Motorcycles
What bikes are suitable for a trip?
Road tours
Basically, any bike of around 500cc or above that is road legal and in good condition is suitable for a road based tour.
We see everything from Harleys to old classic British bikes, super scoots to full on superbikes in Morocco, so whatever you enjoy riding is fine.
You don’t have to carry luggage, as that is all taken in our support truck, so you don’t have to have panniers fitted- We do strongly advise that you have some way of carrying a couple of litres of water, a camera and so on, so a small topbox or dry bag on a rear rack is a good idea.(failing that, a small rucksack with a water bladder like a camelback system is required- Don’t underestimate how hot Morocco can get!)
Your bike should have enough tyre wear left in it to do up to 3000 miles (or bring a spare that we can have fitted/fit ourselves) and your brakes should be up to the job as well- we do go up and down some steep and twisty mountain roads and crash barriers are not something that spoil the views very often, so you will need to be able to ride safely on this type of road.
As well as having enough wear left on them to do the trip, your tyres should be in good condition and road legal by European standards-Moroccan roads can get quite rough at times with frost damage, potholes and from time to time, sand blown across the road, so sticky racing tyres are not at al recommended!
Dual sport bikes with Knobbly or dual-purpose tyres are also fine and you shouldn’t worry about their performance on the road- several of our tour lead riders run Continental TKC80 tyres for every trip and there are few people who will keep up with some of them on the twisty roads even on road tyres!
Our road trips are focussed on seeing the beauty and variety of the country, taking in the scenery and culture rather than ‘hooning around’, so we set a sensible pace all through the trip…..we all enjoy the riding side of things as well, so riders who enjoy twisties and fast straights will have ample opportunity to play, but we always re-group before going through a main town.
This means that less experienced riders or those on slower bikes shouldn’t have any problems on one of our road trips and shouldn’t worry about ’slowing everybody down’ – we do ask that you speak to us if you have notched up less than around 2000 miles on the road on a large capacity machine or have held a full license for less than two years though.
All of our road trips are suitable for pillions.
The maximum distance we ride in a day is around 300 miles, with the normal day being between 150 and 200 miles, so seat comfort is important , particularly if you have a pillion (which usually means you can’t move around so much to stretch and so on)
We do, however, stop frequently for photographs , ‘comfort breaks’ and drinks, as well as having a sensible lunch break, so the day’s riding is broken up nicely.
Our support vehicle also has spare seats, so if your pillion wants a break, that’s no problem either- sometimes seeing the scenery from a car without a helmet and riding gear on can seem like a nice change to even the keenest pillion passenger!
Off- road tours
Any dual sport bike of around 500cc or above is suitable for our off-road trips, though some of the ’softer’ models do benefit from things like progressive fork springs and harder, more protective bash plates as we do cover some bumpy and rocky tracks.
We’ve had everything from the venerable Serow to the ‘unstoppable’ R1200 GS adventure on our off-road trips- all have advantages and disadvantages but as long as a bike can keep up on the road sections but still handle the off-road tracks, it’s fine.
(We will accept smaller bikes like the Serow and the TTR 250 on some trips but please contact us first so we can look at the mix of bikes already booked on a trip to try and keep things balanced for everyone’s enjoyment- the normal size of bike we have tends to be the 600/650 and upwards large trail or enduro bike- our staff bikes include an 1150GSA, a modified DR650Se and a full-on BMW 650 Rallye bike as well as a rather well modified V-Strom in the past!)
Between us, we have many years experience in setting up bikes for longer distance travel and off-roading, so please contact us if you have any doubts about your bike’s suitability or want to know about modifications we can suggest or would recommend for a particular model
Our off-road tours cover a wide mix of surfaces ranging from hard-packed gravel to sandy pistes and some loose, rocky tracks as well- there isn’t much clay type mud in Morocco so we don’t often get tyres getting ‘clogged up’ like we do in the UK and Northern Europe, so in general, the harder grades of tyre are better.
As a minimum, Pirelli scorpion MT60-R tyes as fitted to some models of larger KTM or the Continental Escape tyres are OK, but a more aggressive tread pattern is recommended.
Our favourite tyre for these trips would probably be the Conti TKC80 which gives a very nice compromise between on -road manners and off-road performance- several of our lead bikes use these and they are surprisingly good both on and off-road.
For the lighter bikes, we often use the superb Pirelli MT21 Enduro tyre which is both road legal and yet works extremely well on rocky and hard terrain.
Again though, please contact us for advice on tyre choices if you have any doubts.
We are very happy to transport your own tyres down with us and arrange to have them fitted in Spain before we set off for Morocco on the first day of a trip (you would need to arrive in Spain on the Saturday rather than a Sunday for us to have this done) – we also often supply tyres as well and have linked up with an Enduro bike outfit/shop that has supplied the BMW enduro team with tyres for their training in the hills around Malaga
Tags: Motorcycles, Off-road trips, Road trips, What bike
