About this guide

This site has been written to guide you safely across France and deep into Spain by motorcycle. Along the way you will meet interesting people, fantastic roads, brilliant sunshine, and the heaviest rain imaginable! But never mind the rain, this site has all the information you need to have a great time, either with your friends or on your own. The bikes to ride, the clothes to wear, the equipment to carry - all this info is available on this site.

This has been written with experience gained from four solo trips to the Costa Blanca by motorbike, and three by car with a passenger. The basics are the same no matter how many are in your party, but the problems tend to be more obvious if you ride solo.

Navigating this site  |  About the author  |  Safety Warning!  |  Disclaimer  |  Copyright


Navigating this site

This site is easy to get around by virtue of the menu bar which is constantly on display. Just click one of the topics and that page will be displayed. In an effort to make the pages load more quickly I have only included small photographs, but you can view larger copies by clicking on these 'thumbnail' photos in the main tour pages. The photographs in the Photograph Gallery pages have a different arrangement for viewing better quality pictures. You can tell when you are in the gallery because the background is dark grey.

All the photos were taken by the author on 35mm film and the prints scanned using a 24-bit A4 flatbed scanner. The resolution was then drastically reduced and the files converted to JPEG form to allow reasonable download times; the thumbprint photos are sized in the region of 3k to 5k bytes, and the full size photographs are between 30k and 60k. The site has been optimised for a screen resolution of 800x600. Travelling around this site is not as interesting as biking to Spain, but I hope that you can get some idea of how interesting biking abroad can be. Enjoy your reading.

Top of this page

About the author

The author sitting on his current bike

Born in Cardiff in 1952 the author has hobbies which include competitive swimming, fishkeeping, photography, and, um, oh yes, motorbiking. Visit nealsworld.com for more information.

So what does he do at work. Well, he is a professional telecomms engineer who specialises in multimedia quality of service for third generation mobile telecoms systems. There, now you wish that you'd never asked!

Currently car-less he has also enjoyed some sporting cars such as a 2.8i Capri, an RS Turbo Escort, and a 1340cc Mini-Cooper S. The interest in two wheelers started at age 16 with a real dog of a Lambretta scooter. Cars didn't follow for four years and scooters came and went a couple of times until, at the age of 30, a 250 Honda Superdream was purchased. This was at the time that the learner laws effectively removed the 250cc market at a stroke leaving Honda with a load of bikes which needed a steep discount to sell. He is married, lives in Suffolk and currently runs a 1998 Tricolour Fireblade.

Click here if you would like to E-mail the author

This site is part of . You may wish to visit it.

Top of this page

Safety Warning

Safety Warning!Do not undertake this sort of trip by motorcycle unless you are an experienced biker! Although touring the continent can be a 'holiday of a life-time', there are many pitfalls to catch the inexperienced or unwary. I have noted particular issues throughout the text, but before you attempt this sort of tour you must ask yourself these two questions:

  1. Could I ride from London to Newcastle in one day, and then back again the next day?

  2. In safety?

If you can't answer yes to these two questions then its best to stick to the UK and read this site out of interest, or do a trial tour of northern and middle France to gain experience. That's it - lecture over!

Disclaimer

Please remember that this is a free personal web site and I make no claims to the accuracy of the information contained within. I have tried to make the site informative and accurate, but much of it is based on memory, and notes made between 1989 and 1997. Please do not make any important decisions based on this site. If in doubt, please refer to tourist guides or the motoring associations.

Copyright

Copyright © Neal Daymond-John
All rights reserved.

The photographs on these pages can be used freely (i.e with no payment) by non-profit making organisations and individual persons provided that an acknowledgement is given and, where applicable, a link to these pages is provided. A suitable acknowledgement would be "photograph by permission of Neal Daymond-John". The URL of the welcome page is www.btinternet.com/~ultrablade/index.html.

Top of this page