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We are riding through ten countries in ten days because we all know friends that suffer from Alzheimer's.

There are six of us on this trip. Five of us sing with Reading Male Voice Choir and we brought an audience (of one) with us just in case we burst into spontaneous song!

Our third year of doing a challenging tour on our motorbikes to raise funds for a charity concerned with the health of mostly elderly people. We have raised funds for Prostate Cancer UK and Parkinson’s UK. This year and our biggest challenge will be for Alzheimer’s Society to help their fight against dementia when we ride through 10 countries in 10 days covering a distance of over 2000 miles.

We will be setting off on Sunday 18 May, boarding the ferry to Bilbao Spain where we arrive early on the morning of Tuesday 20.

Our first and second days ride will take us along part of an early pilgrim trail and the foothills of the Pyrenees towards the tiny snow caped mountain country of Andorra.

Day three, Thursday, our route will take us through Andorra, rising over 2400m above sea level and into Southern France past ancient castles, more ancient caves and forested mountain valleys to the old fortified City of Carcassonne.

During our trip across Southern France on day four we will pass by or over iconic bridges, old and new, including what remains of La pont Saint-Benezet where we may sing “Sur la pont d’Avignon”!

 After a night stay in the Rhone valley on day five we follow a route possibly trod by Hannibal and his army of Elephants into Italy (country number four ) over the French Alps at a height of 1850m, and to the city of Torino.

We continue on Sunday to follow part of Hannibal’s route into the heart of Northern Italy as we travel along the River Po to Verona where we stay for the night a short distance from the shores of Lake Garda.

Turning north towards home we travel into the Alps, and an area bitterly contested by Italy and Austria during the First WW. Our route takes us cross the Alps at 2500m and into Austria. We spend the night of our 7 day in the town of Imst at a typical Tyrolean Hotel at the entrance to the sky area of Pitztal.

Day 8 and we take the road west briefly passing through the tiny country of Liechtenstein into Switzerland and the canton of Appenzell. The road takes us over the Swiss/German boarder at Konstanz and into the Black Forrest before we cross the Rhine into the Alsace region of France and the town of Colmar beneath the Ballons des Vosges.

On Wednesday, travelling north we shall cross into Germany again and the ancient town of Trier before crossing through Luxembourg, into Belgium and through the town of Basogne and the Ardennes to Givet, just inside the French boarder.

 

Our last day, Thursday 29 May. On this last leg of our journey it is hoped that we have the opportunity to pass the Waterloo Battle fields, Passendale and the town of Ieper (Ypres) before we take the ferry at Calais for home.