im tired, so keep it brief, the plan: epic journey 2013 cov to inverness, minimal motorways, a- and b-roads if possible at all times on bikes not meant for touring - im on my 19-year old zxr400 l4.
532 miles up there on the first day - took 16.5 hours as max speed is 60mph (thats all the enfield could do until it blew up going up a hill...) and with the X7 only being able to do 95 miles at a push to a full tank we have to make pit stops every 70-80 miles.
return leg 522 miles completed in 14.5 hours
total for the 4 days 1165 miles.
top tips:-
your wrists and butt are the things that hurt the most, padded cycling shorts are the best thing for the butt pains, or look at getting a more "touring" seat, i took codeine for the wrist pains...ive not found anything better so far (after 500+ miles give yourself a day to recover from the beating). deer are plentiful in the scottish highlands, one nearly took 3 of us out before it got (literally) obliterated by an audi a3 on the A9 in the pitch darkness that was overtaking us, so look out especially at night. the tank gets warm so lean on it to relieve back pain/butt pain whilst warming you up (also gets you out of the wind chill somewhat).
touring is definitely possible on the bike, 200 miles a day is easy if broken into ~40-50mile chunks, 300-400 is ok but not pleasant, 532 miles in a day is horrible...but the awesome roads and even better company/banter more than make up for it...if you happened to see a group of people hooning around today, led by a GS850G with a sheep's skull cable-tied to the front headlamp...that was us
