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If only to prove that it’s possible to beg, borrow and steal ideas from just about anywhere, here’s a simple enough to follow route suggestion lifted from the latest Tourenfahrer magazine.

It’s 3,500 km. Edelweiss Bike Travel, run it as a professional tour but any ‘Adventure’ bike riding bod could - with a bit of imagination - recreate it.

4c5b70a57976883b388a57716b650d64.jpg


Want to cheat some more? Easy. Pump each of the destination towns / cities on the map - in the correct sequence, preferably - into Kurviger and ask it to produce a route, which it will do in the blink of an eye. Compare the route Kurviger offers up with the route shown in the picture. Fine tune at leisure. There you go, one long(ish) tour all but planned, with all but zero effort. All you now have to do is ride it; that’s the easy bit.

https://kurviger.de/about/en

Can’t be arsed even to do that? No problem, here’s the tour company. They’ll do it all for you. Yes, you’ll pay them but hey, that’s life:

https://www.edelweissbike.com

All / most of their tours have similar maps for other destinations.

PS I missed Poland out of the title. Apologies for any offence caused to our Polish friends etc etc etc
 
Well found again.
And, if you stretch it slightly further east, you'll reach the Black Sea.
Why is Serbia missed out?
I'll be doing a very similar route when visiting the Austrian MotoGP race in August and taking in the Black Sea at the same time.
 
I guess there are possibly some restrictions / challenges vis-a-vis passports and / or insurance into Serbia? Don’t forget, this is a tour arranged by a professional tour company on behalf of clients from potentially around the globe. They’ll be wanting to make it ‘easy’ for their customers (and themselves) .... or there will be moans, for sure.
 
they will mis the best bit !

all other countries are EU so insurance is the same as you have in UK, so if you are fully comp in UK you will be fully comp in these countries. for most insurance companies in Serbia you will be 3rd party only. A good thing about the EU.
 
Here is Kurviger’s version of the route, which is broadly similar. All done from a iPad, so it can’t be hard to do.

For some of the locations (those with very obvious foreign accenting on the letters of their place names) I had to ask Wikipedia to show me the town. I then highlighted the name, copied it and pasted it into Kurviger. A good example would be, Košice. Sometimes, you just have to think around a problem.

d2d541d091ca667637ae1fb1ceb9945e.jpg
 
I guess there are possibly some restrictions / challenges vis-a-vis passports and / or insurance into Serbia? Don’t forget, this is a tour arranged by a professional tour company on behalf of clients from potentially around the globe. They’ll be wanting to make it ‘easy’ for their customers (and themselves) .... or there will be moans, for sure.

We passed through Serbia on the return leg from Istanbul. We had no issues at border. Infact I had the incorrect paperwork for my bike if you remember and tyhey still let me in.
 
Here is Kurviger’s version of the route, which is broadly similar. All done from a iPad, so it can’t be hard to do.

For some of the locations (those with very obvious foreign accenting on the letters of their place names) I had to ask Wikipedia to show me the town. I then highlighted the name, copied it and pasted it into Kurviger. A good example would be, Košice. Sometimes, you just have to think around a problem.

d2d541d091ca667637ae1fb1ceb9945e.jpg

Another couple of good points about Kurviger is you can create a very long list of waypoints for routing and the altitude tracker is interesting to use.
The best bit is you can create routes in the winter, when some of the passes are closed but will show as open on the routing map, and ride them in the summer; Google won't let you do that.
 
I'd never heard of Kurviger - just had a play, it's brilliant. Thanks for the heads up:thumby:
 
That’s very similar to the route I took around Eastern Europe a couple of years ago and there aren’t any restrictions regarding insurance in Serbia but you need to be careful when booking hotels close to the Croatia/Bosnia border because in some towns the border goes through the middle and you can suddenly find that you’ve booked a hotel in Bosnia and can’t get there without insurance :blast

Never mind, I only had to pay for one night without ever stopping in the hotel and the alternative one in Croatia was so good I booked a second night there :D
 
Here is Kurviger’s version of the route, which is broadly similar. All done from a iPad, so it can’t be hard to do.

For some of the locations (those with very obvious foreign accenting on the letters of their place names) I had to ask Wikipedia to show me the town. I then highlighted the name, copied it and pasted it into Kurviger. A good example would be, Košice. Sometimes, you just have to think around a problem.

d2d541d091ca667637ae1fb1ceb9945e.jpg

I made a route yesterday (very quickly and easily) saved it as a route and uploaded to Basecamp at night but it came out as a series of straight lines. Have you done (is it better) to export as a track and convert in Basecamp? I'll export it as that today and try the conversion tonight and see if it's any better.
 
all other countries are EU so insurance is the same as you have in UK, so if you are fully comp in UK you will be fully comp in these countries. for most insurance companies in Serbia you will be 3rd party only. A good thing about the EU.


Sorry but that is not 100% correct , some UK insurance companies even if you have fully comprehensive UK cover will automatically only provide you with minimum legal cover (3rd party liability) when you are driving abroad . It until recently included Admiral, RAC Direct, Zurich plus many others .

Check the small print of your policy wording
 
To answer Khulu’s question:

I use a Mac and BaseCamp, this is what I’d do:

I’d export the route from Kurviger as a track

I’d ask BaseCamp to change the track’s colour from dark grey to say red, just to make it stand out better

I’d ask BaseCamp to convert the track to a route. When doing this BaseCamp / Mac also preserves the track

I’d compare the route with the track, amending (if appropriate) the route as I saw fit

When happy I’d save the route and delete the track

I’d change the colour of the track
 
To answer Khulu’s question:

I use a Mac and BaseCamp, this is what I’d do:

I’d export the route from Kurviger as a track

I’d ask BaseCamp to change the track’s colour from dark grey to say red, just to make it stand out better

I’d ask BaseCamp to convert the track to a route. When doing this BaseCamp / Mac also preserves the track

I’d compare the route with the track, amending (if appropriate) the route as I saw fit

When happy I’d save the route and delete the track

I’d change the colour of the track

That's what I thought. I'll do that this weekend. I wonder why exporting as a route didn't work perfectly?
 
I suspect it’s because the Kurviger route is based on Open Street mapping, not Garmin’s Navtec (or whoever) maps.

A route brings in with it less ‘invisible’ data, the tiny invisible dots that sit between the start point A and the end point B. Garmin, for understandable reasons, then struggles to match the third party (Kurviger) route to the roads, gives up trying and produces straight lines. We see it quite regularly when bods use Tire and other third party route creation software and then tries to mix it into Garmin.

Tracks bring with them lots more ‘invisible’ data, which makes things easier for Garmin when it comes to conversion into a route, particularly when the conversion is done on a home computer, rather than in the GPS device itself.

Another possible reason for straight lines is sometimes down to the preference settings (and even the maps) within the GPS device itself. But, that’s a whole different ball game!

The trick that works for me is to keep everything as simple as I can. Whenever possible I do as much of the work as I can within my home computer BEFORE sending it to my GPS device, using the computer’s much larger power. Similarly, I have all the preferences turned off and the same maps on my home computer and on my GPS device, cutting out the possible variables. That way, if a route looks right on my home computer in BaseCamp, it should look right and run correctly on my GPS device, too. Not least, I always check the route displayed on my GPS before I pack it away to go on holiday. By and large, this little bit of discipline has served me reasonably well. Is it perfect? No.
 
I suspect it’s because the Kurviger route is based on Open Street mapping, not Garmin’s Navtec (or whoever) maps.

A route brings in with it less ‘invisible’ data, the tiny invisible dots that sit between the start point A and the end point B. Garmin, for understandable reasons, then struggles to match the third party (Kurviger) route to the roads, gives up trying and produces straight lines. We see it quite regularly when bods use Tire and other third party route creation software and then tries to mix it into Garmin.

Tracks bring with them lots more ‘invisible’ data, which makes things easier for Garmin when it comes to conversion into a route, particularly when the conversion is done on a home computer, rather than in the GPS device itself.

Another possible reason for straight lines is sometimes down to the preference settings (and even the maps) within the GPS device itself. But, that’s a whole different ball game!

The trick that works for me is to keep everything as simple as I can. Whenever possible I do as much of the work as I can within my home computer BEFORE sending it to my GPS device, using the computer’s much larger power. Similarly, I have all the preferences turned off and the same maps on my home computer and on my GPS device, cutting out the possible variables. That way, if a route looks right on my home computer in BaseCamp, it should look right and run correctly on my GPS device, too. Not least, I always check the route displayed on my GPS before I pack it away to go on holiday. By and large, this little bit of discipline has served me reasonably well. Is it perfect? No.

I do the same: check, check and check again!
We don't want to get to France and do a "Nutty"!
 
I do the same: check, check and check again!
We don't want to get to France and do a "Nutty"!

Nutty is buying a TomTom, so all his problems are over; mine too.

The other trick I have learned is not too worry too much, when:

A. The device, as it sometimes does, throws a wobbly. I have found it cannot argue with the off button

B. Someone in the happy posse of bikes says, “My device is telling us to turn left”, when mine is saying we should definitely turn right, if we are to avoid the goat track and to have any hope of arriving at our destination this side of a week on Tuesday.
 
you are quite right Neil.

So much for the EU then. I did not know this, I am sure many others do not realise this as well. The good news is then your insurance will be valid 3rd party for Serbia the same as many other EU countries .Serbia is in the EU insurance agreement so one more reason to visit !
 
So much for the EU then. I did not know this, I am sure many others do not realise this as well. The good news is then your insurance will be valid 3rd party for Serbia the same as many other EU countries .Serbia is in the EU insurance agreement so one more reason to visit !

Thats good to know, we've got 2/3 nights there in august.
 


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