On my bucket list is the ride down from blighty to ducati factory and any italian track, via France, Switzerland etc etc... If anyone fancies it next summer PM me....id even be happy hiring a van for the week and do the boring bits/bit of craic, and rolling the bitches out of the back for the Futa pass etc etc
Can't forget also the first time I hit the Ardeche gorge. Firing my little MZ down between VFRs and race reps, laughing like a maniac. My first and best bike holiday.
Many great rides, different bikes and different memories; my first track day at Brands GP etc but the one that still gets talked about is the 2008 three week ride from San Francisco to Yosemite to Monterey, Carmel and down the PCH to Big Sur, Santa Barbara, Santa Monica on a Harley Streetglide. The bike was shite in terms of comfort and fuel range, but the memories of the whole trip, just my wife as pillion and me are very strong. Fantastic weather the whole trip and some amazing hotels and sights.
that was the rout i was gonna mention superb. 10 of us i am the only one two up totally in the groove fast run on 650 pegaso just behind 2 very quick riders pulld back when they started overtaking on blind bends.
i spent a year backpacking around the US and did the PCH, in an 'Auto driveaway'..started way up near Seattle and delivered the car to San Diego (my fave US city)....great memories..being young...shit how i miss that.. Shame it wasnt in a red convertible, white wall tyred '66 Mustang, instead of the battered piece of shit Civic repo with no rear seats and no air con.. happy days.
2012 6 day tour of Wales no rain at all yes waterproofs stayed in panniers all week ! but the day we hit A4121 out of Bala best road i found in the british isle so far was sunny dry empty. starts off with like a half mile left hander around a massive lake sparks flying off my centre stand on the old mutly . 8 of use lead rider on new fazer 1000 best mate on zzr1400 and one on triumph 675 and me totally went for it the others tried lol . i did my best to hang with them wrong end of 120 most of the time grinning stupidly in my helmet ..nirvana so good we went back the next day with out our panniers ,,,was still amazing silly maxxi tyres wernt really up for it two wheel slides on mutly 1000 rockssssssss
2 days doing the strada florida each way, cold, wet covered in mud on a drz400e crashed several times and loved it.
Any ride out on the old 748 where I get home without any oil leaks or bits falling off is something to treasure.....
This is a difficult one.... It could be my first race back in 1979 on a very tired TD2B Yamaha. It could be my first lap of the TT mountain course done at about 4am one morning just after landing and yes, I did do Governors Loop because there were no cops about. It might be the first time I did the Grimsel Pass on a sports bike because that was great fun. In reality it was probably getting up at midnight on my 16th birthday back in 1975 to go and do just over 100 miles on a Puch Maxi that my dad had chained up for the preceding 2 weeks to stop me riding it before I was old enough. That crappy little moped cost me a years worth of paper round money (after holding back enough for 20 Players No6 every week) and it set me off on years of mayhem and a lot more money spunked on motorbikes than I ever would have believed possible. Nothing can compare to that
Ha! I'd forgotten those days. Me and the Fizzie were inseparable for twelve months. And even though I'd already ridden bigger, more powerful machines the fizzie provided me with all the thrills a 16-year-old could possibly want (apart from the ones Jenny Smith was offering when her parents weren't around...). My first (legal) ride to me to the quaint town of...Aldershot, so me and my mates could goad the MPs at the army museum, the fizzie providing the perfect getaway vehicle, easily outmanoeuvring khaki landrovers:biggrin:
I think her name was.... oh wait.. either chasing a mate back round the back roads near Woburn on a sunny friday lunch time last august coming back from the Ace Cafe (he was on a ZXR 750 H1 me on the SS - actually really closely matched on the open road) or bringing the SS home from Oban in the West Highlands.
Mopeds were great fun and I reckon it took me less than a week to realise that if I revved the shit out of the Puch while it was on its stand then suddenly pushed it forward it'd stand up on the back wheel to the point where the rack was acting as a wheelie bar. After I'd terminally blown the engine on the Puch I bought a fizzie which I had until I was 17 and in that time I perfected the art of pulling wheelies without ending up running behind the bike and that came in dead handy when I wanted to impress similar aged totty.
There have been so many memorable rides that I don't remember them... That's the whole point of living next to the Alps. I really liked the rides down to the Bol d'Or every year. The roads were awash with bikes and I was a bit of a fan of the Col de la Croix Haute between Grenoble and Sisteron - lots of fast sweeping bends, some of them in canyons. I enjoyed my rides from Switzerland to Britain in the 80s on my Pantah. It was all still a bit of an adventure then. Actually, the rides back were better as all the best roads came at the end. I did once do 12 mountain passes in a day, starting and ending at home just for the hell of it on my 851. How many hairpins is that? Enough to seriously fatigue your arms. It was about 500 miles worth. Good day! My parents bought a farmhouse in Gascony in 1990, so every year for about 15 years I'd ride down to see them. It was about 550 miles which I'd do in one hit. A bit of motorway from here to St. Etienne, and some more Albi to Toulouse but the rest was all RN through the Massif Central with miles after mile of fast sweepers. If the weather was good I'd take the 851, later 916, and nail it. If it looked a bit iffy I'd take the more comfortable 907ie (first ever trip was 906) but it wasn't quite as fun in the fast twisty stuff. Best I think I ever managed was an average 60 mph for the whole trip, including the fuel stops and a sandwich - on the 916. It wasn't quite as fun when I sometimes had to send the whole day riding back home in the rain...
Good thread! The ride to and from WDW2012 is probably the highlight of my biking career - best 2 days being the Apeninne zig-zag (the long way from Cattolica to Bologna via the Muraglione Pass, Fiesole and Futa Pass) and the Route Napoleon in the south of France. I also really enjoyed the day's advanced training I did with Rapid Training round Hampshire on a fabulous sunny day in May last year, building my confidence overtaking, and being somewhat shocked and surprised at my speed when I glanced at the clocks at one point. Other half and I had great daytrip from a pub just outside Hereford to Aberystwyth and back a couple of years ago, in surprising sunshine - we were in danger of getting sunburned sitting out on the seafront at Aber when we stopped for a cuppa. That said, the roads of Wales (the usual suspects, the A44, A470, A483, the corker over the Black Mountain (A4069?) etc) are so good that even when the weather was filthy wet, tipping it down for 2 days straight, we still enjoyed riding the fantastic sweeping bends round mid-Wales last year. Not all memorable rides are necessarily good ones - the first (and last!) time I rode into central London on my first bike (Yamaha SR125), 16 years ago, for a job interview in Westminster, when there was a tube strike on, definitely sticks in my mind. Taking a wrong turning at Hyde Park Corner (when I was trying to head north-west to the A40), first heading too far west, then turning north (and managing to miss the A40, going under it, and then seeing signs for the likes of Harlesden and Willesden), in pouring rain, is sufficiently memorable to the point that I have not ridden into central London since!
The ride back from the test centre in Banbury to Oxford in the rain on a slightly camp Suzuki Gladius after finally passing my test in June this year, I smiled all the way home
To the Guzzi factory in the early 80s........on a Le Mans 2...........even the custom seat began to be uncomfortable after 840 miles........and it was uncomfortable on the 840 mile way back, even though I had four days rest and not riding. Only stopped for petrol five times in the whole trip, though... AL
First pillion ride at the age of 15 on the back of a RD400 round the north orbital at Watford when it had just been opened
