pre xmas europe trip?
 

i am off on my yamaha TTR600 (it's a single, agricultural enduro bike, quite off-roady), few days before christmas, from london UK, via dover-calais ferry, through eastern france, switzerland, across the snowy alps, to reach northern italy for christmas....

if there is anyone who fancies some miles together... get in touch!

the spirit of my trip is: taking it easy, cruising at low-speed well away from motorways, enjoying the cold and frosty countryside roads (early morning starts)... and challange the snow! will do about 500 / 600 km a day, optimisticly... the trip may last from 3 to 5 days.
will return to london sometimes in early january.

any good for someone?

wishing all the bikers of this forum a great christmas time!

I've just come back from something similar - UK to the Alps and back on my CCM trailie. Get yourself wired up - electric jacket, grips etc, it makes it a lot more comfortable. Think about prebooking hotels as well, nothing worse than sitting on the kerb in the rain because all the hotels in town are full.

cool... have you got any pics of your trip? it sounds great!
where in the alps did you go? any nice road to suggest?

thanks for the advise... will gear up well.

as per bookings, prefer not to plan anything and risk it, as i won't know where i will be when... will decide on the exact road to hit day by day, and depending how cold / iced it will be, not sure how many Km will do daily and so on..
anyway... only hitting countriside villages, rather than towns, last year didn't have any problems with hotels
:mchappy:

this is my bike:

http://web.onetel.com/~dieg0/ttr.jpg

I wrote it up for the ride tales section, have a look in there.

I only mentioned pre booking because I have spent so many winter nights scratching around for hotels in France when they've all been full for one reason or another. Holiday times such as Xmas and school half terms are particularly bad but I got caught out by a political conference booking all the hotel rooms in Reims this time. You don't have to pre book weeks ahead, if you're using one of the cheap chains - Etap, F1 etc, get them to phone the next one that morning. You don't have to turn up if you get a better offer.

yup... sounds sensible.

had a read at your tale... it's great, very interesting and very well written, thank you!
and nice bike, btw, cool photos too.

can't wait to hit the road now, in a cold wintry early morning!

Your nearest snow to Calais might well be in the Ardnenes , Belgium Luxembourg area. We had a good load dumped down there earlier this week - up to 40cm in some parts and the temeprature hasn't moved much off Zero most days since. I'm going to try and head down there tomorrow in my Landrover for some 4x4 fun in the snow :thumbup1: