Also useful for GoldWing rallies?

This Article develops the topic introduced by John Gratton in his recent Article, describing the cost effective solution he found in his quest for more comfortable camping.

Camping rallies of various sorts are an important part of many Wingers’ enjoyment of their hobby and many are perfectly happy camping in a tent; tents needn’t cost much and they can be small enough to pack on to the bike.  But as one Winger said to me recently, as we were sitting and chatting outside his tent in sunshine at a camping event, there comes a time when you’ve had enough of tents, even when it hasn’t been wet.  He’d reached that point and was thinking very seriously about the alternatives, even if it would mean towing his bike to the venue in future rather than riding it there.

It was this conversation coupled with seeing how well John Gratton had done, kitting himself out with a very reasonably priced motorhome and a lightweight trailer, which gave me the idea for this more broadly-based article, which outlines the wider range of alternatives to a tent which I have come across Wingers using over the years.

There is always more than one way of skinning a rabbit and so it is with the alternatives to tents.  As shown by John’s example even if you go for a motorhome, which is potentially the most expensive option, it doesn’t need to be all that expensive to provide very effectively for a comfort-seeking Winger’s needs.  I know another Winger who has a motorhome he has bought and refurbished for similar money to John’s and you would be hard pressed to tell it from a nearly new one.

And a motorhome is by no means the only viable option either – there is quite a range of possibilities and Wingers, who are often quite ingenious and resourceful people, have come up with some interesting ideas.

Budget and somewhere to park it

For Wingers who are seeking an alternative to a tent, there are almost always going to be two primary considerations: how much can they afford to spend and, assuming it involves either an extra or a change of vehicle and/or a trailer of some sort,  whether they have access to suitable parking and/or storage.  American RVs can be bought relatively cheaply when they are a few years old precisely because not many people have somewhere to park them.

Even if you haven’t got enough money for the more luxurious options, there are other, relatively low cost alternatives to tents.  And even if you are not short of funds, few people would be bold enough to jump straight in at the deep end by spending a very large sum of money on a brand new motorhome as a way of discovering whether they like it.  As John Gratton explained in his Article, it was important to him not to be in prospect of losing a lot of money reselling the motorhome if it didn’t meet his expectations – although it turned out to be just the job.  So if you are getting fed up with tents read on;  you might find that someone has come up with an approach which suits you.

Ageing RVs don't cost much - but have you the space to store one?

Luxury RVs

Of course if funds are plentiful and parking space isn’t a problem, we might all be tempted by the luxurious accommodation of a large American RV, with which we could either tow our GoldWing for use on arrival or even have the RV driven ahead for us while we enjoyed riding the bike.  Because they can be a problem to store when not in use and the demands of the well-heeled are always for new rather than used ones, these vehicles depreciate much more steeply than UK or European motorhomes, so if you have the parking space at or near home, an RV which is over 10 years old can be bought for a small fraction of its original cost.  And the older ones were very solidly built, so they may need very little in the way of refurbishment.  Spares for the engine, chassis and for the habitation equipment are often available in UK too, so you don’t even need to order from America over the internet.

There is something which I find very appealing about the style of some of the older RVs, the ones which avoided looking boxy and had lots of chrome bits – it’s a bit like the appeal of a GoldWing I suppose.  Unfortunately, or probably fortunately,  whenever I’ve toyed with the idea of buying one I’ve always decided against it but the urge never quite goes away.

One GoldWing family I knew went as far as selling their home in order to buy a large and modern RV.  It was as big as they come and cost over £150,000.  They lived in it for a couple of years or more, towing their GoldWing to camping events, together with their childrens’ bicycles and all sorts of other things, in a large box van trailer.  This arrangement seemed to suit them very well to start with, in spite of the need to base themselves close enough to Dad’s work to allow him to get there each day.  But at weekends they were free to travel in their home, with all it’s luxuries, to wherever the next camping rally was to be held.

In the end they sold the RV, with some delay and difficulty, and reverted to a more conventional approach to a family residence.  And curiously enough they had reverted to camping in a tent at GoldWing rallies to provide a change from living in a motorhome, even before they sold it.  Converting the family’s bricks and mortar into a depreciating asset like an RV may not have been such a good idea after all.

Van plus gazebo goes a long way towards providing all you really need

3.5 ton Vans and the like

At the other end of the spectrum of alternatives to tents, another Winger couple I know bought a big, old and distinctly, well worn 3.5 ton Ford Transit van (which was nevertheless still a reliable runner) for only £600.  They used it to carry their GoldWing trike in the back (it was just wide enough inside) and to provide what was said to be very comfortable sleeping accommodation once the trike was unloaded, simply by erecting a camping bed in the back and using camping-type portable equipment.

Actually it wasn’t quite that simple because the Winger couple themselves slept in a huge caravan, complete with the mother-in-law, and it was another Winger who slept as their guest in the back of the van, as the alternative to his tent.  Nevertheless the idea of using a big van to carry a GoldWing, or even a trike, and also to provide living space which is as big as many tents, clearly worked very well.

Interestingly this couple have since sold both the big caravan, the 4 x 4 which towed it and the old Transit van which carried the trike in favour of a motorhome and a converted car trailer for the trike.  I did wonder whether this change came about because the caravan was a bit too comfortable for the mother in law, who no longer seems to accompany them, but of course it would be tactless to ask.

The £600 which this Winger paid for his 3.5 ton high-top van might have been unusually cheap for what he got, but the basic idea of using a big old van to provide both bike-carrying capacity and accommodation is clearly viable.

Indeed some of the “new” motorhomes which are sold commercially are conversions of used large vans (a couple of years old, high mileage but clean and tidy) to which windows and then a complete motorhome interior is installed – and fine, good-as-new motorhomes they make too, saving significantly on the cost of a completely new motorhome.  So converting a used high top van into a motorhome (using permanent fittings) and towing the bike on a trailer is another option if you have the skills.

Used large vans also come in a variety of body shapes and special adaptations too; for example there are lutons as well as high-tops and even horse boxes which already have accommodation built into them for the rider as well as the horse.  There’s one on EBay as I write this; just sweep out the stable and then ride your bike up the ramp – couldn’t be simpler!  Minibuses, especially the ex-council community bus type, are potentially adaptable to bike-carrying and accommodation too and with a little imagination and the application of some inexpensive stick-on graphics, your new acquisition could look the biking part too.

So there is no limit other than your own resources and ingenuity in the extent to which you can fit out a  large van or minibus or ambulance for comfortable living as well as carrying your GoldWing bike or trike.  A 3.5 ton van is of course capable of carrying two GoldWings if that’s what you need to be able to do.

Large vans are also very useful for many other carrying purposes as a family vehicle too of course, or even as a way of earning extra money.  Having said that the downside of owning a large van, or indeed a van of any size, is that motor insurance is often relatively expensive these days – more expensive for example than equivalent (private use) cover for a car and substantially more than for a “proper” motorhome.   The insurance cost is worth checking before you commit yourself to buying a van.

Big vans are fairly spacious anyway compared with small tents but as with a tent it can be very useful to have a sheltered entrance, so you don’t have to keep the door closed all the time to keep the rain out.  Gazebos are widely available and inexpensive these days and they can be erected alongside the side door of the van to provide rain shelter or shade.

Box van trailer fitted out for living in as well as bike transportation

Trailer adaptations

Another way of avoiding sleeping in a tent which a Winger, well known for extreme thriftiness, has used on a number of occasions is to tow his bike behind his car in a box van trailer and once on site the bike is unloaded and the trailer becomes living accommodation, using portable camping-type equipment.  His one concession to adapting the trailer itself for habitation was to install a caravan-type roof vent.

This could perhaps be described as the sub-minimalist approach and a bit more effort to install folding or removable facilities wouldn’t go amiss, especially if you plan to go accompanied by a lady.

Caravans

A wife or partner who is comfortable towing a caravan without assistance opens up your options considerably because a caravan offers a very comfortable (and potentially affordable) alternative to a tent providing you have a way of getting it towed there while you ride your bike.

I know several Wingers who use this approach; she tows the caravan to the event and he rides the bike there.  Sometimes they travel together, sometimes separately.  I suppose the ideal wife would get the caravan set up on site and have the tea on the table, timed perfectly for His Lordship’s arrival.  (As a Winger friend of mine, who’d better remain nameless, is fond of pointing out, it’s all a question of getting them properly trained.  His own conspicuous failure to get his wife to drive anything at all speaks volumes.)

A lightweight GRP caravan (Freedom Microlight)

Caravans are available to suit modest budgets and I bought one a few years ago, similar to the one in the picture, for well under £1,000.  It had all necessary facilities and more, including heating and a fridge, although the bed, which converted from dinette seating, would have been a bit small for a couple who are as horizontally challenged as I am.   It wasn’t spacious or luxurious but it did the job and it even came with a full sized awning which more than doubled the floor area – but which was such a pain to erect we only tried it once.

Since the body shell was fibreglass it couldn’t leak or rot and it was also light and easy to tow.  Experiments trying to tow it behind a GoldWing sidecar outfit proved to be a bit ambitious (it was dangerously unstable) but behind a car it behaved perfectly.  When it became surplus to requirements I even managed to sell it on EBay for a small profit.

There are specialised small caravans which can be towed behind GoldWings, or at least behind trikes or sidecar outfits, but these are not cheap and nor are they even remotely spacious – so in terms of home comforts they are little more than sleeping boxes and the only advantage they have over a tent is that you don’t have to unfold and erect them before you crawl inside. Taking off wet biking gear inside and finding somewhere to stow it could however be quite a challenge.  With these types of mini-caravan (and also folding camping trailers which you can tow behind a bike or trike) there is no heating or seating and you’re potentially not much better off than in a tent, which is what this article is about leaving behind.

So if you want the advantages of proper caravan-type comforts: comfortable seating as well as a bed, heating as well as cooking facilities, a toilet and maybe even a shower as well, then you need to compromise by finding a way of towing the thing to the rally site and getting your bike there separately.

With one of these outfits you would be allowed to tow a GoldWing on a second trailer

Towing two trailers

Unfortunately it is illegal in UK to tow more than one trailer behind a vehicle, otherwise you could have a lot of fun, and probably cause spectacular traffic hold-ups, by using a combination of two trailers, one to live in and the other to carry your GoldWing.

There are exceptions to this legal limitation but only for recovery vehicles and showman’s vehicles.  I suppose it might be possible to sleep in the cab of a recovery truck but I wouldn’t fancy trying to persuade my wife to join me.  A proper showman’s outfit would cut a dash on arrival but the speed limitation might be a problem if the camping rally is some distance away.

Bus Conversions

Whilst we’re on the subject of legal limitations there are maximum length and width (but not height) limits which apply to motorhomes and therefore to any vehicle which can be re-designated for use as a motorhome.  Gone are the days when you could buy any retired bus or coach cheaply and convert it to a mobile home and/or bike garage.  A motorhome cannot now exceed 12 metres in length or 2.5 metres in width, including any protuberances other than driving mirrors.  DVLA got themselves into an embarrassing mess a few years ago by allowing imported US RVs to be registered in UK without bothering to measure them.  Forty feet in length is a popular size in the US and this is just over the 12 metre limit, so they were unwittingly allowing over-size vehicles  on to our roads.  Not that these vehicles were all getting stuck anywhere or having lots of accidents because they are no bigger than coaches anyway, it was just that rules is rules and they were discovered to be negligently failing to apply them; they now measure everything scrupulously and interpret the rules strictly to make up for their past mistakes.

Fun, but oversize for UK roads

Standard modern buses and coaches all exceed these motorhome length and width limits, so if you want to convert a bus or coach you will have to chose one of the smaller ones.  Double deckers are OK so in theory you could create a garage/workshop downstairs and living accommodation upstairs if you wish.  Unfortunately bendy buses cannot be re-designated as motorhomes.  This is a pity because with one of those at your disposal for adaptation you really could get creative with really luxurious living facilities.  There must be some vehicle category which the Formula One guys can use to register and tax their huge transporter/habitation vehicles but whatever it might be, it isn’t as a motorhome.

Incidentally insurance companies aren’t keen on DIY motorhome conversions anyway, so if you do convert a big transit van and then decide to re-designate it as a motorhome (which DVLA will let you do subject to a vehicle inspection) you probably won’t get the cheaper motor insurance which branded motorhomes attract.

Easily convertable?

Ambulances

There is no size limit for ambulances and if you buy and convert a vehicle which was originally an ambulance it wouldn’t matter how big it was as long as you retain the original vehicle categorisation.  Quite what you have to do to achieve this and how you get an ambulance insured I don’t know but it must be possible.

One Winger I spotted a few years ago seems to have got away with converting a coach-sized ambulance (or maybe just a coach) into a habitable vehicle behind which he towed his GoldWing on a trailer.  This vehicle was, according to its tax disc, registered as an ambulance.

Maybe the EU hasn’t yet got around to making rules for the size and natures of ambulances – meantime more or less anything seems to be acceptable as an ambulance as long as it’s labelled as such.  And ambulances, even privately owned ambulances, get free road tax in UK too!

In the example I spotted at a camping rally the coach’s windows were of darkened glass (thereby obscuring its internal configuration nicely) and it was painted in plain blue colour with the word “Ambulance”  (discretely, in small letters) front and sides – looking much like one of the “Jumbulances” which are used to transport pilgrims to places like Lourdes to take the cure – and which, incidentally, are available for hire if you ever need one, click here for details.

Doubtless this Winger’s vehicle’s primary and usual purpose was something similar and by using it to live in at a GoldWing camping event he was merely taking it on its holidays with him rather than misrepresenting its true role.

If size was not a problem?

Toy Haulers

In America permitted vehicle sizes (including what can be driven on an ordinary driving licence) are far less restrictive than in UK and a wide variety of what they call “Toy Haulers” are manufactured.  These vehicle are purpose made to provide garage accommodation as well as living and sleeping space.  Toy haulers can be RVs (i.e motorhomes with built-in garage space at the back) or trailers (what we would call a box van trailers) or fifth wheelers.  Sadly most of these will be too long or wide or both to be registerable in UK, but the ingenuity with which ramps and other devices have been employed to load and secure bikes on board in combination with habitable accommodation is well worth studying for ideas.

Just as we have to find a way around the rules or to avoid unnecessary taxation sometimes, so do Americans who build or adapt their own toy haulers.  In Florida any vehicle (including a trailer) which incorporates habitable accommodation of any kind attracts annual property taxation, which is substantial, as well as the cost of a tag plate, which is equivalent to our road tax.  A way of avoiding the property tax element is to install habitation facilities discreetly – so for example by using a box van trailer, which in America might be 40 or more feet long,  and installing all sorts of kitchen, seating and sleeping facilities and of course air conditioning, but no windows.  That way the vehicle escapes the notice of the relevant taxation authority.

Summary

Anyway, back to the realities of avoiding tents for purposes of GoldWing camping rallies in a UK climate.  There are plenty of options and even if you need to stick to a modest budget with a bit of ingenuity you can contrive quite a presentable as well as a comfortable solution.  The minimum requirements are:

1. Must provide better warm, dry eating, seating and sleeping facilities than a tent, otherwise there’s no point.
2. Mustn’t turn the transit journey to the event into a burdensome or risky family ordeal, so don’t try to make the wife tow a caravan or she’ll find a way of getting her own back.
3. Must be compatible with whatever parking space/storage is available/affordable when not in use.
4. Must be affordable overall, depreciation being potentially the most important element of the extra cost compared with tenting.

In ascending order of desirability (but descending affordability) the options are:

1. Buy a cheap box trailer (maybe even costing under £1,000) and use camping type kit to live in it and either travel alone or accept the need to find a new female partner for each outing.
2. Buy a big old van as an extra/replacement vehicle and adapt it for habitation as well as transporting your bike or trike.  Cheap to buy and should have plenty of life left in them; spares and many repairs are also cheap.  Depreciation not important but insurance might be expensive.
3. Buy a decent box van trailer (£1,500-£3,000) which your existing car (might need to be a fairly big one) can tow and can also cope with the bike – and adapt it properly for habitation, so decent ventilation and better-than-a bucket amenities.  Still going to be fairly cramped but might still have dual purpose value as a load carrier and good trailers depreciate only very slowly.
4. Buy a old/cheap caravan to tow either with the family car (wife has to do the driving) or (better) with a van which can carry the bike and other kit too.  Depreciation relatively low but probably need some refurbishment and it won’t gain value.
5. Buy an old/cheap motorhome which is capable of towing the bike on a trailer (avoiding any which have any signs of dampness and therefore hidden rot) and do it up.  Cheap insurance and depreciation will be low – might even gain value if you improve it by refurbishment.
6. Buy a more modern caravan for much better comfort (wife still has to do the towing unless you also have a big van).  Depreciation becomes a significant factor.
7. Buy a better/bigger/newer motorhome, enjoy both travelling together as a couple and real comfort.  Buy a box van for your bike to keep it clean on the journey.  Depreciation of the motorhome (but not the trailer) inevitably becomes a significant factor.
8. Win the Lottery, buy a luxury RV and hire a driver to pre-position it at the venue for you while you take the scenic route on your lightly loaded bike – now that really would beat sleeping in a tent!

Related Articles

Motorhome on a Budget

Towing a GoldWing on a Trailer

Refurbished and ready to tow a GoldWing

Editor’s Introduction: John Gratton is a long time member of GWOCGB and the Regional Rep for Staffordshire Wings.  He wanted to continue taking his GoldWing to camping events without having to pitch and sleep in a tent and this is the story of his search for an affordable alternative.

It was last August I decided that my old bones had started to tell me that my days of camping under canvas were drawing to a close. I considered buying a caravan, a lot more ‘bang for the buck’ basically and I could take my little dog Pip, with me, the downside of that option being that I could not take my beloved Wing with me so that option was quickly dismissed.

The only other option was purchasing a motorhome, so I started my research (well I logged on to Ebay) to look  for a motorhome within my budget of  about £10k.  I didn‘t know how I would take to motorhoming so I wanted something I could re-sell without taking a big financial hit if I wasn‘t fond of it. I needn’t have worried, I took to it like a duck to water.

I quickly realised I wasn’t going to get a lot for my kind of money.  Most of those in my price range were in need of some serious bodywork – something which was going to cost serious money to fix.

In this budget range you will almost certainly be looking at a motorhome based on a Fiat Ducato, Talbot Express or Citroen C25.  All are basically the same vehicle, sharing many common components; these are all tough little vehicles being intended for the abuse they receive by the ‘white van man’ worldwide. You might find one based on a Volkswagen Transporter I dismissed this as having operated one in my company,  I had found the price of spares very expensive, however they are very, very reliable vehicles.

You pays your money etc.  There is an expansive range out there so I decided to make a list of my requirements and preferences, viz:

1. Ducato/Express/C25 based
2. Minimum 4 berth
3. Bed over cab (you will be no doubt be familiar with the shape having an extended body above the cab)
4. In good bodywork condition with no rot
5. In good mechanical order
6. Dry (i.e. not damp) in the habitation area
7. Preferably low mileage
8. Under £10k

Inspect carefully before you buy

If you don’t know much about vehicle mechanics and/or motorhomes take someone with you who does, generally these are the things I always do:

1. Take overalls and a torch so you can scrawl around underneath and have a good look for rot / damage, also take a magnet to check for filler, look for signs of recent ‘overspray’ and or new/recent paint.
2. Take a fully charged 12v battery with you, so you can check lights, fridges etc. work
3. Take a bottle of gas and regulator to check if the fridge, heater and water boiler work
4. When contacting the vendor, tell him you’re ringing about the motorhome, don’t be specific, if they ask which one they’re probably dealers, not a bad thing in it’s self just so long as you know
5. Ask them not to start the engine before you get there, and when you do arrive lift the bonnet and check the block is cold, some worn engines only smoke when they’re cold.
6. Have a test drive (of a reasonable distance 5/10 miles, put a gallon of fuel in if necessary) to make sure the gearbox, engine, cooling system, power steering (if fitted) all works OK. When you get back to the vendors park it on a clean area and check under later for oil leaks
7. Have a good look at the tyres, they aren’t cheap
8. When you get in the habitation area open all the drawers / cupboards and have a good sniff for the tell-tale smell of damp/mould, be suspicious if it has a lot of air fresheners or it’s just been ‘Fabreezed’
9. Be prepared to spend some time when inspecting, it’s a good investment.
10. Petrol or Diesel ? Mines petrol and does very acceptable mpg, diesels of this era were not particularly efficient, according to my Ducato handbook it says 30mpg for petrol and 32mpg for diesel, you’ll have to make your own mind up on this.

By no means an extensive list, you’ll probably think of more things to check.

There are plenty of places to search for a motor home of this type, the internet being invaluable, I recommend you trawl through ebay, there is (usually) a huge selection from complete knackers to £90k plus luxury motor homes on ebay.  Also look on a website/forum called Motorhome Facts, it almost certain that any questions you may have can be answered there.

I looked at a number of suitable vehicles but dismissed them as they had issues, mainly rot.  Eventually I spotted one on Ebay which seemed to conform to my requirements and was described as in ‘amazing’ condition (for the year, manufactured in 1989), it was only 30 miles from home so I telephoned and made an appointment to view the following day at Walsall.  On arrival I was surprised that it was as described: the bodywork in absolutely fine condition.   (Have a good look look underneath as well when you are inspecting, my chassis was like new.)

The owner (it’s first and only) had kept meticulous records every MOT from the first to present, all the handbooks, all the servicing and any repairs receipts (down to receipts from Halfords for spare bulbs !!!!), from the MOT’s I could see that the mileage of 27k miles was correct, this is it I thought, just the job, ticks all the boxes, the vendor was honest and told me that the fridge didn’t work on gas, there was a fault with the water heater and a minor problem with the taps, all I thought easily fixable.  After some negotiations on price (I may be English, but I don’t have an overdeveloped ‘cringe’ gland as the advert says) I was the proud owner of a 1989 Swift Capri (Ducato based) motor home.

I left a deposit and arranged to collect it a few days later. I arranged to have it inspected and serviced by a mechanic mate as soon as I got it home, duly checked and serviced everything was found to be OK apart from the exhaust which had been patched up with exhaust bandage.

The Restoration – Interior & Habitation area

I use the term restoration very loosely it wasn’t my intention to turn it into a ‘concours’ vehicle rather to tidy it up to an acceptable and good level, first an exhaust wont cost much I thought, rang the local exhaust place and was told it was about £250, ashen faced I put the phone down, and picked the keyboard up, on the internet and ten minutes later had a complete brand new exhaust with a five year warranty on the way for the princely sum of about £70 including the carriage, it arrived the next day and was fitted by lunch time.

Spent a few hours with a bucket and sponge inside the vehicle and cleaned everything, curtains down and in the washer, got the Bissell carpet cleaner out, which has an upholstery cleaning attachment and cleaned all the upholstery, came up like new, didn’t bother with the carpet which I had decided to renew anyway with vinyl cushion floor, re-hung the curtains and notice the dry-clean only label, ah well too late now, but they were fine anyway.

Next I thought check the 240v mains electrics, there had been a few mods over the years, some I wasn’t to happy with so I replaced all the 240 volt mains wiring and installed a new consumer unit with an RCD (Residual Current Device a safety feature which must be fitted) and new MCB’s, that done an additional 13A socket was fitted where the TV was going to be fitted, also fitted a couple of 12v cigarette lighter type sockets each side of the upper lockers one external and one internal in both sides for the TV and satellite system (Aldi £60 on offer, works perfectly more of this later). The internal 12v sockets allow the charging of mobile phones, camera and video batteries out of the way of prying eyes.  A further 12v socket was fitted in the dash for DAB radio and/or Sat Nav.

The taps on my motorhome were not working properly, on a unit of this age you’ll probably find the ‘Comet’ taps which have a micro switch fitted, the first few degrees of rotation of the tap knob engages the micro switch and turns on the pump, one of mine had failed on the kitchen sink , I found it more convenient to fit a complete tap assembly, at the same time the steel enamelled sink was found to be rotted around the waste outlet (it’s very common so check it when you are inspecting).

The sink was replaced with a stainless steel one  which fitted perfectly. I now had all the taps working fine except for one of the shower taps, the fault was traced to a tiny piece of plastic being broke on the inside of the knob, soon cured by replacing with one off the old redundant kitchen tap, I didn’t have a great deal of confidence in the current handling properties of these micro switches so I made up a relay unit which was fitted in adjacent to the water heater now the micro switches just operate the relay coil literally milliamps so the micro switches should last forever.

The fridge fault turned out to be an incorrect knob having been fitted and holding the safety gas valve shut, easily fixed, I removed the water heater (a Cascade Mk2), it looked in pretty good order but as the season was fast approaching I decided to ’bite the bullet’ and have it professionally overhauled, a good decision it turned out, took it to Arc Systems in Nottingham who specialise in these devices, all repaired serviced and put back in for the princely sum of £115, and worth every penny, Gary of Arc Systems knows these units inside out and is fully equipped to overhaul them as I watched him I realised you need specialist jigs and equipment, not a DIY job by any means.

Checked the onboard battery charger unit and found it had no output (it charges the leisure batteries and provides 12vdc if you’re on a mains hook up), so that was whipped out and a replacement was planned until I found out the price of a new unit, bugger that I thought and stripped the casing off and spent a couple of evenings drawing out the charger circuit, incidentally the charger has a ‘soft-start’ feature built in, I assume to protect the alternator diodes (tip, you should never charge a vehicle battery, with a mains charger, when the battery is still connected to the vehicle, it can and often does damage the diodes, alternators generate AC the diodes rectify this to DC – simples !!), interestingly the output of the onboard charger is only about 13.8 vdc, the vehicles alternator regulates at 14.4 vdc (approx), simply this means the on board charger will never charge the batteries to full capacity, probably another diode saving feature, checking through the circuit board a few electronic components were found to be defunct, parts ordered from Farnell Electronic Components for the princely sum of about £2.50, soldered in tested, refitted (this time in the correct orientation so the controls could be accessed), another job done. Because where the charger is fitted in the lower half of the wardrobe I had to rig up a work light so when I’d finished the charger I added a 12v fluorescent  light in the wardrobe, this has been invaluable since proving illumination in quite a dark area. I also fitted a couple of spot fittings under the top lockers for reading etc.

Finally in the interior I removed all the cupboard doors and drawer fronts and re-varnished them, they look like brand spanking new now.

Exterior

That’s just about it for the interior, now for the exterior, the transfers had gone a bit tatty and were letting the van down on appearance so I decided to remove them, I started on one of the hottest days of the year, hairdryer and fingernails ready I started, 14 hours later I’d got them off, not an easy job but well worth it the motorhome started to shed it’s years (in appearance). The front bumper and grille/headlight surrounds looked a bit shabby so removed them and resprayed them to match the bodywork( I‘ve got my own spray gun and compressor). Paintwork I thought could do with a polish, now I’m a bit of a ’tool junkie’ so I brought a polishing machine from Machine Mart, the sort as used in professional body shops and set to with the job 4 hours later all the body work done, a coat of Mer and boy was it shining, incidentally  a body shop quoted me £150 to do it the machine cost about £70 and I’ve got it for future use, still toying with the idea of replacing the graphics as I’ve a friend with a sign writing business who owes me a favour and would make and fit for free, and you can’t get much cheaper than that. (My mother was a Yorkshire woman and it shows up in me from time to time.)

Vehicle Electrics

I had a few problems with intermittent faults on the vehicle electrics, all of a sudden the vehicle refused to start, and the indicators stopped working, finally traced it to the absolutely rubbish connectors used to provide the earths to various components, in this case the electronic ignition module and indicator system, just age and corrosion really, there’s one on each side of the inner wings, these were removed and replaced with more substantially units from the local auto electrical factors, they have proper plated screw fittings these were installed and coated with silicon grease (from Maplins) and new terminals fitted to all the earth cables (and silicon greased) all fitted and tightened up and all the intermittent faults disappeared and the vehicle now started first time, even if you haven’t got these problems I advise you to change to these terminal blocks and use the silicon grease it’s brilliant at stopping electrical corrosion, most vehicle electrical problems are caused by poor earths so it’s well worth doing. New horns were fitted, as well as ‘Audi’ style daytime running lights at the front, had them hanging round the garage brought for the Wing but couldn’t find any where suitable to put them on it.

Extra Space

If you want extra space you will need an awning if the motorhome hasn’t got an awning rail then you will have to fit one, really easy took about an hour, got my awning off ebay £75 technically second hand when it arrived it was still sealed in it’s original plastic bag completely unused, I also purchased a sun canopy which also fits in the awning rail (http://www.riverswayleisure.co.uk/acatalog/info_190020.html) not tried that yet but it looks to be just the job, would have liked one of the Fiamma roll out ones but they’re hundreds of pounds, this one should do the same job for £40

Towbar

If the vehicle doesn’t have a towbar fitted, then obviously you are going to have to get one if you are intending to take the Wing with you. Towbar can be very expensive, one quote I had was over £500, finally tracked one down from a company called Watling Towbars, in St Albans, very helpful people who told me that although they didn’t do one specifically’ for my motorhome they did make one which would fit with some minor mods, as I have my own welders, grinders etc. it wasn’t a problem ordered it complete with electrics, etc for about £150, and fitted it myself in about 3 hours, job done.

The last jobs I did was to have new vinyl cushion floor fitted as I am completely hopeless at carpet fitting I had it done by a mate who does it for a living, cost a few pints and looks great, easy to clean and durable.

TV & Satellite systems

I looked at 12vdc/240vac TV’s from the camping & caravanning shops, they are expensive, too expensive for my tastes, the object after all was to do this on a budget, finally sourced one at Tesco (although the newer models are different and not suitable) which was a 15.6” flat panel with built in DVD and Freeview for about £116, importantly the TV has an external power supply which converts 240vac to 12vdc, the 12vdc plugs in the side of the TV, hence it is usable on the vehicle electrics, you might want to run it through a regulator (about £20, that’s roughly half price of most sites)  to prevent damage through transient voltage spikes available here.

The TV was mounted on a ‘swing & tilt’ bracket from Asda (about £15.00) and a quick release bracket was fitted which allows fitting and removal in seconds (about £12.00) I thoroughly recommend this type, available from here.   As mentioned before a 12vdc/ 240vac satellite system was purchased from Aldi and is found to be perfect, mounted mine on a Konig tripod from Amazon.

I had to turn an adaptor from a piece of billet aluminium which was araldite into the tripods top section works perfectly firm, strong and secure. I added a dual satellite / aerial external socket so that I didn’t need to run co-axials through the window or doors widely available and have both a co-ax and f-plug connectors built in.

Conclusion

What’s it like to drive? Well it’s no sports car, but it will happily cruise all day long towing the Wing at 60mph, fuel economy is very reasonable (for this type of vehicle) returning on average about 30mpg, there’s no power steering but I haven’t found that to be a problem at all, on the whole it’s a very pleasant vehicle to drive. Air conditioning, dream on !!!

So what did I get for my money?  In total it’s cost less than £7k and a considerable amount of elbow grease  and that includes everything including the TV/satellite system.  I’ve since had it independently valued at £10k for insurance purposes.

I’ve done about six trips in it to various Goldwing events and covered about 2000 trouble free miles, apart from having a puncture on the trailer, that’s nothing to do with the motorhome.  It’s warm and dry at night and cool in the heat of the day, comfortable and reliable, can’t really see me ever returning to a tent, its completely self contained with it’s own shower, WC, cooker, hob, water storage (24 gallons) on board and hot water on demand, in practical terms I wouldn’t have got anything else if I had brought one costing far, far more.

Editor’s Postscript: If you are choosing a motorhome to tow a GoldWing, the payload and towing capacity of the motorhome are very important considerations.  Motorhomes often have very limited towing capacity and some cannot take a towbar at all, so check this carefully before you buy.

Related Articles

Towing a GoldWing on a Trailer

Alternatives to Tents

The Open Road

The husband and wife team who operate Road Veda, offering both off-the-shelf and bespoke motorcycle tours in India, contacted me with information about their venture.  The tours combine tourism with motorcycling adventure under skilled supervision and with suitable backup.

All the tours start and end in Bangalore, which is easily accessible by direct, low cost  flights from UK with British Airways and other airlines.  Bangladore is now a large and modern city (it is a State Capital) but it’s origins are at least 1,000 years ago, so it combines, from a tourist viewpoint, ancient and very modern.  In recent times has become a hub for English-speaking Call Centres – so there will be no difficulty communicating when you get there either.

You fly out there, Road Veda supplies a suitable bike (a modern, off-road Enfield Bullet) teach you how to ride safely on Indian roads and then lead you on a tour which could be the adventure of a lifetime.

Tours can be as short as one day or last a couple of weeks, according to your appetite and budget.  A ten day tour can cost less than £1,000 per person, excluding flights but including bike, accommodation, food, guide, back up car etc.  There is a special offer for Wingers too (see below) so if you and a few friends fancy a bit of adventure before the nexct UK biking season, read on…….

The following information was provided by Venetia Ansell, who was born in UK but now lives in India with her husband Gautam, who is an experienced rider.  Venetia organises things and Gautam leads the Tours.

Introducing Road Veda

Gautam and Ventia at their Wedding

Just to give you a bit of background…  I met my husband on his Royal Enfield Bullet seven years ago in Bombay.  We did many bike trips around India over the next five years and I quickly realised what a fantastic way this was to see the country – you have access to places most tourists don’t even realise exist and from the open road you see India just as it is.  I moved from the UK to India in 2007 and we got married – riding off
for our honeymoon from the reception on the Bullet.

We wanted to introduce more people to the joys of riding Bullets down the roads of Karnataka, lined with Gulmohar trees, the coastal lanes of Goa and the steep zig zags of Himachal Pradesh.

So we set up Road Veda, starting off initially with short rides aimed at those already based in India, and then more recently the longer tours for those coming from further afield.  After many years of pillion riding, I now ride too – though rather more slowly and sedately than the boys.

Lots of uncrowded tarmac

A Selection of Tours

Road Veda operates motorbike tours right across South India. Our shortest tour, the sunrise ride, is just one day; our long trips extend to two weeks.

Shorter trips include rides to Galibore fishing camp, Chitradurga Fort,
the Nilgiri Hills and the Western Coast.

Three of the longer tours offered for 2009 were:

Beaching It – A ride up India’s Malabar Coast to the Bullet’s spiritual home, Goa. (Two weeks)

Head north-west into the coffee-scented air of Chikmaglur and the lush
Muthodi forest.  Watch the sunset from the cliff at Agumbe, so high you can
see the ocean 60km away, before descending the ghats to the coast and your
own private beach at Kundapur.  Enjoy sunsets over the Arabian Sea as we
putter along the edge of Karnataka taking in a temple or three at the
sacred town of Gokarna until we hit southern Goa whose palm-arched roads
were made for Enfields.

Unusual spectators

Goa lives on her many beaches – swim, ride, party or just loll on the white sand watching life, and the odd cow, go by.  Next is Hampi, the strange boulder oasis in the middle of the country which once ruled India, littered with vast untended ruins. And finally the monkey man at Chitradurga before the return to Bangalore.

Cricket and Kalaripayattu – Faded colonial glory, South Indian style (Ten Days)

Soak in a bit of Indian history in Mysore and Srirangapatnam en route to
Coorg, whose pale-skinned people claim descent from Alexander the Great, where we have the run of a private coffee estate. Cross the border into Kerala and the thick Wayanad forest and cleanse both body and soul in the Papanashini (‘Sin-destroying’) river at Tholpetty or just enjoy the view before we cut across to the coast and Thalassery, home of cricket and the Indian circus.

Not all tarmac!

After some traditional Keralan theatre and dance we amble south for the
backwaters and houseboats.  Next we head to one of Kerala’s famous old
British hill stations laced with tiny tea estate roads before crossing
into Tamil Nadu and the blue hills of the Nilgiris at Kotagiri. Hill roads
and hairpin turns flanked by jungle, paddy fields and the odd village
bring us gently back to reality and Bangalore.

Of Gods and Poet Kings – Karnataka’s forests, temples and kingdoms (Ten Days)

Admire the 60 foot high statue of Gomateshwara, god of the Jains, as we
ride into Shravanabelagola and try to imagine what it looks like when
ritually bathed in milk and saffron every 12 years.  Next we ride to Kukke Subrahmanya in the Western ghats, a teeming mass of nature painted more shades of green than you’d think existed.  Kukke is where you go to rid yourself of the snake curse. Pilgrims throng the tiny town but beyond the temple lies miles of virgin jungle rolling up and down steep hills,
perfect for long undisturbed treks.

Sureal vistas

We cross the ghats to reach the coast and head north for Kundapur, and park ourselves on the beachfront for a bit of R & R and perhaps some lazy kayaking. A ride inland brings us to the boulder-strewn, paddy-green ancient kingdom of Hampi for some serious heritage.  Down to the stone fortress at Chitradurga and an underground temple before we clip back to Bangalore.

Custom Rides

Road Veda will also design and organise custom-built rides for any group of 8 or more.

Ancient and modern

Safety and Backup

Road Veda provides the bikes, helmets and all related equipment, as well
as a mechanic who travels with the group.

A lead rider and a four wheel drive support car accompany each tour.  The support car has room for one non-rider and clients’ luggage.  We carry medical supplies and a trained first aider.

We ride in small groups, normally about five bikes or so and at a good but steady pace of about 60 to 70 kmph allowing us time to soak in the beauty on either side of us.

Our bikes are 350cc Royal Enfield Bullets; each is slightly different and has its own distinctive character.

Special Offer for Wingers: If you mention this Blog Article when you make a booking for five or more persons before the end of January 2010 (even if your Tour starts after that) you will all receive a 15% discount on the list prices!

For further information please visit Road Veda’s Website.  If you don’t find what you want straight away contact them by email and ask questions; Venetia is very good at responding to emails.

Stuart's Mosel Tour 2009

The Federation of UK GoldWing Clubs, the UK’s GoldWing Community’s national service organisation, is planning its own set of GoldWing Tours for 2010 and it’s also offering to support and promote any other GoldWing tours being run by individuals or clubs.

You may remembers that Stuart’s Mosel Tour of 2009, promoted and reported on this Blog, was described as a prototype.  This was a one-centre, hotel-based tour but the Federations plans for 2010 are by no means restricted to a particular type of tour – any Tour can be included in the Programme as long as it’s available for GoldWings , so camping tours are also welcome, as are multi-centre and roaming tours, as are Tours planned by commercial organisers.

The aim of the Programme is to broaden and promote choice for Wingers.  As the Federation’s catch phrase puts it – “It’s all about Freedom of Choice!”

A modest number of Tours (UK and abroad) will be organised by the Federation itself, using its own pool of Tour Leaders.  It is hoped that over time the number of in-house Tours will be expanded, as more Wingers gain experience and acquire the confidence to lead a Tour.

Another feature of the Programme is that the Federation’s experience of planning and leading Tours will be offered to support Wingers (or Clubs) with planning, administration and troubleshooting their own Tours.

The Federation’s aim is to provide services for the UK GoldWing Community as a whole and all of its own Tours will be open to all Wingers.

This is an innovative way for a GoldWing organisation to be trying to do things for UK Wingers and if it takes off the Programme could prove to be very popular.  It may take a few years to build in scale but the basic resources are there for a successful Programme so let’s hope the idea does get taken up.  The Honda GoldWing is the best touring motorcycle in the world so giving UK Wingers a broader opportunity to enjoy touring with their bikes has got to be a good idea.

For further information and to express your own interest, as an individual or a club, in this Programme please visit the Federation’s Website.

Good roads, well signposted - and really nice views

Click on any picture for a full size image.

For our second Riding Day in the Mosel I offered the group a choice.   I would lead a ride aimed at enjoying some of the Area’s excellent riding roads, which would be a rider’s day out rather than a tourist day, not all hard and fast riding, but an opportunity to ride at pace on good roads for its own sake rather than a leisurely scenic tour.

The alternative would be to spend time as a motorcycling tourist in some nice tourist places, such as Bern Kastel, an attractive town an hour or so up river which is both easy to find and has easy bike parking when you get there.

All the couples chose the tourist option (can’t think why!) leaving just Bill and I to set off in search of some nice twisty roads. John, plenty experienced enough to cope with leading a group of bikes to Bern Kastel, volunteered to do so.

Nice place to pause for a picture

On the following day I also provided an option of a riding day out of a more touristy nature, like the first one we had had, but having sampled Bern Kastel and having not seen much of Cochem apart from riding through it, most of the group opted to be tourists for the last day in the Mosel. We were of course facing the longish ride back to Rotterdam for the Ferry home the day after, so it made sense for some to have a rest day.

Bill and I, lacking wifely supervision on this holiday, were therefore off the leash for two whole days in a wonderful biking area, so we set about making the most of it.

On my satnav I had a stored a route based on the one which Klaus, our Hotelier, had led me with another group last year. It had taken us along some roads and to some places which mere visitors to the Mosel would never find, so with just two of us riding together, this was a chance to see if I could find them again. The satnav route wasn’t completely true to Klaus’s original because the process of converting a track (the satnav record of a journey) into a route is not straightforward – or at least it’s not straightforward for me.

So while I managed to find the special viewpoints Klaus took us to, we didn’t necessarily get to them in quite the same way. Not that it matters in the Mosel area which way you go on a motorcycle, there are so many attractive roads you can almost take any turning in any direction and end up with an enjoyable ride.

Panoramic view from the woodland near Valwig

But Klaus knew some special places and hidden viewpoints. For example he took us to a football pitch on the outskirts of a little town called Valwig and got us to park on a rough track alongside it. We were then led about 200 yards along a footpath into the woodland – wondering as we walked what on earth this was all about. I don’t suppose I was the only biker to have wondered why we had stopped somewhere where there was no sign of anywhere to buy even a cup of coffee, let alone a bacon butty.

However our patience, or in my case lack of it, as I stumbled in my biking boots along a rough woodland path, was rewarded, as was Bill’s when I took him back there this year, with an amazing view. Suddenly a gap appears in the trees on the right of the path and you are standing on the edge of a very steep hillside looking down to the river below and the town of Ernst on the other side of the river. So steep is the hillside that the view is almost vertically down on to this little town. Bill was duly impressed.

Bravely standing, bravely - on the edge at Valwig

The gap through which we took in this view has a small, sloping wooden platform under foot from which, if you were at all careless, it would be possible to take a distinctly precipitous step into oblivion. The penny dropped after a while that this structure served a purpose other than committing suicide and its primary purpose was probably a launching ramp for hang gliders or the like. Standing on this ramp to take a picture of the view took more than a little courage, not least because the average hang glider pilot is probably quite a few stones lighter than the average GoldWing rider and this structure looked to be distinctly under-engineered. Bill and I took the precaution of standing on this platform one at once and I allowed him to go first.

Looking down over Ernst from Valwig

The place where we had parked the bikes to take in this view happens to be fairly close to the supposed location of the ventilation tower of the WW2 underground slave-labour Spark Plug Factory which I had gone looking for a couple of days previously. So Bill and I diverted briefly to see if we could spot anything I had missed in the rain on my first attempt, but we couldn’t. If I get back to coping with tramping through woodland again after my hip is fixed, I’ll go back and have a proper look. I’m sure there will be little to see and anyway the ventilation tower isn’t central to what went on in the tunnels below. But having learned of the existence of this place of such awful oppressiveness, in an area of such natural beauty and grandeur, it somehow seems important to make proper contact with it – a bit like the obligation I always feel to stop for a few moments to show respect at a war cemetery whenever I come across one.

The roads were dry and well surfaced and we took advantage of this as we rode them on these two days, enjoying our bikes’ excellent handling. Motorcyclists at large are unfamiliar with GoldWings and they are usually pretty surprised when they see them performing like this. I rode at this sort of pace with a mixed group in Yorkshire a couple of years ago and at the coffee stop after a section of nice twisties which we had taken at pace one of the other riders said “So you can ride it like a hooligan then?”. I’m pretty sure he meant this as a compliment to the bike’s handling capabilities rather than a criticism of my personal riding style. It is of course possible to “make progress”, as it’s called, without taking irresponsible risks; that’s what advanced motorcycling is all about.

Pearl one, Cream one?

Our footpegs would touch down on the bends from time to time as we made this kind of progress and I was reminded yet again that I am no accurate judge of when this is likely to happen. It depends on undulations in the road surface and how hard the suspension is being compressed in the turn as well as the angle of lean and the road’s camber. That’s why you sometimes don’t scrape when you expect to and vice versa. Footpegs pivot upwards of course, so that they scrape along the surface as they touch rather than dig in, and there’s quite a bit of lean angle to go on a GoldWing before anything else on the bike touches down. Once you get the confidence not to panic and start pulling the bike upright just because the footpeg is scraping, it’s merely a useful indicator of how much lean angle you’ve got left.

Although the point at which the footpegs will touch down may be unpredictable on some bends, you can judge this point much more easily on, for example, roundabouts, where the road surface and camber is more even. So roundabouts, in dry and diesel-free conditions, are a good place to get used to the experience of touching down without undue anxiety. Just let the footpeg lift under your foot, as you hear and feel it start to scrape, then enjoy the moment; you are discovering what your bike is capable of, in case you ever need it. If you think you are too fast in a bend and in danger of running out of road you should nearly always lean further and turn tighter rather than brake, it’s safer. Of course it’s even safer to get your speed right as you enter a bend. But if you have go that wrong, leaning over further and thereby turning more tightly should replace panic braking as your instinctive response.

The Mosel Valley’s scenery is of course spectacular and we were able to enjoy that too. Riding hard on the twisties focuses the mind more or less completely, which is one of its attractions, but there are always more open sections of road when you can spare a moment to look around and admire the vista.

Worth riding there to see?

Bill and I also visited another of the obscure place which Klaus had taken me to the year before and this time there was refreshment to be had as well as a nice view. Grevenbruch Castle, which overlooks the riverside village of Trarbach, is one of many ruined castles along the Mosel and in this case it’s very ruined indeed, with little more than a few bits of wall left standing, albeit one of them is quite tall. It occupies a commanding position, as of course medieval castles, built for primarily military reasons, all tend to do. There are spectacular views both up and down river and it has the advantage over others, such as Klotten Castle, of being relatively easily accessible by road, or rather a road of sorts, and having a car park and a cafe/restaurant on site.

Access is via an awkward turn off the main road on to a narrow roadway which then turns into a rough and twisting track which, in case you’re not already wondering whether this place is worth the effort of getting there, suddenly presents an extremely steep and tight S-shaped bend on the final approach to its car park, which is all gravel. Not really the sort of place to take a GoldWing you might think, and you’re right. It would not have been a place to take the whole group. But I had been as pleasantly surprised by how easily I managed to climb out of this place the previous year as I’d been terrified about the prospect when I rode into it.

A charming old ruin - and a crumbling castle

And obsessed though he is with cleaning his bike and combing his hair, Bill is a very capable rider, so I had no hesitation about taking him there. Apart from anything else he would come in handy helping me to pick my bike up if I dropped it this time!

In the event we enjoyed a pleasant refreshment stop in the shade of the trees on a lovely sunny day and we even took time to explore the Castle ruins and take some pictures. Despite several opportunities I didn’t quite manage to catch a photograph of Bill combing his hair, so the pictures are not truly representative.

Terrace viw from Beilstein

There are lots of attractive refreshment stops along the Mosel, indeed you can stop in any village or town and find something. Bill and I stopped at the site of a former monastery, where there is still an interesting church, on yet another elevated viewpoint at Beilstein. Looking very small from the riverside road, this place expands behind the river frontage. A set of steps, enough to get both of us puffing and pausing again, lead up the hill to the terrace in front of the Church where there is a cafe/restaurant.

Shops and Eateries in Zell

Zell was another pleasant refreshment stop. This is much bigger, a small town rather than a village, and it has some tourist shops as well as a selection of restaurants on the street one block away from the river. There is also a riverfront snack bar, which we used, which has a few tables under an awning. By exercising Biker’s Privilege, you can even park on the pavement next to the seating while you relax and eat or drink.

Because it’s open-air eating you do of course run the risk of smokers sitting next to you while you’re eating. I haven’t smoked for over thirty years but I can still remember the days when most of us did and a smokey environment was unremarkable; the change in UK to a legal ban on smoking indoors in pubs and restaurants has made a huge difference to my expectations and I now find it really unpleasant to have anyone smoking in my vicinity, even on an open terrace. Germany is pretty good in this respect; its France where you are still likely to encounter someone at the next table in a restaurant lighting up between courses.

Beilstein Ferry and some elaborate roof tiling

On the second day, as we headed vaguely back towards Klotten during the afternoon, I decided to surprise Bill with another really spectacular view I seen the year before and we diverted towards Burg Eltz. This is a Cinderella-type castle set in an isolated steep valley a few miles north of Klotten. And it is hidden from view until the last minute as you approach it; for maximum impact I didn’t tell Bill where we were heading.

The last part of the approach to the Castle, beyond the Car Park, is on foot, although there is an option to take a minibus ride down the very steep roadway. The Car Park is along either side of the last half mile or so of roadway leading to the place where the minibus service runs from. Knowing this I led Bill to the far end of the Car Park in the hope of finding a parking space there. We were unlucky but rather than subject my dodgy hip to an extra half mile of walking unnecessarily, I exercised Biker’s Privilege and parked against the railings of the turning area right at the end, strictly speaking illegally but not really causing any obstruction.

The reason for mentioning this otherwise uninteresting detail is that by parking tightly against the railing, when I dropped the bike onto its side stand, there was no room to get off it in my usual way. Because of my hip and because I have a rider’s backrest on the bike, I use an inelegant but effective reversing bunny hop on the left leg, dragging my right leg over the seat as I move backwards. This sounds silly but having tried various other ways, it works for me. But it wouldn’t work here, there was a railing in the way. So I tried to get off to the right hand side. After a few false starts I eventually managed to achieve this by performing part of what we used to call a forward roll during my school gymnastics days, narrowly avoiding actually making contact with the ground by scrabbling forwards on all fours for a few feet.

The impressive Burg Eltz Castle

It was not a pretty sight but there was a certain amount of spectator value for Bill, who fortunately for me was the only spectator. He hadn’t seen me attempting gymnastics before and wondered what on earth I was up to. By this time I was laughing aloud at my foolishness and the predicament I had created for myself and it didn’t occur to me at the time that if getting off had been difficult, getting back on would be even more of a problem – but more of that later.

So we walked the few yards to where the minibus was waiting and I decided, since I knew the walk down to the Castle was challenging even without a dodgy hip, to treat my companion and myself to a minibus ride. The minibus was standing waiting but without thinking, as a Brit used to access for the left hand side, I walked around the front of the bus to what turned out to be the wrong side; the passenger door was on the right. So back around the front of the bus I went. The bus was empty apart from the driver, who hadn’t given any indication of noticing my wanderings around his vehicle, so having eventually located the passenger door, naturally I opened it and made to get in.

This caused the driver to suddenly spring into life. He uttered a stream of harsh-sounding German, which I didn’t understand at all but took to mean I should get into the very back seat rather than the row immediately opposite the door, to avoid blocking the rear seats. So I reached for the release lever to get into the back. The driver then said in English, again very aggressively, “Read the paper on the glass!”, pointing as he did so to the window behind the door.

Pity about the minibus service

The penny then dropped that he meant I should read the notice stuck to the inside of the window which said “The door and windows are controlled by the driver”. The penny dropped again after a pause for translation of this puzzling phrase into understandable English, that this unpleasant individual expected his prospective passengers to wait outside the vehicle until he was ready to leave his seat and open the door and supervise boarding. Well, I thought to myself, we won the war (or at least with John Wayne’s help we won it) so I’m not being treated like that. We’ll bloody well walk rather than pay to use his precious bus – so I closed his minibus door with gusto and limped off in silent high dudgeon.

Bill had witnessed this altercation and without exchanging a word, it somehow seemed natural to both of us that we should spread ourselves out across the narrow roadway as we made our descent of the hill towards the Castle. We must have taken quite a while to hear the noise of the minibus approaching us from behind as it came down the hill and this might have caused the driver some frustrating delay as he had to alter speed and aim for the gap between us or around us, which might just have appeared to him to be a shifting target, as this limping, lumbering tourist, who was apparently also deaf to the noise of his approaching vehicle, staggered about in startled confusion.

A bit petty of us perhaps, but we felt he deserved it. And I’m afraid a similar thing happened as we walked back up the hill too, before we moved out of his way.  We got him slowing right down and having to change gear if not come to a complete halt on the really steep section of the hill. He showed his irritation by missing me by a fraction of an inch as he drove past and I suppose if I’d thought quickly enough I could have cried out feigning impact for the benefit of his passengers, but maybe that would have been going a bit too far.

The Germans we met throughout our visit to the Mosel were, with the notable exception of this nasty piece of work, very friendly and helpful people. This made the minibus driver’s obnoxious behaviour even more surprising and conspicuous.  He was after all in the tourist business and so is the Castle.

We walked only half way down the hill to the viewing point overlooking the Castle, took our pictures and walked back up. We had paid the friendly man at the Car Park entrance his due, and he had been suitably complementary about our bikes.  But we didn’t bother visiting the Castle, and of course we didn’t spend any money on the minibus either, as originally intended.  The Castle is an amazing spectacle from the overlooking viewpoint and well worth going to see just for that, maybe worth going all the way down too.

There is another chapter to this bus driver story.  As we reached the top of the hill again, both of us puffing a bit, I sat on a bench near the bus stop to cool off and take on water. A while later the bus arrived, the driver got out and opened the door and out got his passengers, not one of them smiling or thanking him. Was that significant? A UPS van had turned up a few moments earlier and its driver was waiting to get a signature for a couple of parcels destined for the Castle. I didn’t need to understand the German conversation between the two drivers for it to be clear that the minibus driver wanted to pick an argument and was objecting vociferously to having to accept the parcels for onward transportation to the Castle. It wasn’t his job or he didn’t get paid for it, that sort of thing.

The UPS driver didn’t take the bait. He simply smiled and said something quietly which might have been “please yourself, I’ll take it back if you like” but his smile spoke volumes. Having finished his rant, which took a little while, the minibus driver sign the receipt and put the parcels into the back of his minibus anyway, and then slammed the door even harder than I had done.  He then strutted off around the front of the minibus back to his seat.

I’m afraid I burst out laughing long and loud at this point, amazed and appalled at the minibus driver’s behaviour, which on this occasion I had of course had no involvement at all in provoking.  It was almost childish behaviour on his part.  He said nothing more as he strutted angrily back to sit in his driving seat; maybe he was plotting to wreak revenge by making the next lot of passengers wait even longer for him to open his door than usual. The lady sitting next to me on the bench, who clearly was waiting to take the bus and looked puzzled by what was happening right in front of her, was clearly going to have to await a little while longer, perhaps even longer than usual, to be allowed to take a more comfortable seat inside the minibus.

The minibus driver knew of course, couldn’t help but know, from the UPS driver’s smile and especially from my completely uninhibited laughter, that at least two of the three of us present thought he had made a complete prat of himself.

Bill preparing to be photographed

As I walked the few yards back to the bikes Bill was already there, accepting the compliments of the tourists who had recently dismounted from the minibus, and who were now admiring our bikes. One of them, an American lady, was volubly appreciative and we fell into conversation.

She was delighted to learn that the bikes were made in Maryville Ohio and no, we explained, they weren’t Harleys and no, they weren’t quite identical either.

This was my cue to explain, as I take every opportunity to do when I’m out with Bill, that while my bike is genuinely Honda Pearl White, Bill’s is a one-off colour, basically whitish and pearlish but with a gold, or perhaps brownish sheen on the edges, a colour which I feel is best described as Last Week’s Papal Robes.  Bill, well used to this unwarranted verbal abuse of his immaculate pride and joy, smiled tolerantly as usual.

It emerged that Betsy, as the American Lady turned out to be called, had also suffered the burden of the minibus driver’s unsavoury approach to customer service.  And she was so complementary about our bikes too, chivalry required that she be offered a ride on one.   Bill was already mounting up, so I helped Betsy to board his bike, with careful regard to his paintwork, and she was ridden the few yards down the Car Park to her own vehicle grinning happily.  It was a bit like a scene from Driving Miss Daisy, except of course Betsy was far too young for the Miss Daisy part and Bill lacked the baritone gravitas to be a credible Morgan Freeman. They were both smiling far too much.

It was at about this point that I realized that my prospects of assistance getting back on my own bike, still leaning tightly up to the railings, had just ridden off down the Car Park with Betsy.  So as I hobbled over to it to take stock of the challenge, a dreadful foreboding crept up to join me; this was not going to be easy.

Reversing the forward roll manoeuvre which had got me off it was not going to be an option and it was soon apparent that there wasn’t any other way short of hiring a crane to mount the bike from the uphill side.  So I squirmed alongside the railing and managed, eventually, to get over it into the narrow gap alongside the bike. A precarious manoeuvre followed, involving leaning backwards along the railing in order to get my right foot high enough to lift over the saddle but this didn’t work at all; I nearly fell backwards over the railing. There just wasn’t room to swing my right leg up.

Bill captured this moment of quiet contemplation

Eventually I resorted to mounting the bike conventionally by folding the rider’s backrest down, then standing on the left footpeg, then leaning as far forward and across the bike as space would allow in the hope of getting enough legroom to lift my right foot over the back seat. I had to lean so far forward and across the bike to do this that I nearly got my helmeted head wedged irretrievably between the handlebar and the edge of the windscreen and there was clearly a developing risk that I was transferring so much weight over to the right that both bike and I would end up toppling over. I just managed to get my leg over and sit down; it was quite a relief.

While all this was going on there was, mercifully, no one else around. But I couldn’t dismiss from my mind how ridiculous it would have looked to a spectator – this fat guy with a big flash bike struggling so much to get on it – that I couldn’t stop laughing, which of course didn’t help.  At one stage I was stuck, spread-eagled over the bike, as if trying to mount it in the non-vehicular sense.

No doubt Bill, generous soul that he is, would have helped if he had been around and he wouldn’t have stood back videoing my performance for posterity, as I so richly deserved for mocking the colour of his beloved bike. My resolve to get my hip fixed, and to lose some more weight, was strengthened by this experience.

Riding Ms Betsy

So I got my bike moving again and joined Bill further down the Car Park where Betsy was still sitting on his bike having photos taken. Her husband and the Dutch couple who were their companions were there too.

It turned out that Betsy was a Travel Writer and when I confessed that I was a would-be writer, having started this Blog a few months ago, she readily agreed to have a look.  I was hoping she would give me a few professional tips but Betsy rejected the idea that she is a professional writer, describing her writing as an avocation, her day job being a lawyer back home in New York State.

So I had not only insulted my friend Bill’s bike, I’d had him giving an uninsured ride to a New York lawyer without a helmet.

Thank goodness that most people, including most minibus drivers and maybe even most lawyers, are nice friendly people with whom you can really enjoy a chance meeting.  National stereotypes are not a useful predictor of whether you will find any individual likeable or not.

As a GoldWing rider touring at home or abroad, rewarding opportunities to give real pleasure to an interested stranger often comes your way because your bike attracts admirers almost everywhere you take it.  Shame on the GoldWing rider who doesn’t spare a moment to do this.  You even get to spread understanding that GoldWings aren’t quite the same as Harleys.

It was a good couple of riding days and Bill and I really enjoyed ourselves. Sadly on the next day, all too soon, it was time to head for home.

The photographs with this Article include some by Bill Squires and Betsy Shequine and I am grateful for their permission to use them.

Having a good day!

Our second full day in the Mosel Region was forecast to be showery but we came down to a pleasant and clear morning for breakfast with a plan already formed to be on the road for a Ride Out without delay.

Rob Ellis, a seasoned Mosel tourer, had co-operated with me the night before in planning a circular ride for the group which would take in a useful sample of the area’s attractive places and also provide a gentle introduction to the riding opportunities provided by its magnificent roads.

We settled on a route heading across the river from Klotten via the bridge at Tries.  Then then up one of the Mosel’s side valleys and southwards across the high ground which separates the two river valleys as they head towards each other at Koblenz.  We headed for the Rhine ferry at Kaub, where I knew from a previous visit there was an unusual biker’s cafe on the far bank, which would make an interesting coffee stop.

Ride that curve!

As we queued on the West side of the Rhine, on the ramp down from the road to the river’s edge, we were basking in sunshine and there was an opportunity to take a few pictures of this extremely pretty spot. And pictures of the passing river traffic, which was either also attractive to the eye or impressively huge or both.   The River Liners which cruise this great river from Holland to Switzerland and all stations in between, are really quite a site.  Nigel Mackintosh was in his element, clicking away.

Queuing for our first ferry, to Kaub

I had explained that these ferries run continuously and there’s no pre-booking.  You simply ride-on, pay the man who comes around like an old fashioned  bus conductor a couple of Euros or so and ride-off again in no time.  But once on the Ferry Nigel had his helmet and jacket off in no time and his camera held aloft (nautical term!) on a stick to take another photo or ten.  He was completely immersed in this novel photo-opportunity and he had to move pretty quickly to get back on his bike when we pointed out that the Ferry was already approaching the docking ramp on the other side.  It doesn’t take long to cross the line. Nigel managed to ride off with the rest of us, just.

Rosie & Steve, with mid-river Castle

The Biker’s Cafe I was heading for is across the road at the top of the Ferry Ramp and impossible to miss.  It lived up to my recollections and expectations, or rather it was still a bit scruffy-looking and its eccentric and entertaining owner was on form.  He speaks reasonable English but pretends not to and takes the micky out of your fumbling attempts to communicate for a few minutes before letting you off the hook with a smile and a hint to help yourself.

Parked at the Biker's Cafe at Kaub

He operates an honesty system and although he will cook hot food to order (and he even understands what a bacon butty is) you are expected to help yourself as far as practicable, for example to coffee from the urn, milk from the jug and sugar if you need it.  You are also expected to enjoy as many free refills as you wish and stay as long as you like.  You pay at the counter only when you are ready to leave, even if you have eaten a steak, which is always on offer.

Bill balancing a motorcycle on his head

The toilet bears no signage and it’s in the cluttered bottle store and best described as basically functional rather than decorous – and its probably kept that way deliberately to discourage non-biking customers from hanging around.  And in case any non-biking customer is in any doubt about the Cafe’s core customer base, a classic motorcycle is suspended above the counter for them to bang their heads on.  It’s quite a cultural experience and worth diverting for if you’re in the area.

And it's even a Honda!

Dave Turvey eventually managed quite a conversation with the Owner, in English, and apparently got himself appointed as UK selling agent for an allegedly pristine and low mileage GL1500 which the Owner was hoarding.  I wondered it’s low mileage had anything to do with a stint dangling above the counter in order to really terrorise non-biking would-be customers into full flight.

Lots of character - and good food too

Having re-hydrated (it was turning out to be a warm sunny day) and in most cases braved a visit to the bottle store, we headed down river towards the narrows at Loreley, a tight turning point on the Rhine where, according to legend, mariners were seduced on to the rocks by beautiful maidens, the Lorelies.  We got a view of the high ground which towers over the river at this bend, where there are both spectacular views upstream and downstream and a very pleasant, and surprisingly affordable, lunch stop.

View of the Rhine from Loreley

It takes quite a detour inland to get up to the top of the cliffs high above the river, maybe as much as four or five miles, but it’s worth it.  The views really are spectacular and relaxing in the shade of the umbrellas and trees was very pleasant indeed.  It was also an opportunity for novices to Germany to discover that ordering food there is no problem – not least because most of the tourist spots print their menus in English as well ás German.

During my own first visit to Germany I felt more than a little out of my depth ordering food when I spotted a stall selling chunks of roast chicken and bread.  My efforts to get the guy who was serving them failed miserably when he pointed to the cashier’s station a few yards away.  I was obviously expected to pay for my food in advance there, and the cashier obviously served several food stalls, so I was going to have to say what I wanted.

Parking up at Loreley

Lacking a more conventional way of communicating,  resorted to saying “Ein” (i.e. “one”) and then making a clucking noise while wagging my elbows.  I got the message across but no one was more surprised by me when the Cashier said “You want some chicken then love?” .  She was from Rotherham. Many real Germans, as distinct from Yorkshire ex-patriates, speak English too and they are mostly very friendly and helpful.  Unlike the French, who seem to  like pretending they don’t speak English in France even if they do, I have always found Germans much more inclined to be helpful.  There was no problem ordering our lunch at Lorely.

Bill's Bike collected a notice

As we returned to the Loreley Car Park Bill’s bike, looking immaculate as usual, had acquired a printed sign saying “Please do not clean this bike, it’s supposed tolook like this”.  As the picture shows, he saw the funny side of it.

Back on the road we headed down to the riverside and downriver for another ferry to get us back on to the left bank of the Rhine at Boppard, another pretty riversaide town, then North along the riverside into Koblenz.

Maureen and friend at Loreley

We were heading for Deutsches Eck (German Corner) which is where the Mosel, itself a pretty big river, flows into the mighty Rhine. Getting there means riding through the City of Koblenz, so I was a bit nervous about how the group, all ten bikes and trikes on the tour, would stay together. Four bikes had both satnav and CB,  I had loaded the route onto their satnavs and they were strategically spaced out along the riding order, so at least we stood a chance. The route through Koblenz to Deutsches Eck also turned to be well signposted, which helped.

Boarding our second Ferry to Boppard

In the event we did split into two groups by traffic lights and despite my best efforts we only regrouped after arriving at our destination.  Fortunately CB helped me to direct the strays into the designated bike park, which is not well signposted but once you spot it, does the job nicely.  Fortunately it was empty and (just) big enough to take all of us, so we enjoyed a prime parking spot.

And it was still warm enough to warrant an Ice Cream – and there was an Ice Cream Booth right beside where we parked.

Deutsches Eck is said to hold great significance for Germans, as longstanding symbol of a united Germany.  In 1897, nine years after his death, a giant equestrian statue of Kaiser Wilhelm I was built there, commemorating his achievements in uniting what was then a much larger Germany, incorporating  parts of  France, Russia, Poland, Denmark, Belgium and Lithuania.  During the post-WW2 era, when Germany was divided, it became a symbol of  Germany’s wish for re-unification, albeit on a less expansive scale than Wilhelm originally wanted to hang on to.  There are three chunks of the Berlin Wall standing there these days as well as the statue, as a memorial to its dismantlement.  The equestrian stature of Wilhelm is truly impressive, indeed it’s huge.  The US army hit it with an artillery shell towards the end of War and more or less demolished it, but it has since been fixed up nicely.  Deutsches Eck is well worth a visit.

Group picture at Loreley

At some poiunt the sign which had been on Bill’s bike at Lorely mysteriously appeared on my bike’s windscreen at Deutsches Eck.  Bill must have somehow got the idea that I had had something to do with it.

Ideally we would have incorporated Rudsesheim in our circuit but that would have added just a bit too many miles. By the time we got to Deutsches Eck it was late afternoon and showers were threatening.  We stayed for an hour or so and sheltered from one shower.  We then had an easy ride back along the right bank of the Mosel to Tries before crossing to return to Klotten and there were only a few spots of rain en route.

It's not all steep hills and vineyards

It had been a very successful and enjoyable day exploring a taste of what the  Mosel and Rhine valleys have to offer on our GoldWings and as we gathered for dinner together back at the Hotel, showered and refreshed with our bikes tucked away securely in the Garage,  there was a general air of satisfaction and contentment.  We had seen some attractice sights, ridden some nice twisty roads and enjoyed some German food, drink and even learned a bit of German history.  Not sure about the German history lesson, but the rest of it was certainly what we had come to Germany for.

The photos which accompany this Article include those taken by Nigel and Joanna Mackintosh as well as Bill Squires and my own.

Nice scenery, wonderful motorcycling

Three of us who live in the Preston Area met at my home to make the 130 miles afternoon journey to our Ferryport at Hull.  Since we were all fairly experienced riders, we simply rode as mates for the first half hour, making progress through the relatively slow-moving Saturday traffic on the A59 without difficulty – although Bill, who was bringing up the rear, did complain afterwards that he was having to leg it somewhat to keep up.

Up front I was sticking to the speed limit apart from brief spurts to complete an overtake with dispatch, so I didn’t think I would be hurrying him and there were no complaints from Maureen, riding pillion to John on the second bike, so we can’t have been going it too enthusiastically.  But it’s amazing how much of a flying start the lead bike of a group gets because he has first go at all the overtakes and of course the following bikes will often get held up until a safe overtaking opportunity arises.  There are a lot of double white line sections along the A59, so these effectively prevent overtaking at all for a while.

And of course Bill’s  wife had packed him four pairs of trousers and nine shirts amongst other things, while I was carrying quite a few less.  Lacking a trunk rack and also Bill’s snappy dress sense, I had settled for one pairs of trousers and one pair of shorts combined with just enough pairs of underpants for there to be any serious risk of having to use the Travel Wash stuff my wife had put out for me.

Squires Cafe in the sunshine

At Skipton we met up with Steve and Rose on their immaculate 2000 GL1500 EML trike; a magnificent machine to which Steve had recently added a pair of black leather Harley-style panniers, mounted on top of the mudguards, so with a trikes huge boot, the trunk and trunk rack bag and these two great big leather containers, they had room for almost as much stuff as Bill was taking.  Sitting between these two extra bags, Rose looked like she was enthroned.   Steve announced himself as a novice GoldWing rider so we rode to Squires Cafe at a measured pace and, thankfully,  in lovely sunshine.  It was a scenic and extremely pleasant way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

En route to Squires Cafe, as I was listening to Bill on the CB someone else suddenly joined in.  Since John on the other bike doesn’t have a CB and Bill was riding solo, it took me a while to work out what was going on.  I had recently upgraded my satnav to a Garmin 2820 which features a Bluetooth link to my mobile phone.  The mystery voice turned out to be Nigel Mackintosh ringing up to tell me that they had arrived at Squires.

The reception was extremely good and it was just like talking to Nigel over the intercom.  Bill didn’t know what was happening of course so he carried on talking on the CB and then my Talex Speed Camera device chipped in with a warning,  so it only needed my own satnav to chirp up and I would have had the lot.

So while I can report that the combination of a Garmin 2820 and a Kennedy Technologies interface (courtesy of Ian Cardwell) works a treat with a mobile phone, whether it’s a good idea to be taking calls on a mobile phone while riding is of course a moot point and as a general rule I don’t plan to have my mobile phone switched on while riding.  But having the facility when you are leading a group ride on a foreign motorway does adds a useful safety feature; it means you can be contacted by your Sweeper while out of CB range, for example if he’s had to stop with a broken down bike on a motorway,  so I thought it was at least worth a try.  Nigel and I did eventually manage to hold a brief conversation in spite of my confusion over the combination of voices I was hearing, so this first-time test of the system proved that it works.

On Ilkley Moor (but not of course, ‘Ba T‘At) we therefore made steady progress towards Squires Cafe to join Nigel and Dave.  For those like me who’ve never been there before, Squires Cafe is a very popular biker’s meeting place North East of Leeds on the B122.  It has a large car park and a grassed area on which some bikers pitch their tents, so presumably they allow camping too.  I was told they get upwards of 3,000 bikes there on a busy Sunday, so the place is a virtual bikers city, with traders as well as catering on site. Fortunately it wasn’t that busy on the Saturday we rolled up and once I found the top car park there was no difficulty finding somewhere to park my Wing.

Nigel had told me on the phone that a contingent from Yorkshire Wings (whom he described as my Fan Club) were already there but although as I rode into the busy car park I did see a few GoldWings, I didn’t see anyone I recognised to wave to other than Nigel and Dave, who were waving to me, which of course made it easy to spot them.

I enjoyed  a very tasty Ice Cream and chatting to some Wingers I hadn’t met before, both of whom were looking forward to this year’s Blackpool Light Parade.  I was told Tony Walton was there but didn’t spot him,  so I hope I didn’t cause offence by failing to seek him out.  It was only a fairly quick rendezvous halt and we had a Ferry to catch, so we were soon on our way.

Bikes as far as the eye could see along the Car Deck

Now an expanded group of four bikes and two trikes, we set off again, still in sunshine, for Hull.  We arrived  to find the Check In booths already open and only a small queue – and a designated Check In just for bikes.  So I went virtually straight through and was then waived past the queuing cars and straight on board.

It then became apparent why P&O were making these special arrangements; it was end of the Isle of Man TT Week and the ship was heaving with bikes, far more than the ship usually carries.  They had therefore organised lots of extra parking space for bikes complete with deck cables to which the bikes could be secured, and my bike was nicely trussed up in no time.

Dave’s trike managed to block the Check In queue for a time while they sorted out some confusion over his booking, but this served to allow me time to get off my bike and be available to help the rest of the group park up.  One more bike had joined the group by getting on to the Ferry slightly ahead of the rest of us, so those of us who were using the Hull-Rotterdam Ferry had successfully got together in no time at all.

The system for securing bikes to the deck on board the Pride of Hull and Pride of Rotterdam, which are sister ships, is on the face of it a bit crude and insecure.  They stretch steel cables either fore and aft or athwartships (sideways) along the deck and provide in one case a single tie-down intended to go over the bike’s seat and in the other just short lengths of rope.  Bikers are expected to secure their bikes themselves.  Now I spent a few years in the Boy Scouts and then the Navy, so I reckon I can tie a knot or two when necessary, but even so it is difficult to get tension into these rope tie-downs without resorting to Trucker’s Hitches (a sort of pulley system using turns of rope) which unfortunately is one knot I’ve never quite mastered, and anyway you still have the problem of attaching the ropes to the steel deck cable at an angle, which is necessary to secure the bike when it is parked between a pair of lengthwise cables, as we were on the way out.  Ideally of course you need at least three pulls in opposing directions in order to prevent the bike from moving and it can be difficult to contrive this without relying on an angled attachment to the deck cables.

This bike didn't move during the voyage!

The P&O Deck Crew are all for cramming the bikes as closely together as possible, so this complicates.the process of getting a fair lead (as the Navy would term it) for the tie downs.  Had it not been for my previous experience of using these ships, and my confidence that even in a full gale they are so big and so well stabilised that the bikes are never going to move anyway, I might have been more concerned.  But I wasn’t, so I put the bike into reverse before switching off and dropped it on to its side stand, put three rope lashings on and left it at that.

Unfortunately the German rider next to me was not so laid back about tying his bike down, nor about my bigger and heavier bike being next to his without being tied down comprehensively, like Gulliver by the Liliputians.  He was all for tying my bike down with lots more ropes, so it couldn’t slide toward his even if the ship capsized.

As many of us will know from experiences with towels on sunbeds around hotel swimming pools, an assertive German can be a force to be reckoned with but fortunately he was reasonably tactful in his pushiness and he did seem to settle for going with the flow eventually.  What he didn’t know and I didn’t tell him, was that I had a Cunning Plan and a Secret Weapon, in the form of a clever knot called a Rolling Hitch, which is capable, when correctly tied against the lay of the ropes, of holding an angled pull on to a steel wire rope such as P&O were using for their deck cables.  My literary skills don’t extend to describing how to tie a Rolling Hitch but it is a very useful knot to have up your sleeve.  All you need to do is collar a Boy Scout, preferably a Sea Scout, buy him an Ice Cream and get him to show you.  Being a middle aged man in modern Britain, it would of course be sensible to ensure you have a companion with you, so your motives for buying Ice Cream for a Boy Scout while carrying a piece of rope in your hand cannot be misinterpreted. Alternatively follow this link for an animated demonstration. Once the knot is tied, the red rope in the illustration will not slip along the green one; it’s very effective.

So there we were in no time, gathered in the Bar for a drink, then a splendid Dinner and finally an after-dinner stroll on the upper deck in warm air to wave goodbye to the receding British coastline and the setting sun.  It was a very enjoyable way to start a holiday.  P&O had even arranged to dock the ship in Rotterdam at 9 am rather than 8 o’clock as I was expecting, which pleased Maureen no end.

Maureen, John’s partner and on her first ever biking trip,  had shown her hand as having the Tour Group’s most pressing need for coffee stop by expecting to stop for coffee 30 minutes after we left home, to which she now, in that winning way which Ladies seem to be able to deploy as necessary, added a clear signal that early or timely getaways were not her preferred style.  I don’t think she believed me when I told her the P&O would wake her up at 6am anyway, even if the Ferry wasn’t going to dock until three hours later, but of course they did. One thing you definitely don’t need on a P&O Ferry is an alarm clock; there is no danger of over-sleeping.

A civilised way to cross the Channel

Come 9 o’clock the following morning we were all breakfasted, packed, dressed and ready as they opened the Car Deck doors to let us get to our bikes.  Those who hadn’t made too much of a meal of tying their bike down were ready to go in no time and P&O kindly let bikes get off the ship before all except the necessary few cars which were blocking the way.  Quite right and proper too.

Unfortunately it was raining steadily, as we could see clearly through the ship’s windows as we approached the jetty, which I suppose did have the benefit of forcing all of us to don our wet weather gear from the outset.  There is a handy area just past Dutch Passport Control to pull in and gather the group, as I had briefed everyone to do, so in no time we were all buttoned up in waterproofs and rolling.

As we headed for the motorway there were bikers parked under every bridge stopping to put on their wet gear and quite why they had set off not wearing it was difficult to imagine.  From the forecast I was expecting to have to ride through a relatively short band of heavy rain or showers somewhere during the first 100 miles or so of our journey – and of course hoping that it wouldn’t materialise.  But materialise it did, big time.  And it was a lot wider than fifty miles too.

We soon found ourselves riding in very heavy rain and also in motorway traffic which was heavier than expected on a Sunday morning. Why the Dutch couldn’t all stop in bed or go the church on a rainy Sunday morning goodness knows but they clearly didn’t.  It really wasn’t much fun riding through that heavy rain and heavy traffic.

We had a long day’s ride in front of us and a group of mixed experience and enough rain and spray to reduce visibility and areas of surface water which were enough to present a risk of getting distinctly slippery.  Oh, and there were road works, lots of narrow lanes and temporary road surfaces and deviations.  But there were only seven bikes at this stage (others were crossing via the Tunnel and meeting us later) and four had CB radio.  With two trikes immediately behind me and a solo bike with CB in the middle as well as at the back, we could keep together fairly well and I was able to observe or keep in touch by radio with how everyone was coping.

By no stretch of the imagination was this an enjoyable ride; it was uncomfortable and at times worrying, but we were able to keep together without real difficulty and press on in relative safety. I did of course keep a close eye on the trikes and bikes behind me, especially the first one which was ridden by Steve, the self-declared novice.  Inevitably in such conditions Steve was not at ease, indeed neither was I.  It was of course necessary to moderate our speed for safety reasons but we nevertheless made reasonable progress.

I had planned our first refreshment stop in Helmond, which has an attractive canal-side area with lots of Cafes in its centre and routing through it avoids Eindhoven’s complex motorway bypass.  Unfortunately I hadn’t anticipated that when we arrived there at about 1130am, still in heavy rain, the place was deserted and all the cafes were still shut.  Maybe, unlike the citizens of Rotterdam, the Helmonders had all gone to Church.  The one Cafe which did have open doors refused to allow us in, even to let the ladies use their loo for security reasons, because they were counting the previous evening’s takings. If you don’t go to Church in Helmond on a Sunday morning, you stay indoors to count your cash.

Chance came to the rescue because eventually we did find one Cafe which was open before the magic hour of noon, when the rest would come to life.  There had been a cycling event (presumably a very damp one) and one Cafe had opened at 8am to serve their needs. A procession of dripping motorcyclists entered gratefully and left a trail directly to the toilets and thence back towards the tables, where disrobing, often accompanied by mutterings and groaning, took place to the sound of ripping velcro and a variety of squelching noises. Poor Dave T seemed to be worst affected, or at least he moaned loudest and longest, but the one I felt most sympathy for was poor Nigel, whose brand new bargain gloves had got completely soaked and satined his hands a deep black colour.  Everyone else had their own concerns about water ingress somewhere or another so he got little sympathy, although there were one or two consoling suggestions about being well equipped to form yet another new GoldWing club called the Black Hand Gang.

Despite the best the Cafe’s washing facilities and Bill’s Swarfega (he’s not all trousers when it comes to packing up wisely) Nigel’s hands were hanging on to their new colour scheme very convincingly.  When you get really soaked like this it takes more than a little strength of character to get back into your wet gear and back on the bike to resume a long journey when it’s still raining.  The worst bit, in my experience of such tragedies, is getting your underpants soaking wet.  As Dave pointed out, presumably from experience, at least if you leak internally it feels warm for a while.

But we did it – or rather they did it, because I and a fortunate few others had actually stayed fairly dry inside.  I felt it appropriate to keep a bit quite about my own state of relative comfort but Neil, wearing his boil-in-the-bag oversuit had also stayed dry as a bone and was keen to keep telling Dave about this, which for some reason Dave didn’t seem to want to hear.  Humour among bikers can be terribly cruel and in these circumstances I could have forgiven Dave for taking one of the cafe’s forks to Neil’s oversuit, but he didn’t and took it in good spirit.

Back on the motorway towards Aachen we stopped for fuel and this also gave us an opportunity to scratch our heads about a warning light which had appeared on Dave’s trike.  Someone had brought along his GL1800 Owner’s Handbook which advised that the light meant there was a fault in the fuel injection system and the bike should be taken to a Honda Dealer as quickly as possibe.  Not terribly practical on a Sunday in the far corner of Holland, but the trike seemed to be running normally so we carried on. It wasn’t Dave’s day – although at least the rain was easing up and it even seemed to stop for a while as we were fueling.

Nice roads and sunshine - much better than the motorway rain

Having got past Aachen we left the motorway behind – and thankfully also the rain.  As we arrived at  Monschau the sun was shining and the hedge around the motorcycle parking area came in very handy as a temporary drying facility.  Things were definitely perking up.

Monschau was also where we hoped to rendezvous with more of our group and indeed an extra bike and trike were there as we arrived, having crossed the Channel via the Tunnel and stayed overnight in Brugge.

Morale lifted even more when a successful telephone call to the ever-helpful Barry Walton of Appleyards revealled that Dave’s warning llight was probably an oxygen sensor fault indication, which it might be possible to reset (and he explained how) and even if it didn’t reset there would be no damage done by continuing the journey; the trike would merely use even more fuel than usual.  On the strength of this news (and a huge portion of chips bought from the nearby eatery)  Dave started smiling.  Fed, watered and at least partially dried out, a combination of nine trikes and bikes set off again for Klotten.

We were now in relative heaven; dry roads, sunshine and pleasant scenery.  This was what we had come to Europe to enjoy.   For me as Leader however, another problem had loomed.  I knew from previous experience of Germany that when the roads signs have some of the town names crossed out with reflective tape, there is a road closure ahead.  They don’t say there’s a road closure, the only clue is that while the closer towns listed as being on the road you are using on the big yellow signs as not crossed out, the ones further away (in this case Trier and Kblenz) are crossed out.

If you ignore this warning and keep going, you will eventually come to a barrier across the road and you will be forced to turn off.  They don’t (or don’t always) signpost a diversion route as in UK, you are left to find your own way around the closure.  The only clue as to where the closure is comes from which town names are crossed out.  The closure is before the first crossed-out town.

A Garage big enough for all our bikes and many more

We were heading South East (along the B258, a lovely biking road) so I had to make a loop either left or right and I chose, pretty much arbitrarily, to go right.  Fortune continued to smile on us and we worked our way South a bit earlier than planned (actually riding South West for a while before turning East) and we found ourselves riding roads which were just as scenic and enjoyable as the primary route would have been.  Satnav helps enormously in situations like this and I was able to zoom out to get a the general picture of the options to loop around, choose a road to divert on to, then cancel the satnav’s existing route in favour of a recalculated route to the Hotel.

My own basic error as leader of failing to ask the bikes who had joined us at Monschau about their fuel state led to an unplanned halt when one of them suddenly dived into a garage to get some, but thanks to Bill’s alert on the CB radio I knew immediately what was happening and it was merely a question of pulling over for a few minutes until we could all get going again.  I decided to keep the group together all the time rather than use drop-offs and this worked out well.  We managed to make reasonable progress without anyone getting outside their confidence zone, including through a few twisties when the trikes surprised me with their ability to keep up.  I kept my own speed at no more than 50 mph during this cross country phase, rising to 60mph only when we were on a conspicuously open and easy section.

A welcoming glass of Fizz

Because we had to divert around the road closure we rode a bit further but probably only 15 miles or so, and we got to the Hotel by 6pm, which was earlier than I expected to in the first place.  Within a few minutes the Hotelier’s daughter had handed out welcoming glasses of sparkling wine and, after a very enjoyable last section of the route, we were mostly in a position to have forgotten about the rainy morning.  Dave still had damp underwear and Nigel still had black hands, but both were wearing smiles.

Raining again as evening fell - but we didn't care

The final member of the tour  group arrived about twenty minutes after us, having ridden independently from Brugge, so we had finally all got together.

We had arrived and stood around in warm sunshine sipping the welcoming glasses of fizz which the Hotel laid on.  Fairly quickly all the bikes (and trikes) were garaged, we had showered and unpacked, gathered for another drink and then enjoyed our first taste of Klaus’s excellent cooking.  We were starting to enjoy our holiday and even when the rain we had ridden through caught us up and started coming down heavily as we went to bed, it didn’t matter at all.  We were on holiday.

However, ensuring you have adequate insurance cover for a trip to Europe is very important.  You have to be a bit of an anorak to enjoy reading about insurance, so I won’t pretend this will be the most interesting or enjoyable Article on the Blog, but there are somethings you should probably know.  So here are a few tips to help you check that your cover is adequate.

I approached two of the major suppliers of insurance to the UK GoldWing market for up to date information and their helpful responses forms the basis of this Article.  Thanks therefore to Gary of Aire Valley and Andy of Carol Nash’s PR Agency for answering my questions so patiently.  Inevitably there were questions I didn’t think of asking at the time and I may have misunderstood, so this Article will be edited as necessary to incorporate any corrections.  Likewise if any if  other broker or insurer has something to contribute they will be most welcome to contact me and I will take account of anything they would like to contribute.

Hopefully therefore what’s in this Article is reasonably authoritative and up to date but it’s always necessary to bear in mind that individual insurance policies can vary significantly.  The only way to be sure what your policy covers (and just as importantly what it does not cover) is to check your policy documents carefully and check with your own broker or insurance company.  This Article will, if nothing else, help you to ask the right questions.

The key questions for adequate European touring cover are:

1. Will your normal motorcycle riding insurance be valid for Europe and will it still provide comprehensive cover?
2. Are you covered to ride other bikes if necessary, for example if another rider is injured?
3. Does your breakdown cover work for Europe and does it cover accidental damage as well as mechanical breakdown?
4. Are you covered if you get injured or ill and so cannot ride your (ride-able) bike home?
5. Are you covered for medical costs in case of illness or injury to you and/or your pillion passenger are there any restrictions or exclusions because of the type of riding you will be doing?
6. What insurance documents and telephone numbers do you need to have with you in Europe?

Standard motorcycle insurance for GoldWings

When you shop around for insurance for a GoldWing you need to make sure your comparing apples with apples and pears with pears.  There are differences you need to take into account; it is never as  simple as choosing the cheapest.

So let’s start with a bit of background information about the scope of insurance cover.  It’s imortant to understand that all policies cover what they say they will cover, nothing more and hopefully nothing less.  There is therefore no such thing as truly comprehensive insurance, they all have exclusions and knowing what these exclusions can turn out to be very important.

To get adequate overall cover for a trip to Europe most Wingers will have a combination of three policies.  Firstly there’s normal, so-called comprehensive (or sometimes just third party) motorcycle insurance cover for the operation of the bike on the road – basically in case it collides with anything and gets damaged and/or damages something else.  Secondly breakdown cover, to get the bike to a repairer or back to UK if it cannot be ridden, after either a mechanical breakdown or an accident.  And thirdly travel insurance, which provides (most importantly) medical expenses cover and usually lots of other travel-related stuff too, but it’s medical cover which really matters, whic is why policies usually provide cover for several millions of poundsworth.

Even GoldWings break down!

If only it were as simple as ticking three standard boxes, but of course it isn’t.  Although these three broad categories of cover are commonly sold a separate policies under these labels, there is considerable overlap and there are also important gaps in cover which can arise.  For example some normal motorcyle policies include perfectly adequate breakdown cover for a European bike tour, some breakdown cover policies don’t cover recovery of a bike to UK if it’s still rideable, even though you can’t ride it home because you’ve bust your ankle.

Lots of GoldWing owners insure their bikes through Aire Valley, which has offered a run a special scheme for GoldWings for many years.  They offer a specially developed “Goldspan” policy for GoldWings; it’s a standard policy which is underwritten at Lloyds, so only one broker and one underwriter is involved, which is helpful if claims arise.  The insurer wouldn’t want to get known among Wingers for being mean about claims, because Wingers talk to each other and might all vote with their feet.  So there is a reasonable expectation of fair dealings and I’ve never heard anyone suggest that a claim under a Goldspan policy has been hard work.

By the way Aire Valley’s Goldspan Policy used to be a GWOCGB-only scheme but that restriction was lifted some years ago, so it’s been available to all Wingers for some time.  GWOCGB have no role in managing or arbitrating the policy (thankfully) so it’s no longer really their scheme in any practical way at all, even though it is still badged as such on Aire Valley’s website and documentation.  So don’t let being sensible enough not to join GWOCGB put you off this excellent GoldWing policy.

This policy covers a GoldWing’s accessories in the event of accidental damage as well as the bike as originally manufactured, which is of course important to many Wingers, who spend a lot on their accessories. It also covers towing a trailer behind a Wing, which most motorcycle policies won’t.  As with all motor insurance you do have to declare any modifications to the bike which affect its performance or handling, so any special tuning or suspension modifications or enhancements.  Otherwise however the Goldspan policy has the advantage of being just about as “comprehensive” as a Winger could hope for – but it doesn’t include breakdown cover, which costs about £60 per year extra.  (This is done to make it cheaper for the majority of Wingers, who don’t leave UK.)

Carol Nash is one of the very biggest motorcycle insurance brokers and lots of Wingers use them, indeed I did myself until their maximum limit on the value of a bike proved too low for the new GL1800 I had bought, so I switched to Aire Valley.  I had been very happy with Carol Nash and heard good reports about how helpful they had been with an alternator failure on a GL1500 in the South of France.  They also include European (and UK) breakdown cover “free” with all their motorcycle policies, which Aire Valley don’t.  It isn’t free of course, nothing ever is, but it’s a very cheap way of getting adequate breakdown cover for a European tour because it is bundled with all their motorcycle policies.  But Carol Nash arranges insurance for bikes using a substantial number of insurance companies, so there isn’t one standard policy and one insurer, but maybe Carol Nash’s huge share of the motorcycle insurance market gives them enough clout to ensure fairness in settling claims anyway.  But because there are a number of different policies, the scope of the cover will vary.  For example the duration of European cover which is included can vary from as little as 30 to as many as 365 days per year.

It’s probably broadly true that Wingers who own expensive trikes and/or tow trailers, fit lots shiny bits and never leave UK are likely to do better with Aire Valley while those who don’t tow a trailer and tour extensively in Europe are more likely to be suited with Carol Nash.  But even if that has been true in the past things may be about to change.

Carol Nash is launching a GoldWing Club scheme

This is because Carol Nash is planning to launch a Club scheme which will suit Wingers within the next few months and there is also something of a question mark hanging over the Goldspan scheme.

Carol Nash’s new scheme is said to allow them to cater for GoldWings much better than they were able to in the past and, for example they have done something about the upper valuation limit.  It’s not clear yet how it will be structured and especially how it will link with clubs.   I have suggested avoiding making it an exclusive club scheme (as Goldspan was originally) in the interests of freedom of choice – and no lest in the case of GoldWings because there isn”t one dominant club any more.  They have expressed interest in launching their scheme for GoldWings via our new the Federation website, which also happens to be approaching readiness for launch.

End of the Goldspan Scheme looming?

I mentioned in another Article recently that the big claim following the accident at GWOCGB’s Treffen last year is reported to have brought the future of the Goldspan policy into question, so there may be some radical developments on the GoldWing insurance scene this coming Summer.

The Goldspan Policy is specially underwritten for GoldWings at Lloyds rather than by an insurance company.  Lloyds takes on insurance risks on a more individual basis that insurance companies, hence their willingness to entertain a club-type scheme like Goldspan.  They take the trouble assess insurance risks indvidually rather than (in this context) sticking to the bigger overall picture of the motorcycle market.   This doesn’t make Lloyds any less secure (in terms of being able to afford to pay out claims) but it does mean that if, because of the exceptionally expensive accident last year, the idea of GoldWings being a relatively safe insurance bet has started to look much less attractive, they might decide to close it down.  Apparently it’s a serious possibility, and that from the horse’s mouth. At any event the Goldspan Policy is currently still alive and working normally, renwals and new policies are being issued and of course there is no risk that exisiting policies will not be honoured in all respects,  Aire Valley have done a cracking job supporting Wingers with the Goldspan Policy over many years so no doubt we all hope it will have a secure future.

In the meantime lots of us are covered by Aire Valley and Carol Nash, so let’s stop worrying about the future for now and concentrate on whether our insurance cover for this year’s European trip is OK.

1  Is your Bike Insurance is valid for European riding?

The minimm level of cover which insurers have to provide by law as part of every UK motorcycle policy these days includes riding anywhere in the EU but this compulsory European cover is pretty basic and most Wingers would consider it inadequate.

This legal minimum, which may be all you will get unless you ask for something better, won’t necessarily provide the same level of cover as your policy would provide for an accident in UK.  In other words a “comprehensive” policy is potentially even less comprehensive in reality that it would be at home.

When you see references to a specific duration of free cover for European travel (90 days per year is common) it refers to a limitation of the full cover of the policy, as it would apply in UK and this full cover is often conditional on notifying the insurer of the foriegn trip before you set off.  Unless you establish that you will have full cover abroad, the best you can hope for is the legal minimum.

Not a good way to spend your holiday - make sure you have breakdown cover!

The legal requirement is to provide just the minimum cover required by the law of the Country you’re riding in.  This varies from Country to Country within Europe but it will often be the equivalent of UK’s basic “road traffic act” cover, which is third party liability only, not even fire and theft.  And in some Countries maybe not even cover for third party property damages.  So if you run someone over and injure them, your insurance company has to pay the costs and compensation for their injuries, but they will not necessarily pay for the third party’s vehicle and other property damage – which the injured parties might therefore come after you personally to pay for.

So you cannot assume that the comprehensive policy you have in UK will apply in full abroad.  It may be extendable to Europe and this might not cost you any extra, but your insurer may well require that you notify them of the dates and Countries of your trip in advance, otherwise you sacrifice your full cover in favour of the legal minimum.

So it’s potentially very important that you telephone your insurer before you go, tell them when and where you are going and ask them to confirm that your normal comprehensive cover will apply.  You should also ask if there are any other special requirements or restrictions which will apply while you’re abroad.  If you don’t know the telephone numbers you would  need to ring from abroad to tell them about a problem, then find out what they are.

With the Aire Valley Goldspan Policy you are required to tell them in advance, so don’t forget to do it and you are allowed up to 90 days cover in Europe each year without extra charge.

Carol Nash told me they don’t require advance notification of a European trip, but their inclusive European cover varies from 30 to 365 days per year, so I can’t make sense of that.  I would tell thm anyway; it’s only a phone call and they let you use 0800 numbers, so why not?  (I alays give my credit card company a ring too every time I go abroad; the last thing you want is to have it blocked because of an “unusual pattern of spending” when you’re depending on it to pay for your petrol.)

Finally, on this subject of bike insurance, it’s important to be aware that not all European Countries will be covered, although you should have covers for Western Europe and some of Eastrn Europe too.  But Carol Nash’s excludes Russia and, perhaps unsurprisingly, Iraq.  I didn’t ask whether Aire Valley covers Russia – or Iraq.

If anyone is adventurous enough to be going anywhere into East Europe, or of course anywhwere outside Continental Europe, like Iraq, it would be sensible to ask.

2  Cover to ride other people’s bikes?

There are many situations which could arise when you’re abroad with other bikers when it would be very handy to be able to ride someone else’s bike, and not just for purposes of riding a different bike for a change.  Swapping bikes just for a change is probably best avoided when you’re abroad anyway, it’s fraught with potential complications if something goes wrong.  I was thinking of contingency situations in which riding someone else’s bike might become necessary for safety or damage-limitation reasons.

For example someone in your group drops his bike and twist his ankle or crushes his foot.  His bike is still rideable but he can’t ride it safely.  (Remember my story about Randy Rodriguez riding 200 miles home with a broken right arm?  That was all on one US highway, no ferries, no roundabouts.  You can’t do much riding wearing a plaster cast.)

Supposing the incident occurs some distance from your base or your next overnight halt.  And you don’t want to just abandon his bike to its fate at the roadside.  It would be very handy if somone else could ride it back to base or at least to a place of safety, even if this meant having to bring a rider back as pillion to pick it up.  And in these circumstances allowing another to ride the rdierless bike could be very much in the interests of the insurers; they don’t want the abondoned bike stolen any more than the owner does.

Unfortunately however insurance cover to take the riderless bike to a place of safety is not automatically available, even if the volunteer rider is acting in a Good Samaritan basis.  It’s not difficult to understand why insurers cannot include blanket let-outs like that in their policies; they would be open to abuse.

If a problem like this arises during working hours, it will be possible (and very worthwhile) ringing the injured rider’s insurers because this might well result in an offer to add the volunteer rider to the bike’s policy as a named rider.  But unless that’s done and agreed, there will probably be no insurance cover at all on the injured rider’s policy.  This is another good reason for having your insurer’s phone number with you when you’re abroad.

If the insurer agrees to add the volunteer rider to the bike’s policy this is the preferred solution because insurance will be on the same basis as when the owner is riding the bike himself.

The only other possibility of cover will be if the volunteer rider is insured to ride other people’s bikes on his own policy, in which case it won’t ever be comprehensive cover, just third party.  The volunteer rider should establish clearly that he has the injured rider’s permission to ride the bike and that the injured rider understands that it will be third party cover only, so any damage to his bike will not be covered.  The volunteer rider should maybe get the injured rider to accept that risk explicitly; he is after all doing a favour by moving his bike and if he’s ulucky and subsequently damages the bike h won’t want o end up forking out for it. A telephone call to the injured rider’s insurer to arrange temporary cover is much better if it can be done.

So are you covered on your particular policy to ride other people’s bikes?

Once upon a time all motor and bike policies provided third party cover for driving and riding other people’s vehicles automatically but those days are long gone.  The facility was open to abuse, it was widely abused so perfectly understandably insurance companies withdrew it.  The best you can hope for these days is third party cover for the same type of vehicle you are insuring (ie a bike on a bike policy, car on a car policy) and nothing else and then only if your Certificate of Insurance actually says so.  So check.

There is however an interesting anomaly with Aire Valley’s Goldspan Policy which I discovered when I rang to check my own cover.  Some riders are covered to ride other bikes, some aren’t.

This oddity arose because of a software glitch which occured a while ago which started giving people this extra cover unintentionally, because of some back-room error in programming.  It turned out to be too complicated and uneconomic to remove the extra cover, so it’s been left in.

So those of you who renewed with Aire Valley within the last two or three months probably do have third party cover for riding other people’s bikes, otherwise not, or at least not until your next renewal.  With effect from any future renewals, this extra cover will included on every Winger’s Goldspan policy but it’s not being included retrospectively.  You can check by looking for “MB0″ as an endorsement on your Schedule of Insurance.  If you have the endorsement you have got third party cover to ride other bikes, otherwise you don’t.  To get a definitive answer about your personal scope of cover, ring your insurer and ask; don’t assume you have cover to ride other bikes unless you have checked very carefully.  For Goldspan policy holders it’s the Schedule of your insurance you need to check; the endorsement does not appear on the Certificate of Insurance but it is shown on the Schedule if it applies.  Nowt so queer as insurance anomalies, as they probably say in parts of Keighley.

And Carol Nash’s policies are said not to cover other bikes while abroad even if they cover riding them in UK, so one way and another riding someone else’s bike while abroad is a very bad idea unless you have both the rider’s and hs insurer’s permission before you do it.

Riding the Nurburgring?

I wrote about my own experience of riding the Nurburging last year in a previous Article.  Was I covered if I had had an accident?

Technically, according to the Germans, the Nurburgring, or at least the part that’s open to the public, is a toll road and not a racing circuit.  Any road-legal vehicle can use it simply by buying a ticket. There is no system of scrutiny, no racing is allowed or acilitated and there’s no system for timing of circuits unless you use your own stopwatch. And they take various steps to discourage people from getting carried away, like banning the use of video cameras.  It’s a fun opportunity to ride a road which has 147 bends in 13 miles; a really interesting and potentially exhilarating biking challenge.

So it’s at least arguable that your European cover should apply to the Nurburgring in exacly the same way as it would on a French Toll Motorway.

But if you ask your insurer in advance they will almost certainly tell you that it is not covered because they regard it as a race circuit (whether the Germans do or not) and so your insurance is invalid if you ride The Ring, just as it would be if you did a track day in UK.  At least you are pretty unlikely to get stopped and booked by the German Police for riding uninsured on the Nurburgring, s there is that consolation.

So if you’re going to ride the Ring while you’re in Germany it should be on the basis that you will at the very least have a struggle to get an insurance claim settled if you try to make one.  And it might be best not to tell your insurer about this part of your holiday plans in advance; at least that way you won’t have been told in advance that they will repudiate any claim, so you will at least be able to argue the toss on that basis!

The same uncertainty will apply to your travel insurance for medical expenses too on the Nurbugring of course, so if you are admitted to a German hospital after an accident on the Nurburgring, expect to have to hand over your credit card – and maybe to face having to extend your morgage by quite a few years t pay the credit card bill off too.

Does your breakdown cover work for Europe and does it cover accidental damage as well as mechanical breakdown? Are you also covered if you get injured or ill and so cannot ride your (rideable) bike home?

This is another variable provision of insurance.  All Carol Nash’s standard bike policies cover breakdown and accident recovery in Europe.  Likewise if you pay Aire Valley the extra  £60 for their European cover it provides for both situations, which is what you need.

But you may already have European breakdown cover for the bike anyway, as I do on my family’s breakdown cover with Britannia Rescue for the car, so I don’t need to spend the extra £60, my standard Goldspan Policy plus the Britannia cover does the trick.

And it covers recovery of the bike to UK if I cannot ride it because I get ill as well as injured, even if the bike is undamaged and wasn’t involved.

The point to be made, yet again, is that you can’t take the cover for granted, you need to check – and before you go, not by the roadside when you are picking up the pieces.

Are you covered for medical costs in case of illness or injury to you and/or pillion passengerand are there any restrictions or exclusions because of the type of riding you will be doing?

This is the biggie. If you have to pay to get your bike recovered back to UK it would hurt but you could probably pay for it – maybe £1,000 or thereabouts.  But what about a bill for tens of thousands of pounds in ambulance charges and hospitall fees, what then?

While overlap between bike and breakdown insurance may provide what you need in way of both to tour in Europe, neither type of policy will ever provide cover for medical expenses.  Of course if you get injured in an accident which is someon else’s fault you will probably, eventually, be able to recover your medical expenses from the guilty party, but you will still probably have to fork out in the short term.  And the problem is that hospital bills can, admittedly in rare and fairly extreme circumstances,  rack up huge bills.

The rider who was killed in an accident in Germany a few years ago was in intensive care for three weeks before he died and fortunately he was insured and the insurer took care of the hospital bills directly and would presumably have organised and paid for getting himback to UK  if he had survived.  Goodness knows what would have happened if he hadn’t been insured.

Within the EU we UK taxpayers (and even non-taxpayers who are UK Residents) are entitled to the same free health provision across the whole of the EU on the same basis as ciizens of those Countries in which we travel. Unfortunately while this means that ciizen of other EU Counries cn come to UK and expect to be treated free by the NHS, it doesn’t necessarily work the other way around.  We only get whatever they get, which turn out to be not very much.  What they have to pay for we have to pay for.

So while you must obtain and take with you a valid European Health card with you (your insurers will require it because it will help to minimise their costs in the event of a claim) it does not provide sufficient cover to protect you from the risk of some really big hospital bills.  And because Wingers are often ‘of mature years’, there are risks of heart attacks and Strokes to be considered too, it’s not just biking accidents.

Travel insurance which provides medical expenses cover is therefore essential, and therein lies another substantial insurance pitfall.  Travel insurance for medical condition almost excludes “pre-existing conditions” and anyting arising as a consequence of them.  For several years I was travvelling to the States relying on travel insurance advertised in Rotary Club magazines as suitable for Rotarians who, as a bunch, are even older and less healthy than Wingers.  I had been taking tablets for raised blood pressure for some time; my blood presure was stable and well controlled.  But when I got around to asking i was told that simply because I had raised blood presure, no matter how well controlled, any claim i might make in th event of a heart attack or stroke would be repudiated, because these conditions would be regarded as linked to the blood pressure problem.  I hanged insurers at once and ever since then I have checked the “pre-existing conditions” exclusions on travel insurance very carefully.

Travel policies often ask you to check before your travel, every time, that you can make their “health declaration”, failing which you must ring up for special clearance or special terms, or risk not being covered.  This is either a list of medical conditions, either those which can be ignored or those which you have to tell them about.  There is no way of ducking the obligation to take this seriously, because otherwise your premium will be wasted and your insurance cover invalid. Age restrictions creep in too; it can be very difficult to get affordable travel insurance at all. One family friend of ours has been refused travel cover since he was discovered to have hardened coronary arteries and another quoted 310,00 premium for a one week holiday in the Canaries.  Eventually, unless you stay remarkably healthy, you may find yourself force either to go without effective travel insurance (at least for medical expenses) or not go abroad at all.

Travel insurance also frequently carries exclusions for adventuous or especially risky activities. The travel policies sold by the holiday industry often exclude motorcycling, either altogether or using bikes over 125cc.  They might just realise that a GoldWing is over 125cc if you make a claim.

Last year i was relying on an annual  travel policy which came free with a bank account.  The health side was OK (my blood pressure was an acceptable condition for that particular policy) but they excluded a list of “activities” which included motorcycling using abkie over 125cc.  When I rang to ask whether touring on a GoldWing would fall into this category of exclusion I explained that the motorcycle would be my means of transport on a touring holiday.  The girl I was speaking to, who was of course a call taker rather than an xpert insurance underwriter, said that I was OK because it was holiday activities (such as hiring a bike to go riding once you’re abroad) which they were trying to exclude. I took this at face value and relied on the insurance, but I fear there probably would have been an attempt to repudiate a claim if I had had to make a big one.

I changed travel insurers again recently and I checked before I took this one up (because of previous experience) whether my tow pre-existing medical conditions (blood pressure and arthritis) would be excluded – and I was told they wouldn’t.  When the policy arrived I checked again and found I had to telephone a special number (every time I go abroad) to check whether the cover still holds.  It turns out that for my next trip abroad my blood pressure wil be covered but my arthritis won’t – because I started taking some tablets for arthritis within the past six months.  Under this policy every time you change the nature or dose of any of your medication they exclude cover for the relevant medical condition, even if the dose is reduced or your stop taking it altogether!

Having been at risk of having a travel claim repudiated twice now, and once over a period of several years without realising it, I’m now pretty careful about checking that my travel insurance really does cover me.  You do end up thinking that the whle business of travel insurance is a bit of a rip off, because they seem to grab every little opportunity to exclude cover.  And of course if you fail to declare something you are handing them an opportunity to repudiate any claim on the policy – and you can be sure that if there is a substantial claim they will insist of having a look at your GP’s medical records of you, to see if there is anything you haven’t declared.

Exclusions of motorcycling activities in travel policies are relatively easy to get around because the travel policies sold by both Aire Valley and Carol Nash (and also MAG and BMF policies) all cover motorcycling properly. Carol Nash’s Travel Policy even has special inclusions for bikers: it covers helmets, leathers and up to £250 for pannier contents.

Fraudulent Claims

The background to the care which insurers take with exclusions and careful checking before they pay out is of course that they have experienced fraudulent claims – and travel insurance is particularly prone to fraudulent claims.  Before the days of computer records and cooperation between insurance companies to detect fraudsters, it was difficult to check whether an individual had a track record of making claims for lost cameras or luggage.  Of course people are less likely to claim hospital bills without actually having been in hospital, but even that is subject to fraud these days with people travelling abroad specifically for surgery and other treatment.

So if you make a claim on a travel insurance policy you should not expect it to go through without question and even if you change insurer each year if you build up a track record of making claims they will know about it.  They will ask for proof whenever they reasonably can (so you’re expected to report thefts to the local police and get a crime number for example) and they may well subject you to quite a long and repetitive telephone enquiry about your claim – to see if your story holds up to persistent questionning.

Happily however, after years of getting tougher and tougher in their approach to checking and cross-checking claims before paying out, insurance companies are realising that giving every claimant a grilling just because some of them try to cheat is counterproductive. A contact in a large insurance company told me recently that they had discovered that about 70% of what they thought they were saving (by using a challenging approach to claims) was lost in renewal premiums the following year – the decent folk who were making a genuine claim resented being treated with obvious (and from their viewpoint time-wasting) suspicion, so they vote with their feet.

Hopefully therefore the pendulum is swinging back again and insurers do realise that they have to take care not to offend honest folk as well as catch out the fraudsters.

And for injury claims, for example a biker having an accident and ending up in hospital, insurers do operate a supportive system to pay your hospital and other bills without adding to your difficulties and they will try to be helpful, for example by organising your repatriation to UK should that be necessary.

Summary

So the message about insurance for a European bike tour is check your cover carefully well before you go, not just the night before you set off for the ferry.

Tell your bike insurer in advance when and where you’re going.

Check that your breakdown cover will bring your bike home if you are too injured or sick to ride it, if not take out extra insurance which does.

And don’t rely on ordinary travel insurance to cover touring on a GoldWing without checking carefully for motorcycling exclusions.

Likewise if you have (or have had) any substantial medical conditions, don’t fail to check whether any of those will invoke an important exclusion in your travel cover because it counts as a pre-exiting condition.

Limited relevance but it is a nice picture! Hardknott Pass last week; it focuses the mind on safety very effectively!

Riding in a group doesn’t absolve any individual rider of the responsibility for handling his own bike safely at all times and this must be his top priority.  But when you are part of a group it helps if everyone does their bit to care for other riders in the group whenever they can too – and of course everyone usually does this, which is what makes the companionship of group riding so valuable and group riding so enjoyable.

So there is a potential conflict between being part of a group ride and also concentrating sufficiently on your own safety, so you need to avoid any situation in which you might feel pressure to sacrifice your own safety because you are thinking of the group. And it’s not just the leader and Sweeper who are at risk, as the following sad story illustrates.

A group of ten or so riders, a sub-group of a large tour group of twenty or so bikes, were on a day’s outing in an area of Germany with which none of us were familiar.  The route was planned before we set off and everyone had been told what it was in the form of a list of small towns which would be the turning points along a circular route.

We didn’t know where we would be able to find suitable refreshment stops, so they were to be discovered as we rode.  I had satnav on my bike although the route wasn’t on it, so the Leader briefed me to ride behind him and, lacking radio communications between us, I would toot my horn and point with my arm if I thought he was going wrong.  Between us we would navigate the route, by one means or another.

All went smoothly to start with, as it had done the day before when we had first tried to use this ad hoc approach to navigation, except of course because we were in Germany, I worked out fairly quickly that tooting my horn and then pointing my raised right arm toward a right deviation as we passed through a village was open to misinterpretation by pedestrians.  I did get some very funny looks until the penny dropped and I started waving my arm instead.  Fortunately I didn’t get arrested.

I don’t remember whether there was a specific briefing about how Drop Offs would work before we set off that day but it was certainly my expectation that only turns would be marked, so if there was no marker bike, the route would be straight on.  The day before most of the same riders had ridden together successfully in a smaller group and I don’t think any need to drop a turn marker off ever arose because as things turned out we were always more or less together throughout.

Looking forward to another lovely riding day

So on the second day of riding together we set off full of enthusiasm for another good day’s riding together.  About half the group were advanced riders and none appeared to be nervous or slow; we made brisk, but by no means forced progress on the open country roads we were using. We passed through little villages uneventfully and traffic was very light or non-existent; we were enjoying excellent German biking roads on a lovely sunny day. There was no pressure, we were not trying to make fast progress.

Busy roundabouts and junctions can easily split a group up, hence the value of a drop off at the next turn.

And then we came into a town which our planned route would take us more or less straight through, although with a bit of a deviation to the left as we emerged from it.  The town was bigger and much busier than it looked on the map and it turned out to have a lot more roundabouts and a lot more traffic than anyone could have anticipated. We were effectively skirting the old town centre on a ring road through the outskirts.

Inevitably our group of ten bikes got split up in the course of negotiating this series of busy roundabouts, even though were going straight ahead at all of them.  The roads were urban and relatively narrow as well as busy, and the view across the roundabouts were all obscured by vegetation, road signs and other clutter. The road signs were of course in German and were mostly names of the villages to which the turn-offs led.

The three leading bikes managed to stay together and as we got through the last of them and were beginning to head out of the town, the Leader pulled over to let the others rejoin us.  We waited for five minutes or so then two of us continued waiting while the Leader back-tracked. After half an hour no trace of anyone else had been found.

Since we had no way of making contact with any of the other riders in a situation like this there was nothing further we could do, so eventually the three of us continued along the route, hoping that we might rejoin the others further along if we found a refreshment stop overlooking it.

It was about four hours later when our Leader got a text message from the Leader of the other sub-group, who was also the Tour Leader to ring him.  We then learned there had been an accident and a rider was in hospital.
It emerged that the fourth rider in our group sequence had turned right at one of the roundabouts, having lost sight of the bike in front and which way it had gone, i.e. straight on.   He was then heading North out of town on a suburban road instead of West, as the route required.  Everyone behind him had followed.

Tragedy strikes

Here the leader is allowing the pack to bunch as they enter a village, to minimise chances of getting split up

The rider was reported to have realised he had gone wrong very quickly and was seen to be looking up at a large, high-up directional signpost on the left (off side) of the road, presumably trying to work out which way to go, as he drifted across double white lines into the path of a heavy lorry.  The lorry driver didn’t stand a chance of avoiding him and neither, by the time he realised he had drifted left, did the rider have any time to react.

Everyone stopped.  The biker who had been riding immediately behind him had recently done a First Bike on Scene training and gave first aid; other riders helped or held up traffic.  Local car drivers also stopped immediately, helped to control traffic and also called for help.

The emergency services were extremely quick and efficient.  The injured rider was given the best possible care both on site and then in a state of the art hospital to which he was taken.  Unfortunately so serious were his injuries that he died three weeks later of complications.

The injured rider was certainly not new to riding but he was on his first European Tour and he was probably pretty new to group riding too.  He was in his fifties and rode a tourer; might not have been an advanced rider but he was no boy racer either.  He had joined the Tour not knowing anyone else, as others had done too, and he was a bit diffident and shy in company to start with.

But we had been riding together for three or four days by then and he was seen to be riding confidently and well; he was certainly no novice rider.  He had been with us the day before, ridden well and really, really enjoyed himself. He was also coming out of his shell socially by then and thoroughly enjoying the Tour. There was nothing to suggest he was at any special risk.

Maybe he got a bit flustered when he found himself separated from the bikes in front while negotiating traffic through a sequence of several busy roundabouts in an unexpectedly busy town, suddenly finding himself leading the group the wrong way.  Maybe he got confused by the similar names of the many towns and villages which were signposted at these roundabouts.  We will never know.

In the end it was the individual rider’s inattention to his own safety which actually caused this accident to happen and precisely why he lost concentration on the safety of his own riding will remain a mystery.

It is useful, and a mark of respect to the rider who was killed, to draw as many other lessons as possible from a tragedy like this.  So let’s do that now.

Ride safely yourself

A yellow hi-vis is a useful safety feature for bikers

The golden rule when riding in a group is that each rider must give top priority to the safety of his own riding at all times.  You’re riding in close proximity to other bikes as well as general traffic, so always give yourself the time and space to stay safe.  If you get confused about where the others have gone and what has gone wrong, find somewhere safe to pull over, look at your map and work out what to do next. If you have the rest of the group behind you when this happens, concentrate on finding somewhere for everyone to stop safely and don’t worry about navigation until you have done that.

Contingency communications

The Leader did have a mobile phone with him on the day of this accident, so did I, so probably did most of the group, but no one thought in advance of exchanging telephone numbers among the riding group. We all had the Tour leader’s number but that was it.

In this case it would not have prevented the accident if we had all exchanged mobile numbers at the start of the Tour or that day’s ride, but it would have allowed the three of us who became detached up front to find out about the accident much sooner and therefore to have been able to help the others deal with it.

Since that day I always ensure that everyone on a foreign tour who has a mobile phone exchanges phone numbers with everyone else. If I am leading group I ensure that I have everyone’s emergency contact details too.  This isn’t always practical for group riding within UK, but it’s good practice for groups of riders who ride together regularly to exchange mobile phone numbers and for every motorcyclist to carry his emergency contact details on him whenever he is riding.  I keep my next of kin on my mobile phone under “ICE”; this stands for In Case of Emergency and apparently the emergency services know to look for such an entry.

Pre-Ride Briefings are valuable

We did at least have a route briefing before we set off that fateful day.  In retrospect a clearer briefing about the Drop Off System we were to use and more explicit instruction to continue straight ahead at any unmarked junction or roundabout might have helped the rider to avoid his mistake in turning off route inadvertently.

An orange hi-vis is a good choice for the sweeper AND his pillion

I’m not criticising the Leader of this particular ride by saying that, because of course pre-ride briefings are not the norm among bikers, especially anything like a military-style or detailed briefing.  That’s a far too regimented an approach for most bikers; it smacks too much of being bossed around.  I’m simply observing that if things had been spelled out more clearly before that day’s rise started, it might have made a difference because the rider who was killed might have been less likely to get confused when he suddenly found himself losing sight of the bike in front in a completely strange place.

So maybe a leader should be prepared to spell a few things out before a ride starts, even if it might appear to some riders that he’s taking a surprisingly organised or even a bossy approach.

As a result of this experience I always conduct a rider’s briefing when I am leading a group ride, even if the ride is pre-planned and route cards have been handed out, if only to make sure there is an opportunity for the riders to ask questions. I try to make it as brief and easy-going as possible, consistent with getting the essentials across.

And if someone thinks I’m being too structured or bossy by doing this, then I can live with that and I don’t even mind if they take the p**s, as long as they do their bit as group riders not to put anyone else at risk.

So as far as I am concerned a pre-ride briefing is potentially worth its weight in gold.  If the Leader conducts an adequate briefing before the ride starts, everyone will at least have had a chance to understand what the plan is, or at least enough of it to be able to cope with the risk of getting separated and having to find their own way either to the next planned stop if they know where it is or wherever else makes sense to them.  I would almost always give briefing before a group ride.

An informal approach can work too

I would not claim for a moment that holding a pre-ride briefing is the only acceptable way to lead a group ride.

See how easy it is to spot the sweeper in that orange hi-vis

A friend of mine has been very successful in leading rides of this kind with no apparent briefing at all and mostly not even knowing himself when he sets off where the urge will take him on that day.  His approach is always to move at a pace and on roads which will allow the group to stay intact as a group, relying on CB communication with someone who has agreed to be Sweeper, so that most things which could go wrong probably will not do so, and he will otherwise cross bridges as and when he comes to them.

And in effect there has of course been a pre-ride briefing anyway, by virtue of the long established and well understood basis upon which all rides in this particular club among a small group of friends and over many years.  Most of them could probably also predict fairly accurately what all the others will choose for lunch, so well have they come to know each other’s ways.   That’s OK by me; for that type of ride I don’t think anything further is needed.  It works for that group on that type of ride, it wouldn’t work for many other types of group ride.

The more complex and unfamiliar the route, the more the need for planning and briefing

But at the other end of the spectrum, for a Ride homewards for a mixed-ability group of 20 bikes across over 300 miles of France in heavy showers to the Channel Port where a deadline has to be met for the Ferry and a new Leader has had to take over because the Tour Leader has gone off to do his own thing, getting the riders together for a briefing before the Ride sets off becomes absolutely essential. And failing to include information about the planned route, where the planed steps will be and how the group will be kept together is a recipe for disaster.

But with a briefing, and a leadership style which stands a chance of keeping the group together (and probably a bit of luck too) it can be done and it can even go remarkably smoothly.  The leader who took over on that day did an excellent job.

Some riders are just not group riders

Not everyone likes fitting in with other or, as they might see it, being regimented.  And some riders will not want to be bothered trying to know anything about the route in advance; some of them might even announce openly that they can’t be bothered trying to remember anything and they’d much rather just follow the bike in front and other people do the worrying.  Some people might decide to abandon the ride part way around and not think of telling anyone they are doing so.

Satnavs are wonderful, but sometimes you just can't beat explaining the route with a road atlas

If riders are unwilling to take any interest in group safety and don’t realise at the very least that bailing out to go home without telling anyone creates real problems for other people, people who have been putting themselves out to organise and lead a ride for them, then they may need to be told – that they must at least tell someone else before they peel off to go elsewhere or they should do their riding on their own.  Apart from having to make things like that clear if it becomes necessary, a pre-ride briefing can be a very light hearted affair which covers the essentials without taking on the character of a full scale military mission briefing.

So for many, many reasons the Leader really should conduct a briefing of some sort before the ride starts because it is by far the most effective way to prevent many of the problems which might otherwise spoil the Ride happening at all.  It can be as simple as a few quick words or a few notes about the route and the riding plan.  A route sheet can be handed out at the rendezvous or, these days, circulated in advance by email.

But one way or another someone, preferably the Ride Leader, needs to get the message across about where the Ride is aiming to go, where the planned stops, if any, will be, which if any Drop Off System will be used and how the communications will work.

In the next Article in this series I will try to provide some tips on leading group rides.

There's more than one way of dropping off

Drop Offs are a way of marking a turning point on the group’s route so that the riders can make the turn reliably, even when they are not in sight of each other as they approach it.   Dropping Off means that a rider stops his bike near the turning point where he can be seen by other riders as they approach in order to indicate the direction to turn.

Even if a group has radio communication between every bike, using a drop off system is the only reliable way to keep a group together, because even the best bike-to-bike radios only have a relatively short range.  Drop Offs cannot be used on motorways and nor, strictly speaking, on Clearways and Red Routes, but on all other roads a drop off system provides an excellent way of keeping a group of bikes on route.

Using a drop off system has the great advantage of liberating riders to proceed at their own pace, without feeling pressure to keep up with the rider in front which otherwise develops, especially among newcomers to group riding.

Staggered Formation - useful for major roads but not twisty country lanes. Click on the image for an enlarged view.

Overtaking is no bad thing

Overtaking among group riders can also take place without compromising the drop off system, so riders with different appetites for making progress can enjoy riding in the same group but indulge their own riding appetites a little too if they wish.  Of course there will be times (not just on motorways) when overtaking among a group would be pointless or would disrupt the group’s enjoyment and riders who wish to overtake should be sensitive to this.  But when a rider finds riding behind a particular individual irritating or frustrating, which can happen, if he has the option of either overtaking him or waving the rider behind through to drop back a place, the irritation can be relieved.  Riders who like to “make progress” can do so, as long as their overtakes are timely and safe, without forcing the pace for everyone else – they just get back to the front of the group and then get dropped off more often than other riders.  So everyone  can enjoy themselves on the ride and, because the drop off system will still work, no one need get lost!

Rabbit skin jacket by Divas FJ

There’s more than one way to skin a rabbit

There are a number of ways of dropping off route markers but the only drop off system which I think works reliably is when the Leader signals the rider immediately behind him that he wants him to stop and mark a turn, usually by means of an arm signal.  This rider then takes up a suitable position to mark the turn and stays there until the very last bike in the group arrives, then he gets going again and rejoins the group.  It’s simple to understand and it’s generally very effective.

But it can go wrong.  For example a Leader who isn’t on the ball can end up signalling a drop off to a rider who isn’t one of the group, just a biker who happens to be behind him having broken into the group.  One Leader I know tried to drop off a following rider who turned out to be a police motorcyclist and he got a very dirty look for his trouble.  And stopping a bike at the side of the road near a junction, whichever way you do it, is not entirely without risk.  So the Leader Drop Off System, good as it is, does need a bit of skill and effort to make it work well.

And of course it is important that all the riders in the group understand the drop off system which is being used, otherwise confusion probably will reign.

Leader Drop Off Rules – OK!

While there are other drop off methods, the Leader Drop Off system is the most reliable.

It is infinitely better than the main alternative, which relies on all riders in the group dropping themselves off at a turn when the rider immediately behind them is not in sight as they reach it.  This “buddy” drop off system is unreliable because it depends on everyone in the group maintaining sufficient vigilance and consideration for the following rider to stop at a turn and wait until the next rider in the group arrives who, if there is no one behind him, takes over marking the turn.  The following rider therefore “displaces” the marker, which give this systems alternative name – the displacement system.

The rider of the dark red bike has stopped to mark this right hand turn where he is clearly visible to approaching bikes

At best, if everyone checks for a following rider reliably and stops until relieved by the next guy, it ends up needing a sequence of cumbersome if not hazardous handover manoeuvres at the turn.  Sooner or later the “buddy” system will go wrong.  For example riders can forget to check for a following rider at the turn – easily done if you are concentrating on dealing with traffic or other hazards as you approach and line up for the turn.  A non-group rider just behind a group rider as he reaches a turn could fool him into thinking that his following group rider is in sight, so he doesn’t need to stop.  Instead of the drop offs depending on the Leader, who is probably one or the more experienced riders in the group, everybody gets the opportunity to mess them up.  Even if the group operates a no overtaking rule, so that each rider will always be looking for the same bike behind him, this system can easily break down.

So for lots of reasons there is only one drop off system worth using and that’s when the Leader does the dropping off, by signalling to the rider immediately behind him.  It has to be the rider immediately behind the Leader who is dropped off, otherwise the uncertainties of whether the signal has been seen get a lot bigger. And the rider who is dropped off must, repeat must stay in position until the last rider in the group, usually called the Sweeper, arrives – otherwise the system does breaks down.  As long as all riders understand that they must stay in position marking a turn until the Sweeper turns up, even if it takes an hour (because there might be a big problem being sorted out, and someone will come and tell him eventually) this drop off system will work reliably.  Normally of course a dropped off rider will only be marking a turn for a few minutes.

While variations on other aspects of the drop of system may be possible, the essential features are that:

• Drop Offs are signalled by the Leader
• A Sweeper must be nominated and must stay at the back all the time
• A Rider who is dropped off must stay in position marking the turn until the Sweeper arrives.

Sweepers need to be conspicuous in appearance

Behind every successful Leader is a conspicuous Sweeper

So, you need a Sweeper (or Tail End Charlie) and he has a very important role.  He is there to act as back marker, so that a rider who has been dropped off will know when everyone has made the turn he is marking, so he can therefore move off and rejoin the ride.

As back marker for the group, the Sweeper needs to be easily recognisable as he approaches.  So he will usually wear or have on the front of his bike something conspicuous, something which sets him apart from the rest of the group. That can present a challenge among GoldWings of course because they’re all pretty conspicuous from the front, as from most angles.

It also helps if the Sweeper looks distinctive from the rear too, to give following traffic the impression that something special is ahead of them.  Hi viz jackets (i.e. full jackets as distinct from waistcoats) work well for this purpose, likewise hi viz garments with an explanatory message across the back; “GoldWing Club Ride” or “Caution Motorcycle Ride”. When I ride as Sweeper, wearing my yellow hi viz riding jacket and white helmet, riding a white bike, it seems to have the desired effect too.

Even though the route goes straight on here, it can be worth marking when it's crossing a main road

If no one else in the group is wearing one, an ordinary high visibility waistcoat or jacket would do the trick but hi viz jackets and waistcoats are not uncommon safety apparel among Wingers, so a Sweeper might have to find a way of being conspicuous in a more unique way.   Maybe a bright orange high viz waistcoat rather than the more common yellow one would be adequate, or if push comes to shove sticking an A4 sheet of fluorescent paper inside the windscreen would probably work very well.  Fog or driving lights on a GoldWing add to its conspicuousness from the front considerably and these will work well to distinguish the Sweeper providing everyone else in the group can be persuaded to turn theirs off.

Picking up Dropped-Off Riders

The Sweeper needs to exercise riding skills too; he needs to be able to judge when and how to slow down as he approaches a dropped of marker bike, to allow its rider time to move off ahead of him as he arrives.   He therefore needs to spot where the marker bike in good time, so he can plan when to drop back a bit and where best to position himself in the roadway, to keep both himself and the rider he is picking up safe in relation to any following traffic, which might by then be itching to get past.

Fortunately  GoldWings are big bikes and that helps when it comes to “commanding the lane” as we call it in IAM circles, when what we really mean is positioning it centrally in the traffic lane to discourage if not prevent a following road user from overtaking us, in the interests of our own safety.

Communication between Leader and Sweeper

It helps considerably if the Sweeper can communicate with the Leader by radio during the ride but it’s not essential, the Leader Drop Off System can work perfectly well without radio communications.

If they can talk over the radio there are times when it will be important that they can do so, so if lots of bikes in the group have radios and they are being used for chatting, which can add to the enjoyment of the ride, everyone should understand that safety messages between Sweeper and Leader and vice versa should take priority.

Leader and Sweeper could of course use a different radio channel, but that would make it more cumbersome for the Leader to use radio to warn the whole group of a problem (“Loose gravel on this bend!”) so on balance its probably better that everyone who has a radio on the same channel.

Sweeping can be fun

The Sweeper role also has its perks; riding at the back of the group with no one except following traffic to worry about behind him, the Sweeper is free to drop back from the group any time he wishes, to create some space to speed up to enjoy an appealing set of bends.  Some riders like being Sweeper for this reason alone.

What happens if the Sweeper has to stop with a casualty?

The Sweeper is also usually the one who stops and checks on or helps any casualties among the group’s riders and bikes, or at least tries to communicate the problem to the Leader.  He (or maybe sometimes another volunteer from the group) may wait with the casualty until help can be organised, while the rest of the group ride on.  If the Sweeper stays with a casualty someone else has to take over as Sweeper, otherwise drop offs cannot work – and dropped off riders need to know the Sweeper has changed, so the new Sweeper needs to stop when he reaches them, to tell them he has taken over.

Choosing a safe place to stop to mark a turn

It can sometimes be expedient to drop off a pillion passenger to mark a turn

Bikers choose routes because they are scenic or because they involve interesting biking roads or both.  Most turns which require marking are therefore likely to be fairly straightforward cross roads or T- junctions and the like.  In these cases it won’t be too difficult to decide where to position the marker bike and it shouldn’t be a particularly hazardous location for a rider to be stopped at the roadside either.

However it’s not always easy and if the route brings you to an unforeseen and more complicated or obscured roundabout than anticipated, the Leader has to work out quickly what to do to mark it.  It might require more than one dropped off bike to mark it adequately, for example one on the approach to signal that a turn is to be made and one on the exit road as well, to make sure the correct turn is made.

A complex junction might even require the whole group to be brought to a halt somewhere before the turn, either just to bunch the group up so they can go through it in sight of each other or even to brief the riders about what lies ahead.  A Leader will sometimes stop the group beyond a complex junction to check that everyone made the turn before continuing.

So who decides where the Dropped Off bike should stop?

And this begs the question of who should decide precisely where a dropped of rider places himself at a junction or roundabout, because this raises safety considerations too.

The answer is of course that the Leader invites the following rider to stop by making the agreed signal, probably by pointing with his left arm (in UK, right arm abroad) to where he would like the rider to position himself.  But the rider being dropped off must make his own decision about whether it is safe to stop and if so precisely where to position himself.  Hopefully the Leader will have chosen somewhere sensible, but no one is infallible. The rider being dropped off must retain responsibility for his own safety at all times.

Generally speaking a dropped off rider should stop on the left hand side of the carriageway (in UK, right hand side in Europe) where he is most likely to be both safe and visible to following bikes.  He should only stop somewhere other than on the near side of the carriageway if there is special reason to do so, and of course only if it is safe and legal to stop there.  Being dropped off to mark a biking route doesn’t empower you to break any laws or to ignore the Highway Code.

Dropping Off for a Left Turn - click here to see an expanded image

Dropping Off for Left Hand Turns

For left hand turn at junctions and straightforward roundabouts it will usually be sensible for the dropped off rider to position himself at the nearside kerb, some distance before the junction or roundabout, normally at least ten meters before it – and considerably more than this if the riding group is large one, so that quite a number of bikes (or other traffic) are likely to end queuing at the junction or roundabout before making the turn.

So it’s no use being there to mark a junction if you end up hidden by a queue and approaching riders cannot see you as they approach.  The dropped off rider should therefore stop far enough back so that he will remain in view to approaching riders and not be at risk of becoming obscured if a queue forms.  He can then remain in position, left hand indicator on, showing the following bikes in the group which way to turn with no risk of confusing other road users by his actions.

Marking a Right Turn - click on the image to see an enlarged version

Dropping Off for Right Hand Turns

Right hand turns at junctions are more problematic, because the sensible place to stop to mark the turn will vary, depending on the configuration of the junction and the view approaching and across it.  There is also a much bigger risk of confusing other road users and the stopping position is potentially more hazardous.

Potentially the best position to mark a right hand turn is just beyond the turn, against the left hand kerb, close enough to the junction to still be in view to bikes which are approaching it – but not so close as to be at risk of being struck by a vehicle turning into the same exit road.  Only if the dropped off rider will be safe stopping in this exit road position and only if he will still be visible to the following bikes as they approach the junction should it be used.

If there is no safe place to stop just beyond the junction there are potentially two alternatives; either the rider stops further down the road in a safe place, then dismounts and walks back to stand on the verge in view of the junction, or he stops against the kerb before the junction, as for a left hand turn, but signals the right hand turn with his outstretched right arm.  This right arm signal is far from ideal because it could confuse the hell out of other road users, who might wonder what sort of hazard (or celebration, or political affiliation) is being signalled.  Nevertheless if stopping before the junction is the only safe position available, that will at least be a potentially safe option.  (By the way holding an outstretched right arm in the air is illegal in Germany and Austria!)

Dropping Off for complex junctions and roundabouts

Marking turns at junctions where more than four roads meet or they meet at strange angle, or of course the equivalent roundabouts, is even more problematic.  Traffic engineers come up with some weird solutions sometimes, enough to cause your satnav to gabble a seemingly contradictory set of instructions like “keep right then straight on left”.

There are some junctions and roundabouts which are so difficult to mark safely and effectively by dropping off a bike that the Leader will need to resort to other means of getting the whole group past them safely – probably by bunching up (or stopping if necessary) so that the group can follow each other through it nose to tail.

Roundabouts

Open view roundabouts are easy and you can drop one rider of a few yards along the exit road because he will be visible there on the approach.  Of course he has to find a position which is both in the sight line from the approach and also safe to stop.  The nearside kerb will usually be reasonable safe  on the exit for a roundabout but there are exceptions and each case needs to be judged on its merits.  In these circumstances a single drop off will be sufficient.

Even though a bike has stopped to mark the turn, every rider is still responsible for watching for traffic and making the turn when safe to do so

But if the junction or roundabout is obscured from direct view across it, as many are by road furniture or vegetation, marking becomes more of a challenge.  It may be sufficient for one dropped off bike to stop against the kerb on the approach to the roundabout so that the dropped off rider can point in the direction of the exit road with his arm, but it will often be more reliable to use two drop offs, one on the approach and one on the exit.

Even that might not work on some roundabouts, for example if the exit road turns sharply left, so that the nearside kerb on this exit road is unsafe as a stopping place and the curve of the exit road would  make it difficult for riders to see him while they are still on the roundabout anyway.  In these circumstances, especially if there is a road divider, stopping on the off side of the exit lane might be safer and more visible.

As with stopping on Clearways, halting at the kerbside on a roundabout is not entirely legal in UK but if, as there often is in UK, an area of “dead” tarmac on larger roundabouts which traffic never really uses, so it might be reasonable to make use of it for this purpose, effectively stopping at the nearside kerb just before the exit road.  However you should always look carefully at the road surface as you approach any of these “dead space” places on roundabouts or junctions, because they tend to collect a lot of road debris including loose stones.  They therefore present a risk of loss of tyre grip and perhaps even tyre damage.

Providing you are not likely to be stopped for a long time, halting just beyond a junction or roundabout on a Clearway in a position which is otherwise safe to use in UK isn’t very likely to get you prosecuted but please don’t tell the policeman I said so if you do get taken to task!

Continental Roundabouts

In Continental Europe roundabouts are generally smaller and tighter than in UK and have and most have an open view across them, so it is unlikely that you will have to do anything other than mark them by stopping at the kerbside on the exit road.

No Drop Offs on Motorways

As I mentioned in the previous Article in this series, motorways are no place for marking turns by dropping off.  The group has to try to say together all the time.

Next Article

The next Article in this series will present a few more experiences of difficulties I have encountered during group riding which are better avoided, including one which, tragically, resulted in the death of a rider ………