Adventure Bike Rider Forum

Hi all,
Newbie to forum but have been riding bikes for yonks starting in the 1970s on a Honda CB125. My first trip abroad was to the South of France in 1978 i think on a GS750 in the company of a Kwak 500 triple , BSA Thunderbolt , BSA Rocket 3 , RD 400 with no phones or satnavs or any other techy stuff just a map and route plans scribbled on a piece of pape stuck to the tank
Im currently on my 2nd Triumph Tiger 800 (2012) and it does everything well for me
I've not done any trips abroad since 2019 as COVID and other issues and commitments knocked plans out of kilter slightly but I'm considering a trip back to Ireland as soon as i can.

Welcome...I still go everywhere with a handwritten route shoved into the top of my tankbag, and recently did the daylight part of the Lands End Trial with a routebook holder made out of a whiskey bottle sleeve.

Yeah despite all the benefits they bring, all that faffing around with mountains of cables chargers adaptors and mounts for the Phone , Satnav Gopro can be a nightmare .

Important rule is never rely on the SATNAV alone and always take a good map

Hello.

On our first 'big' trip was in 2013 when we rode from Aylesbury to Marbella and back with just the en-route hotel addresses on a piece of paper. That was about 3,000 miles, give or take, and we only had two mis-adventures. The first was getting stuck in the inescapable one way system in Rouen, France (which we've since done using a Sat Nav and I'm not sure it was any better ). And the second was when we turned up at what we thought was the correct area in Madrid only to find that we were about 15 miles away on the wrong side of the city.
A bit like booking a hotel in Stratford, East London and turning up at Wembley, West London .
Who would have thought that there could be two areas in Madrid both with the name 'Sebastian' in them?

Since then, we've switched over to Sat Nav but only because it gives the option to filter the route by type of roads (bendy) or more direct (if we need to make up time). I suppose we use a kind of hybrid navigation rather than a set route from A to B and it's worked to good effect. In 2018 we ended up on a ferry to cross the Rhine in Germany when we were following bendy sat nav - which we never would have done if we'd plotted the route from start to finish.