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Your first long trip or short tour

Your first long trip or short tour: Three rookie mistakes to avoid

If you’re a relatively new biker, the chances are you’ll want to get out on the road at every opportunity, and get going on a couple of long-ish trips or tours to really get used to the bike and see what it can do.

Touring is probably the best bit of biking, or at least it is for me, and really reminds me every time I get going of why I wanted a bike in the first place, after the daily cross-London ‘avoid the bendy-busses’ commute has worn me down. However, it would be fair to say that as a baby biker, the first summer that I got let loose on the roads with my shiny new driving licence with a category ‘A’ sticker on it, I was more ‘rebel without a clue’ than Sons of Anarchy on a battered old red NTV.

Consequently, my first couple of short tours from London up to Wales were slightly harder and less comfortable than they really should have been, due to my basic lack of knowledge (or as my Mother would have it, ‘common sense’) and the fact that I wasn’t really thinking like a biker.

I’m under no illusions that most bikers, even those new to the game, would probably find the following points fairly obvious, but just in case, here are three of the basic mistakes I made during my early touring days, in the hope that I might save somebody else from learning the hard way.

Mistake number one: How not to use a SatNav.

Bike SatNav is great- Or at least, that’s what I’ve been saying since I ponied up the £500 or so I needed to buy a proper bike SatNav a couple of years ago. However, when I was planning my first short tour, I didn’t have a bike SatNav, and decided that there was surely no real reason why I couldn’t just get a regular cheap car SatNav for under £100 and put it in the front of my tank pack under the clear plastic. I didn’t really need the audio, so that wasn’t a problem, I was happy just to follow the road on the screen. I even felt rather proud of myself that I took into account the battery life of the unit and scheduled in stops at which I would be able to charge it up. I’m pretty sure most of you can see the obvious problem with this plan- after all, if it was really that simple, why would Garmin and Tomtom be making a fortune out of special motorbike models?

But anyway, I got it all set up, set off and was fine for about an hour, very proud of my lateral thinking and how well things were working out. It was when I found myself following the SatNav’s directions to come off the motorway at Reading and thinking ‘this doesn’t seem right’ that the flaw in my plan became apparent. Yes, SatNavs are touch screen; and lo and behold, the flexible clear plastic front of the tank pack touches the screen, and basically sent it haywire, changing my destination and just about anything else that it could mess with to send me to Swansea via Aberdeen. My ‘SatNav’ for the rest of the trip consisted of two sides of handwritten A4 paper gaffer-taped to the top of tank.

Mistake number two: Nearly dying of hypothermia.

Ok I may be overstating it slightly; when I say I almost died, what I really mean is, I got uncomfortably cold and had to stop because I was starting to loose the feeling in my fingers and toes. It was only September when I headed out on my first tour, so certainly not the kind of brass monkey weather I would soon be getting used to, but it can be all too easy to underestimate how cold you can get on a bike going at motorway speeds, and sitting in the same position for hours at a time. By the time I’d been on the road for about an hour, my feet were numb, my fingers were stiff, and despite wearing a balaclava, the wind was whistling down the back of my neck like nobody’s business. I had to stop off for a hot drink and to pile on some extra layers, but the remainder of that day’s trip was still pretty uncomfortable as I now resembled the Michelin man, only with less freedom of movement. Not ideal. Investing in some proper biking clothing (aside from the obvious helmet, gloves, jacket, boots and trousers) became my priority; suddenly the Thinsulate-type long johns which I had giggled at in bike shops in the past seemed like the best idea in the world.

Mistake number three: Thinking you can find a petrol station when you need one.

I once had the pleasure of owning a bike with an actual real live petrol gauge on the dashboard. The novelty soon wore off when I realised that it was only accurate to within oh, say half a tank full. But anyway, with my first bike, I got used to the idea of not having a petrol gauge by doing some basic sums and working out that if I filled up when I got to around 150 miles since the last full tank and judged 150 miles of travel by resetting the mile counter to zero each up time, I would never again fall victim to that awful spluttering sound that has you frantically trying to reach for the reserve tank switch at fifty miles an hour. (And another thing, how come you can always put your hand on it first time when you don’t need it, but when you actually do, it’s mysteriously moved?) What I didn’t account for, however, was that upon noticing that I was coming up on my magic 150 miles, there wouldn’t be a petrol station for miles around. When you only have a small tank capacity, as you do on a bike, you have to plan your fuel stops into the journey. You might pass three petrol stations in half an hour, but when you actually need one, there’ll be nothing for twenty miles in any direction. This is due to a phenomenon I like to think of as ‘biker’s law.’ (Sod thinks he invented it; he didn’t.)

I could carry on writing my ‘first time touring mistakes’ list up to a total of ten items or more, but I don’t want to bore you all to death so soon. But to summarise, let me just say this.

Make sure you have the right tools for the job, whatever it is. A suitable SatNav (if you use one) appropriate clothing, all the right basic kit.

Plan ahead. Plan ahead for fuel stops, comfort breaks and where you’re going to stop for the night. ‘Biker’s law’ also extends to B&B’s and pubs.

Be philosophical about it all, and keep your sense of humour. On your first couple of tours or long trips, you’re going to find that you’re unprepared for something, or that something catches you out. You can never plan for every eventuality- this is half of the fun of biking. It’s how you manage it that makes all of the difference to whether you have a great time with a story to tell at the end of it, or if you get thoroughly fed up and resolve to stick the bike back in the garage and write the whole thing off as a bad idea.

Happy touring, and stay safe!