The first time I rode more than 600 km in a single day I got everything wrong. Too much luggage on the tail, tyre pressures set for city commuting, and a route I’d traced on a map at midnight without once asking myself where I’d eat or sleep. I arrived, but I remember the aches better than the road.
Motorcycle touring is not a longer version of your Sunday ride. The distance changes what matters: the road you pick, the state of the bike, how you break up the hours, what you do with the memory afterwards. This is the guide I would have wanted then — what I’ve learned riding, and what I built into RideLog because of it.
What motorcycle touring actually means
A day ride is about the riding. Touring is about the journey: several hours in the saddle, often several days, with luggage, fuel stops, weather that changes on you, and a destination that’s usually just the excuse.
That shift has practical consequences. On a two-hour ride a slightly low tyre is a nuisance; on a 500 km day it’s fatigue, then risk. On a Sunday you can improvise lunch; on a tour, a missed fuel stop in an empty valley is your whole afternoon. Almost everything below comes from that one difference.
Finding the best motorcycle roads
The best roads are rarely the fastest ones, and they’re almost never the ones the navigation app hands you by default. What makes a road worth the fuel is a mix of things: a rhythm of corners that lets you settle into it, a surface you can trust, a view worth stopping for, and enough length that you’re not back on a dual carriageway in ten minutes.
Three sources, in the order I actually use them:
- Riders who have been there. A road recommended by someone who rode it last month beats any listicle. This is why route sharing matters more than route databases.
- Terrain. Mountain passes, coastlines and lake shores produce good roads because geography forces the road to bend. Open a topographic map and the candidates announce themselves.
- Roads you’ve already ridden. The ones you half-remember are often the ones worth doing again — if you kept a record of them.
If you want concrete starting points, I’ve written up the ones I know best: the most spectacular Alpine mountain passes for high-altitude riding, the ten most scenic motorcycle routes in Italy if you want variety in one country, and the most beautiful coastal destinations to reach by motorcycle when the sea is the point.
Ride the road, not just the map
Two roads with identical shapes on a map can be completely different in the saddle. Tunnels, gravel patches, tourist traffic in August, a pass that’s still closed in May — none of that shows up in the drawn line. Ask, read, and when you can, look at photos taken by riders on the road itself rather than at the marketing shot on a tourism board’s website.
Planning: enough, but not too much
There’s a plan that helps and a plan that ruins the trip. The one that helps fixes the fixed points — where you sleep, where you refuel, what the daily distance is — and leaves the rest loose.
A rule I’ve settled on: plan around 250–350 km a day of interesting roads, not the 600 you could do on a motorway. Twisty roads take longer than the estimate, and the whole point is to be able to stop. Add a margin at the end of the day so arriving late isn’t riding tired in the dark.
Then leave the middle of the day open. The detour you take because someone at a fuel station points up a valley is usually the part you’ll tell people about.
For the full version — stages, luggage, documents, budget, what to do when the plan breaks — I go through it step by step in my guide to planning a multi-day motorcycle trip.
Preparing the bike
Nothing ruins a tour faster than a mechanical problem 200 km from anywhere. The checks are boring and they take twenty minutes.
- Tyres. Condition, age, and pressure set for a loaded bike, not an empty one. Long days at speed with luggage are the hardest thing you’ll ask of them. My complete guide to motorcycle tyres covers selection and pressure properly.
- Chain, brakes, fluids, lights. The full sequence is in my pre-ride checklist — run it before you leave, not on the morning of departure.
- Service intervals. If a service falls in the middle of your trip, do it before. Finding a workshop abroad, in August, is a story you don’t want.
- Luggage. Weight low and forward, nothing loose on the tail. Then re-check the tyre pressures, because now the bike is heavier.
Gear deserves the same attention: on a long day it’s a piece of equipment, not an outfit. Ventilation, waterproofing and protection all matter more when you can’t simply go home — I’ve covered how to choose it in my guide to technical motorcycle gear.
Riding the long days well
Fatigue arrives before you notice it. It shows up as a corner taken a little wide, a braking point missed by a metre. The countermeasures are unglamorous: stop every 90 minutes or so, drink before you’re thirsty, eat lightly.
Conditions decide the rest of the day. Heat is the one riders underestimate most — it drains you long before it becomes obviously dangerous, and I’ve written about riding through extreme heat safely. At the other end, arriving after dark on an unknown road is a different discipline: night riding asks for more space and less speed than you think.
And if you’re not alone, remember the bike handles differently and so does the day: braking distances grow, stops need to be more frequent, and the person behind you is doing their own kind of work. Read up on travelling with a passenger before the first long stage, not after.
When to go
Spring and early autumn are the touring seasons in most of Europe: mild temperatures, open passes, roads that aren’t full. High summer means heat and traffic in the places worth visiting, though the high mountains stay reasonable. In winter, high passes close — check before you plan a route across one.
If you can choose, choose the shoulder seasons and mid-week. The same road at 8 a.m. on a Wednesday in June and at 3 p.m. on a Sunday in August is not the same road.
Keep a record of every tour
Here’s the part riders skip, and then regret. After a few seasons the tours blur together: you know you rode a beautiful road somewhere south of the Apennines, but not which one, or when, or how you got onto it.
I built RideLog because of this. It records your rides automatically — motion sensors and GPS work out that you’re riding, so there’s no start button to forget and no half-recorded day. Every road stays there, with distance, duration and speed, and you can replay any ride later. It also tracks fuel and running costs across a trip, which is how you find out what a tour actually costs rather than what you guessed, and it keeps your maintenance reminders — service, tyres, insurance — so a deadline doesn’t ambush you two days before departure.
The routes you record can be shared with the community, with the photos you took along the way, and you can see what other riders have ridden near you. That’s the honest answer to “where do I find good roads”: from the people who rode them.
I need to be clear about two things. RideLog is not a turn-by-turn navigator — it won’t call out the next junction, and if you want a voice guiding you down calculated twisties, apps like Calimoto, Kurviger or Scenic are built for that and do it well. And your data doesn’t go anywhere: RideLog has no servers, everything stays on the phone, it works offline on the mountain roads where you have no signal, and you can export the whole thing to PDF or CSV whenever you want.
👉 Download RideLog free — iPhone and Android, all core features included.
To see how recording and sharing work in practice, I’ve covered it in detail in my piece on motorcycle route apps, and compared the wider field in my rundown of the best motorcycle apps.
Start with one long day
You don’t need a three-week plan to begin. Pick a road you’ve never ridden that’s four hours away, prepare the bike properly, leave early, and come back the long way. That’s a tour. Everything in this guide scales up from there.
👉 Download RideLog free and let it record the road — you’ll want it back next season.
Frequently asked questions
What is motorcycle touring?
Motorcycle touring means riding long distances for the journey itself, usually over a full day or several days, with luggage and planned stops. What separates it from a normal ride is the preparation it demands: the bike, the gear, the daily distance and the fuel and rest stops all need thinking about in advance.
How many kilometres should I ride in a day when touring?
On interesting roads, 250–350 km a day is a realistic target that leaves room to stop, eat and look around. You can cover far more on motorways, but you’ll arrive tired and you’ll have seen nothing. Plan a margin at the end of each day so a delay doesn’t turn into riding tired after dark.
How do I find the best motorcycle roads?
Start with the terrain — mountain passes, coastlines and lake shores force roads to bend — then check them against riders who have actually been there recently. Route-sharing apps help here: in RideLog you can see roads other motorcyclists have ridden near you, with their photos, and filter by distance and rating.
Do I need a navigator for motorcycle touring?
It helps, but it’s a separate tool. A turn-by-turn navigator (Calimoto, Kurviger, Scenic) guides you along a calculated route while you ride. RideLog does something different: it records the roads you ride automatically, lets you replay and share them, and keeps your fuel and maintenance data. Many riders use one of each.
Is there a free app to track my motorcycle tours?
Yes. RideLog is free on iPhone and Android with all core features: automatic ride recording, fuel and cost tracking, maintenance reminders, and route sharing with the community. There’s an optional premium — a flexible subscription or a one-off lifetime purchase — but you don’t need it to track your tours.
