New Orleans and Nashville Motorcycle Tour

This one is about music. Eight days out of New Orleans, seven nights and around 1,290 miles through the Deep South, calling at the places where blues, country and rock and roll were actually made rather than just remembered.

The Natchez Trace Parkway starts it properly, an old trade route turned quiet two-lane road with no trucks and no advertising hoardings, running north towards Vicksburg. Memphis follows, and with it Sun Studio and Graceland, then Shiloh and the ride into Nashville. The daily distances are real, 150 to 260 miles, but the roads are easy, the traffic is light and the stops are rather the point of the whole thing.

Tennessee and Alabama fill the second half. Lynchburg is home to the Jack Daniel’s distillery, which sits on the route to Birmingham, and Huntsville’s space centre is nearby for anyone who wants a complete change of subject. Montgomery comes next, then Mobile, before the final day runs west along the Gulf Coast back into New Orleans and whatever is playing on Frenchmen Street that night.

EAGLERIDER supplies the motorcycle and books all seven nights, with Harley-Davidson touring models alongside Triumph and BMW sport machines. Fuel, meals and insurance are arranged separately. The riding here is not technical and the landscape is not dramatic, which is rather the point: this is a route built around what is at the end of each day. For riders who would rather finish the day hearing something memorable than climbing another mountain pass, it is one of the best weeks in the whole range.