Comme d’habitude, it’s the time of the year to sum up what was going on this year…at least with respect to motorbiking. Not as spectacular as 2023, but not boring either. Some highs and not so highs, but entertaining.
The first motorcycle-related ‘activity’ this year was a sad one. End of January, many fellow motorcycle riders from Britain and beyond joined in Cornwall to pay the last honours to Kevin Weller. Kevin and Lyn were a great couple, inseparable, riding everywhere during rallies and rides, always good for a laugh. After the touching ceremony, we joined Lyn at the wake to celebrate Kevin’s life.
The first European Ride to Eat in February this year was in Northern France, close to the Belgian border. The topic this year was ‘motorcycle statues’. After a cool ride and the obligatory picture, we joined for dinner and a good chat.
My BMW dealer invited for a test ride day in March, but I was too late to realise it, so I could only pick rides with the ‘less desirable’ models. So I had to choose a F 900 GSA and a S1000RR. The downside with these tests is that you can only ride in a guided group. This was not a big deal with the 105 hp two cylinder inline GSA, a solid bike. The 270º firing interval makes the motor agile, but gives it also a somewhat rough character. Very different: the inline four beast. S1000RR. Not one R, bur two RR. A whopping 210 hp.
Riding in a slow group was painful, I could only rev it up to 50 % nominal-speed range. But this was enough for about 100 hp and quite impressive, long before the real music kicks in. The riding position was surprisingly relaxed, not riding on a razor’s edge as expected. But even with ‘the hand break on’, the traction control light in the dashboard was flickering like a disco light. Flabbergasting. Would be interesting to ride it properly.
In April, I was invited by the IBA UK’s president Phil Weston to give a talk about long-distance motorcycle rallying at the IBA UK’s annual jamboree. I gladly accepted and presented my experiences and ‘acquired wisdom’ in front of an interested crowd in Coventry.
As I had planned to do a tour with the XBR in summer, I started to work on the bike in spring. I had ordered a large windshield called Slip Streamer Turbo. It was the largest windshield I could find that had some universal mounts. It was a bit tricky to attach it to the XBR, but in the end I managed. It replaced my old, smaller windshield that I was using for decades. As the saying goes: the better is the enemy of the good. The massive windshield provides me with an even larger surface to cover me of the wind and the cold, two aspects that I deemed important from my next trip. I did some test rides and concluded that the new gadget was stable and should be reliable for future adventures.
Another major improvement was to build a mount for my auxiliary tank to push the bikes fuel capacity from 20 L to 37 L. I had the tank mounted to the XBR in 2013 Iron Butt Rally but I used a different amount in the past. As this amount was not available anymore I had to make a new one. I decided to apply my dodgy welding skills to construct a basis where the tank could be mounted on. The whole thing would go on my rack in the back of the bike where normally my big 80 L aluminium box would be placed. I still had some iron lying around and started to construct what looked like a hashtag and welded it together. In the end the whole thing seemed to work and after I had connected the fuel line to some new connectors that combined the old and the auxiliary fuel line together. I also invested in a few more farkles such as a new GPS holder and was quite happy with the result of all the transformation.
The railing year started early with the 12 hour Brit Butt Light rally. The starting point was near Bristol were all riders met at the same location in the morning. The difference to longer rallies is that the riders get the rally documentation already a few days before the start. In my case I thought I had an excellent plan albeit a very ambitious one. It turned out that my plan indeed was very ambitious as I had to drop a point or two in order to stay on schedule but I had fun and a good weather and ride made it a nice day out. I even got close to the vicinity of Greater London before I turned around, making a detour through the centre of Oxford and Bristol before I arrived back at the finish. I thought that I had done an almost perfect rally as I had to ride really very engaged to make this plan work.
At the scoring I realised that one of my combos that I had chosen so cunningly was missing one location. I went back to my bike to doublecheck. Indeed I had not visited one location? I checked again my plan. Indeed, during planning I had missed one location on the map probably because it was of a light colour and went unnoticed. This was very frustrating as I had double and triple checked my whole route and did not spot that. This meant that I lost a tremendous amount of points as my whole plan had suddenly collapsed. In the end I achieved a second place behind Arian Steiner and was quite miffed with the result. I don’t have a problem that someone has a better performance than I do, but when these stupid errors happen I virtually kick myself in the ass. This was an error not to be repeated.
The next opportunity to make up for this error came already two weeks later. I had decided to join a new rally offered in Europe double point the Celtic rally, organised by the IBA Ireland. This first rally was called the tartan edition and took place in Scotland. This was an opportunity I could not miss. I always love to ride in Scotland and then 12 hours of rallying that was not to be missed. I took the ferry from Rotterdam to Hull overnight and rode up to the Scottish East Coast the next day, a smooth ride without any pressure. I joined some other participants in the Rally Hotel in Dundee and early the next morning we set off for our 12 hour plan that we had designed to ride the days before. We all set off from an iconic point and I still had not really fully understood all the rally rules as it turned out later. Nevertheless I followed my plan and rode first through the lowlands and later up to the highlands all the way up to Inverness and then to the west coast open where I had to walk up to an old castle in Oban. I did enjoy the ride and was not aware that I had not fully understood the rally rules as I passed several locations that I had not considered eligible according to the rules, thereby giving away a big sum of points along the way. This was really a very nice ride even the weather was so-so, still a bit fresh as it was only beginning of May. I returned to the finish in the same hotel and learned only at the scoring of my massive misunderstanding! Did I cock up again? However, I was lucky enough to have sufficient points to come on first place and to be the first winner of this new Irish rally. The next day I rode back through Scotland and England and arrived in Belgium with a pretty much worn tyre.
A little interlude was the German Ride to Eat in May. I picked my old ST1100 for a day out. The meeting point was at the Teufelstisch in the Palatinate and quite a big bunch of riders joined. We met for dinner in Pirmasens and I rode home afterwards. I concluded that the old steed is still a great long distance bike and sponsored a new shock shortly after. I found a place in internet that could replace the contacts of my old Garmin Zumo 590 so the navigation is again up to its job.
I did another test ride day, but this time at a Honda dealer. I had signed up for testing the Transalp and the Africa Twin. The first bike was all right, maybe a bit strained, but ok. But I was really surprised about the performance of the Africa Twin, a bike that I could imagine as a future RTW bike.
Hannes Bagar, who is still riding a test bike with 550.000 km on the clock – without big issues. I had chosen a bike with DCT – the automatic transmission system. To my surprise, I got used to it immediately. The ride was super smooth – both in terms of suspension (typical Belgian concrete roads) and because of the absence of any load changes. Honestly, truly impressive. A test to be remembered.
In June I had everything ready – a cunning, perfect plan and a prepared bike to run the 12 hours Magic 12 rally in Baden-Würtemberg in the south-west of Germany. Just before I set off the news reached me that the rally was cancelled – the heavy rains in Germany had caused a lot of floodings that lead to a declaration of state of emergency. Not some good conditions to hold a rally. It was postponed to 2026.
In June, I finally took off to the big ride with the old XBR500 of this year – first to the European Ride to Eat in Estonia, and then, through torrential rain in Finland – up to the North Cape where I started my End to End ride with the aim to arrive at the Southern tip of Europe not later than 78 hours after the start. In the beginning everything went according to plan, but in the middle of Sweden, my chain sprocket decided that it had reached the end of its lifetime. The subsequent rescue mission was also epic and could not have happened without the help of Ralf and Daniel who helped me massively. Despite the failure, a ride to be remembered.
In early July, I visited the yearly XBR meeting in Franconia – I had missed it for various reasons the last years. Although I had to squeeze in a short business trip to Munich, it was good to be with the XBR500 and GB500 lovers. Lots of fuel talk.
In August it was finally time to take my raucous, 680cc ‘yippie ki yay’ XBR to the Alpes again. I organised another ‘XBR Alpentour’ for the old friends. It was the 30th anniversary of the first one in 1994; I had organised one every August until 2014. Since then, it has only happened two times that we brought the old group together. So it was a special occasion again. But first I had planned a pre-tour with Gernot and Johannes as a warm-up. We met in Tegernsee and rode through the Bavarian Pre-Alps and over the TImmelsjoch to our base for the next days, the Hotel Penegal on top of the Penegal mountain. From there, you have spectacular views over the Adige valley and the Italian Alps.
The next day, Johannes and I did a tour over the Stelvio Pass, Umbrail and Ofen Pass to do a lunch break in Livigno. We returned back to the hotel over the Gavia and Tonale passes. The following day, Gernot joined us and we rode to the Croce Domini Pass and back home again. We were warmed up now and left the Penegal the next day to meet the other chaps in a nice, traditional restaurant near Sterzing for lunch. Spectacular food and good company, the secret of the XBR Alpentours. Apart from the great roads, of course. The next three days, we visited all the great places in the area – Southern Dolomites, Pasubio area and Lake Garda area with the Monte Baldo area – bringing back good old memories and making new ones. A great time together!
In September, it was time to do the Brit Butt Rally, finally again as defending champion. As ever, some great trip with lots of memories made. The result was very pleasing, I had to pay many rounds after the ceremony which I did with great pleasure – winning the Brit Butt Rally, the longest, frequently organised long-distance motorcycle rally is always something special. I should know – this was already the sixth time 🤗. The report is here.
In autumn, two articles were published about me and my tours and bikes. First, a whole one-pager in the prestigious ‘Süddeutsche Zeitung’ and somewhat later a paragraph in an article about high mileage bikes in Bike, the largest motorcycle magazine in Britain. Very nice indeed. Links are in the top menu of this page.
In autumn, two articles were published about me and my tours and bikes. First, a whole one-pager in the prestigious ‘Süddeutsche Zeitung’ and somewhat later a paragraph in an article about high mileage bikes in Bike, the largest motorcycle magazine in Britain. Very nice indeed. Links are in the top menu of this page.
End of October, I rode to the European Ride to Eat at the Faaker See in Carinthia in Austria, stayed for the dinner and started a business trip the next day that lead me to the Lago Maggiore and back to Miesbach and Belgium. A relaxed, but most fitting trip to conclude the year 2024. All in all, a more kind of ‘average, good’ year 😁, with the exception of the Nordic trip with the XBR. That was epic, even or because of the outcome.
What’s up for 2025? Well, the usual rallies – BBR, Celtic, M12 – and the six days rally through France, Spain and Portugal. Looking forward to that. And there’s another possible job for the old XBR to visit another, so far unknown country: I heard that it is now possible to enter Algeria on motorbike…more on this channel.
Hutzlmandl On Tour 