Planning in the Era of Covid

In February of this year we got together in a group of five of us to plan our big trip for the Autumn. Every September/October sees a fortnight long excursion onto the continent. This year, as we sat drinking our dark winter ales, we dreamed of Mediterranean Sun, sandy coastlines and awe inspiring mountain ranges. Our outline of a plan had us ride to Germany where we'd catch an overnight train to Austria. From there we would ride east to Hungary before dropping down to Croatia, Slovenia, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, France and home in a big slingshot manoeuvre. Unfortunately 2020, like for all of us, had other plans.

The Covid pandemic put an end to our dreams of foreign lands, but we still each had a hankering for more than our day long ride outs. So we started to formulate a new plan...

When we were in Porto, Martin, Alan and I had to use AirBnB to find an apartment as there was nowhere available with parking for the bikes and accommodation for us all. We had in fact arrived in the centre of the city on a bank holiday with nothing pre-booked (see my write up of the Camino for more details) for a little more on that one! Since then Martin, Alan and Mark had used it on their trips so we decided to see what it could offer in the UK.

First off, we had to find out who was going with us. Usually there are in fact two trips in September, one down to Somerset and the other to the continent. George, who goes on the Somerset trip still wanted an outing too and Ellie, my wife, had just bought a new motorcycle for our trip to Scotland to do the NC500 (also cancelled). With the prospect of an alternate trip in the offing we were decided on a group of five for the one trip - Ellie, George, Mark and myself, and Martin, Alan, Mark and myself for the second. As George and Alan couldn't go at the same time we settled to do two trips as usual. I don't mind getting more time to see more places via motorbike after all!

Since Ellie hasn't ridden in a while and we weren't pushing ourselves to go too far we settled on the New Forest for the first trip and since we wanted to go a little further and explore some interesting countryside we decided on the Welsh border for the second trip. The Welsh border made sense as if the Covid restrictions were again increased we were at least still in England in order to ride this side of it.

So all set on who and where we looked next at what we wanted to book. We usually spend between £40-£60 on accommodation per person per night, leaning more in the £40 direction where possible. This gave us a ballpark. We also needed parking space for the bikes and most importantly pubs within walking distance! All of these set we put our criteria into AirBnB, created a shortlist, selected the best and booked them!

All that's left now is to ride there and tell you about that so watch out for those posts in the future!