Roadtrips: The Great Malle Rally 2025
- Steve Toze
- Jul 29
- 13 min read
Updated: Aug 2
The British have a long, glorious, history of stupid ideas.
I first heard of the Malle Rally before I could even ride a motorcycle and, in part, the idea of the Malle Rally inspired me to actually get on and pass my test. When I pressed the button on an entry to the 2025 Malle Rally I’d only been riding a motorcycle for one month and that month was January.
The Great Malle Rally is the longest motorcycle rally in the UK. 1500 (ish) miles from the Southern tip of the UK down here on The Lizard heading via pretty much every epic road in our fair nation to the very northerly tip of Scotland, Castle of Mey, just a short ride from John O Groats. Now I know what you are thinking, why didn’t it start from Land’s End? The educated amongst us know that Land’s End is a useless point, it’s neither the most southerly or westerly point of the UK - it’s just a place that the ill informed ride to and from.
Let’s head back to Feb 2025, I am pressing the button on my entry to The Great Malle Rally, I’d seen some videos on Youtube and it looked like my kind of thing but I’d been riding a motorcycle for about 4 months, a couple of months before my test on a little 125 and then a few weeks of no riding and then a month after my test on the Ducati Scrambler that I’d decided to buy myself for my birthday. From that point I had around 4 months to prepare myself for one of the toughest challenges of my life, I put in around 1500 miles of riding over those 4 months, nowhere near the experience required but I was hoping my lifetime of riding bicycles in hostile weather would really help me out.
A word on kit. Now the organisers Malle London make luggage for motorcycles and given I had absolutely no kit whatsoever I ordered one of their pannier bags, a duffel bag is also included in the entry that they move for you from checkpoint to checkpoint. Nervously I bought and sold kit trying to work out what would be the right choice, a massive Belstaff riding jacket seemed ok, boots I could not get right until I stumbled upon a kind of retro walking boot from Grenson which just seemed to fit both the look and function of life on the road. I was about to buy a helmet from British brand Hedon when they told me there were doing a special lid for the Malle Rally so this seemed both logical and a fun tribute if I actually managed to complete the rally. My bike was as unsuitable as any other, from the videos I’d seen riders were on anything from massive BMW adventure bikes to small retro Honda scramblers, my naked (this means no wind protection) Ducati Scrambler was brand new, so I had the luxury of knowing it would start each morning - even if I did look like I had all the gear and no idea - a largely factual statement. For navigation I was using a combo of my phone and a cute nav system called Beeline.
Fast forward to June 22nd 2025 and I am stood in the kitchen packing my kit and really trying hard to want to go. Every part of me was up for it but in a parallel universe there was a version of Steve Toze not doing it, scared of the challenge, wondering whether he’d get on with the other people, wondering if he’d make a tit of himself, fearing for his safety - those two universes never felt so close together. I did the only sensible thing, loaded my bike, hugged my wife and set off for the start line.
Day -01 - The Ride to the Start
I was blessed, or cursed, with being the rider closest to the start. A couple of hours easy ride for me, with all of my kit on the bike. Now I should at this point out that included in the entry is the option to have your bike shipped from the finish back South but given this would still mean me collecting my bike from London I opted to just ride home. This meant this short ride to the start would be my opportunity to find out how the bike would ride on the 950 mile ride home - without the daily luggage transfer - and thankfully, aside from a few adjustments, it rode just fine. I arrived at the Lizard in good time and rolled into the campsite, it felt like the bulk of the 100 riders had already arrived and riders were applying their rider numbers, laughing and joking and as I looked around I wondered what I’d signed myself up for. The rider next to me had a similar look and as we began chatting it quickly became apparent that a fair chunk of the riders were there solo.
I registered, got my number (69) and stuck my bike graphics on before heading to find my bunk, accommodation was a bell tent which I’d be sharing with Steve 2, a confident San Franciscan and Stuart, hailing from Lincolnshire, who was quieter, competent but looked more nervous about what lay ahead. Around a hundred riders were taking part, half from the UK and then the rest from every corner of the globe, mostly blokes in their middle years but a few women along for the fun too.
After a short shake down ride, dinner was served and we got to find out who our road crew would be - the riders I would spend each day of the Rally with. The organisers thinking my surname was in some way Latin hooked me up in a crew with Samuel from Brazil, Bruno from Portugal, Jamie from Peru and then Niels from Denmark and Kev from Macclesfield. We named ourselves the Conquistadors and receiving our route cards for the next day started to plan our route. It was at this point I told them we were basically on my home soil, less than 10 miles from my childhood home and riding the very route out of the South West that I’d used to ride down. I was quickly appointed the lead rider for the next day. Oh my.
Day 01 - The Rally begins. Lizard to Cheddar Gorge
The night was cold; a few beers and a cold air-bed meant sleep was broken. Each team was allocated a start time, we all rolled down to the Lizard Point car park the smell of petrol and the bracing wind were reminders of the general shape of things to come. My crew were already gelling well and having a few laughs in the car park waiting to get our log books stamped. 09:23 was our time to ride, with safety checks complete the flag was dropped.
Now, co-ordinating 6 of you on the road, together, with no form of communication other than hand gestures and head nods was a refined art but fairly quickly we found our way and as I led my new crew through the homelands of south Cornwall I began to see why the organisers chose to make the route go from South to North, these weren’t Cornwall’s best roads. As we ejected Cornwall we took a slight deviation from the prescribed route suggestion heading through Tavistock and up to checkpoint one in Princetown.
As we took in the surroundings and wrestled with the giant pasty in our lunch bags Kev announced he didn’t actually have enough fuel for the crossing of Dartmoor, fairly rapidly (but with Moor care) we descended back off the moors to Yelverton for a refuel before pressing on towards Exeter and up the River Exe towards Dunster Castle on the edge of Exmoor. By any stretch this would be a decent day of riding but we still had a couple more hours ahead of us and as we tired we started to make basic navigational errors, missing turns and reading the sat nav wrong. This turned a fairly simple ride from Dunster to Cheddar Gorge into a bit of a mission and also tested the newly forming relationship on the road - everyone remained fairly chilled, even if they were cursing inside their helmets.
Day 02 - Mishaps, Mist & Mayhem - Bristol to Snowdonia
We awoke to the sound that no one in a tent ever wants to hear, rain. Riding a motorcycle in rain is never fun but fortunately for me I’d had a ton of practice, my motorcycle test was completed in a howling rain storm back in January so some summertime mizzle wasn’t going to kill my vibe. With waterproofs on we set out across Bristol in search of the Severn Bridge. Crossing the bridge was probably my lowest point of the whole trip, traffic, trucks and insane winds made the whole experience joyless. Thankfully as we entered Wales the weather cheered up, the waterproofs came off and the roads got smaller and quieter. Despite the crappy start things really looked up, fast sweeping roads, stunning views and switchbacks started to give us a taste of why we were doing this. The Brecon Beacons delivered great road after great road as we skirted Dyfi Forest and into Snowdonia the weather predictably turned to shit. I think we’d all hoped for the majestic views of Snowdonia but what we got was mist, floods and wild roads. As we rode back towards the border things improved, more and more riders appeared and stuck with a 50mph average speed camera the party started early as the huge group rolled across North Wales in search of Hawarden Castle and our evening camp. After a couple of days on the road the relationships between riders really began to take a front seat, as someone that had travelled to the Malle Rally alone it’s wild to think that you can make brand new friends at aged fifty, the common interest being the road ahead but often so many experiences to share on the roads travelled over the previous decades.
Day 03 - Back to England
Predictably we completely screwed up the start of the day, again. A stop for fuel and another reroute on the sat nav took us for a trip to Wrexham that wasn’t planned (is any trip to Wrexham planned?) before we finally got back on track and headed towards the Derbyshire hills. Winnats Pass delivering the first of the day’s spectacular roads and then onward to Snake Pass. Snake Pass is the kind of road you see in motoring magazines and also on the news as it’s both insanely good on a motorcycle but also there’s plenty of opportunities to launch yourself in the abyss below. After a couple of days of wrestling my little Ducati around this was the first time where I truly felt like I’d started to understand how to ride it properly, corners came up quickly and the speed crept up but the bike felt great and as we crossed what is one of the highest road in the Pennines man and machine came together in the kind of cliche that only old men seem to write about, but I am sure exist for everyone, and I found myself shouting with joy inside my helmet at the sheer awesomeness of the whole moment.
Day three just continued to get better as we rode on through old mill towns and into Yorkshire we took in the spectacular Malham Cove before pressing on at a fairly intense pace toward Kendal and our stop for the night, the highly impressive Motorboat Racing Club on the banks of Lake Windermere.
Day 04 - It’s a Hardknott Life
There’s rain and then there’s the kind of rain you get in the Lake District, it looks the same, in fact it looks less intense but somehow it just is wetter and I awoke to the full experience. The start was thankfully slightly delayed and looking at the weather radar we hoped this would minimise our time in the rain so with storm suits on (essentially a waterproof adult baby grow) we set off around the edge of Lake Windermere in pursuit of our first checkpoint of the day, the mighty Hardknot Pass. I didn’t know anything about Hardknott Pass but I quickly got to work it out; corners with 33% gradients, cascading rain, single track and poor visibility.
As we rolled out of the Pass and into the checkpoint Kev’, my team mate, politely told me I did really well to ride it all and as stories circulated about bikes getting dropped I started to think he may be right. My little Ducati seemed to love this terrain and just as I’d hoped those years of racing mountain bikes were really helping me with pretty much everything aside from an involuntary response to pull the left “brake lever” which on a motorbike is actually the clutch and so periodically, at the very worst times, instead of carefully slowing myself down on technical corners I’d actually add even more speed by removing the engine braking - in all honesty I’ve ridden a bike for so long that I don’t even consciously use the brakes at all so unlearning a habit that I don’t consciously have is going to take some time.
The rest of Day Four was taken up by the fairly arduous task of leaving England, skirting Carlisle and a hilarious checkpoint in Gretna Green to gatecrash multiple weddings and find some dry woolly socks. The late afternoon was spent largely riding at the speed limit, overtaking massive trucks and heading for Kelburn Castle, a wild looking place that is kind of half ancient Scottish castle and half design project. The story goes that whilst working on the rebuild of the 11th century castle they got some Brazilian artists in to decorate it with large murals and they liked it so much it’s just stayed.
Day 05 - Highland Fing
First stop of the day was Glasgow and, yes, we totally fumbled our way around the edge of the Clyde and over the Erskine Bridge before calming ourselves down as we headed to Loch Lomond and the Trossachs. This wasn’t my first trip to this area, back in the day trips to Fort William for mountain bike races were a regular occurrence, but on a damp summer’s day staring through my visor at the rapidly approaching corners nothing looked the same. The weather around Loch Lomond was bad but as we gained altitude en route to Glencoe the wind increased and it really got wild. Our checkpoint in Glencoe village offered a roaring fire and a chance to dry out before it was back onto the A82, skirting Ben Nevis and heading west to the Kyle of Lochalsh and then north west towards Applecross.
Applecross is a remote peninsula and the Bealach na Ba route to get there is absolutely bonkers, there’s warning signs and they were ignored. At times I wondered what on earth I was doing but with a rider ahead of me I needed to follow and a rider behind me thinking the same we just got to it. Two thousand feet up on a narrow alpine road with a huge cascading waterfall to my side I tried to take in as much as I could whilst wrestling my bike around the sharp bends.
By contrast the road out of Applecross is possibly the best motorcycling road in the world. Flowing bend after bend for mile after mile, remote, coastal and spectacular. It had been such a massive day it was hard not to feel emotional but fortunately the quiet place inside your helmet, the deep throb of an engine somewhere distant was the perfect place to have a little quiet time, maybe a tear and feel absolutely insignificant in a mighty world where you are just a dickhead having the very best time of their life.
Day 06 - The End
I awoke with a slightly sore head after sharing a little too much joy of the day previous. The night before had been great fun, staying at The Torridon Estate which is exactly the kind of eccentric, quirky and charmingly rundown estate you’d expect to find in a remote corner of northern Scotland. The hosts had made us very welcome and we’d reciprocated by hanging our wet pants on their fire and destroying their showers. Looking at the route card for the day it was evident that the last day would be a stunner, no major roads, coastline for almost the entirety and a solid 240 miles of basically B roads we’d need to press on.
The vibe around the bikes was buzzing, my tent mate Stu’ had taken a fall the previous day, narrowly avoiding a truck in a failed overtaking attempt so it was great to see him on a bike and ready to ride. The sun was out, I pulled the white jeans that I’d carried all week in my bag and rolling out onto the main road to Gairloch and essentially locking into the NC500 route north things felt really great, really quickly.
Now, although we’re nearing the end of our tale I feel a cautionary word on wind shouldn’t be overlooked, riding bikes in the rain is essentially a fairly universal ball ache, it’s wet, it’s annoying but it’s the same for everyone. Wind however is not universal, if you’re riding a nice heavy adventure bike with a front fairing then wind is very little trouble to you. If you’re riding a high revving, lightweight Italian motorcycle and your shirt size is closer to an XL than an L then the wind will very much make its presence known and the coast of Scotland is very, very windy. There’s very little you can do about it, except look forward to shelter.
The NC500 is truly epic, the roads are empty, exciting and there’s insane views in all directions. As we rode through Gairloch and climbed out over the mountain pass towards Ullapool things got really windy, I was blowing about all over the place and the descent towards Loch Ewe had me slowed down to under forty as I wrested to keep the bike in a straight line. Ullapool offered a welcome rest, Ullapool is a perfect blend of old Scottish fishing port and hipster vibes. Kind of the Newlyn of Scotland. The Sea Shack offered great seafood and decent coffee wasn’t far away. I found an outdoor shop and bought an extra layer of clothing, the biting wind starting to chill the bones on this sunny Scottish day.
The afternoon push north was truly epic, it became evident fairly quickly that instead of sticking to the fairly quick A835 we’d deviated off the prescribed route and were pushing right along the coast on the tiny B roads that hugged the coast. It was a major detour and would cost us dearly later in the day but the magical landscape of ancient rocky outcrops, stunning white sand beaches and beautiful coastal roads deserved life in the moment. We rode with wild abandon, after a week our group just locked in, we were having the time of our lives.
We were the last riders to arrive at the final checkpoint, it was likely we were going to miss the frivolities at Castle of Mey, still a good couple of hours away, but as we refuelled and headed east to the finish no one really cared. Less than a week previous we’d been strangers, all brought to Malle Rally for different reasons, all travelling alone and as the epic montage of great roads and good laughs played out no one there doubted that we’d been brought together for something far more than just riding motorcycles and whatever it was we’d found it.
Nothing grows in the comfort zone.
Thanks to Malle London for organising a great event, more info on their website, we'll be back next year for the next adventure.