Luxembourg Self-Guided Motorcycle Tour

Four nights in Luxembourg, self-guided, from a single base hotel in Vianden with three free riding days around it.

Vianden sits in a wooded gorge below a castle that was rebuilt from ruins in the twentieth century and is among the largest fortified houses west of the Rhine, with the river running through the middle of the town. The route out from Folkestone goes by Eurotunnel and Bastogne.

The free days are suggested rather than fixed. One runs to Arlon, Dinant, which sits under a cliff with a citadel on top of it, and Esch-sur-Sure, a village inside a loop of river, with Bitburg in Germany as an alternative. Another takes in Clervaux Castle, the Malmedy massacre memorial and the Bastogne War Museum, all of it ground fought over in the Ardennes offensive of the winter of 1944. The third crosses into Germany for the Moselle wine region, with Traben-Trarbach and Cochem Castle on it.

Four nights of bed and breakfast, one evening meal and the return Eurotunnel crossing are included, along with the GPX routes, the kit list and the itinerary; the other meals, fuel, parking, admissions and the vignette are not. Five days from a single base means no packing and unpacking, which suits a short trip: three countries are within an easy day’s ride of the hotel. This is the cheapest tour in the range and about the gentlest introduction to riding in Europe there is. The Ardennes roads are forested, twisting and very lightly trafficked, and Vianden itself is small enough to walk round in an evening, with a chairlift up to a viewpoint above the castle.