Preparing for your tour

Electrical and battery problems are one of the biggest things we encounter on a tour.

Before your tour starts, check that your battery is in good health and a great way to do this, not only for a tour, but for your bike in general is to use a battery optimiser when you are not using it.  This keeps your battery in tip top condition.

Test your battery before you go and sometimes a quick visit to your local motorcycle dealer will sort this out for you.

It’s worth having your battery checked by an expert prior to travelling.  It is not always possible to get your bike looked at quickly when you are abroad if you have a problem.

Check your battery and if in doubt get a new one in time for your tour.

Brakes are a fundamental part of your motorbike. Checking you have sufficient wear left in your pads will take the worry out of your tour.

Does your bike need a service before you go?  It is worth checking when your next service is due and factoring in the miles you will be covering on a tour.  It may be worth having your bike serviced before you go, so that you know your bike is fully prepared and ready for your adventure.

Some of the places on our tours are in rural countryside and make problems a little more tricky than normal to fix, so planning ahead will take the headache out of a problem.

We have all ridden bikes where after a while our bodies starts to ache.  Slightly changing the height of your handlebars might help you.

You can get bar risers and also risers that bring your handlebars back towards you too.  This can really help to ensure that you are comfortable all day long on a tour.  Bearing in mind that you will be riding for most of the tour!

Toolkits are brilliant. Have a think about the tools you want to take when preparing for your tour. We would advise taking, Gaffa tape, zip ties and a small selection of spanners and torque drivers. These will get you past most eventualities.

Our guides will have a jump starter pack, first aid kit, tyre inflator and a few tools too.

We can’t fix your bike as we are not trained technicians but we will always be there to support you and offer assistance at the road side.

Make sure you check all of your bulbs on your motorbike.  Do they work? Are they looking like they are on the way out?  It’s quick and easy to check these but you should take spare bulbs with you.

In some countries it is a legal requirement so make sure you have them.

Most new bikes have LED lights.  You can’t take new LED units but check they are working before you go.

This is perhaps one of the most contentious issues with preparing for your tour as it is hard to know exactly what you need to take with you or what you might need.

In our experience we have found that less is more.  We only have a finite amount of space on a motorbike, so making sure that everything you carry has a purpose is important.

Spare clothes, wash-kit, shoes, jacket etc are all good, although think about not packing too much.  Remember you are in your motorbike clothes most of the day, so you won’t necessarily need many clothes at all.

We provide GPX and ITN files for your Garmin and TomTom devices.  We also provide links to the maps in Google Maps.

There are lots of different Sat Nav options out there so make sure that you are able to use the one you have and are familiar with its settings.

Updating both the maps and firmware need to be done before going on a tour as we won’t always have access to wifi to update it while away.

There are lots of Screen Mirroring devices such as Chigee AIO5 BMW, Carpuride and the like, although great for a motorcycle, there is nothing better than having a dedicated Sat Nav unit.

As with any motorcycle, we want it to look good, but it also has to be the right fit for us.

Remember that you will be in the riding seat for many hours throughout the tour and having something that is comfortable is one of the best things you can do for your ride.

There are lots of options out there from pads to gel inserts and airflow options.

Tyres without doubt are the one thing that you MUST make sure are right.  They are a divisive subject we know, but making sure you have the right ones for you will make the ride so so much better.

In the UK, you must have at least 1mm of tread around 3/4 of the width around the whole circumference of the tyre.  Now, we know that 1mm is really not that great so check that your tyres have enough life in them to complete the whole tour.

When preparing for your tour, consider that you will be riding with more weight on your bike, with luggage, pillions in some cases and you will be riding in a different climate where the roads will be warmer and stickier, so the mileage you think you would get out of a tyre normally at home might not equate the same on a tour. 

If in doubt, get a new set and keep the old ones in the garage and put them back on after your tour.

In the countries that we tour in, there are lots of places to get tyres, although they have different opening times than the UK and may not carry the exact size or make you require.  Organising a tyre change is sometimes not the easiest while away.  It will also dent your riding time too! 

Your number plate should always be legal in your home country.  A country designated ‘sticker’ is required in most countries and sometimes along side the marking on the actual number plate itself.

If you are from the UK and are riding abroad, you need to have a UK sticker.  It used to be a GB sticker, but is now not the case.

Some countries are stricter than others about this.