Still living in West Yorkshire, just three weeks after my 17th Birthday, I passed my test and bought my first “big bike”- a 1969 Triumph Tiger 650, and I’ve still got it today! Many other bikes; British, Japanese, Italian, Spanish, Austrian and latterly, Anglo-Indian, have graced my garage since.
I first rode down to the Alps on that untrusty Triumph in 1978, as part of my university degree course in French. Soon I began taking groups down to the high mountains for white water kayaking trips in the eighties. We supported the British canoe teams in the Olympics, in the pre-worlds, and world championships 1983 and 1985. This lead to taking more groups down there, every Winter for skiing holidays.
So after redundancy in late 1999 (Kodak / Balfour Beatty), it seemed a natural move to start taking biking groups down to one of my favourite mountain places in the world.
Over the last twenty years I’ve been offering trips within the UK (our National Parks), the Isle of Man TT Races, France, Spain, Morocco, Thailand and Iceland.
My “entry level”, tried & tested destinations, such as The Yorkshire Dales and the French Alps are places I still love and go back to regularly. I was of course, born & raised in God’s Own County, so The Dales have a place in my heart.
In 1989 and again in 1993 I travelled within Nepal to follow my passions of white-water kayaking and honeymoon trekking, and so for the last few years this has become my favourite destination to run motorcycle tours after forming good relations with reliable contacts in Kathmandu.