The last two weeks has seen us complete our first two tours of the season.

The first of the year was our ‘Cactus and Canyons ‘tour which started in Phoenix, Arizona on April 30th.

We rode up there to meet the group on the Sunday and we then all returned to Tucson after picking up the hire bikes on the Monday Morning.

I am not going to go over the tour day by day, but briefly after spending a couple of nights in Tucson we headed south for the Wild West town of Tombstone. From here, the route turned north for a visit of the Chiricahua National Monument and then into the White Mountains on the famous ‘Devils Highway’ – some 123 miles long it apparently has 460 bends – I did not count them, but there sure is a lot!

On entering Northern Arizona, a low pressure went through, this gave us some exceptional visibility; the price was a drop in temperature for a couple of days – but nothing different to a European tour.

As usual everyone was blown away (there is a pun in there somewhere) with the helicopter ride over the Grand Canyon. Conditions were ideal and I am sure is a memory that will stay with people for a long time.

Route 66 took us to the red rocks of Sedona and our usual jeep tour, before a final blast through the Mingus Mountains into Phoenix and its temperature of 106F.

Bike troubles were confined to Peter’s Kawasaki GTR1400 (we found out later it was the same one that gave us grief last year) fortunately we soon found the fault as a collapsed battery, easily remedied by a new one from Autozone next to the hotel. His pannier did try to escape later in the trip, but I am told Peter assumes he is going to have bike problems every tour, and we just hate to disappoint.

We have done this tour several times before and as with all our tours we are constantly trying to improve things, so this year we added an added extra in the form of a weekend at a beach resort in Mexico.

As often you find when you depend upon other companies, this did not go as well as we would have liked – where as you are never further than 60 miles from the beach in the UK – here the closest place is 240 miles – and because it was Mexico (with all the insurance ramifications) we had to rely on another tour company to take everyone there. Unfortunately we got the driver from hell and it was not the easiest of journeys. On arrival we found out that the sunset cruise boat has a blown engine so we had to reschedule the cruise to the following night – and that tuned out to be a much smaller 18-30 party boat and very uncomfortable (I may have been in the Merchant Navy for 10 years but still felt a little green).

On the plus side the hotel we used was great and everyone had a relaxing day by the beach. Hopefully the extension did not spoil the main event for our customers, which of course was the Arizona tour.

Our USA tour next year, at one of our customers suggestion,  is called the ‘Saints and Sinners’ Tour  (Sunday 14th - Saturday 27th May 2017)  – the tour is based on our 2015 Canyonlands tour (see pictures in gallery) but has two extra nights in Las Vegas, this also allows us to ride more of Route 66.
The tour will start and finish in Phoenix and will go anti-clockwise through Northern Arizona and into Utah (a strong Mormon community - hence the Saints bit), but more importantly, Utah has some fantastic biking roads and beautiful National Parks like Bryce and Zion. We then go onto Las Vegas for a 2 night stay (yep that's the Sinner bit) before picking up Route 66 at Oatman and following it east to the beautiful rocks of Sedona. The tour will include all the old favourites such as Sedona jeep tour and helicopter ride over the Grand Canyon. We will post full details including prices on the website as soon as possible. (note you will return Bank Holiday weekend so get extra day off before work)

On the 10^th May Roy and Alison took a group of riders to Northern Ireland to visit the Antrim Coast, Donegal and the annual NW200 road races.  

Alison will be writing her blog on the tour but judging from the photos they enjoyed some good weather, scenic tours and exciting racing.

It was sad to hear of the death of a rider and injuries to others, we all know how dangerous road racing can be, but the thrill of racing on normal roads is something  the riders enjoy and of course is a great spectator event.

It was good to hear that Ryan Farquhar is making a good recovery and I hope he is back to full health soon.

Congratulations to Alastair Seeley when he became the most successful North West 200 racer of all-time when he won his 16th race at the Vauxhall sponsored event on Thursday evening.