Nick Dawson
Tour Guide
I was fifteen years old when I first started riding motorcycles – or, to be honest, sports mopeds. It was all the rage at school; my friends had Honda SS50s, and then came the Yamaha FS1/e, or Fizzy. But my dad went to the Austrians and bought me a Puch MP50 just before my 16th birthday. In the hour after school, before he came home from work, I would ride all the back roads around where we lived in NE Scotland.
Things progressed from there, and at 20 years old, a friend and I embarked on a road trip through Europe and down to Greece on our Honda CB650s. We had a budget of £400, which seemed like a fortune in 1980. As we camped along the way, the money lasted well on our adventure, changing currencies as we crossed borders and navigating with maps and place names taped to our tanks.
With the advent of GPS devices, touring became easier, and we got lost less often, giving us the chance to explore smaller routes and focus on particular areas such as the higher passes in Switzerland, France, and Austria.
Work always seemed to get in the way of really getting out there. Although it paid for the trips, it also restricted them to the few weeks we were allocated. However, weekend motorcycle camping trips during the summer months to the Scottish west coast, the islands, and the far north with friends or the Triumph club became regular occurrences. I tried to balance my time off with other interests such as hill walking, golf, skiing, and sailing.
I married my French wife, Martine, in 1994, and she gamely rode pillion on holidays to France and the occasional foray around the British Isles. By that time, I had two or three motorcycles, with my constant companion being a 1969 Triumph Bonneville, which I only sold in 2022. That bike kept me busy with restoration work and countless forays into the depths of the engine as I tried to repair that impossible-to-find oil leak!
I decided to stop working and move to France when I reached the age of 55. Apart from restoring an old farmhouse, learning French, and integrating into French society, I was looking for something to keep me interested as a hobby. I knew I could lead motorcycle groups, as I was already doing that, and because I could speak some French and was going to live in France, I started looking for tour companies that operated in France.
This is how I came across Felix and Magellan Motorcycle Tours. At that time, Felix was guiding, managing the business, and developing new trips almost by himself, although his father, David, was helping out with routes in the background. We corresponded via email to see if there was a fit, and in 2016, we met in Grenoble during one of Felix’s France and Corsica trips to size each other up.
That obviously worked out well, and look where we are now!
Ride with Nick on a future tour