Top 10 Adventure Motorcycling Do's

01. Set a departure date

There’s nothing quite like inking it in the diary, telling all your friends and family and organising a mammoth send-off to actually make you go. Just the potential humiliation of bottling it at the last minute should be enough to get you to Dover, and after that… well, you might as well keep going.

02. Set a goal

Although there’s a certain vague, hippie appeal to aimlessly roaming the globe with no set purpose, in reality this kind of travel can quickly become dispiriting. Maybe it’s an Anglo Saxon thang, but being able to say ‘I’m riding to… Cape Town/Mongolia/Timbuktu, etc’ helps to focus your journey and gets you going on those rainy mornings when you wake up in a tent with dodgy guts in the middle of nowhere and wonder what the hell you’re doing. If you are a master of Eastern philosophy or just seeking some existential angst then ignore this advice.

03. Read the Adventure Motorcycling Handbook

Chris Scott’s excellent book tells you all you need to know about this motorcycle travel lark. It’s packed with real-life advice and tales from the road, tons of detailed information and best of all it’s sprinkled with a dry humour that makes it an entertaining read even if you have no intention whatever of venturing outside of dear old Blighty. But be warned – approach with extreme caution: will induce severe case of itchy feet.