Caroline Barrett
Editorial assistant
Twisting Tuscan tarmac, charming bikes to ride and a nice hotel every evening… does biking get any better? If only I had time to ride to Italy — or the bike to do it on. Fly-ride tours aren’t cheap but the Moto Guzzi Experience could be worth it.
RIDING IN EUROPE is great fun, but the organisation, such as sorting the practical and legal logistics and the time that it takes to get to the good bits of riding, mean it isn’t everyone’s cup of espresso.
The Moto Guzzi Experience offers ready-made tours in some of the Europe’s most beautiful locations and on lovely bikes. However, it isn’t cheap: just over £1000, plus flights, for a four-day trip. We headed to Tuscany to see if it was worth it.
DAY 1 After a two-hour flight and a similar coach transfer, I and the other ten Brits on the experience pulled up at Hotel Montaperti, in the heart of Tuscany.
We had a few minutes to check in, drop our bags and meet another 20 riders from different countries before a buffet lunch. There followed a welcome and a chat about where we were heading for the first day.
Waiting for us outside was the full range of 2018 Moto Guzzis, from the diminutive V7 to the enormous MGX-21 Flying Fortress, and even some models not available in the UK, like the V7 III Racer, clad in shiny Öhlins and Brembo bits.
One of the great things about this trip was that it wasn’t a ‘pick and stick’ gig — riders
are encouraged to swap bikes throughout the day, to try something different.
Our ride on the first day was a 60-mile spin through the countryside and I opted
for a V7 III Stone. The simple, low-revving 744cc V-twin squeezes out 52bhp and is completely unintimidating. It seemed the perfect bike to get my eye in. In unison, we fired up our engines and made our way out of town and into the countryside. The roads were flanked by almost unbelievable landscapes, with wave-like hillsides flowing smoothly from one to the next.
The ride was a comfortable pace for all levels of rider and we kept together through the countryside. After an hour of convoying along almost-empty roads, we pulled over for a break and I swapped onto the V9 Roamer, with a slightly bigger