Wild One Tours

FERRY GOOD VALUE:
Time for a recap of themed recent posts. Wild One Tours has completed the last of its guided tours and the theme of recent posts has been to explain how marketing has added huge sums of money to what many people believe are necessary must haves to go on a motorcycle touring holiday in Continental Europe.
Some riders are paying up to £10,000 more than they need to on their choice of motorcycle and luggage. More than £1,000 than they need to on a suitable and safe helmet and clothing.
If they could use old fashioned navigation with a couple of paper maps and written directions, backed up by the Google Maps app on their mobile phones. They could save up to £500, instead of buying expensive motorcycle navigation systems.
By early pre-booking hotels with saver rate prices via booking sites, you can save a couple of hundred £s compared to late booking or just turning up. Whilst also ensuring choice, i.e. the required facilities i.e. parking, air-conditioning and convenient dining facilities.
If you don't already have a suitable tent and camping gear, again the saving on initial expenditure, only slightly offset by camping costs compared to hotels can be another consideration and staying at hotels means you can travel light and there is better security for your possessions.
Now it may be that you have loads of cash, or you much prefer the idea of camping to staying in a hotel. So do it! All I'm saying is that it is still affordable and at the same time maybe you can cover bigger mileage if you don't have so much money and you don't have to make and break camp at every stop.
Another potential saving is on the ferry journey you choose. Specifically if you are visiting Spain.
Over the years I have seen many posts in which people argue that it is cheaper to get a ferry from Plymouth or Portsmouth direct to Bilbao or Santander in Spain. This on account of petrol, accomodation and toll road costs. To level up some people also take into consideration and add on tyre wear and servicing costs for your motorcycle. Then try to justify their belief with some appallingly dodgy mathematics. But the fact is they are wrong!
Getting a ferry from Dover to Calais or Dunkirk is much like getting a bus, wheras longer sailings are more like going on a coach trip.
On the last of the tour groups we assembled in England, I would leave home in Northern Lincolnshire at 6.45am on a Saturday. Arrive at the group assembly on the Kent coast, fully fueled at about 10am
By late afternoon or early evening, (even with the clocks having gone on an hour) we would be settled into a hotel at Lille, Reims, or Rouen.
The ride to Catalonia on the Mediterranean coast of Spain requires only one other overnight stop and on a route which is less than 20% toll road.
Tolls are cheaper for a motorcycle than they are for a car. Some of the motorway is quite scenic and you can legally ride them at speeds of up to 81mph. So as not to become monotonous, I would include non motorway road, including mountain roads in each days route.
Like for like, including a personal use cabin on the boat instead of a personal use hotel room. The short crossing for a trip to the Mediterranean coast is much cheaper. For people riding from Eastern and Northern UK and onward to visit Spain, it is also slightly quicker. With a much greater choice of departure times from your home.
Again there may be other reasons why you prefer the longer boat journey, but cost savings, or speed of getting to your destination aren't included.
I personally prefer to ride my bike than go on a long boat trip. Wear and tear of tyres and servicing costs are all part and parcel of riding. But even if you include these costs you can still save a couple of hundred £s if say going to Catalonia.
Getting best value isn't just about making motorcycle touring more affordable. It affords opportunities to be able to treat yourself to for instance a good meal, or the odd night in a hotel in a popular tourist attraction city centre, where with your bike parked up securely for the night you can go out on the town.
In my experience going out on the town is much better if in the company of fellow travellers. But either way I would prefer to do this than sit on my own in my hotel room, fiddling with my mobile phone or other electronic devices.
I am now entering a phase of life in which the enjoyment of experiences doesn't need to be expressed to others. I'm sure that most people who go motorcycle touring are having the time of their lives and that being the case they don't need to compare themselves to what other people are doing.
There are other ways of reducing expenditure while on tour, such as sourcing cheaper petrol. But these savings are minimal compared with those already discussed and I don't intend to go into them in any detail.
Happy touring folks,!

MOTORCYCLE NAVIGATION:
SatNav and mobile phone map apps are wonderful. I sometimes wonder how I ever did without them. I currently possess two SatNav devices, but more frequently use the Google Maps app on my phone.
There, now that's over with I'll say that almost everyone.already has a mobile phone and the Google Maps app is free and reliable.
Motorcycle SatNav devices tend to be expensive. More so than car devices because exposure to the elements necessitates that they be weather resistant. To this end most manage to keep the rain out, but still shut down when exposed to extremes of heat or cold. For all phone and SatNav devices there is a variance of how easy the screens are to read in strong sunlight. None are perfect in this respect.
To hear voice navigation instructions while riding a motorcycle you will need to purchase a good quality bluetooth headset to fit to your helmet. I recommend a Sena brand headset, but only because this is the only one which works well that I have experience with.
The devices I have owned and currently own have many glitches and drawbacks. I won't go in to them all, but most recently I have just paid a €40 fine for entering a bus and taxi only road while being directed to a hotel in the city of Granada and it's not the first time this has happened.
Useful though they are, these apps and devices are completely unnecessary.
It is a fact that from the mid 1970s until 2008 when I bought my first SatNav, a TomTom Rider V2, I found my way around the UK and Continental Europe perfectly well with paper maps and written directions. Through force of habit and preference I still do.
Now able to consult the Internet, finding those directions or creating them to display in a map pocket is even easier.
When I look at marketing for motorcycle mounted devices, often costing in excess of £300, bluetooth headsets often costing in excess of £100 and devices using CarPlay which is an exclusive Apple App requiring an iPhone (often costing in excess of £500). I wonder how many people are tucked into believing that this is an essential spend for motorcycle touring?
It isn't! Not at all! The devices are a comfort and not at all a necessity.
Map reading and route planning are skills that develop over time with practice. But even at my entry level I got around alright. It has always been a pleasure and something I enjoy doing.
Over time the maps and directions you write imprint into your brain and you need to refer to them less. You become more aware of your surroundings. Particularly road signs and are much less likely to turn into restricted access lanes or roads, where you shouldn't be.
It's cheap and fun. Give it a go!
A few tips:
Tank mounted map pockets don't always keep out heavy rain. Consider placing paper contents into a clear plastic bag for extra protection.
Large printed directions on display are much easier to follow than a map. I usually have the directions on top. The less fussy they are, the easier it is to follow them. When you write the directions yourself, your brain kicks in on the road to fill in missing details, such as the distance between turns.
I usually keep a map under the directions, so I can pull over to consult it if needs be.
Under the directions and map, for quick and easy access I keep a puck for resting the bike on its sidestand on soft ground. I also keep toll tickets and a credit card for paying tolls and buying petrol.
You can pick out some nice rides using the Michelin National Maps. But with only 1cm of detail for a 10km ride, you may want more detailed mapping for riding the back roads.
For this you can always look at Google Maps, preferably on a large screen desktop or laptop. Or you can stick with large scale paper maps for writing your directions.
Do this before you set off and you don't need to take the large scale paper maps with you.
If you take a wrong turn and are effectively lost, don't panic. Treat it as an unscripted adventure that requires you use your wiles to navigate. That too can be great fun.