revtothelimit - motorbike forum

Mini-write up of my recent trip.

Our route had been meticulously planned by MAC (of VD), with the aim being to get to, and do, the Swiss Alps five-pass loop: Furka, Susten, Grimsel, Nufenen, and the cobbled one, Gotthard.

Distance-wise the plan was ~2500 miles. 200-250 per day, plus two longer 350 days to get from Calais to Germany and back at the start and end of the route.
My trip by the end was 2528, with 2037 of those being on the continent - though somebody else got 2118, so YMMV

It was my first European tour for a few years. And on a smaller bike than ever before - the baby KTM 390 Duke
I contemplated it for a while after being invited, and then decided that as it can do 99 mph, it'd survive

In preparation, I added a Givi rack and top box, and a Puig screen to help cope with the motorway sections.

I also packed a litre of oil to handle how much I was going to be ragging it, as this bike EATS oil.
Plus a litre of fuel and a syphon in case of emergencies, given the 11 litre tank.

Here's the planned route:

Day 0 - Friday 26th June. UK heatwave.

This was a day for getting to a hotel in Ashford, given we had the channel tunnel booked for 7.54am Saturday morning.

Timings were planned as follows: leave home 10.15am ish, meet one of the others at 11am ish. Get to Ashford 5/6pm ish.

I met one of the group who lives not too far from me (the others were coming from Yorkshire way) and together we headed down the A5 (rather than motorways all the way) before jumping on the M25 and filtering around most of it, with my jacket open to cope with the ridiculous heat. Yes, I managed to catch the sun.

Down the M26/M20 and filled up with fuel before grabbing some food, meeting the others, and seeing an alarm for 5.10am. No air-conditioning in the rooms, so it was hotter than the surface of the sun. Minimal sleep.

Day 1:

Chunnel at 7.54am Sat...

The day started with a 5:10 alarm. It pissed it down on the way to the tunnel, then the actual train was delayed by an hour.

We then headed from France to Belgium, and it was HOT. Rode through a cool thunderstorm with forked lightning flashing in the clouds ahead of us, and then straight back to extreme heat - where the bike dashes were reading 40 degrees.

Dropped into Germany and hit 42.5 degrees Decided against doing a planned section of fun roads to avoid heatstroke.

Arrived at the campsite on the banks of the Mosel river, threw the tents up and me and a couple of the lads went for a swim in the river to cool down, which was just what was needed, and proper lush.

There were people blatting up and down in boats and jet skis too. Perfect weather for it.

Then showers, and out for food a few km away - to which we all rode in shorts, t-shirts and helmets like rebellious teenagers

Turned in to bed at 10.30pm German time, and 33 degrees Did not need a sleeping bag

Ready to get started on the fun roads the next morning, heading down into France

Day 2: the start of the fun roads

Today was half Germany half France, lots of big sweepy forest bends through the mountains, and down into Alsace, where it somehow still managed to be hotter than the surface of the sun. So much fun.

A cycle race closed a key road at the start of the day and made the days routes shorter than planned, but as it was a long hot day it wasn't a bad thing.

Highest temperature we saw was 38 degrees. We made an executive decision and rented an apartment for the night, so we could escape the heat a bit.

Stood on the balcony watching lightning in the distance was balmy warm and lush.

Day 3:

More fun French roads today, including Ballon d'Alsace, Route de Joffre and Route des Crêtes.

Ending up at a campsite on a lake in France. More post ride swimming ensued.

Lots of technical roads, lots of overtaking performance cars (including a very nice Porsche and a few Audis etc) plus other motorbikes, which is always amusing when we're fully loaded with luggage

The D39 was an epic road, but they've all been epic roads

Near the end of today one of the 1290 Super Adventure bikes' clutch boiled
Handily he and another friend are engineers, so some brake fluid was bought, campsite maintenance was carried out and we were all sorted for the morning.

Oh, and it 'only' got up to 30 degrees, so was way more bearable

Day 4:

A pretty long/eventful day.

Started with a lush early morning swim in the lake, left the campsite by 8am, patisserie for breakfast and then on the road.

We rented an apartment in Italy for the night, as it was going to be a fairly long day and likely to be raining when we got there.

Some fucking amazing roads through the French Alps. Decent lunch by a huge lake in France near Annecy, surrounded by Alps.
More fucking amazing roads through more French Alps and into the Italian ones, chasing supercars (including a Lancia Delta Integrale, if you can technically call that a supercar?) and playing with other bikes.

Finally high enough to ride past snow on the side of the road, though not much, because again it's been a 30 degree day.

Event #1: we got our bikes covered in fresh tar and gravel thanks to French road maintenance Literally had to pull over to get the gravel off our tyres, and it's going to take hours to get all the tar out of all the nooks and crannies.

Event #2: I feel I need to start this bit by saying I haven't crashed for about 20 years - you can see what's coming, can't you?
Having zoomed my way up one of today's Alps, round a ton of technical bends, I managed to highside my bike on some gravel at the top of the Col de Méraillet at approximately zero miles an hour, while attempting to leave the car park where we'd stopped at the the top waiting for the slower member of the group (surprised it wasn't me? Me too ) to catch up.

(We know exactly what happened re the highside because we watched it back on the camera footage from my bike, otherwise I'd have just said I lost the front end).

Bike was a bit scuffed, but mostly fine, and so was I.
Scuffs on the bike are not too bad, but will annoy me so I'll need to replace a few bits - plus the bars are very slightly out of line, which has been diagnosed as a bolt in the bracket, so that's the first priority to sort - everything else is basically cosmetic.
For me, I got away with a few bruises, a scraped knee, intercostal muscle strain in my ribs, a bruised pelvis, and I did also develop a bit of concussion an hour or so later on (the weird vision thing - I've had it from Krav Maga a few times, so clocked what it was) but that went away again pretty quickly.

Engineer mates to the rescue again, swapped my snapped foot peg for the rear pillion one and we had another good run for the rest of the afternoon

Knackered when we arrived though, grabbed pizza, then did some more checking over my bike, shower, and bed. I scored the room with the double bed thanks to my incident - win.

I remained not even a bit shaken up after the mini crash. It was basically falling over leaving a car park, just in a slightly dramatic way
If I'd stacked it on a bend it would be an entirely different story. Oh and it happened right in front of a bunch of German car enthusiasts, including that Lancia Delta, so there was not only my mates checking I was alright, but also a bunch of German car aficionados - I felt like a right muppet

Day 5:

Another long day (Italy > Switzerland, with four of the five Swiss passes planned).

We left Italy via the St Bernard pass, up over into Switzerland. The view from the top was the inside of a cloud, we could just about see the cross on the island in the lake
And then it absolutely threw it down for the first time the entire holiday, so we stopped for lunch and it mostly cleared up.
High today of 20 - bit of a change!

We then started the three-pass loop - Furka pass
> Susten pass > Grimsel pass.

Furka was stunning - snow at the top, and the famous abandoned hotel thing.

But even though the passes were all showing as open, mudslides closed the Susten road - presumably from the torrential morning rain - which we discovered halfway up, which also meant we couldn't continue the loop and do the Grimsel. So we turned round (minor insect with one of the adventures toppling over mid U-turn ) and did the Furka in the opposite direction (which is 2429m high). Hence the route map today looks a bit odd!

Made an executive decision to camp instead of doing the fourth planned pass of the day.

Today's standout cars were a McLaren and an E-type Jag, plus what must have been at least 60 crazy tiny polish Fiats on some sort of rally

Camping in a glacial valley in the Alps at 1370m was a bit chiller than the last few nights, down to about 16 degrees.

Day 6:

We started off by doing the remaining planned famous passes in the Swiss Alps - Nufenen (which at 2478m is the highest pass entirely in Switzerland) and Gotthard. Gotthard is cobbled, which makes for interesting hairpins!

The Swiss Alps are insanely stunning. So we started to make a point of stopping for photos.

Then we headed across Switzerland, being very well behaved because the speeding fines here are means tested

As soon as we got down out of the Alps it warmed right up - high of 32 - and we started to see black Kites flying everywhere, which was cool.

Got to Lake Konstanz and crossed the border into Germany by heading over a bridge, and then did a couple of lush roads, including one called the L440 which was ace, up to a campsite at a place called Schomberg. Less technical roads (after the passes, anyway), so less brain dead as a result, which was nice.
The campsite is next to a lake so we went for a swim, then had dinner.

Back to the heat today high of 32, still at 29 degrees post dinner.

Day 7:

Today was more of Germany - heading up through the black forest riding through the 31 degree Germany/France borders - lots of lovely Black Forest bends, although we didn't stop for photos at all...

Shout out to the B48. What a road.

Camping on the banks of the Mosel River in Germany again, but a different bit to the first night.

There was a jet ski flying along the river as we came over the bridge, and the road follows the river alongside it, so I think we've technically raced a jet ski now (and won, obvs)

Had a quick swim in the river before dinner.

Day 8:

The last leg before the Chunnel home - blasting back through Luxembourg/Belgium/France. I can't believe how quickly it went

We decided to have a long day and do some fun roads in the morning through Luxembourg, before hoofing it along motorways for the second half of the day to end up in Calais pre-chunnel - 350 miles ish, with a hotel booked in Calais.

The roads in Luxembourg were something else - they were like a race track - beautiful black tarmac surfaces, sweeping bends, we couldn't have chosen a better final blast. Epic.

Last meal of the trip, followed by a walk down to Calais beach and a brief paddle in the sea - so a decent end to the day.

Day 9:

Headed off to the Chunnel early. Got one an hour before we were booked, then M20 > M25 > A5 back home.

FIN

I was really pleased that I could keep pace with the lads on their massive adventure bikes most of the time, (some random at a fuel station on Monday came over to tell me how impressed he was that I'd come from from the UK on it when "most people come on adventure bikes - pussies").

I'm also now confident on handling hairpins, I've never done much trail breaking before, so it really helped having an ex-IAM observer along for the ride to give me pointers

Sounds like a fantastic trip, incidents are part of it. My biggest bother these days is HEAT, time of year is a vital consideration these days.

Dodgy69 wrote: Wed Jul 08, 2026 8:33 am Sounds like a fantastic trip, incidents are part of it. My biggest bother these days is HEAT, time of year is a vital consideration these days.

It was proper epic. When it dropped below 40 we acclimatised pretty quickly tbh - lots of hydration and ice-cream stops!

Two of the group had mesh jackets and really rated them.

(Posts now with added photos!)

I can't believe you didn't pop in to see Noggin.

Pirahna wrote: Wed Jul 08, 2026 9:14 am I can't believe you didn't pop in to see Noggin.

We were going to try to!
Honestly we we're so knackered with the heat, I couldn't get my brain into gear to plan it

Thanks for posting,it looked like you all had a good tour.
I plan on heading that way mid August/early September when,hopefully it's cooled off a bit.In the meantime I'll enjoy the sunny weather over here

Sounds epic, I'm jealous, (well apart from the camping, still not my thing)

Good tour, epic write up, and don't worry about the dings on the bike - honorable battle scars!

Also shows that it is NOT necessary to have a huge behemoth to do tours, my Honda 500 coped as did your 390 KTM. The best touring bike is the one you have got.

Oh, and twice my fuel tank got down to 10km left Both times I filled up I got 10.9 litres in

That was the biggest issue tbh, but given we needed to stop to drink fluids, it was also a non-issue. It became a standard Cardo intercom question

Other than that, the luggage weight probably contributed to the off, but was a non-issue when it came to general handing, and getting on the power out of a bend/on an overtake involved a lot of booting up through the gears, so my litre of oil got eaten up