Where I've driven

18 Mar, 2025

By now a little over 10 years, almost 400.000km through Europe (though much of that is commute within the Netherlands :))

(The single near-vertical line through France was a one-day return trip from the Pyrenees, 1450km in 16 hours and stifling heat. Not doing that again any time soon, I got completely dehydrated and couldn't walk straight for three days.)

The map shows the aggregate of all my bike trips:

Commute and short trips throughout the Netherlands
Yearly multi-week trips into the Alps or Pyrenees
Two years worth of short rides and day trips from when I lived in Southwestern England
Dozens of days and weekend in the Ardennes, Eifel, and the Sauerland
Fall 2015: Four-month trip to Morocco, Dakar, and down into Africa (bits of write-up here, here, and here)
Summer 2018: 3 weeks' trip through Spain and Portugal
Fall 2022: Four-month trip around Italy, Turkey, and the Middle East (full story here)
Summer 2023: 2 weeks, 4000km across France, Ireland, and Scotland with the gf on the back
Summer 2024: 2 weeks, 4000km riding with the gf, across the Alps and Northern Italy (mere days after she got get license!)
Summer 2025: 5 week, 8300km trip with the gf through the Balkans down to Crete, then back up through Italy and the Alps (write-up coming soon!)

Bikes involved:

Honda CB650 Nighthawk - 15.000km (my first bike, sold it after a year)
Honda Transalp XL600V (black/red), about 25.000km in six months (sold it in Africa)
Transalp number 2 (green), about 60.000km in three years; scrapped it after someone ran into it
Transalp number 3 (blue), about 75.000km in three years; passed it on to my dad who gave it away to a friend a few years later
Triumph Tiger 800 XCA - going on five years, about 235k so far
Triumph Speed Triple RS - four years, about 25k so far
KTM SMT890, newest addition since spring 2025, about 15k so far

(I currently still own the Tiger, the Speed Triple, and the SMT)

Non-exhaustive list of favourites:

Pyrenees around Laguarta and Castejón de Sos are wild and desolate
Northern Provence has numerous amazing roads like the D94 from Serres to Nyon, and of course the Mont Ventoux
Corsica is stunning
Central Calabria is eerily quiet but gorgeous and cheap
I keep coming back to Graubünden and the Swiss mountain passes, including the Stelvio and my favorites, the Splügen and Albula
The Irish and Scottish coast are an absolute pleasure to ride
Crete, and the Arcadia in the Central Peloponnese are fabulous
The Amalfi coast just south of Naples is small, but absolutely spectacular

Places I still need to go to still / need to go again, but longer:

North Cape and the Baltic states
Portugal and Spain all-over
Eastern Sardinia and Sicily
The Turkish West and Northern coasts

Favorite pictures:

Favorite moment:

Taking a leak on the side of the road in Southern Bosnia and a clumsy little bear cub casually sauntered by. Very quietly signalled my gf that we had to go, stat, cause I didn't want to meet his mom lmao

I have a blog with some bike/travel related stories here: https://www.horsewithnoname.nl/ if you're ever bored :)