Rocky Mountain High

Eleven days in Colorado and not a mile outside it. Ten nights, around 1,055 miles, and a route built around the state’s most celebrated mountain roads, with daily distances kept short because the roads deserve the time.

It opens gently through Manitou Springs and Salida, taking in the Royal Gorge Bridge, which hangs nearly 1,000 feet above the Arkansas River and held the record as the world’s highest suspension bridge for the best part of half a century. Durango follows, and gets two nights and a free day, which is where the optional extras live: the Durango and Silverton steam railway, whitewater rafting or a day on horseback.

The Million Dollar Highway is the centrepiece. Highway 550 climbs from Durango through Silverton and Ouray on a shelf cut into the mountainside, with no guardrail in places, and it is regularly called the finest motorcycle road in the United States. The Black Canyon of the Gunnison comes next, a gorge so deep and narrow that parts of its floor see barely half an hour of direct sun, then Aspen and Independence Pass at over 12,000 feet, then Rocky Mountain National Park and Estes Park before the return to Denver through Golden.

EAGLERIDER supplies the motorcycle and books all ten nights. Fuel, meals, insurance and the optional activities are arranged separately. Riding days are only 90 to 200 miles, which on roads this demanding is exactly right. For riders who would rather do one state properly than cross four of them, this is the deepest look at Colorado anywhere in the range, and the free day at Durango gives it room to breathe.