ll forget something (I normally forget my sunglasses). If you’re riding through France, make sure you have the Hi-Viz vest and breathalysers that are a legal requirement over there. Make sure you have a suitable GB sticker for the bike. Check you have the adaptors (top tip: take one adapter and a four-gang extension lead so you can charge everything you need with just one adaptor). And the likelihood is that next year you will still need to take face masks with you.
Sort all the paperwork you need to take – including the CritAir sticker needed for French cities, a Swiss motorway vignette. Make sure you have your documents, the bike documents as well as the details (including the phone numbers) for your booked hotels. Also check in good time that your passport has enough life left in it… or replace it if it’s down to its final seven months. Remember that, post-Brexit, you will need to have full travel insurance with medical cover for travelling in Europe – a policy that covers your for motorcycle riding (make sure it includes repatriation).
READ MORE: The UK Motorcycle Travel Insurance Guide
Pack light
The game with packing is always to reduce the amount of stuff you have to take. It almost never fits into the luggage on the first go, especially when two people are on the bike, so pack, repack, repack again and when everything closes easily, without huffing and puffing, relax. My system is to pack clothes in individual bundles, with one bag for clean and one for dirty.
READ MORE: Motorcycle Luggage Guides
Get the bike prepped nice and early. If it’s due a service, get it booked for two weeks before departure (never the week before you go, just in case it has to go back to the dealer before departure). If it needs tyres, get them done then even if the current ones are part-worn and might last… You can always keep a half-decent set to refit later, but it’s better to write off the final £40s-worth of rubber on a well-used set than risk ruining a day of your holiday and spending a fortune getting expensive tyres fitted somewhere in Europe.
If you have any doubts about the mechanical health of a bike, get it assessed well before you set off so any problems can be rectified. Especially if the planning process starts now, there’s no excuse for getting to within a few weeks of departure with a dodgy motorcycle…
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5. Stop – a lot
When you finally get to go on tour, don’t spend the entire time just riding. By all means cover a lot of ground, discover brilliant roads and see as much wonderful scenery as possible… and that’s the point. It’s important to take the time to really see the places you’re visiting – and not just as a blur in the periphery of your vision as you focus on the next apex.
A great tour should produce great memories and while the riding should be a memorable part of any bike tour, there’s much more to the best bike holidays. That means stopping to smell the flowers, admire the views and take the pictures… as well as drink the coffee and eat the ice-cream and generally enjoy being on holiday. Even a ten-minute stop somewhere interesting or scenic can add an important extra dimension to a trip – those “Remember when…” conversations you’ll want to have in years to come are rarely about “when you took that third left-hander after the hairpin…” but about the quaint church, or the friendly cows, or the crazy art display… things you see when you’re off the bike.
Prevent aches
However, regular stops are important for more than just getting selfies to post on Facebook. Stopping regularly will keep you fitter and more aleart and, ultimately, safter on a long trip. If you’re in the saddle long enough for a small ache to start, it will just get worse as the day goes on and it’ll be with you until you go to bed – and there’s a good chance it’ll get worse with every day of the trip. Stopping regularly – ideally every hour, even if it’s just to stretch and walk round the bike – should stop aches even forming.
It’s also important to stay properly hydrated. Hopefully you’ll be touring in fine weather in a hotter country, so take care to keep your fluids up with regular stops for a short drink. Dehydration leads to a loss of concentration, which is not something you want when riding a motorcycle. The problem can be, ahem, heightened at altitude – so drinking lots of water is especially important when touring in the mountains. Remember that coffee is a diuretic so will ultimately lead to dehydration: always have a glass of water with your double espresso…
6. Go with the flow
The golden rule for making the most of every tour is really simple: relax. Go with the flow. Enjoy it. Touring is meant to be fun, obviously – which is why we put so much effort into planning it carefully. But don’t try to cram too much in at the planning stage and never become a hostage to the schedule – that’ll suck the joy out of it completely.
If you need to change a route, find a short cut, skip a sightseeing stop, do it. Always be ready to adapt the plan and do it with a smile – the unexpected moments, the changes of plan, the detours and surprises are often the most memorable moments of a trip. There are no rules when you’re on tour. Well, clearly there are laws to be obeyed… but in terms of what you have to do each day, you can do what you want – you’re on holiday. It’s more important that you have a relaxing time than that you tick off everything on the plan.
Anyway, if you have miss something off your plan, that’s a reason to come back the following year – right? You could start daydreaming about it that night in the bar…
And if you don’t want to plan it yourself, check out my site for a bespoke tour-planning service or off-the-peg self-guided tour!
About the author
Simon Weir
Simon is the author of the best-selling Bikers’ Britain series. He has been riding bikes since he was 15 and spent 17 years working on motorcycle titles. He quit his job as editor of RiDE at the end of 2018 to ride his Kawasaki Z1000SX to Australia. He now runs a motorcycle-touring website with downloadable routes across the UK and Europe, as well as planning bespoke tours for people.
Check out Simon’s comprehensive guides to touring by bike in Western Europe. Bikers’ Europe and Bikers’ Europe: Hidden Gems are packed with routes from the Baltic to the Mediterranean, from Slovenia to Portugal, all supported by downloadable GPX files to make touring easy.
- Visit Simon’s website for downloadable routes: simonweir.co.uk
- Simon’s books are available from his website or Amazon
- Read more of Simon’s articles on the Contributors Page
Read more on motorcycle travel in Europe
Thanks for checking out this European Motorcycle Tour Planning Guide. We hope you enjoyed it! Here’s a few more articles on motorcycling in Europe that we recommend you read next.
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Shipping my Can Am Spyder RT with Knopf Tours from Orlando in Feb 2022. This will be my 4th yr. touring Europe on a Bike. The first 3years I had a Honda Varadero 1000 I bought and kept with Martin in Kinsale, Ireland. But now that I will turn 80 next Aug. and don’t want to hold up a 2 wheeler anymore I have decided to ship my Spyder over to ride the next couple years of course depending on my health. As I did in the past I will ride for 2-3 months. I really enjoyed your Articles. Even though I have done these rides before I find all of your information really helpful. Thanks, Nick.
Hi Nick, thanks for your comment. Oh wow, that’s amazing! Happy birthday for August and what a trip to do just before your birthday! Sounds like you’ve ridden a lot over here in Europe especially if it’s for 2-3 months each time.
I’m really glad to hear you’re enjoying our articles, thank you, that’s much appreciated.
If all goes to plan, we should be shipping over to the States towards the end of next year to continue our RTW trip there, perhaps we can meet up in Orlando!
Cheers,
Andy
Excellent site, so useful even though I’ve done loads of tours. Anyone planning or taking part in a tour needs to read this and all the links.
Wow, cheers Steve! Very kind of you to say and hugely appreciated!
Cheers,
Andy
Hi! I’m taking my Mod1 & Mod2 tests in the next few months and my husband and I would like to go on a 10 day tour to celebrate my 60th birthday. Due to work commitments we would be going at the start of November. Do you have any recommendations of special, scenic places to go in Europe that would still be warm at that time of year?
Hi Amanda, thanks for your comment.
Firstly, happy birthday for a few months time! And that’s brilliant to hear you’re taking your bike test – awesome!
Sure, are you thinking of an organised guided or self-guided tour where you’ll fly to a country and have everything taken care off, or are you planning on riding your own bike/s to the destination?
Thanks,
Andy
Hi!
I am just in the beginning stages of daydreaming a trip. Do people usually ship their own bikes over from the US, or rent one in Europe?
Hi Mary,
Thanks for your comment. Exciting to hear you’re planning a trip to Europe!
That’s a good question, but the answer depends on quite a few variables. Namely, how long are you planning on touring in Europe for? Will you be riding solo or do you want to join a group? Where abouts are you headed? What type of riding will you be doing? (i.e. off-road trail riding or primarily roads) and how attached/comfortable are you to with your current bike?
I ask because if you’re only coming over to Europe for a few weeks, it doesn’t make sense to pay the expense of shipping and the hassle of paperwork. You may as well rent one.
And then I ask about riding with others, because if that’s your aim then you could join an organised tour.
The type of bike makes a difference as if you want to ride predominately off-road like on the TET, then you’ll be hard pushed to find a rental for that.
I’d suggest looking into rental/ tour companies in Europe. You can rent a bike (the longer you rent for, the cheaper it is) and cross borders easily for a fun few weeks.
Take a look at our Recommended Motorcycle Rental and Tour Companies page (simply click Europe or a specific country on the map and you’ll find a bunch of recommended companies that you can contact), ask what their prices are for the duration you have in mind.
And also, visit our Recommended International Shipping Companies page and click on the UK and get in touch with those guys as they’ll be able to give you a hand calculating a quote for shipping.
From there you should be in a much better position to decide on what the best options for your circumstances are.
I hope this helps, please feel free to ask any more questions in the Forum where we’ll be able to help further.
Cheers and best of luck with your trip!
Andy
Thank you so much. That is great info!
I am just in the beginning of exploring options, but I know it would be a relatively short term trip focusing on France and possibly Germany.
This is exactly the kind of information I needed to get started. Thanks again!
Hi Mary,
No problem! Glad I could be of help 🙂
Yeah, if you’re going short term then I’d definitely save the time, money and headache and go for a rental.
Have fun!
Andy
Great info! Was wondering if you had any suggestions but extended duration bike insurance insurance in Europe? We are travelling for 9 months – 3 months EU 3 months Balkans then 3 months EU but can only find max of 90 days EU insurance. Any ideas? Thanks in advance.
Hi Julia, just to check, are you on a UK registered bike?
Thanks,
Andy