Touring the Continent

To me, motorcycling is a never ending series of personal challenges and achievements, so I assume that it must be similar for a number of other riders. Probably one of the great rungs on the motorcycling ladder is taking your bike abroad. The mags, that well known body of knowledge, wax lyrical about it being better to be lost in France than found in Wigan, but its clearly a rung that some people still find a challenge and one that is not without its moments. 

So this is an attempt to put down on paper a few things that whilst they’ve not tripped me up, they’ve definitely slowed progress and ratchet up the under helmet tensions on more than one occasion. 

It’s a British view of touring into Western European countries and should be read as such.

How far is a long way?

Europe, it’s a big place in comparison to the UK. Okay, technically speaking, the distance between the Calais and the South of France is similar to the distance between Dover and John O’Groats. But many in the South won’t go north of the Watford Gap services without full breakdown cover and guidance from the RAC, so France is really no different. 

Therefore your first step before buying the ferry tickets is doing a bit of route planning. Sounds obvious, it’s simple common sense, but it’s only after you’ve done the Tour that you can really judge how good you planning skills are.

My approach is to roughly organise where I want to go and what I want to see and then try and then see if it’s possible. Here are some of my planning guidelines:

• If there are pillions along, I try not to exceed 300 miles per day. I also try and avoid putting more than two 300 mile days together back to back. 
• When riding solo and riding in a group at the same time, a 400 mile day in European conditions is a long day. 
• When riding solo and alone, a 600 mile day is a very long day.
• If possible, do the majority of the mileage before lunch. After lunch you do seem to slow down a bit and the miles can really drag.
• Every 3^rd or 4^th day, take a day off the bike. Choose somewhere nice, sit in the sun and watch the World go by, after all it is a holiday (as my wife points out).
• Know where you’re going too, and that there is a bed there waiting for you. Book your hotels in advance and check that they have a proper car park for your bike. It’s a lot less stressful knowing how the day will end and that your pride and joy will be safely tucked up for the night.
• Allow for an alternative route, preferably one that is easier to ride. So if you get tired, the weather is bad, etc., then you can drop back and ride the easier route. It amazing how many times I’ve planned a great mountain route with a parallel section of Motorway and ended up riding the Motorway section because of weather or just general tiredness.
• Check the weather for the regions you will cross, most guidebooks give you average temperatures and rainfalls for the 4 seasons of the year. Adjust your mileage downwards if you’re looking at a season with high rainfall.
• Think about who you are going with. i.e. plan it round the weakest rider or smallest/slowest bike. Know who you are going with, and know what they’re like as a rider, e.g. can they get up every day, get on the bike and ride what you’ve planned? 
• Allow at least 2 - 2 1/2 hours of the traveling day for fuelling, lunch, coffee breaks and general fannying around taking pictures and looking at the strange odd foreign things you will encounter.

Okay, so the route is planned, the tickets are purchased and it’s a few weeks to go, what next?

Your Bike, Your Kit and Your Luggage

It might sound obvious that checking your bike before traveling is part of trip preparation. However, given the number of breakdowns I’ve seen happen to other riders whilst touring, it is obviously not something people take overly serious. As an example, I met a chap who had run out of fuel on his Fireblade. Probably not that unusual an occurrence, but this was a bike he also raced and it therefore had its reserve supply wire locked off. He’d just dragged it out of the garage, hopped on and ridden off without any real checks of it. A testament to the reliable nature of the modern motorcycle definitely, but not to not to the sense of modern man. Very definitely a case of kick the tyres, light the fires, let’s get this show on the road.

You almost have to go to the other extreme to ensure that your bike is ready for the tour. I obviously know in advance when I’m going and I try and predict how many miles I will ride between now and the start of the tour. To that I add how many I’m expecting on the tour, plus a margin and then I check to see if I’ve got sufficient tyres and distance to the service interval to complete the trip. I also do this nice and early, as I’ve noticed that my dealer always seems to need 2-3 weeks notice for a service, so I make it part of the preparation.

Did I mention tyres? Surprisingly they do seem to be a popular area that people like to forget about. I’ve met a few people riding big bikes at high speed who have no tread left, with 100s of miles left to ride. Now I’m sure that many of these people get home okay and if they’re reading this they’re probably are laughing at me. They wouldn’t be if the Euro Plod got their hands on them. Especially in countries like Germany and Austria, where not only must you have the correct depth of thread, but you must have a TUV approved tyre fitted.

Lastly there is your luggage, what are you going to carry everything in? Even if you’re staying in top-notch hotels, motorcycle touring is still like camping. Two up on a tourer with built-in luggage, and heading off for more than a week, still requires some thought. 

We try and aim to plan what we’re going to wear when, and have clothes that drip dry so that we can do some hand washing as we go. 

We’ve deliberately purchased smaller containers of toiletries and my wife always checks to see if the hotels supply hairdryers. We’ve looked round the camping stores and bought items like camping towels and clothes from companies like Rohan that are designed to be stuffed into small places and not crease. 

Some of the other tricks that I’ve seen employed include:

• Posting clothes out to hotels and sending the dirty ones home.
• Buying clothes as you go.
• Organising the tour round a single hotel and having the pillion fly into the destination, bringing the majority of the luggage with them.

Why do all of this? Basically, the heavier the bike the more tiring it will be to ride. The more tired you are, then the more likely you are that something will catch you out.

The Ferry Port

So it’s the big day and you’re off to the ferry. It’s a bit like Christmas and there is a natural tendency to hurry along and worry about getting there on time. This is not just something affecting motorcyclists; it affects all other road users catching the ferry as well.

This means that the approaches to the ferry terminal are full of car drivers who are even more focused on ignoring you and getting to the ferry. They’re lost, stressed, trying to get somewhere against a definite deadline and, as a result, I believe they are not aware of other road users. They also have other factors we don’t have to contend with, such as kids in the back demanding to know "Are we there yet?" And the sub-conscious knowledge that their vehicle is not ambidextrous when it comes to driving on the other side of the road.

So you need to be sure of your defensive riding and be sure that you’re riding into their mirrors and that at the same time you’re visible to people sitting at junctions. 

The same is true at the other end, everyone piles off the ferry in a great mass, and everyone wants to get out onto the open road. Ports like Calais are easy as you come straight out onto a motorway, but others such as Cherbourg or Le Havre dump you almost in the town centre. Then you face the nightmare of the Brit, who is lost, possibly dragging a caravan and having a row with his wife who is trying to navigate. I must admit that I always try and take the first few junctions a bit easier in this situation, hang back and let them make their mistakes. Twice I’ve seen British motorcyclists nearly come a cropper on the first roundabout outside Cherbourg’s ferry terminal as some caravan dragging Volvo realises he is taking the wrong turning and make a violent course alteration. Afterwards the biker was justifiably annoyed, but equally all the signs were there that this was going to happen. The passenger trying to orientate the map, the way the driver is looking round and the fact that the junction he was indicating his intention of taking stated it went to the ‘Zone Industrial’ all indicate that the guy was lost and liable to do something foolish.

Petrol in France

What I try and avoid is stress when I’m riding abroad. It's one of the factors, along with fatigue, that can turn an everyday situation into a bit of a nightmare.

On thing that definitely winds up the tension is the fear of running out of fuel. Modern France in some areas is a bit of a petrol station desert. The last 15 years have seen automated petrol stations at supermarkets replace local petrol stations. These facilities require a French credit card with a PIN number. If you don’t have one and the facility is unmanned, then the best thing to do if you haven’t much fuel is to hang about and wait for someone to come along. Offer them cash and they’ll usually buy you some fuel.

The best way to beat this problem though is to know who has the smallest tank or least range and ride to that plus a safety margin. Identify the big towns on your maps and fuel at those if you’re starting to get towards the range limit you earlier set yourself.

Fuel stops really add to the non-riding time, so if you’ve only got a range to reserve of 80 miles, then you need to allow for the impact of what will be a stop every 70-90 minutes on your progress during the day. 

You should also consider that touring has the potential to be more costly in terms of fuel consumption. The bike will be heavier and with Europe’s more open roads, the chance for sustained higher speed motoring exists. So for the first few fill ups, just check your assumptions around how far you can go on a tank of fuel.

Lastly on this subject, if you’ve got a big tourer and your mates are riding sports-tourers, then you will definitely have a range advantage over them. I have heard of people taking a piece of fuel pipe with them and delivering fuel to the others when they run out. This is achieved not by siphoning, but by using the fuel pump which is often found under the rider’s seat and to which the pipe can be attached. 

I’d advise practising this before you go. 

Navigation

Navigation can be a bit of mystery in Europe, all those strange names, funny signs but the reality is not that much different than here. You can be sure you’ll get lost at some point, but the reality of all of this is that you are only temporarily unsure of your position. After all, the Earth is not flat and it’s better to think safety first and find a sensible place to stop and check the map.

You can of course prepare yourself a bit better to ensure when you’re looking for a road, that you have a chance of finding it. If you leave London for Liverpool you won’t find signs for 'Liverpool', you find signs for the North initially and the same is true in Europe. You have to know what major towns are in the direction you wish to travel. You’ll find that if you read the map legend or key, that some towns names will be highlighted and these will be the ones that appear signposted on major routes.

Similarly, you need to try and work out where the name of the road is given on a sign; in France it’s usually posted on top of a signpost.

I’ve tried GPS for navigation and I guess that for 95% of the time it's okay, but sometimes it gets mixed up. You do have to check what the mapping coverage is for the area you’re traveling to. Spain can be poorly covered and the maps can be out of date as roads are improved and upgraded.

Also I’ve noticed that GPS can get a bit confused in towns where the European tendency to build tall terraced housing presumably blinds the device to the satellites. The end result is that you always seem to lose track of where you are and what turning you should be taking at a critical moment. 

I’m also really aware that these devices require you to go heads down on a relatively small screen on a regular basis when you really do need to be looking up and round to see what the car drivers are getting up to. 

I would not be surprised if someone is not doing a study into the safety of these devices already. Salesmen and journalists always tell you how wonderful these devices are and how easy they are to use and that they managed to find their way round the block only last week using one. But the number of actual owners of these devices I’ve spoken to who are at the least disappointed in them is considerable. 

With GPS you still need to be cross checking what the device is telling you, so you still need to know what route you’re following. I think GPS is useful, especially for finding the hotel or a specific location, but it can be more trouble than it’s worth.

Whatever method you’re using, there is no getting away from the fact though that sooner or later you will need to do a U-turn. It’s a worthwhile investment that you practise doing some left-handed U-turns before you go. 

Those Continentals are crap drivers!

I’ve met a lot of motorcyclists who complain about foreign drivers, indeed I’ve found each new country I’ve visited to be a stressful experience on the first visit.

What I've also found is that as most of our continental neighbours begin their motoring careers on scooters, they are much more bike-friendly than our own car-wielding countrymen. 

What is important to adapt is to the local driving styles. In places like Italy and Spain, it is important to dominate the road, especially in towns where leaving an open space is an invitation to the locals try and fit their car into the gap.

The one thing that I do find very frightening is people smoking in petrol stations. In Italy it has got to be a fashion thing, whilst in Spain it’s some macho statement.

Organised Tours

Organised tours are a good way of getting started if you don’t know anyone to go touring with. Riding round on the Continent is a lonely holiday and buying a few friends by going on an organised tour is better than being Billy No Mates in the evening.

The only thing I will say about them is that you can’t guarantee who you’re riding with. Twice on an organised tour that I’ve been on there has been a Jackass along and then life can get to be fun.

The best thing to do on an organised tour is to ride for yourself and do your own navigation on your own route and then meet up with the rest in the evening. Indeed with some of the tour companies, it’s the only way you get to ride anywhere other than on the Motorway. After all, they’ve got a great string of bikes to get from A to B and the easiest way of doing that is on a motorway.

Finally

I’ve danced round the subject that this was supposed to be on: Safety, because I was trying to think of all the things that have come up as I’ve toured. That’s because for me there’s no real big magic safety bullet. I assume that if you’re reading this page it has already dawned on you that safety is your responsibility and that you’ve decided to own that responsibility.

Accidents are a combination of events, some of our own making that come together at the wrong time to get us. If you look at modern commercial aircraft accidents they are often the combination of a number of small events that together overwhelm the flight and turn what might have been a difficult situation into a tragedy. 

Some motorcycle accidents are the same. By going to a foreign country, we increase the odds as we’re bringing in that element of risk as we’re entering new or less familiar territory. So each risk that we can minimise could mean that we remove the fatal element that turns that difficult situation into a nasty crash.

In most of what I’ve tried to do above is explain where I personally think that the 'gotchas' may lie. I do notice that most of what I’ve written down is about relieving stress, which does have a detrimental effect on us as humans.

Articles Index