Some of you may remember that I took off with my son on a pair of rental bikes on a tour of B.C and Alberta a few weeks ago. Well, we're back home again in the UK now after the best bike ride of our lives. I just wanted to say a big thank you to everyone on here who chipped in with ideas for our route when it was at the planning stage a few months back. We used most of the ideas you guys came up with and put together a convoluted but incredible ride.

I've not finished processing / editing the many photos and videos we shot yet, but when they're all done and published on my website I'll pop the link on here.

The only probelm we have now is where do we go riding now after seeing one of the most beautiful countries in the world from a motorcyle seat.

Thanks again to everyone who made suggestions, meanwhile here's one photo to be going on with

 

Derv
could you post a picture with you route ?

 

Start planning your next ride for the American Southwest; in particular, lower Utah and Arizona. Do it in mid-May before things get too hot. We did 11 western US states on a ride in '08, and hit 11 nat'l parks. I can sum up the ride in one sentence, "Utah has the scenic nat'l parks, hands down." Yosemite was in the same league; Yellowstone, not so much. Zion, Bryce, Capitol Reef, Arches, and Monument Valley are amazing.

I live in the Pacific NW, and I've seen lots of B.C. & Alberta...it's great. Glad you had a great time.

 

It was probably hard to watch where you're going with all that great scenery around. I'm lookin' forward to your link.

 

I was wondering about this a few days ago. Because our weather has been great the last few weeks, but terrible before that. I couldn't remember when you said you were coming. Let us know when you get your pictures up.

 

Blaster, the weather was fine while were there - couple of light rain showers that's all, I think we got lucky by all accounts as we told how bad it had been before we arrived. Got back to the UK and it's flooded here up in the north, I need to be back in Canada. My boy loved B.C so much he's making plans to move over there and join his big sister in Vancouver. If I was younger I'd do it with him! You have a truly beautiful country - and lots of genuinely nice people we met on our route

Derv

 

Glad you had a good time. Tell your son that the weather in Vancouver isn't like that all the time. I'm sure his sister will already have told him that.

What type of bikes did you end up with? And how did you like riding them.

 

Glad you enjoyed your trip, looking foward to pis & video.

 

Yeah Blaster, she's been into all that, he's not that naive as to expect it would be sunny all the time though, he's quite a well planted lad so he's under no illusions, he knows it's going to be hard - he saw his sister go through it all when she moved over there. She just up and went - she knew nobody there at all. She's a proper little Vancouverite now though, got the accent and everything.

It's more a lifestyle thing with Ben - he liked the more relaxed attitude to life over there than here - and the space. Consider our small island has going on for 70 mllion people at present, whilst Canada has only about 33 million I believe? We are so overcrowded here now it's getting stupid, especially in the south. We do still have a bit of breathing space up here in the north but it's getting slowly eaten away by developers. I can't blame any young people for wanting to quit the UK.

The bikes we hired were Hondas - a VFR800 for Ben and and I had a little Shadow - comfy but I missed the grunt of my Dyna. I had VFRs (interceptor) for years before the Harley and Ben rode them often so he was well familiar with it. I just wanted something of a similar physical size to my Dyna - hence the Shadow. We did intend originally to hire a couple of Harleys from Trev Deeley in Vancouver but they never responded to any of the mails I sent - about 5 I think it was, so we ended up at Cycle BC rentals on the corner of East 6th and Quebec - great people to rent from.

The vids and photos shouldn't be too long now - it's taking ages getting some of the HD vids onto You Tube - massive files.

Derv

 

If you were going to make the trip across the pond to see North America you certainly saw the most beautiful and majestic she has to offer; though I will agree with another comment above about Utah being well worth whatever it takes to see it.