Black Forest Self-Guided Motorcycle Tour

Five nights in the Black Forest, self-guided, from a base hotel with two free days and the B500 ridden twice.

The Champagne region comes first through Epernay and Sezanne, which breaks the run across France, with the Charles de Gaulle memorial on the way into Germany, then the base hotel in the forest itself, which is where the next three nights are spent.

The first free day is the long one: the Gutach open-air museum and its toboggan run, the B500 along the ridge, Lake Mummelsee at the top, the Feldberg, the Triberg waterfalls, and Schluchsee and Titisee at the southern end. The second crosses into Switzerland for the Rhine Falls at Schaffhausen, among the largest waterfalls in Europe by volume, with Laufen Castle above it. A second stretch of the B500 comes on the ride home to Vianden, which means the road gets ridden in both directions and in different light.

Five nights of bed and breakfast, four evening meals and the return Eurotunnel crossing are included, along with the GPX routes and the itinerary; fuel, parking, admissions and the vignette are not. Six days makes this a short break rather than a tour, and RideWithUs list it among their most popular: two long transit days, two riding days and a base hotel in between. The B500 is busy with bikes at weekends and empty midweek, which is worth knowing when picking dates. Late spring through September is the season, and the forest roads drain well enough to be worth riding in the wet. For a first trip to Europe on a bike, a single base and two guided-route days is about the gentlest introduction going.