Closest mountain pass ?

[Rasher]

That route is effectively Trip 13 in the "Motorcycle Journey's" book if you take out Aravis and Colombiere and we rode it clockwise in 2010 starting from a few miles out of Martigny - a long day but easily do-able in good weather.

Plan to do the same route counter clockwise on our RDGA trip later this year.

 

[Simon W]

Probably the Vosges - for semi-high stuff, anyway. A day and a half from Calais gets you started: by the end of Day 2 you can be in Mulhouse or Belfort having ridden the Route des Cretes. Something like this.

 

[Rasher]

Probably the Vosges - for semi-high stuff, anyway. A day and a half from Calais gets you started: by the end of Day 2 you can be in Mulhouse or Belfort having ridden the Route des Cretes. Something like this.

We have gone from West of Oxford to the edge of the Vosges in a day, requires an early start / crossing, we use the tunnel and try to get a train before 9:00am which ensures we have little or no motorway on day 2, another option for those short on available days is to ride down to the crossing the evening before and get an even earlier train, or possibly cross the same evening and have a cheap motel lined up just outside of Calais.