Flat Roads & Twisties - Ben Fourie. This book was released in July 2008 in South Africa. It is the first of-it’s-kind ever published on the African continent, and is sure to become the mainstay of handbooks for adventure motorcycling enthusiasts.

The author has travelled the length and breadth of Southern Africa. There are various chapters dealing with safety concerns and issues, touring and touring tips for Southern Africa, routes to ride and places to go (including Swaziland, Lesotho, Mozambique and other African countries) and the history of BMW motorcycles both in Europe and in South Africa. This is the ideal handbook for someone who wishes to get involved in motorcycle touring, or just wants to brush up on forgotten tips and tricks. It is also ideal for the foreign traveller who is keen to ride in Southern Africa. This website belongs to the author, and should give you an idea as to what the book is all about. 360 pages, soft-cover full-colour. Selling for R179.00. Available from CNA, Exclusive Books, Estoril and other good bookstores.

In July 2008, Adventure Motorcycling author Robert Wicks travelled to Iceland with BMW off-road instructor and Dakar veteran Simon Pavey, and friend and co-author Greg Baker, to meet up with local BMW tour operators Biking Viking. Their mission: to find the best places in the country to shoot pictures to illustrate a new book called Adventure Riding Techniques.

Accompanied by Iceland’s leading automotive photographer – Thorvaldur Kristmundsson – and riding a selection of BMW motorcycles, including the F 650 GS, F 800 GS and the HP 2 Enduro, the group enjoyed some of the best riding and terrain available in Europe, including snow, ice, rocks, sand, gravel and mud. The pictures were superb and showed, step by step, all the riding skills that adventure motorcyclists need to fully enjoy themselves out on the trail.

Robert and Greg then spent the following months painstakingly writing their book, as well as researching real adventures to include, and selecting the best images from a choice of more than 1,500 photographs to best illustrate all the topics contained in the various chapters. Finally, Adventure Riding Techniques is finished and is due for general release in early March. However, it is available for ‘pre-order’ now, much to Robert’s delight.

Adventure Riding Techniques is published by J H Haynes & Co Ltd and is available in 176-page hardback (ISBN-10: 1844255727).

In May 2007 when the world still speculated about whether or not BMW would launch the new F 800 GS, Herbert Schwarz was already on a secret mission in Africa with a pre-production bike. Accompanying him to photograph and film the adventure, Ramona Eichhorn rode a BMW G 650 Xchallenge. Herbert, the director of Touratech, tested some of his company’s pre-production accessories under extreme conditions off-road. Their journey around Lake Victoria covered 5.087 kilometres of sand, gravel, corrugated metal and mud, from the white sandy beaches bordering the Indian Ocean through the Masai steppe in Kenya, the savannah of Tanzania, the green hills of Burundi and Rwanda, around the extinct Mt. Elgon volcano in Uganda, and back to Mombassa.

As the rainy season was unseasonably late in 2007 the land was still flooded. But though facing tough riding conditions and challenging technical problems, the two also encountered a plenitude of African joie de vivre and hospitality. Their visit to see the world’s last surviving mountain gorillas around the Virunga volcanoes of Rwanda was quite a unique occurrence. Travelling self-sufficiently with a tent often resulted in some amazing episodes with the locals too. Ramona and Herbert shot all of the footage themselves, capturing images of the roadside and daily life; and the film has a strong documentary character, presenting a realistic picture of the strange and fascinating land of Africa. And topics such as the genocide in Rwanda and poverty are portrayed with tactful sensitivity and understanding as well.2-DVD-set, 55 minutes, plus bonus material, filmed in wide-screen HD format, in English and German, selling for ZAR 282.  

The End of the Rains - A Motorcycle Adventure Around Africa’s Biggest Lake - Ramona Eichhorn & Herbert Schwarz

Adventure Riding Techniques - The essential guide to all the skills you need for off-road adventure riding - Robert Wicks