ABR 2027: I Could Just Fly. Apparently I’m Not Going To.

Next year I need to get from Cyprus to the Adventure Bike Rider Festival at Ragley Hall.

It sort of started with a distant aspiration to go. Then one glass led to another one evening and, hey presto, a full ticket including Super Thursday and a Trail Pass landed in my inbox.

So now I'm going.

Lucky lad!

According to the sensible part of my brain, this is a fairly straightforward transport problem. Book a cheap Ryanair flight, get a taxi to my mate who also owns an ADV tour company, jump on something rather cheeky and amble down to the Cotswolds.

Job done.

Except the more I thought about it, the more daft that seemed.

I live in Cyprus. I own an adventure motorcycle business. I have a choice of bikes sitting outside. Between here and Ragley Hall are Greece, the Balkans, Italy and France.

And I'm going to fly over all of it?

No.

If I'm going to the Adventure Bike Rider Festival, I may as well have an adventure getting there. Which is roughly where a perfectly simple trip to a motorcycle festival began getting out of hand.

The current plan is somewhere around 5,000 km, starting with roughly 2,300 km of Adventure Country Tracks through Greece, Albania, Montenegro and Croatia, followed by a pit stop at our house near Rijeka, then Tuscany, Lyon, the Channel and finally Ragley Hall.

And somewhere during this escalation I made another decision.

No motorways.

I need to get to England. I don't particularly want to miss Europe by doing it at 150 km/h.

So now we have one motorcycle, two sets of tyres, a ferry, several countries, around 5,000 km and no motorways.

And one inconvenient detail:

The ABR Festival starts on a specific day.

Actually, there are now two inconvenient details, but we'll get to my wife later.

Everything else is negotiable.

And that's where this becomes interesting. Because I own a motorcycle business, I spend a great deal of my riding life working on the principle that some of the best discoveries happen when the plan goes wrong. I'll happily reach a trail, spot something interesting and completely change what I thought I was doing that day.

That works beautifully when you've got nowhere in particular to be. It's slightly more complicated when several thousand kilometres away there is a festival that isn't going to postpone itself because I found a nice track in Albania.

So this trip has become a bit of an experiment:

How much of a 5,000 km journey across Europe can I deliberately leave to adventure when there are places along the way where I absolutely have to be on time?

I don't know.

Which is precisely why I'm writing this before I go.

First problem: which bloody motorcycle?

I'm in the rather fortunate position of owning an adventure-motorcycle business, which means choosing a bike for this trip isn't quite the same problem it is for most people.

I have options.

Our Rieju 307s would be fabulous for the first part. The ACT routes through Greece and the Balkans are exactly the sort of riding where a light motorcycle on serious dirt tyres makes enormous sense and would put a Cheshire cat grin on my face.

But then I'd leave Croatia with Tuscany, France, the Channel and England still ahead of me.

Suddenly a lightweight 300 starts looking rather less clever.

Then there are our CFMoto 450MTs. A 450 might actually be the obvious compromise. It's light enough to be properly useful on the dirt but sufficiently road capable to cross Europe without making you hate motorcycles by the time you arrive.

There's only one problem.

Our 450MTs aren't really standard 450MTs anymore.

We've deliberately configured them for spending most of their lives on Cyprus dirt. They have shorter 14/50 gearing, dirt-biased tyres, uprated suspension, altered ergonomics and ECU changes aimed at giving them better low-speed torque and throttle response.

They're bloody good at the job we've built them for.

I could undo some of that for this trip.

But then I started looking at another motorcycle sitting in the Horizon Rider fleet.

The CFMoto 1000MTX.

And that makes things rather more interesting.

The bike I've never really tried

We have a couple of 1000MTXs for a very different sort of Horizon Rider customer.

Somebody might want to explore Cyprus two-up. They might want to carry proper luggage. They may principally want to tour the island on the road rather than spend their week climbing rocky trails.

For that job the MTX makes enormous sense.

It's a big, comfortable 112 bhp adventure-tourer with luggage capacity, cruise control, heated everything and the ability to consume serious distances without making its rider feel as though they've been mugged by the motorcycle.

Which is precisely why I've never really considered it for the sort of riding I normally do.

But here's the interesting bit.

It's apparently pretty capable off-road too.

I've never properly tried it.

So I think I will.

At around 222 kg wet, it's considerably heavier than the motorcycles I'd normally choose for technical riding. And I'm proposing to point it at routes that Adventure Country Tracks themselves describe in places as Advanced, High and High Plus.

There will almost certainly be a moment somewhere in the Balkans when I'm underneath 222 kg of CFMoto wondering why the hell I didn't bring the Rieju.

That's rather the point.

Because this trip gives me the chance to answer a question I genuinely don't know the answer to.

Can one big adventure motorcycle actually be properly good at both halves of the word?

Not capable of going off-road in the sense that somebody once rode one across a field for a brochure photograph.

Actually good.

Good enough that I enjoy more than 2,000 km of ACT riding rather than merely surviving it.

And then, if it manages that, can the same motorcycle turn into the comfortable European mile-muncher it was always designed to be?

We're going to find out.

The ACTs are the backbone, not the obligation

I also don't intend to become a slave to somebody else's GPX file.

That might sound slightly odd coming from somebody who has spent an indecent amount of his life creating GPX files for other people, but I think it's important. The ACTs give me a superb backbone through Greece and the Balkans.

They don't give me an obligation.

If a section carries me usefully north, fantastic. If completing some enormous loop takes me 300 km back towards somewhere I've just come from merely so I can say I completed the entire ACT, I'm probably not going to do it.

Likewise, if I spot something interesting nearby, I reserve the right to become distracted.

I've built enough routes myself to know that the line on the screen isn't the adventure.

It's simply a very good way of finding one.

So I'm going to use the ACTs in much the same way I'd encourage somebody to use our HATs here in Cyprus: understand where you're trying to get to, use the route to unlock the good riding, and don't treat the GPX as holy scripture.

The objective isn't to complete three ACTs.

The objective is to have a bloody good ride from Greece to Croatia.

There is a difference.

How much planning is enough?

This is the bit I'm finding most interesting before I've even left.

Obviously I'm going to plan the trip.

I'm not setting off from Cyprus with a toothbrush and a vague understanding that England is somewhere north-west.

I'll know the ferry. I'll have the ACT GPX files. I'll know the fixed dates. I'll know roughly how much distance I need to cover.

What I don't particularly want is a hotel reservation every 280 km.

The full ACT routes recommend roughly five days for Greece, six for Montenegro and Albania and five for Croatia. I'm shortening Greece and Croatia, but I'm still expecting that first phase to consume something like 11–13 riding days rather than trying to smash through it as though somebody is timing me.

Some days will go brilliantly.

Some won't.

Weather will happen. A track will be blocked. I'll get distracted. Something that looked like an easy 180 km day on the laptop will turn into eight hours of wondering who designed the bloody route.

Possibly me.

That's adventure riding.

The trick is leaving enough space for those things to happen without allowing them to destroy everything that follows. Because eventually I have somewhere I need to be.

And before that, I have a garage.

Croatia is the pit stop

I have one enormous advantage on this journey.

We own a house near Rijeka.

We call it our happy place but, more importantly, it has a garage.

By the time I get there, the 1000MTX should have completed something approaching 2,300 km of dirt-biased Balkan riding, plus whatever road mileage joins it all together. So Croatia becomes a proper planned halt.

Not merely somewhere to sleep.

I'll go through the motorcycle. Chain. Pads. Fluids. Fasteners. Anything I've bent. Anything I've broken. Anything that has developed an irritating noise somewhere in Albania and which I've spent three days pretending not to hear.

I'll wash my clothes.

Possibly myself.

Open a beer and apply witch hazel to the accumulated bruises. I'll edit some video and upload more to do later.

And then I'll change the motorcycle.

The 80% dirt tyres come off and stay in the garage. On goes a set of Pirelli Scorpion Rally STRs.

That tyre change marks the end of Part One.

And this is where the 1000MTX experiment gets particularly interesting.

Same motorcycle. Different job.

Leaving Croatia, the motorcycle effectively changes character.

Before Croatia, dirt is a major part of the route, and the bike is configured accordingly.

After Croatia, I still want gentle green lanes, unsealed roads and interesting tracks where they're legal and genuinely worth riding, but now the balance moves much further towards back roads, mountain passes, highways and byways.

Suddenly the things that made the 1000MTX look slightly extravagant in Albania begin to look rather clever.

112 bhp. Cruise control. Heated grips. Heated seat. Proper luggage. Space. Comfort.

The Rieju would almost certainly have been easier through the technical parts of the Balkans.

I'm equally certain that somewhere after my fifth long day crossing western Europe, the heated seat will make a persuasive counterargument.

That's what I want to discover.

Can the same motorcycle arrive at our Croatian garage having convinced me it's a proper off-road adventure bike, change nothing fundamental except its tyres, and leave again as a genuinely excellent grand tourer?

If I reach Croatia wishing I'd taken the 450, we'll know.

If I reach England thinking actually, that thing was bloody good at everything I asked of it, we'll know that too.

Either result makes for a better story than already knowing the answer.

Tuscany, because obviously Tuscany

From Croatia I want to head towards Tuscany.

Is Tuscany the most efficient way to get from Rijeka to England?

Probably not.

I don't care.

This is where the rule about motorways becomes important. I'm not anti-motorway. They're marvellous things if you urgently need to turn here into there.

But that's not what this journey is for.

I need to get to England.

I don't particularly want to miss Europe while doing it.

So from Croatia onwards I want roads that actually show me where I am. Mountain passes. Small roads. Interesting highways and byways. Legal green lanes where they make sense. A trattoria or two I feel is only polite to patronise as I pass through the country.

If one road takes an hour longer but goes somewhere interesting, that's probably the road I'll choose.

But I'm not going to ride a miserable muddy farm track beside a spectacular mountain road simply because one is technically off-road.

That's something building the HATs has reinforced for me.

Dirt isn't automatically better simply because it's dirt.

The road has to be worth riding.

Tuscany seems like a reasonably good place to apply that philosophy. I've done it by car before and it's truly spectacular.

I'm going to activate smellovision and enjoy the ride.

The only danger is that I may not want to leave.

Which brings us neatly to inconvenient detail number two.

There is one non-motorcycle condition

There is, apparently, a limit to how long a married man can announce that he's disappearing across Europe on a motorcycle before certain conditions are attached.

Julia has been remarkably accommodating about the prospect of me vanishing from work, household chores and normal civilisation for a significant period.

There is, however, a price.

I have to stop in Lyon.

Julia will fly in and we'll spend a couple of days exploring the city together.

No ACT.

No green lanes.

No looking at a tiny road disappearing into the hills and saying “I wonder where that goes.”

Just Lyon.

This seems an entirely reasonable condition of release.

It's also no great hardship. Walking the cobbled streets of my favourite city in France holding hands with my better half is hardly a sacrifice. Eating all that amazing grub doesn't exactly qualify as a compromise either.

It also creates something useful for the trip because Lyon becomes an immovable point on the map and helps move me towards the goal.

I can be flexible through Greece. I can lose time in Albania and perhaps make some of it back later. I can wander from Croatia through Tuscany.

But Julia's aircraft is unlikely to delay itself because I've found an interesting track in northern Italy.

I must be in Lyon when she lands.

Which means this journey now has two clocks ticking.

Lyon.

And Ragley Hall.

Fixed points. Flexible lines.

This, I think, is how I want to plan the whole journey.

Some things cannot move.

The ferry from Cyprus is fixed. Our house in Croatia is fixed, although thankfully considerably less fussy about what time I arrive. Julia lands in Lyon on a particular day. The Adventure Bike Rider Festival starts on a particular day.

Those are the anchors.

The lines between them are where I get my freedom.

I don't need to know exactly where I'll sleep on night seven before I've even left Cyprus. I don't need to know which restaurant I'll eat in somewhere in Montenegro. And I certainly don't want to reject an interesting road because six months earlier I decided in front of a laptop that I should be somewhere else by 17:30.

I want enough planning to protect the things that matter.

And enough absence of planning to allow the adventure to happen.

That's the balancing act.

Lyon changes the clock

After a couple of days exploring Lyon with Julia, she'll fly home.

I'll get back on the motorcycle.

And something subtle will have changed.

Until Lyon, I've got a fair amount of flexibility. I can use contingency days. I can alter the route. I can make up time later.

After Lyon, Ragley Hall starts getting rather closer on the calendar.

I still don't want motorways.

I still want to cross France on interesting roads where they're worth riding. But every morning the question becomes slightly less:

What's the most interesting way north?

and slightly more:

How many days have I got left?

I know exactly how this is going to end.

Somewhere in France I'll be studying a map, spot an interesting squiggly line heading vaguely west and then look at the date.

There will be a pause.

And the entire navigation philosophy will suddenly become:

How far is the ferry?

Contingency isn't just for things going wrong

This may be the most important part of the planning.

Adventure routes and exact arrival times are not natural friends. ACT Greece isn't a motorway. Albania isn't famous for ensuring Kevin's schedule remains undisturbed. Weather exists. Punctures exist. Mechanical problems exist.

And I exist.

Which may be the greatest threat to the schedule of all.

If I see something interesting, I have a tendency to go and explore it. So the plan needs slack built into it deliberately.

But I don't want contingency merely because something might go wrong.

I want enough time for something to go right unexpectedly.

That's an important distinction.

A spare day might repair a motorcycle.

It might also let me stay somewhere because it's brilliant.

It might let me follow a route somebody tells me about over dinner.

It might simply mean that when I arrive somewhere extraordinary at four in the afternoon, I don't have to immediately leave because my spreadsheet says tonight's hotel is another 180 km away.

It might also give me the flexibility to just crash out if I'm knackered.

That's the sort of contingency I want.

And eventually, Ragley Hall

There is something rather appealing about making the Adventure Bike Rider Festival the destination for a journey like this.

I could fly to Britain.

We established that about 5,000 km ago.

But arriving at an adventure-bike festival on a motorcycle that has just crossed Europe seems considerably more appropriate.

By then the 1000MTX should have been through Greece, Albania, Montenegro, Croatia, Italy and France. It will have worn two different sets of tyres for two very different jobs. It'll doubtless have a few battle scars. It should have Greek and Balkan dirt hidden somewhere underneath it, an international collection of insects attached to the front and somewhere around 5,000 km added to its journey.

And I'll doubtless feel rather more comfortable rolling through the gates knowing that, for me at least, the journey there was part of earning the experience.

Also, if everything has gone broadly according to plan, it'll roll into Ragley Hall having answered the question I set off with:

Can one big adventure bike really do all of this well?

If the answer is yes, excellent.

If the answer is no, I suspect I'll have some entertaining stories explaining why.

Either way, I should arrive at ABR with a motorcycle that looks as though it has actually had an adventure getting to the Adventure Bike Rider Festival.

I'm certainly no Ted Simon or Sam Manicom, but perhaps by then a little of the DNA of adventure will at least be ingrained in the bike.

There is one more problem

I still have to get home.

I'm deliberately refusing to think too hard about that yet.

The 80% dirt tyres will be sitting in my garage in Croatia, which does rather suggest that at some point the 1000MTX and I may find ourselves back there.

I have had a crafty look at the Italian ACT.

Maybe it would be a fitting bookend to my adventure.

What happens between Ragley Hall and home is Future Kevin's problem.

He seems like a capable chap.

I'll leave it with him.

There is still some blank space on the map

So if you know a road, legal green lane, mountain pass, ridiculous café, campsite or piece of trail somewhere between Croatia and Ragley Hall that you think I'd be an idiot to ride past, tell me.

I'm still planning.

And when it's all over, I'll come back to this article and compare what I thought was going to happen with what actually did.

I suspect those may turn out to be two quite different stories.