Nina and I just returned from a 6-day trip to Umbria in Italy and found the roads to be as bad as ever.
Should you be planning a ride into Umbria in Italy, then be advised that even the main through roads there are in very bad shape. The province doesn’t have money and most main roads are littered with potholes, only with some tar poured in here and there….. which with air temps of 40C an more is quickly coming out again!
The Dolomiti roads (Alto Adige and Friuli) and Toscany roads are in much better shape.
We would advise NOT to ride at night (you won’t notice all the holes in time) and be very careful by day, especially on the faster roads (4-lane through roads).
Umbria and its thousands of ancient little towns is still VERY MUCH worth a visit ! Just be careful!
Check out the ‘Fuel Info’ tab under Road Info. I have added more links to sites about fuel prices in Europe. I will continue to add interesting sites. Some are in local language, but most have some way of entering a city or region and will then show pumps and prices. Check back regularly for more new!
We bit the bullet and traded our Jeep Cherokee for a brand new company car: a Mercedes Viano diesel MPV that seats 4 (or even 5 if needed) PLUS a huge luggage compartment. And of course it has a hook to tow the bike trailer.
Although this was the biggest investment so far for our little company, we are very happy with it and put it to the test with a 4000 km Alps tour last week, taking some people from Seattle through 8 countries in 8 days ! It performed wonderful, is very comfortable and for once we did not have to watch our luggage quantity!
The Viano is equipped with snow tires, climate control, traction control, anti-skid, automatic hill-braking, ASB, ESP and some other nifty electronics to make it safer. In the 4-person configuration it has 4 captain seats for comfortable traveling.
The Merc will be used for drive tours, photo tours and for Silver Cloud Publishing too of course….
From one of our relations we received word that he has a special offer in May! Riding a 1200 or 850 GS in the south of Spain and a stay in a wonderful villa INCLUDED.
He writes "…. I am offering 1 weeks rental of a GS1200 or GS650(Twin) for 550 euros. This price INCLUDES stunning accommodation, insurance and airport shuttle. I hope you agree that this is a great deal….".
Well, we agree. Unfortunately we can’t take Marc up on it ourselves since we will already been traveling through Germany, Switzerland and Italy at that time. But maybe YOU can !!??
Check out Marc’s website here: http://www.bmwmotohire.com
With motor season approaching there’s new activity on the site and in other areas. One bit of news is that we have a new business partner on our site ! Kenny Simon handles our technical support for our BMW RT but also for other brands and models.Ken has opened a new shop in Den Dolder, in the province of Utrecht and will discuss any work on your motorbike with you. Just click on the picture to check out his website!| Ken is from New York, speaks Dutch and English and is an enthusiastic BMW rider himself! Find his website here!
in the form of some virus, or more likely a False Positive (i.e. a mistake by the anti-virus program), in our previous WordPress Theme.
So I had to take it off-line and replace the look and feel for now. Sorry!
But don’t worry, I am hard at work to design a new look for the site and we’ll be back soon!
Francois
That’s the problem of having a busy life….. and few customers: no time to update the website. Truth is I posted most of the motor riding news on Facebook and on the BMWST forums, leaving precious little time to update things here. But, riding season is coming closer again here in northern Europe, so lets start posting again.
Nina and I did a lot of riding last Summer and we never had the time to report on those journeys. So I’ll be starting work on that too. I made some 7000 photos and that is part of the problem. Too many to choose from !
On another note, we’re getting ready to get us a company car. right now we’re looking at the Mercedes Viano as the most likely candidate. It will allow us to not only move a trailer with bikes, but also additional luggage and people to/from departure points! Lets hope we can trade the Jeep in……
Our first ‘event’ this year will be the BMW RT ride in Holland on April 25th. Will report on that when the time is there!
Many of us ride through winter months as well, and then it can get REALLY chilly. I did a few rides down to 6 C (that’s around 42 F) and it was alright the first 15 minutes, but after that it starts getting cold quickly.
What better ‘garment’ to wear then but a heated vest of some sort. Trouble is, these things are expensive. My US friends ride with Gerbings stuff and that’s difficult to find here AND expensive.
That’s why I wanted to share a nice site with you, on which I found a Do-It-Yourself heated vest with a complete and very clear building instruction. Maybe something to make over this Summer and be less cold next Winter, eh?
Check out
Well, it is stopping some people. So here is the good news: we have time on our hands to accommodate your travel again, since two US customers have canceled their plans. And that’s the bad news; some folks really are feeling the pinch of these economic woes unfortunately.
And yes, I keep promising to update the site, but like so many of you I am too busy trying to make a living. This has been a bad winter too, in more than one way, so I did hardly do any riding. Bummer !
I can only promise you that I am doing my best to get new conent on the site. We have some really nice travel tales to show that are still waiting in the photos folder of my hard disk. And I’ve been collecting many more interesting internet links too. Now, if only I could find a good system of storing and providing those links. Anybody ?
Wishing you all a great riding season(s) in 2009, in spite of the gloomy and depressing news the media are unloading upn us every day. I tend to just shrug it off and enjoy the days I have…… cheaper petrol helps in doing that ! ;-)
Hi everybody. As you already figured from the absence of much activity here, we are very busy! Busy with the Internet work I do, but also with preparing the 2009 riding season. We did some (delayed) scouting in September and found you some great new roads to discover in the Alps. I’ll be posting a story about the trips later in November.
We also are starting to get the first preliminary bookings for the next season, so if you have any plans to visit Europe next year, then do not wait too long with contacting us ! We hope petrol prices will remain at their current low (yeah, right!) and the Dollar will crawl back a little after the elections (maybe!).
The economic downturn does not have only negative effects. Sure, people may have less money to spend (or less confidence in doing so), but competition will be fiercer, especially in the travel industry, so lodging prices may drop a little too. We’ll keep an eye on it for you of course!