Planning for our trips typically takes place in early spring, with tour dates in late July/ early August. Generally, we would take anything from a week to ten nights away, making a large circle from our home so as not to go through the same place twice.  We find that travelling around 80 miles a day is the most comfortable, with longer journeys split up by a few hours visiting towns and villages on the way.  We always travel two-up, so if you’re travelling solo or with other scooters, you might comfortably be able to cover more distance than that. However, there is generally always somewhere to stop and look at or visit to break up the ride and uncover some of those forgotten gems.

When planning our route, we try not to be too far away from a workshop, as a classic scooter travelling hundreds of miles is, let’s face it, always a bit of a gamble. Whenever we’ve had an unscheduled stop at a scooter workshop, regardless of the day or time, they have always risen to the occasion and got us back on the road quickly or lent me a corner of their workshop (thanks South West Scooters).  We recommend that you create your own Google map, by signing up for an account with Google, and cross-referencing workshops and places of interest with our maps.  That way, you can draw in your route, calculating distance between places, and find the best roads and stopping points. However, our Google map is smart phone friendly, so you can always just log into our website while on the road.

We know of some hardy souls who camp out on their tours, but we always stay at B&Bs and hotels, as we value having a bed and a shower at the end of the long ride.  A tip from us about accommodation is that if it has many bad reviews on Trip Advisor, rather than hoping that it must have improved because of those reviews, steer well clear.  It’s worth paying an extra few quid to get somewhere that adds to the pleasure of the trip.   Staying at different B&Bs is always one of the most interesting aspects of the tour; accommodation varies vastly and sometimes you find somewhere really wonderful for a budget price on www.laterooms.com.  However, to give you a rough idea we budget on around £80 a night or if it’s purely a place to get your head down then Travelodge usually have hotels in most areas for around £40 if you book early, but to be honest they don’t have much character.

Touring on a classic scooter gives you lots of opportunities to meet people along the route. We’ve spent time chatting with some great people who have been fascinated by our tour and the scooters we have used. Also parking up mid tour for a cuppa and bite to eat has been a magnet for people to come over and chat about the Lambretta,Vespa or other scooters they owned back in the 50’s or 60’s and their stories of a time when scooters ruled the roads.

So now it’s your turn, maybe start with just a few days away to get used to how far you comfortably want to travel. Then plan where you want to go and start scootering Britain and enjoying your scooter as a touring scooter, rather than just using them to commute or for the odd weekend or bank holiday away to the coast or scooter rallies.