Hi, newbie here, I've been riding a long time and have had interesting adventures, but because of health problems my range is limited ... is there anywhere to talk about trips that are more ambitious / interesting than going from Basingstoke to Loomies and back, but less than crossing a continent?

A lot of us do smaller trips as well as the trans continental / out in the boondocks stuff but often the smaller stuff gets shuffled to one side. Welcome to the HUBB by the way. Give us some idea of your background or if you've any plans in the pipeline - we'll soon get an interesting discussion going.

Talking of talking, I was speaking to someone yesterday who's the travel group 'leader' for my local branch of the U3A (a UK 'social' network for the (mainly) over 65's). They have people volunteer to present talks about their travels ('what I did on my holidays' mainly) and yesterday's one was on Cappadocia. I found myself volunteering to present one on motorcycle travel across the USA. Whether that was a good idea or not I'll presumably find out in due course.

Thank you for the welcome

Some background - me and my other half live in a nature reserve, halfway up a small mountain in Catalunya. In the past we've done a lot of riding on "big" road bikes (500cc and up), albeit in a different style from what one generally sees on the internet- namely budget, unplanned, slow, and getting lost a lot.

We also do some trail and trials riding in much the same style, and have decided we both prefer small bikes these days.

We recently bought our first ever new bike, a Rieju Tango 125 for my other half, and having tested it on our local trails it's managed to tractor up just about anything, so the next plan is to sell some of our old bikes off (13 between us) and get another Tango, then in a year or so we can take them up to the Pyrinees and get lost there for a while.

Another plan on the list is that my other half wants to attend a 10 day meditation course near Madrid once it's covid safe to do so, and wants to get there on the Tango using as few roads as possible.

We also have two mad Italian friends who are planning to circumnavigate the Iberian peninsula on vintage bikes (from 1938 and 1965) for which we'll probably be riding support bikes in the form of our 250 commuter machines ... though this is dependent on one of them passing her bike test in a language she doesn't speak, so it might take a while.

So basically there's lots of plans, all of which are currently on the back burner, and in the mean time we're just going on day trips in our local area.

Good luck with your talk, by the way - I imagine anything out of the usual will be welcomed!

I quite like the sound of the vintage trip around Iberia. If they’re Italians I guess they’ll be using Ducati’s or something. I was supposed to be doing a vintage bike trip (UK to Morocco) last year but Covid has postponed it until next year - which is just as well because bikes that old (1970 in my case) have a mind of their own. There were supposed to be two identical bikes going and between us we managed a total of 350 miles on shakedown runs before they both blew up. We hadn’t planned on needing backup but I’m beginning to wonder ...

I think you need to take YouTube / Facebook Bike envy trips with a pinch of salt. I look at them in the same way as lifestyle adverts on tv. They only have a nodding relationship with real life. There’s a few of us here that use small bikes and loads of posts on what we’ve been doing on them - check out the archives.

While many of the trips planned and talked about here are "big" trips, there's lots of smaller trips too. Most of us can't be on a permanent "big trip" after all!
I encourage you to discuss your plans - someone here knows something about just about anywhere!
Backofbeyond has made some great comments. And I second his welcome!

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Grant Johnson
Seek, and ye shall find.
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Inspiring, Informing and Connecting travellers since 1997!
www.HorizonsUnlimited.com

Thank you, Grant

One is a Motobecane and the other a MV Augusta, I think having two modern-ish support bikes is the way to go because I can totally see having to tow both to the nearest machine shop at the same time more than once, lol ... also it allows for people to swap bikes when the limits of vintage ergonomics become apparent.
My commuter is a 2005 CBF250, which doesn't look too much like an angry Decepticon like the newest bikes do, so I figured having it tagging on at the back won't detract from the experience

Thanks for the tip regarding the "envy trips", I guess it's easy to fall into the trap of aspirational negativity. No wonder young people these days struggle with this problem so much!

Hi and welcome.
Seems to me that every time I go to some kind of motorcycle meeting the age of the attendees is 50+. I would have thought, then, that there’s lots of people in your situation - doesn’t mean they don’t want to go to an Horizons meet.

Sounds like you’ve got a lot of experience - why not put together a presentation and approach Grant? As he’s already said we can’t always be on a big trip ….. but we have holidays and, I for one, am always looking for ideas out of the ordinary.

Go barefoot?

I'll give it some thought, it would likely have to be a collection of anecdotes strung together to be interesting though

For people with older bikes look at the 6 day rallies organised by the los Indianos bike club in Colombres in Northern Spain, various day trips around 100-150 miles per day, route marked, find your own way but there is a trailer of shame if required.

Great fun good people, not expensive, look the club up on line or Facebook, I’m off to get the ferry on Saturday.




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Charles CCM450, BMW R90/6, BMW R50
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Cool, I'll look that up ... might be a good way for our friends to try out a bit of touring without committing to a monumental journey.

I'm friends with the local touring club here, but it's a bit more aggressive on the mileage at 500+ mile days which just isn't my bag ... 150 miles sounds about right for me