Motorcycle Road Trip Tips: Warm Up Trips

Jumping straight into a round the world trip probably isn't a good idea. Talk to any around the world traveller and they’ll probably tell you of a few smaller trips that they did leading up to the big one. Even if your goal isn’t to travel around the world, maybe you just want to ride around Europe or take weekend motorcycle breaks in the UK, doing warm up trips can be really beneficial.

A few years ago when I was first looking at getting into motorcycle touring I set myself 3 clear goals for the year.

1. Ride with a group over the weekend

2. Ride solo long distance

3. Ride solo with an overnight camping stop

My intention was to build my confidence and introduce a new concept into my ride each time.

Starting out doing a weekend trip in a group would give me the confidence to be able to ride long distances while providing the safety of being in a group. If something went wrong I would have backup. This would also give me the first opportunity to try out packing for a trip. At this point I still didn’t know what you need to take and didn’t yet have my [top three things list](/blog/top-3-things-I-learned-on-my-first-motorcycle-trip). I highly recommend doing a first tour as a part of a group. That’s one of the reasons I set up Two Wheeled Adventure Tours. We have tours specifically targeted at people wanting to try out their first trip in a group for this very reason.

My second tour, riding solo over a long distance would take away the safety net of being in a group of riders. My intention was to ride long distance, stay somewhere I know (luckily my family live quite far north from me) and ride back in a weekend. I would have to organise and navigate the route (I wouldn’t be relying on motorways for distance), check the weather and conduct all the pre-trip preparation on my own. When on the road, navigating it’s issues would be all down to me. As it turns out, this trip threw some good lessons at me:

• my route over the Humber bridge was closed leading to an hour and a half diversion in the rain

• the weather was horrendous and my hands froze in my summer gloves

• I found one of the most boring riding roads in the UK - the A15.

Since these first tours I've been planning a long distance trip to Nordkapp, around the Baltic states and back. For this reason my third warm up trip was a camping one. I had to figure out how much gear I could take on a bike, what pitching and un-pitching a tent would be like from a bike and what cooking, camping then getting up and riding the next day would feel like. I learned some important things on this trip too:

• don’t forget trousers

• I couldn’t go to the pub wearing just my leather bottoms

• don’t forget the second key hole to lift your seat

• I spent an hour unpacking my tent a second time and searched the entire campsite to find the key here

• don’t pitch your tent in a bowl - it turns out that when it rains all the rain flows into said bowls and I returned to my tent to find it floating.

Every year since, I try something new with my trips. It’s about pushing what I can do and what I’m confident in doing. Whether that’s been a group ride across Europe, an off road adventure course weekend or a solo expedition into Europe. I’m constantly trying to push myself and my comfort zone and you should too. Without those first three trips though I don’t think I’d have half the confidence to try these things.

If you’re ready to try out your first trip why not check out one of our motorcycle tours? Our South Coast UK and North France Tour is specifically designed for those looking to try that very thing.