TBC – Columbia 2025

Bumble – South America 2019/20

Badger – UK, Eire, Continental Europe, Caucasus 2021-2024

TBC

Not the snappiest of bike names is it!? Well, I did contemplate shipping Badger to Colombia so I could ride that country and finish off my intended route from 2020. However, the more I looked at it the less I could justify the £2,500ish shipping costs. Having your own bike for big touring over most of a continent and half a dozen countries makes some kind of sense, but doing the same for a (relatively) small single country makes less financial sense. I say “relatively” small because Colombia is still about the same size as France and Spain combined! But, having lived in Australia, I have a healthy appreciation of what is really a big country…

So… my intention is to hire a bike while I’m in Colombia and see what I can see on two wheels. This part of the trip will probably take place over several weekends, whilst I’m at the Spanish school, and perhaps a week or two touring after that. Bike hire in Colombia is pretty affordable and it is possible to get proper ‘big’ bikes, though there is a real premium for these. It seems that small bikes are the best way to go.

There are several places in Medellin that hire bikes but at time of writing (Jan 25) Colombian Moto Adventures look like a decent place to try. For the handsome sum of US$75 per day I can pick up a small but strong Honda XRE300. Of course it will be no Bumble or Badger, but I am quite looking forward to travelling light and clocking up some serious off-road miles and getting some proper skills. Just lets hope I don’t have a pathetically slow “off” that cracks an ankle… or wrist… or collar bone [I’m getting pre-emptive deja vous just typing these words… gulp!]

Badger

I bought Badger – a 2011 Triumph Tiger 800 XC – in 2021 after a year without a bike. I was looking for something that could take me plenty of miles in relative comfort and handle a bit of luggage and light off-roading. My experience with Bumble was great and she never let me down so I did contemplate buying another beamer but they are just so ubiquitous now… I also remember reading the biking magazine comparison between the 2011 Tiger and 2011 800GS when they came out, it was a very close call between the two. The Tiger just pinching the road supremacy and the GS slightly ahead off-road.

Badger came with very low miles – just 5,000 – and the panniers, so it seemed a good buy to me, and so it has proved. She has carried me confidently on short trips to Eire, Germany and around England. With the biggest adventure to date taking me all the way to Armenia and back, a story covered in detail here…

Bumble

As soon as I started thinking about this trip I quickly got carried away with choosing just the perfect bike and (oh lord…) the “perfect” gear to wear. Although I tried really hard not to let it, these thoughts quickly took up way too much time and effort. Of course, the actual answer is – any bike, any gear – plenty of people have followed that philosophy and had an amazing adventure. I guess I’ve become sucked in by my monthly dose of bike porn and the lie that minor differences in this tyre or that tyre, this helmet or that, will make all the difference. Of course they won’t. Not when I’m freezing my balls off at 4000 metres on a dirt road in the rain…

Anyway, I settled on a 2008 BMW F800GS. It’s in pretty good nick and has 30,000 on the clock which is about right for the year. I’m hoping to add about 10,000+ to that, so it will be interesting to see how Bumble bears up. There are a few BMW dealers on the route so hopefully I can limp to one when things do go pop.

As for transport, I’ve banked everything on the good people from Moto Birds who are filling an important gap in the market offering women only adventure bike tours. They also arrange bike shipping and have been as good as gold so far. It was a big moment when the nice man from Poland loaded up Bumble into his white van and drove back to Poland to ship the bike.

Whether or not I come home with Bumble depends on lots of things, the cost of shipping her home may be more than what she’s worth if I do manage to put 10,000+ hard miles on her, but we’ll see…

Well, as can be seen elsewhere on this site, Bumble sadly did not make it home. However, I’m pleased to report that when I last heard she was helping out a local Arequipa charity in Peru, delivering xmas gifts to local kids… ahhhh!