Grand Europe Self-Guided Motorcycle Tour

Thirteen nights and seven countries, self-guided, which RideWithUs list as their most in-demand long tour, with riders on their own bikes.

The Champagne region, the Black Forest and the Austrian Tyrol come first on the way east, with the B500, the Rhine Falls, the Bregenzerwaldstrasse and the Arlberg Pass along the way, then Bohinj in Slovenia over the Gerlos, the Grossglockner and the Wurzen Pass, which is three days of steady riding to reach the interesting part.

A free day at Bohinj offers the Savica waterfalls and Lake Bled, or the Vrsic Pass, which has fifty cobbled hairpins and was built by prisoners of war in 1915. Porec in Croatia follows by way of the Postojna caves, where a mining train runs into the hill and the olm salamander lives in the water, blind and pale enough to be nicknamed the human fish. Two free days there cover Pula, Rovinj and Hum, or a boat trip. The Dolomites, Sankt Moritz and Interlaken carry the route home.

Thirteen nights of bed and breakfast, six evening meals and the return Eurotunnel crossing are included, along with the GPX routes and the itinerary; fuel, parking, admissions and the vignettes are not. Fourteen days across this much of Europe means long transit days at either end and three free days in the middle, and the Slovenian and Croatian sections are what people book it for rather than the Alpine ones. Summer is the season, and the vignettes for Austria, Slovenia and Switzerland all need buying before the borders rather than after them.