Planning a trip abroad

Wonda-Boy

Essentials:

A couple of travel requirements:
Original Registration Document
License
Passport
Original Insurance cert
European Medical card

Some things you should bring:

Buy an Airhawk Seat Cushion (The best purchase you’ll make for your trip!)Lots of ear plugs! You can get ~50 pairs for ~€10 on ebay.
Cameras (For that nice bike picture in the alps )
Electrical Chargers and Euro adapters (Phones/Cameras/Video/GPS. Test them and make sure they work)
Chain lube (every morning)
Tool Kit (There will be plenty of bike garages but a few tools won't hurt)
Small Head mounted Torch
A few pairs of gloves (1 Gore-tex, 1 ventilated)
Sun Glasses
Chain(s)/Lock(s)
Spare Fuses
Bring some rags for the ferries. Some of them don’t have any to put between the ratchet tie downs and your seat and paintwork! Ireland-France crossing had them.

Optional:

GPS with updated maps + Mounting Kit
Top Up Oils/Fluids. 1l bottles (you could end up paying €30 for 1l of oil in a petrol station when you really need it)
Puncture Repair Kit and/or a can of tyre weld
Spare Bungees/Cargo Net (Handy for drying your clothes on top of your topbox)
Tablet/Laptop if you can fit it. Lots of places have free wi-fi (McDonalds). So you can upload photos of your trip to make us all jealous
Ultra absorbent thin towel
Visor cleaner + cloth to wipe it off properly
Sun Cream
Cable Ties
Gaffer Tape
Side stand plates for earthen ground
Fire extinguisher
Ratchet Tie Downs
Pens and paper to keep track of spending
Vitamin tablets. It's a long trip so it’s important to keep your strength up

Before the trip:

Try to check everything on the bike. Tyres, chain, bearings, throttle and brake cables (one of the lads throttle went in Gibraltar so we ended up wasting half a day there).

Pack and unpack preparation. Plan and re-plan what to take with you a week before the trip. Organise what you're bringing into the luggage. Think about weight distribution on each side of the bike when you’re doing this, you don’t want to be veering to one side

Try and plan where you’ll be each night and look up possible accommodation in each place before you leave.

Make a list of things you want to see in each country. Have 2 things in each country that you’d really like to see. Other attractions can be left on the list or taken out depend on time.

Take a look at road watch websites of the countries your visiting. It’ll let you know of any road works on your route and delays that may be encountered due to them.

On the trip:

Arrive at your destination each evening no later than 8. If you arrive after this it's too late to look around and find the best priced place, have a shower and then find a place to eat. Recently a friend did a trip where he was leaving at 6am and riding until 4pm. He had a few hours of the roads to himself then beat the evening work traffic chaos.

Have plenty of bottled water bought for the nights and mornings.

The tolls in France and Spain are expensive so stay off them if you can. The other roads are better biking roads anyway

French bikers are great and every one of them will salute you!

If you’re not making as much progress as you thought then don’t go too far into Europe. You don’t want to have to rush the last half of your trip in order to make a ferry!

galwaytt

Just back from a week in Normandy, first trip on the Continent bar one, in years. First trip ever for the SO on her bike.

We did it on a whim: saw weather here was going to be shite, so Thursday 3rd August looked on AirBnB and Irish Ferries and booked both and sailed 5th August. Sailed back 12th August.

Costs: 2 bikes, with cabin, Dublin-Cherbourd-Dubln €1300-odd. Gites in Normandy with a pool, for a week, €1100. All expenses in the week: fuel for both bikes, food, attractions etc €1200. So the entire week for everything: €3600. Just to give you an idea of how expensive peak time ferries are: I did the same route in Oct 2021 when I came back from NL with my new bike and the ferry was just €178 including cabin, so we did travel on probably the most expensive week of the entire year. I think it shouldn't be hard to half those ferry and accomodation costs at another time of the year.

Petrol varied from €1.84 - €2.10 a litre depending on where.

For any trip abroad I create a folder on my Google Drive and I drop copies of our passports, vehicle logbooks, insurances, E111 cards, accommodation and ferry bookings, travel insurance etc.I can then access them from anywhere out on the road.

We didn't do huge mileage : it was supposed to be a holiday : no more than a couple of hours a day. Travelled on backroads mostly, the odd ring road, and filtered. Was religious about not speeding : thank God for cruise control ! When we hit mad traffic (e.g. at Mont St Michel, we filtered (her for the first time) and found french drivers actually pull in an wave you on. Bliss)

Each day was - not - planned. We literally followed our nose. Saw something, somewhere nice and: just stopped right there.

Did find lots of places closed (N. France goes to S. France for their holidays that week), so we even came across petrol stations, hotels and supermarkets that were closed for holidays. LIDL, however, doesn't. Met a couple in Fougeres shopping LIDL : their Dunnes Store bag gave them away. And yes, they were shopping in the middle aisle. :)

Weather was fab. Nearly too fab tbh. Wore all the heavy gear on the way out, and once it was packed away on the bike at the ferry it never came out of the bags again until we got as far as Athlone on the way home on the 13th. Temps started off around 20 degrees, but hit 27-29 degrees by week end. Too hot for me tbh, and I always ATGATT.

I brought 2 big locks and one smaller one and I used them everywhere, locking the bikes to one another. The SO's bike being an NC750, she could lock here helmet in the 'tank' when we got to parking - If i packed my jacket etc on the bike, I used the small lock to lock my helmet to the seat.

We also made a special effort to travel light. She had the top box on here bike, and I had one on mine, and I had 2 panniers. Which, despite it being a behemoth (GoldWing), are useless. And i carried locks, puncture repair kit, first aid kit etc. That basically took up one entire pannier (yes, they're that small, and stupidly-shaped). I haid raingear in the other. France has washing machines & driers. Launderettes too. No reason to carry piles of clothes around, half of which you'll never wear.

We're definitely doing it again next year, but will try to avoid peak travel dates (for cost reasons).