First of all, we would like to introduce ourselves. We are Mark and Veronika young couple of explorers and food lovers who love to explore each corner of historic Europe. You may be asking why Europe and no exotic countries. The answer is that we both like the spirit of historic estates from ancient times when visiting them and the imagination of day life when in best condition and use. We feel, that Europe has a lot more to offer then any of us can think about. With love to food we are greedy to try and taste other cuisines which will determine places where we will go.
Our plan is to link historic places, great food and do adventure riding on local and stunning mountain roads with a bit of off-road. We will do wild camping when possible to keep the journey as much adventurous as we can. All of this is going to happen on the road from Scotland to Sicily on one lovely motorbike Honda Transalp XL650V bought 3 years ago in United Kingdom.
Mark already owned a couple of bikes when decided for Transalp. He never really intended to buy another.
It happened in 2013 when we came to live in UK and started exploring South of England on scooter, Vespa LX50. With Vespa, we have done around 6000km. In our memories these days are many of those exciting ones and unforgettable as we rode in a speed 20km/h up the hills
Vespa was the best companion for commuting to work and for days off. Unfortunately, after a while, she became insufficient for longer distance trips as we wanted to travel further more and more. We realised that we need bigger bike as we could not believe how many places are there to be seen in the countryside and all over the mainland. That was the moment when we bought our Transalp XL650V which has enough space for both of us and our stuff. Choosing the right bike wasn’t that difficult as Mark is keen biker and Honda fanatic. The option to decide from was Transalp or Varadero. Because of weight, design and off-road purposes, the Transalp took first place. Well maintained shining orange motorbike with a range of accessories we fell in love straight away. Within 3 days after calling a dealer and transferring money, Transalp stood in front of us. Since that day we have been riding without limits. Last year, 2015 we made our first longest motorbike trip riding up North, Scotland to reach dream point John O’Groats.
We enjoyed full 2 weeks on the road, visiting historic sites and experiencing Highlands’s paths, Applecross and visited local distilleries.
We knew we want to come back as there in Scotland is much more to be seen. Therefore, John O’Groats became our START point of our next long journey. Our aim is to ride across selected countries in the Europe down to Trapani, Sicily.
Italy is the last country, our finish point because of our previous holidays spent in Italy and memories of good food, culture and sunshine. And as we know, there is more to explore while on the road.