USA Riderz Euro Tour - Summer 2008

Greetings from us yanks, I posted this on a US forum called monkeyriders.com and decided to post it here as well as we are looking for ideas and riders to joins us, here is the post, please be kind and offer any tips and suggestions, and we'd like to see some Euro riders come on over to these shores and we can swap tours, eh?

uro trip - summer 2008

We are in initial phases of planning a Europe tour next summer, I created a Google group which I hope the mods wont delete, but it is here: http://groups.google.com/group/usa-riderz

We plan to ship bikes to the UK and ride from there over two weeks to Croatia/Italy and then back to the UK.

We are still planning the details, so if you are interested sign up for the Google group.

I am serious about this, I've ridden in Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Benin, Albania, Haiti etc and this would be a group led by myself and another rider with combined 15-20 years of riding.

We will have some minimum requirements like age (I am leaning towards minimum age of 25 or 2-3 years/10K miles of riding experience), experience, level-headedness, knowing how to perfrom maintenance on your own bike (if we ship ours) and financial resources and we may all do a voluntary record check, no drugs, minimal alcohol and a lot of self-respect and discipline to complete a tour that could well be a total of 6k miles.

We will also do a 4 day US ride, maybe a couple before then to get all of us acclimatized to longer rides, ok?

I welcome all useful suggestion, especially from riders with European roots and connections, I am half Croatian myself so we have a good resting spot in Croatia.

Proposed countries:

UK, France, Belgium, Austria, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Poland and then back to UK thru Germany for the return flight home.

Cost of renting a Honda 650 Touring bike is a bout $600 a week in the UK and allowed for Euro travel with unlimited miles.

There are also some great roads in Switzerland, if you are are going out and back across the Alps you could do France & Switzerland one way, and Austria the other. Sounds like a nice trip, if you want any detailed tips on which passes to take in I'll happily add a few suggestions.

A number of people have done a fair few euro tours if you look through this section and the photo section.

Oh and welcome to the site!

Some great roads in Czech especially the north run from Prague towards Ostrava. Nice and twisty, no speed traps ... heaven. Slovakia has some fantastic scenery but there is huge volume of traffic and it's difficult to maintain some progress especially with bigger group. Hungary is flat as a pancake and I don't remember much of it TBH. Let me know if you want some info on where to stay in Czech.

[STRAMASHER]

a couple of good touring sites for you.....

www.alpineroads.com

www.ukgser.com/forums/

Big trip! Good luck

Originally Posted by STRAMASHER

a couple of good touring sites for you.....

www.alpineroads.com

www.ukgser.com/forums/

Big trip! Good luck

Top Gear did a feature of some roads in that Europe on Sunday, probably on youtube or similar by now.

What sort of bikes are you riding? Check out Alpineroads.com for lots of route info.

A tip if you are going to Venice (and you should!).
You can cross over on the causeway to Plaza de Roma and park your bike in the shed (or pavement) on the right. Then its a 100 yard walk to the Vaparetto Ticket office. If you are on a budget, then don't stay in Venice itself.
The Dolomites is definitely worth a visit. The Hotel at the top of Passo Pordoi is great.
http://www.informahotel.com/trentino...savoia_it.html
You can get an excellent biker map from Tourist Information in Arabba.