Touring in Style, Without a Support Truck

There is a version of motorcycle travel that involves a chase van, a guide with a headset and forty euro added to every meal. There is another version that costs a fraction of it and feels better, because it removes the friction rather than adding service on top. This is the second one.

Rent the specific machine, not the category

Rental agencies list categories, and categories hide the details that decide a week: seat height, screen height, whether the panniers are the lockable hard ones, whether there is a pillion backrest. Book the model, confirm the equipment by e-mail, and ask for a photograph of the actual bike. Good agencies answer within a day and the ones that do not are telling you something useful.

Renting locally rather than riding to the region is the single biggest upgrade available. Two days of motorway each way, tolls, fatigue and the wear on your own machine cost more than the rental and buy you nothing.

Two bases beat five hotels

Moving hotel every night means packing, loading, unloading and finding the next place, every day, usually in the late afternoon when you would rather be at a viewpoint. Two or three bases for a week, each for two nights, means you ride the best roads unloaded and come back to a room that is already yours.

Look for three things in a hotel: somewhere secure and visible to park, a kitchen that serves after eight, and a location you can walk out of in the evening. A hotel on a roundabout outside town fails the third even when it passes the first two.

Everything that makes a motorcycle week feel luxurious is a decision made six weeks earlier, at a table, for very little money.

Luggage transfer, where it exists

In Mallorca, Andalusia, Tuscany and the Alps there are small companies that move bags between hotels for 15 to 30 euro a day. It sounds indulgent and it changes the trip: you ride with an empty tail and a half-empty pannier, you stop wherever you like, and the bike handles the way it was designed to. If you are moving base every second day and you can spare the money, this is where it is worth spending.

Group size

Two machines is the easiest number by a wide margin. Four is still civilised. Six begins to need a plan, because fuel stops take twenty minutes, everybody has a different idea of lunch and somebody is always waiting at a junction. Above six, you need a lead and a sweep, agreed hand signals and a rule that nobody waits at a turn for more than a minute, which is precisely the point where the trip stops being a holiday and becomes an organised tour.

Guides, and when they earn their fee

A local guide is worth it in three situations: a region you do not know at all and have three days for, a language barrier that would otherwise cost you the good restaurants, or a group large enough that somebody has to make decisions. For a week on a well-mapped island, a guide is an expensive way to be told where to turn.

The small things that carry the week

• Book dinner on the first and last night. Everything in between can be improvised.
• Carry one dry set of clothes sealed in a bag, however good the weather forecast is.
• Have a plan for rain that is not "ride through it", because in a Mediterranean spring you will get one wet afternoon.
• Put a tracker in a pannier. It costs nothing and it is why you sleep well in a town hotel.
• Leave one day of the week unplanned. It becomes the day everybody remembers.

Questions we get asked

Is an organised tour worth the money?

For a first trip in an unfamiliar country, or for a group that does not want to plan, yes. For two experienced riders on Mallorca or in Andalusia, you are paying a significant premium for decisions you could make in an evening.

What does a week actually cost?

Two people, a rented touring machine, good rural hotels and dinner out: roughly 2,300 to 3,000 euro in the shoulder season including flights. An organised tour with the same hotels typically starts around 4,000.

How far ahead should I book?

Six to eight weeks for spring and autumn, more for Easter and for the weeks either side of a public holiday. The machines go before the hotels do.