Merry Christmas 2023 and best wishes for 2024

Well it’s almost the end of 2023 and time to start looking ahead to 2024.

At the moment I have no real idea about what the biking year will bring or where I’ll get to.

2023 was certainly a good year with a few very good trips made. It was also the year when I said farewell to the BMW F800 which had turned out to be a very decent and enjoyable bike.

There was a new bike in 2023

Saying goodbye to the F800 also meant that I welcomed it’s replacement the F900 XR.

I have absolutely loved the F900 and used it for a short trip to Scotland and a longer and quite superb trip down to Spain and Portugal.

If you missed the Scotland trip you can read about that here.

You can head to the Spain/Portugal trip at this link. Prior to those trips II had a week in Ireland on the F800R.

So all in all and despite some pretty unusual weather patterns with way too much rain, that wasn’t great for getting out on a bike, it still turned out to be a decent year for travel and for biking and a year that left with me with plenty of fine memories.

Not all my travel was on the bikes

In addition to the bike trips I also had superb holidays with my wife in Poland, Scotland, Hungary and Wales.

So all in all 2023 delivered and has been a really good year for travel and trips.

So what about 2024?

At the moment I haven’t decided what to do and where to go in the coming year.

It wont involve any change of bikes. I’m very happy with the bikes I have, which in addition to the F900XR include the magnificent RnineT and the always beautiful Moto Guzzi V7

The Moto Guzzi was barely used last year and I intend to do more miles on that bike in the coming year as I expect to have a little more time on my hands than in the past few years.

Thoughts that have run through my mind include maybe doing the Ireland/Scotland trip I had planned and then cancelled due to the dreadful weather we were having.

I’ve also thought about heading down to Spain and Portugal again and maybe spending some time down in the south west perhaps around the Cadiz area in Andalucia.

Competing thoughts

But I also have competing thoughts about a trip to Germany. A trip that maybe taking in Luxemburg and Belgium appeals to me as well. It’s a few years since I have been down that way and I absolutely love south west Germany … or maybe I should head for Italy again.

I have motorcycled a lot in Italy as well as holidaying there with my wife quite a few times and it’s a county that has never disappointed me at any level.

But maybe…

A one way ticket down to Santander or Bilbao and then heading across northern Spain, across the Pyrenees, across France to Italy and then onto Slovenia and across the Dolomite’s could make a good trip.

I did a trip like that a few years ago on my own and it was quite brilliant. I ended up making a good route home from Slovenia via Austria, Germany, Luxembourg etc … the thought of another trip like that has also crossed my mind.

There are plenty of options I really don’t know at the moment quite what I will do – although if I am to book a ferry down to Spain I’ll probably need to do that sooner rather than later .

But first things first

Before the end of the ‘festive holiday period’ I plan to have least sketched in the dates that are out of scope due to other commitments.

Once those dates are marked it’s time to look at possible trip dates . We already have our first (non biking) trip in the diary. That first trip is one we are both really looking forward to. It’s going to be a pretty remote stay in Scotland – not too far from Skye.

 

 

So once again …

Thanks for reading and visiting the blog – and best wishes for Christmas and the New Year