Notes from the road

This journal is where heritage blog paths live, plus a guest post. The old motorcycle copy is gone. The paths are not.

If you want the structured hubs, start at tour types or rail trails. If you arrived from a 2014 WordPress permalink, you are in the right paddock — read the new article, then jump to a field guide.

Corrections still go through contact. Guest pitches go there too; we do not publish invented operator claims or prices.

Why these slugs look strange

The 2014–2023 site was a WordPress motorcycle-tour brochure with a blog bolted on. Wayback’s CDX still lists /blog/bike-tours, /blog/go-wrong-motorcycle-tour-proceed, a Royal Enfield Ladakh post, and a Scotland motorcycle destinations post. Those were real HTML pages, not theme-demo Latin. The rebuild rule is simple: a real old URL with a real post keeps a real article on the same path. The topic is now Australian bicycle touring, because that is what this domain is for.

You will also find /tours/, /bike-tours-new-zealand/ and several motorcycle-era marketing paths as standalone pages, not 301s, for the same reason. Messy demo URLs (/tours-view/gallery-format/, lorem categories) 301 once.

What you will find in the journal

• Types of bike tours — a magazine-length version of the tour-types split: road, rail-trail, gravel, e-bike, support.
• What goes wrong — heat, closures, over-long days, and the habit of trusting a brochure instead of the manager.
• What bike for a long tour — the old Enfield slug, now about choosing a touring bicycle rather than a motorcycle.
• Which destinations to include — an Australian shortlist keyed to official trail lengths, not a Highland loop.
• Why rail trails first — a guest perspective, labelled as such, from a generic experienced tourer. No invented official quotes.

None of these posts replace a field guide. If you need the 137 km Murray to Mountains split, open the rail-trail guide. If you need helmet law, open road rules.

Editorial rules for this folder

Journal posts still list sources. They still refuse prices. They still distinguish this site from a mountain-bike park guide and from a New Zealand guidebook. Guest copy is edited for facts; the first-person voice stays, the invented statistics do not.

If you want to pitch a guest note, use the contact form and say what official page your claim rests on. We will not run a ride report that is secretly an advertorial for a van company.

The structured start remains home and the six hubs above this one in the navigation. This folder is the long tail — and the honesty about how the domain got here.

How to read a heritage post

Start with the first paragraph. If it is answering a touring question, keep going. If you only wanted the old motorcycle itinerary, it is not here — that operator is not here. Use the related links at the bottom of each post to reach a field guide with an official kilometre count.

A heritage URL is not a loophole for thin content. Each post is meant to be useful on its own: a planning mistake, a bike-choice argument, a destination shortlist. If a paragraph contains a length, it should be the same length you will find on Rail Trails Australia, the Northern Rivers FAQ, the Munda Biddi Foundation or ORSR. If we slipped, say so.

Guest copy is labelled. It is still edited. It is not a back door for a hire desk to publish a price list.

What we do not put in the journal

Live availability. Operator league tables. Invented climate scores. Downhill-park line reviews. New Zealand stage-by-stage Otago clones. Those omissions are the product.

If you arrived from /category/bike-tour/ or a lorem tag, the 301 was deliberate. You are on the index now. Pick a post or go back to rail trails.

The journal is also where we will put later corrections that are too small for a field-guide rewrite: a tunnel rule that changed, a section that opened, a BOM climate page that we now prefer. Until then, treat the posts as essays with sources, and treat the guides as the pages you ride from. That split keeps the hostname honest: one site, two speeds of prose, no motorcycle leftover pretending to be a booking form.

If you only have time for one essay, read what goes wrong and then the planning hub. Most ruined tours are arithmetic mistakes, not missing carbon wheels.