Florida - Georgia Motorcycle Tour

The old South, by way of its best-looking cities. Eight days out of Orlando, seven nights and around 1,210 miles through Florida, Georgia and South Carolina, calling at St Augustine, Savannah, Charleston and Macon.

St Augustine opens it, the oldest continuously occupied European settlement in the United States, founded in 1565 and still guarded by its fort of coquina stone. Daytona Beach and Fort Matanzas sit on the same ride. Then the route crosses into Georgia through Brunswick and out to Jekyll Island, one of the barrier islands, on the way to Savannah and its squares of live oaks hung with Spanish moss.

Charleston is a short 110-mile day away, reached through Beaufort and the Lowcountry marshes, which gives most of the afternoon to the city itself. Inland then to Macon by way of the Middleton Place gardens and Milledgeville, then Tallahassee, before the final day returns down Florida’s west coast through Tampa to Orlando.

EAGLERIDER supplies the motorcycle and books all seven nights, with Harley-Davidson touring models and Triumph and BMW sport machines available. Fuel, meals and insurance are arranged separately. Days range from 110 to 265 miles on easy, well-surfaced roads, with the shortest falling where Charleston deserves an afternoon. This is a route where the interest lies in the architecture, the food and the history rather than in the gradients, and all four cities are worth an evening on foot. For riders who want a week of genuine American South without a mountain in sight, it is the pick of the range.