mpc Ural motorbikes - Ural uk 

We specialize in ural flat twin motorcycles/sidecars from Russia, Dnepr motorbikes/sidecars from the Ukraine, overhead valve and sidevalve versions. Over the years these bikes have been known under various names, cossacks, nevals, urals, uralmoto, dnepr, IMZ, KMZ

1000 Mile Club

whats this page about,  simple, in order to have your name listed,  you need to have covered in a day, 1000 miles plus, that's not 500 out and 500 back, but 1000 plus outbound.  We don't expect it to be done on a ural  (many many more brownie points if you do) So, to start the ball rolling, I will recount our 1000 mile plus journey undertaken a couple of weeks ago.

It all started with the usual sort of conversation in the workshop, we need to go for a good blast,, somewhere worth a visit,, so ideas started to form,, lets nip down to barga in Italy, its where the wife comes from (reason to go), its 1107 miles each way (long enough blast) good, French and Italian roads and a bit of an adventure, so a date was set and 4 of us were due to go,, erindoors riding pillion on my busa, fat boy on his busa and edge on whatever he had at the time, turned out to be a zxr12,,)  so ferries/accommodation/dates arranged and we were off,,  we left at half past midnight for a 1am rendezvous with fatboy and edge at the services at jct15 of the m1,, we were due to get the 4.20 ferry from Dover so loads of time,, nice steady ride down the m1 and onto the m25,, over the bridge and hang a left for the m20 towards Dover,,   that's left for the m20 fatboy and edge, who decided to carry on round the m25, so having lost bill and ben, I carried on down to Dover,, which if we had stayed together we could have caught the earlier ferry,, so after a half hour wait, bill and ben turned up,, so onto the 4am ferry over to Calais, which with the hour time difference we landed at 7 am. the intention was to get to barga in 12 hours arriving at 7pm,, good plan, we now had 927 miles ish to cover,  with one relative novice (fat boy) and one time served rider(edge),, wind the throttle on up to 110-120 ish mph and off we go,, heading south on the toll roads,  first problem we encounter is the zx12 is crap on fuel,, 100 miles per tank best,  so as soon as the busa reads half a tank i am looking for fuel for edge,  what we found was that for every 10 litres used by the busa's  the green beastie needed 13 litres,, not good. Now I have done this journey many times by can and bike, but what I didn't allow for in the time scale was the wait,,,  every ticket or payment point on the toll roads takes 3 times as long as you wait for the others to get through.. but we are making reasonable progress,, I didn't realize how taxing it would be, being the lead bike,, setting the pace, sorting the route, stopping for fuel/breaks and just keeping us together the missus is just sat pillion on her new gel pad seat, going with the flow, now normally she moans about the seat after a hundred miles or so,, but she seems happy so seat doing its job,, by early afternoon we are a good way through France and needing to stop for food/fuel, but we are by my calculation already an hour behind schedule(i have a good reason to want to get to barga by 7pm)so get some scoff and push the speed up again,  through the monte blanc tunnel and into Italy,, still a long way to go, we head down through aosta and towards genova,, now genova is the problem  its about 100 miles of tunnels and bridges, the tunnels are not straight and the bridges are at the end of the tunnels and can go left/right or straight which at speed hurtling through dark tunnels and out the other side onto bridges with just barriers can be disconcerting to say the least, I wanted to hit this section whilst we still had daylight,, but it was not tobe,, so in darkness we are hurtling through the tunnels,, edge is falling further and further back, as I drop speed to let him catch up, I realize he needs fuel soon,, so I slow right down, to get into the next services, onto the hard shoulder waiting for him and fatboy, and they go hurtling by trying to catch me up,, oh shit,,, there is a fork in 5 or 6 miles,,  so I had to nail the busa  trying to catch someone doing 120mph,, is not that easy particularly as it was the middle of the rush hour Italian style,, everyone wellies it,, just managed to catch up and get by them 250 yds before the fork,, took the right turn and pulled up in the next available services,, as we all got off the bikes, fat boy looked like a zombie,, he was absolutely shattered,  edge was muttering on about finding a hotel, and crating the bikes and shipping them back to the uk,,   so both knackered then,  fuel and  neat coffee injections, only 150 miles left (told them it was about 50 miles just to keep them moving) set off again at a slower pace,, 80ish and slowly wound the speed back up to a ton to keep us with the flow of traffic  turned off at lucca which leaves us with about 20 miles to go,, took a break in the MacDonald's,, fatboy was so knackered he couldn't even eat a burger(now that's not normal for him being on a sea food diet)  edge was silent (that's not normal for him either) the final section of the journey is on minor roads with loads of z bends etc as we work our way upinto the mountains,, arrived at barga at 10pm, found the accommodation and everyone hit the sack almost straight away,......(not a murmur from the missus about her backside  so gelpad done the trick then)   the next day we just relaxed and spent most of the day in cafes/bars drinking and eating,, on the Saturday decided to take the boys for a spin around the area,,  so off we went down the twisty roads,, fatboy not got the experience for these roads and not having much fun, so down onto the lower roads and look at some of the sights it was then decided to do a 75mile loop back into barga via abetone,, which is up a mountain,, wrong choice we rode straight into a snow storm lasted for about 2 hours as we rode up the twisty roads to abetone,, once over the top and we started to drop back down the mountain again we hit a leaf storm,, the roads were awash in leafs with our wheels sliding all over the place, then we hit a 3 to 4 mile section of road covered in conkers,,, great fun yeah right,,,  we were all quite pleased to get back to the accommodation ,,  the return journey to the uk was done on the following day (sunday),, we left a 7am with the air temp below 0 degrees,, it stay at 0 or below all the way through Italy back into France and didn't really warm up until we were near the English channel,  it was cold,  but we made better time on the return journey knocking 3 hours off  the cold was taking a toll on all of us,, but the missus suffered the most,, to the point where she didn't really want to get back on the bike after each fuel stop, so onto the ferry,, we all crashed for an hour and off at dover, we all headed north at our own speed, we pulled into the south minns services by this time the missus was in hypothermia so we booked into the travel lodge for what was left of the night and carried on home the next day, fatboy and edge, carried on home arriving at 2.30-3am,,  so no crashes,only one breakdownish,  fatboys busa seems to have a thing about ferries, and refused to start again to get him on the ferry,, so he pushed it up the ramp,, and it then started,, it failed to start in a service station and was jump started, and after that started first time every time,, work that out,,,, my new dual compound rear tyre, performed well with very little visible wear at the end of the journey which if i had used the oem tyre would have been worn out by the end of 2500 miles,,  cant fault the busa,,  returned 40/45 to the gallon,  average speed was about 120mph,, with blasts upto 170mph,,  and we only triggered half a dozen speed cameras(mainly forward facing) good run, and we are all up for another run in 2008,,  gibraltar in a day maybe,,,,,,,,,,

2008 is now nearly over,  the year has been busy and long distance runs have not been our priority,  but in 2009 the intention is to do a run to portugal,  this will be a URAL run, with the aim of completing a 1000 miles in a day,  starting off the ferry in france  a steady 65mph run south west down through france into spain and then portugal, only stopping for the night when we have covered the required 1000 miles.

  anyone interested in coming along email or call me.

my 1000 miles in a day run for 2008 ended up being to the ural dealer meeting in linz austria, this according to the book was less than 1000 miles but with a missed turn outbound around Brussels and an overshoot into Dusseldorf on the way back, my round trip turned out to be just over the 2000 mile mark,, It was an interesting trip completed on my own, which meant i could travel without worrying about whether everyone was still with me, surprisingly  without other riders i tended to find my speed dropping and had to make a conscious effort to maintain the speed, even with an hour or so lost around Brussels and some heavy traffic and road works I made good time and arrived in Linz about 10pm,  attended the dealer meeting on saturday and started the return journey at 7am sunday by 8.30pm sunday evening I was sat down at home watching top gear. speeds through germany on the autobahns was high with me averaging 150mph most of the way with bursts upto 180/190mph (just to stay with the flow of traffic you understand) even through roadworks the germans were sitting at 90mph even though the speed was supposed to be 90kmh  as for the german service stations,,  brilliant  ride in, and they all follow a logical order,,   no long service roads taking you around in circles,,  fuel first, followed by the shop area, followed by parking one straight line,,, IN and OUT.   saw 5 crashes in the 2000 miles,,   yup  all in the uk, so with the slowest road speeds we have the most crashes,, work it out,, crap uk drivers,, the bike i used was my hayabusa,  average fuel consumption over the 2000 miles  50 mpg,,,,

have done a couple of other good runs this year, but neither in the 1000 mile club league, but hey, its my site, so i am going to tell you about them,  first was to gourin in france, with she who must be obeyed on the pillion, took the hayabusa,,, yup got caught in france 90 euro on the spot fine for 40mph over the limit, and a very slow approach to doing the paper work just to make the point i think,,  still  no points,   second ride was to france again, but went on a caponord,, slower more relaxed she likes the seat better, no arse ache,  BUT (aprillia take note)   the speedo is not in the centre of the console its too the left,, which meant for the whole weekend i was getting a jab every time we strayed over the speed limit,, from the nagging machine on the back,, who can now see what speed we are doing,,   after my speeding fine on the previous visit, i was also getting a jab everytime a cop was spotted on the other side of the road,  or she saw a speed camera sign,,, but she missed the radar trap in the same place as i got caught earlier in the year, she also missed the mobile radar gun as we came back up the coast. still a good time was had by all. 

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units L2/K2  Elms farm ind est, Ullesthorpe Rd, Bitteswell, Nr Lutterworth, Leicestershire England  LE17 4LR  (Approx. 3 miles from Jct. 20 M1)

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