Bike was faultless. Just saying France, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Stelvio Pass into italy, down to Bari in southern Italy and back up via Naples, Turin, Dijon in France and the Ardennes. Roads were incredible. I'll get a nice write up done once I get some time.
Bloody hell. Did you have the kitchen sink in your luggage? I get all mine in 1xUS10 and an R15! Thats for over a week, maybe 2. I just wash stuff by hand. Anyhoo, welcome. Whats the comfort like on the 1199. If you can compare it to an 1198/1098/848 that would be useful.
I carried a 5 litre spare petrol container on one side of the Kreiger luggage for the whole trip! Never used it but between top speed tests (185 mph just hitting the redline so fair bit more in there I think ) on the autobahn and the Italian on her small tanked Gsx-r600 it seemed worthwhile just in case. I dont think I'd carry it if I went again as the weight is noticeable but you live and learn and all that. I can't give a great comparison as I've not rode the 1198/1098/848 over any distance but you certainly notice the different riding position on the Panigales straight away as you are not reaching so far for the bars. When I didn't have wind assistance when riding fast you can sit more upright in a bit of a dorky riding position with my heels on the pegs instead of my toes so it took pressure off my wrists and neck. Obvious if you've done it on a 1198 but our opinion was that you just have to adjust your distance expectations if you are on what most people think of as an unpractical bike. 500 miles a day is (I guess) easy on a Multistrada whereas we settled with about 2-300 miles , with a few 400 mile days, on the racebikes for the couple of weeks we were riding. The other thing was to make sure you pick the good roads so you make it worthwhile being on a racebike. You quickly feel fresh again when thrashing across amazing mountain roads on a Panigale
Yes, plenty of traction here at Baden Baden B500 ( cheesy phot opportunity cannot be passed up. B500 is a 20 mile racetrack, amazing road) although doing the Passa Della Futa on the way back up in the rain on Supercorsas with 3000miles on them was a little hairy. I stopped at Ducati for some new Rosso Corsas after that.
Haha, yes, her little GSX-R600 suffered more than the Panigale from carrying a load of luggage. She was being blown around in the wind.
Righto - so it's about time I got some more phots up here! The Plan! We had two weeks to get to Miss Pineapples (that's the lady) Mums place in Bari in South Italy and back and figured the best start would be to book the channel tunnel crossings and then sketch out a rough plan to give us some direction. We were planning on booking some accomodation in advance but that kind of all went out the window as we were busy at work plus I had the torturous task of putting 600 miles on the new 1199s after work each night so it could go in for it's first service it's a hard life. We were leaving on Friday evening so obviously on Thursday morning I got a nail in my rear tyre on the way to work resulting in an emergency visit to a random backroad bike shop in London. Needless to say I was rather nervous about seeing my new baby up on a car jack!! A couple hours later I was off with a puncture repair ready for tripping across Europe!!! View attachment 35723
Friday evening and all packed and ready to leave An hour later we decided it might be a good idea to take a 5 litre spare fuel can so the Kriega grew another bag. TBH it was never used and I probably wouldn't bother next time, but it was piece of mind at the time. Folkestone waiting for the Chunnel train.
All the bikes get put into the Chunnel train in the same coaches so it's a nice wait to get chatting to people. View attachment 35728 We hooked up with some guys who were heading to Baden Baden to enjoy the amazing B500. GPS - iPhone running CoPilot with TwistyRide case and charger. My last minute GPS setup was a TwistyRide case for my iPhone running CoPilot and with an onbike charge kit. It had a few issues; the App is unstable and crashes the iPhone every so often, usually when you desperately need to use it for direction! The fitting kit goes into the yoke hole on the Panigale handle bars. You screw in a rubber bit , which promptly destroyed itself as I tightened it so I ended up just clamping it to the bars and it was fine. After a week travelling the charging unit and the cable also broke which gave me no end of hassle having to keep the phone charged every time we stopped. I need to see about getting a refund on this. It was a shame as it was a pretty good setup before this and I was glad I hadn't bought an expensive bike GPS. View attachment 35730 Due to me having only set up my GPS that morning we decided to follow these guys for the first day down through Belgium and Germany.
Things got a bit creative as the leader had his (Ducati Multistrada!) GPS waypoints sending them right into the middle of Brussels and then Leige!! They were top guys but we decided to blast off as we had wasted a lot of time with the unexpected sightseeing. We soon passed Spa which has the first of many epic roads on the trip. View attachment 35731
No speed limit Autobahns in Germany are a great place to play with traffic. A couple of Ferraris, a Lambo, and a new Nissan GTR had a play and were promptly dispatched in Panigale style.
We didn't quite make it to Baden Baden that day and stopped near Ramstein Airbase. The place was full of Mustangs owned by the Yank airforce guys. An early start saw us getting down to Baden Baden in glorious sunshine for the 20 plus miles of racetrack like roads. It really is biking heaven and worth a weeks trip in itself. It starts off with fairly tight hairpins and then opens up into triple digit sweepers with excellent open views ahead across the hills.
The guys in the picture are RAF that we met randomly, they had been there all week. My tyres were pretty well worn in considering the bike was fully loaded up with 70 litres of Kriega luggage!
