Clean Bikes, One Last Time
A parking lot in Burgas, the evening before the start. A few dozen dirt bikes stand in a row, washed, polished, not a scratch on them. Mostly hard enduros, plus a handful of oddballs: a Kove 450 Rally, a Honda CRF300 Rally, a Suzuki DR-Z4S, a 690. Not one big adventure bike in sight. I pan the camera across the lineup and say what everybody’s thinking: we’re hoping they stay this pretty all the way across. They won’t.
Next morning at the Black Sea coast near Sozopol, you can’t even see the water, because the hotel’s in the way. Doesn’t matter. The trucks are getting loaded, the riders’ briefing is about to start, and my GasGas is waiting. We’re riding to the other sea!
Four Countries for the Price of One
Here’s why I signed up: Bulgaria, Greece, North Macedonia and Albania in one hit. Every one of them is a real trek from central Europe with a motorcycle. The organizing crew drove 23 hours from southern Austria to get the trucks to the start. I took the easy way, flew into Burgas and climbed onto my own bike, which had come down on the transporter.
The GPX file tells the rest: 1,005 miles (1,618 km) across 64,764 track points, more than 72,000 feet (22,000 m) of climbing, six riding days and one rest day. Stefan Rosner came up with the idea and scouts the tracks, treacherous TET sections included. Helly Frauwallner, six-time Austrian champion and his partner for 13 years, said it sounded good. This is the fourth running, and it’s sold out.
Ten Hours and a Granola Bar
I honestly thought this would be a gentle loop for old men. I was badly mistaken. Day one runs 216 miles (347 km) out of Sozopol through the Strandzha and Sakar hills: dusty tracks, up, down, through the woods, start at eight in the morning and no real stop until the hotel. Ten hours in the saddle. Lunch was one granola bar. Slave drivers!
Day two was longer still. 239 miles (385 km) through the Eastern Rhodope mountains, over the Nymfaia border pass into Greece and down to Serres. Until this trip, the most I’d ever ridden off-road in a group was about 125 miles in a day. Usually the whole house of cards collapses the moment the weakest link goes down. Here it just worked, and the riders were properly cooked by evening. Stefan’s secret isn’t much of a secret: you’re only as fast as your slowest rider, so the art is in mixing the three groups right.
The Softest Mousse in the Pack
My bike is a 2023 GasGas EC 350F, and I’ve had it for several years. I keep wondering whether I should go bigger for trips like this, maybe a 500. Then I ride the 350 again and the question’s gone: enough grunt, loves to rev, light on its feet. For my skill level, it’s the right tool. All I changed for the Balkans was the gearing, back to the taller homologated stock ratio.
The Öhlins TTX suspension is in there for one reason, and it isn’t speed. It makes rough ground disappear, so every hit costs you less strength at the end of a ten-hour day. Yes, it costs a fortune. It also holds its value and moves with me to the next bike. I’m keeping it for the next 20 years.
Then the gamble: Mitas super soft tires with the softest mousse in the entire group, on a trip this long. Everybody else ran harder stuff. In the rocks I was world champion, 10 percent throttle and rolling over everything. One gripe: the stock seat. I need a rally seat. Badly.
Armor, Luggage and Triple Zip Ties
This isn’t a sales pitch, and I couldn’t tell you which of these brands is an advertising customer and which isn’t. I only discovered Dowatek this year, and the fit and build quality won me over. On the GasGas there’s a skid plate with linkage guard, a clutch case cover, aluminum wrap-around handguards and the Factory rear disc guard V2.2, a billet aluminum piece that also guides the caliper when you pull the rear wheel. Add a front disc guard and a chain guide. The goal was simple: I didn’t want to touch a wrench all week.
The luggage is SW-Motech’s PEAX rackless system, and I’m probably the only person on Earth who mounts it like this: one bag, one side. That’s exactly how much stuff I carry, so why haul an empty bag for looks? Water, camera and phone go in there, which means no backpack. Nothing on your body. It’s incredibly freeing. The base plate is one more bulky part, but it keeps the bag off the tire and stops it from slapping you in the back, which is what happened to me with a plateless setup in Colorado.
My half-system needed the certified-engineer zip-tie solution. One snapped, so now there are three. And on day one I’d mounted it wrong and it got in the way when standing. My fault. For version 2.0, I’d route the closing strap from bottom to top so it locks the bag in place by shape instead of by tension.
A First Bike and a Chinese Exotic
Kurt rides a Honda CRF300 Rally. It’s his first motorcycle. Ever. I was speechless. The bike cost him just under €7,000, then came the shock, the fork and the exhaust at roughly €1,000 each, plus bars and crash bars. Close to €10,000 all in, and he says you shouldn’t tell anybody that. Out here, in the mountains of North Macedonia among the hard enduros, he digs deep and keeps up. When the pace climbs, the suspension goes mushy and he’s at his limit, he admits. The bike isn’t even close to done. And at every summit, Kurt beams.
Roman’s Kove 450 Rally is the bike everybody’s curious about and nobody can test ride. I’m always skeptical when owners of exotic brands talk, because they tend to ride with their hearts. So I pushed him. His answer, with 963 miles (1,550 km) of scree on the clock: nothing rattles, nothing wobbles, not one loose bolt. Vibration is no worse than on his 500 or his 690. His one complaint is gearing: first gear idles along at 31 mph (50 km/h), so in tricky terrain you’re slipping the clutch. A sprocket fixes that. He’s not in love, he says. It just works.
The Suzuki and the Mountain Biker
Thomas brought a Suzuki DR-Z4S with 3,700 miles (6,000 km) on it, about half of that off-road, and it still looks new. Great suspension, an engine that isn’t too strong, an easy bike to spend a long day on. He did go down once and snapped the clutch lever. That was the rider, not the motorcycle, and it got patched on the trail.
Christian is one of four Christians in the group. He’d never heard of me, which I count as an honor. He’s on a rental GasGas 350 and has a KTM 350 at home, so he knows what a mid-size four-stroke is worth over distance. He’s crossed the Alps on a mountain bike and calls that pretty normal stuff. Anything heavier, he says, he couldn’t ride out here. He’s German, and he had one note on the Austrian organizers: not quite as punctual as he’s used to. He can live with it.
Four Experts, One Rear Brake
A gas station somewhere in North Macedonia. Nobody knows what anything costs, because nobody understands the currency. I’ve got my favorite snack, zero-sugar soda and peanut candy, which makes no sense at all. And around Kurt’s Honda stands a circle of men bleeding his rear brake.
I check credentials. Two graduate engineers, one of them a mechanical engineer. A master car mechanic. A tech guy. Next to them, a civil engineer offering commentary, who says the most he could contribute is building a garage around it. That’s how it always goes when somebody’s wrenching: five people in a circle, everybody knows better, and somehow it comes out right. A couple of hours later I ask Kurt. Brake’s perfect!
That’s the spirit of this whole trip. One guy packs dog food to make friends with the shepherd dogs up in the mountains, and after one particular hill we all wished we’d had some too. And at every service stop there’s Helly at the support truck, grinning. I asked him why. Because we roll in grinning, he said, and when we’re happy, so is he. He’d rather be riding, truth be told.
Like Mongolia, Only Closer
Serres was halftime. A rest day for maintenance and a debrief, in a town north of Thessaloniki with hardly a package tourist in it, where locals sit outside at noon, in the afternoon and at night. I filmed my bike walkaround and walked straight into a wedding. On a Monday!
Day three: papers out, group border crossing with the support trucks, then 160 miles (257 km) past Lake Dojran into the Mariovo highlands. This is the part I’ll remember longest. Wide open, barely a soul living up there, tracks that just flow, like Mongolia. Day four adds 162 miles (261 km) across Pelister National Park and over Galicica Pass at 6,542 ft (1,994 m), the roof of the trip, with Lake Prespa on one side and Lake Ohrid on the other. Then down into Albania.
Lumber Trucks on a One-Lane Cliff
Albania has a shadow side and you see it from the saddle: plastic trash along the roads in valleys that would otherwise take your breath away. The waste system is only now being built. It hurts to look at after what you’ve just seen up top.
Day five is the shortest at 107 miles (172 km) through the Gramos mountains, and it taught the sharpest lesson. You feel completely alone up there. You’re not. These gravel tracks are ordinary roads, and on one brutally exposed one-lane stretch we met three or four trucks. Nothing comes for five hours, and then something comes. Ride so you can stop in half of what you can see. The day ends in the wild Vjosa valley, at the best hotel of the week, in the middle of absolutely nowhere. By 6:30 the next morning the crew already had the rental bikes running.
Ride for Yourself
Here’s what I’d tell anyone thinking about a trip like this: you’re not the center of the universe. Nobody’s watching how fast you are. The moment you ride to impress the group, you crash, you break things, and that’s what actually costs everybody time. Waiting for a slower rider has never bothered an enduro rider. We stand around in the woods and talk nonsense anyway.
And when the whole group has clawed its way up some ugly climb, nobody remembers who got stuck. Everyone up top is grinning. Golf has a scorecard and track days have a stopwatch. This doesn’t.
Hands Up at the Ionian Sea
Day six: 122 miles (196 km) through the Pindus foothills, and then there’s water again. Stefan told me in Serres he gets goosebumps just thinking about rolling into Igoumenitsa. Now I know why. Bikes on the beach, a burnout in the sand, grown men bouncing around like kids.
I held my hands up to the camera. A thousand miles of dirt, zero blisters. That’s no miracle. Stand centered, move your weight from ankles, knees and hips, and if you feel pull or push in your arms, you’re standing wrong. Loose hands mean you can ride almost forever.
So book a training day. Then book a trip like this one. You’ll come home with a different idea of what a day can hold. Get on the bike!