THE END OF THE WORLD
UNLIKE LUCKY STARR and his many imitators, I haven’t been everywhere, but I have been around. Here are a few tips from those journeys.
AUSTRIA
The great thing about Austria is that it probably has more wonderful motorcycle roads squeezed into such a small area than any other place in the world. That’s what you get when you own a substantial part of the Alps. Of course Austria would own even more of the Alps and have even more great motorcycle roads if its southern population hadn’t voted to become part of Italy, but there you go.
On top of that, it’s one of the countries where hotels have realized that there’s money in motorcyclists, and the alpine part of the country has many places which specialize in looking after riders with garaging, free route maps, organised runs and even workshops. As well, there are far more gravel roads that are accessible to us than there are in, say, Germany. Gravel passes are lots of fun.
Are there downsides to Austria? Well, they do have a tendency there to put tolls on all sorts of roads, especially the kinds of mountain passes that motorcyclists love especially. The cost of living seems to be a little higher than it is in some of the surrounding countries.
EASTERN EUROPE
It isn’t really possible to sum up Eastern Europe like this. So why am I doing it? Because I don’t want this article to take over the entire magazine. There are some generalisations that work
