To anyonw who in not very experienced with travelling on two wheels I have the following tips:
- Depends a lot how you drive and the road condition. I generally travel only on well paved roads and a rule of thumb would be 400km per day.
- Best hardware for supporting your smartphone Rokform, QuadLock, Interphone among others. - phone charger: These tend to brake from vibrations. Make sure it's not strapped on a hard surface that will make it vibrate. Bring a spare (or two) just in case.
- Green card (a green A4 sheet of paper from your insurance stating in which countries your insurance will cover you).
Carnet de passage for the countries listed here. Caution: - International driving licence: just a driving licence in French, passport photos needed. The vehicle registration office issues them for a small cost
- better to drive with tubeless tires. Bring a quick repair kit for fixing punctures. If you travel very remotely, a pump or CO2 cannisters would also be advised.
- It makes life easy to have a GPS with you. You can also use your smartphone but make sure it has a waterproof cover. Best app for me is OsmAnd because it's free and offline. Familiarise yourself with how it words before you go! It's not the most user friendly one but it works.
- Google maps is good but it has its flaws. I discovered who bad it was when I googled "camping near Parma, Italy" and it found 6 places. Trust me, there is not a single camping place near Parma! The google maps resulted also included Decathlong, camping shops, Camper van shops and any other place that sold tents. Download OsmAnd, hover over Parma, search "camping" and you will find the real camping places, the nearest one is 35km away.
Here is a list of places to see which you can downloand onto OsmAnd. It's very difficult to import places but I finally managed to crack it. Here is how you do it: - download my list of attractions for all of Europe here (do not change the name) - log on your PC and open whatsapp desktop. Send the file to yourself - open the file on Whatsapp on your phone - click arrow (bottom left) - select "open with OsmAnd". There you have it
