Blue Ridge Blues and BBQ Motorcycle Tour

Fifteen days from New Orleans to Chicago, and a route built on music, barbecue and one notorious piece of road. Fourteen nights, around 2,300 miles, guided throughout, following the Mississippi Blues Trail north before turning into the Appalachians.

The Mississippi Delta comes first, and it sets the tone for the opening week. Baton Rouge and Natchez lead to Clarksdale, the crossroads town at the centre of blues mythology, then Memphis for Sun Studio, Graceland and Beale Street. Florence follows, then Lynchburg and the Jack Daniel’s distillery on the way to Nashville, which gets a free day to make proper use of the evening.

Then the roads get serious, and the character of the trip changes entirely. Townsend sits at the edge of the Great Smoky Mountains, and from there the route rides the Tail of the Dragon, 318 curves in eleven miles and probably the most talked-about stretch of tarmac in the United States, before joining the Blue Ridge Parkway to Asheville. More of the Parkway follows towards Pikeville, then Louisville, Champaign and the final run into Chicago.

EAGLERIDER provides the motorcycle, the tour leader, all fourteen nights and group dinners. Fuel, most meals and insurance are separate. Riding days run from 85 to 300 miles, with the shortest falling where the towns themselves deserve an afternoon on foot. For riders who want American music history and the great Appalachian roads inside the same trip, led rather than self-navigated, this is the one route in the range that manages both of them properly.