Motorrad Days (Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany)

Six nights riding to BMW’s own festival at Garmisch-Partenkirchen and back, with an optional four-day Alpine extension bolted on the end. Own bike or a hired BMW.

The outward run goes through the Ardennes to the Black Forest, then across the southern Black Forest into Bavaria, taking in the stretches of unrestricted Autobahn on the way, which most riders will want to sample at least once.

Garmisch-Partenkirchen is the destination, a town that hosted the 1936 Winter Olympics and still has a fresco-painted old quarter, with the hotel a short walk from the festival site. Motorrad Days draws around forty thousand people: stunt shows, beer tents, clubs, accessory stands and organised ride-outs, with a VIP party and dinner with a live band on the Saturday night included.

The optional extension is where the serious riding is. It runs over the Stelvio, with forty-eight numbered hairpins on the northern side and a summit at 2,757 metres, to a night near St Moritz, then west over the Splugen, the San Bernardino, the Simplon and the Grimsel to Meiringen, which is four of the better Swiss passes inside a single day. Hotels, breakfasts, the welcome and farewell dinners, the party night, the crossing, maps and GPS routes are included, with fuel and other meals separate. The price is quoted per person. For anyone who has thought about the festival but not fancied organising the ride down to it, this removes the only real obstacle. The festival has been running for decades and is the largest BMW motorcycle gathering in the world, so the atmosphere is less corporate launch event and more enormous rally that happens to have a manufacturer attached.