Top 5 tips for motorcycle holiday preparation

Motorcycle touring in Japan

1. Plan your route. Allow ample time for unexpected hold ups and allow time for plenty of comfort and rest breaks.
2. Check your bike. Make sure your servicing is up-to-date and give your bike a thorough once over. Don’t forget our essential motorcycle maintenance checklist too.
3. Pack and load your bike. It’s best to take only the bare minimum on a motorcycle holiday. Try and distribute the weight evenly across the bike’s centre of mass. Some essentials to take with you include first aid kit, tool kit, torch and a map.
4. Make sure all your documentation is up-to-date and take it along with you. This includes MOT, insurance, road tax and driving license. If you are travelling abroad you will also need to check you bike insurance covers you in your country of travel, as well as making sure you have with you an EHIC card, passport, travel insurance, breakdown cover and V5 registration doc. It is a legal requirement to be able to produce the original V5 registration document in a number of countries.
5. If you are travelling abroad check the legal requirements for country of travel. Be familiar with local speed limits before you travel, too.

Finally make sure you are dressed in comfortable, weather-appropriate protective clothing and have enough fuel and currency for your journey.

Motorcycle holiday resources we like:

Highland Motorcycle Holidays – Nigel provides self guided tour document of motorcycle holiday routes, hire advice and accommodation in the Highlands.

The opening sentences give you a flavour of what’s to come:

Read the rest of the manual at the Chinglish Files. And if you’ve got a Qingqi scooter, or any chinese import motorcycle, remember that Bikesure can give you a Chinese Scooter Insurance Quote, even if no-one else has heard of it.

Bikesure doesn’t work like that. Our long experience with insuring custom bikes, trikes and rare classics means we quote for each and every bike on its own individual merits. This means we are one of the few companies able to cover every road-legal model of scooter, no matter how unusual or new to the market. So give us a try for Chinese Scooter Insurance.

Now if only someone could do something about the “Chinglish” slogans that the manufacturers write on their bikes…

“Shen Yang – The New Generational Scooter Fron Earth”

“No One In the World Can Be My Best Partner Except the Dio – New Generation”

More here with pictures!

Click here to view the embedded video.

The guy on the bike might just be the luckiest guy in the world. If you get into a scrape you want to be wearing a high quality helmet and protective clothing.

Of course, the best gear can be expensive, but in the event of an accident you won’t have to worry about replacing all your safety gear, so long as you take out our optional helmet and leathers cover.

Usually Bennetts employ wannabe glamour models, who may look attractive in the right light, but generally know as much about insurance as I do about morris dancing. It seems that Bennetts have realised that having someone from the insurance industry who is both attractive and well-informed on the merits of the various motorcycle insurance policies available would be a good thing.

And so, presumably having failed to find anyone suitable working for them, they’ve launched a competition to recruit babes from the UK insurance industry.

They must be somewhat regretting having chosen alleged racist bully and Celebrity Big Brother contestant, Danielle Lloyd, to launch their campaign – especially so given her well known history with competitions (She “won” Miss Great Britain before being stripped of the title when it was found she was in a relationship with judge Teddy Sheringham). They’ve now been forced to cut their losses and dump the hapless glamour girl.

Of course, we already know that the hottest girls in insurance work for us, in the shape of the legendary Flux & Bikesure babes.

For proof of that, you only had to be at Stoneleigh Park last week for the Motorcycle Trade Expo, where men from around the UK bike industry had the opportunity to meet Laura and Jenny, who were there on our behalf, along with Rob, Duncan and Dave McCourt, our dealers rep.

And the dealers and traders were pleasantly surprised to find that OUR babes not only looked stunning, but also genuinely worked for us, knew all about insurance and bikes and even took an interest in their well polished helmets – our helmet and leathers cover is an essential add-on for bikers who want to look after their gear.

Check out our Flickr for more pics of some real insurance babes in action, or check out their website – fluxbabes.co.uk.