A wall of photographs from Rodrigo and Jacko's journeys

Jacko On Tour field notes

Stories From The Road

23 true stories from Rodrigo's archive. Each one reveals a different part of the experience behind the next expedition.

Why these stories matter

The road is persuasive when the record is real.

These are not invented adventure scenes. The routes, conditions and outcomes come from Rodrigo's own archive and the completed Patagonia journey. The editorial lesson is what connects them to the rider considering what comes next.

Rodrigo and Jacko on the loaded bike above the white sand at Achmelvich

The Long North

Scotland: the Highlands, the west coast, and a castle in a wheat field

North out of Ayrshire through Glasgow and Edinburgh, into the Highlands at Fort William, over to Applecross and the white sand at Achmelvich, and back down to the Borders. Two weeks of the summer of 2021, with a week in Iceland cut into the middle.Scotland · 5 min readRead The Field Note

Rodrigo standing on cooled lava with molten lava running down the slope behind him

The Long North

Iceland: the ring road in a week, and a volcano still erupting

Flown in from Edinburgh on 5 August 2021 and out to Fagradalsfjall the same day, while it was still erupting. Then Route 1 the whole way round: Skogafoss, Vik, Jokulsarlon, the east fjords, the north, and back to Reykjavik seven days later.Iceland · 5 min readRead The Field Note

Rodrigo and Jacko with a Turkish flag on the Bosphorus

The Silk Road

Turkey: the border I had failed at twice, and then the whole country

A month riding Turkey end to end in the summer of 2025: into Istanbul at sunset, down the Aegean and the Mediterranean, over Cappadocia and the salt lake, along the Syrian border to Mount Nemrut and Mardin, and out through the mountains of the east.Turkey · 7 min readRead The Field Note

Jacko sitting on the loaded motorcycle beside a green Soviet railway carriage

The Silk Road

Georgia: wine older than history, Stalin's home town, and the wall of the Caucasus

Five weeks in Georgia in 2025, from the Turkish border to the Russian one: Tbilisi, the vineyards of Kakheti, Stalin's home town, the Black Sea at Batumi, and the high Caucasus.Georgia · 5 min readRead The Field Note

Rodrigo and another rider with Jacko between their motorcycles, a Georgian flag and the snow peaks of the Caucasus behind

The Silk Road

The South Ossetian line: camping at 2,240 metres under the Greater Caucasus

September 2025, in the Georgian mountains below South Ossetia. A track that climbs to well over two thousand metres, a border post with a flag, and a night camped where the road stops.The South Ossetian border, Georgia · 3 min readRead The Field Note

Riding into the Lauterbrunnen valley, with glaciers and waterfalls at the head of it

Favourite Roads

Grindelwald and Lauterbrunnen: the Alps at walking pace

One of the most memorable stretches of the Eurotrip, and nothing like anything I had ridden before: glaciers, waterfalls, meadows and cows with bells, all within the same hour.The Bernese Alps, Switzerland · 3 min readRead The Field Note

Turquoise glacial water beside the Carretera Austral

Favourite Roads

Route 7: a thousand kilometres of Chilean Patagonia

Route 7, the Carretera Austral. A thousand kilometres of forest, fjord and gravel through Chilean Patagonia, opened to the public only about forty years ago.Chilean Patagonia · 4 min readRead The Field Note

An empty curving road through the Sierra foothills

Favourite Roads

Route 49: the California gold rush road

The road takes its number from 1849, the year the gold rush began. What is left along it are the towns that were thrown up for the prospectors and abandoned when the gold ran out.The Sierra foothills, California · 3 min readRead The Field Note

The convoy: a French overland truck and four loaded motorcycles on the Guajira coast

Favourite Roads

The Guajira trail: reaching the top of South America

Punta Gallinas is the northernmost point of South America, at the end of a desert where tracks cross, disappear and reappear. I reached it in a convoy of strangers who had become a team.La Guajira, Colombia · 4 min readRead The Field Note

Favourite Roads

The Rugova gorge: six hundred metres of granite either side

West of Pec, in a country that has only existed since 2008, a narrow road turns into one of the least explored corners of the Balkans and climbs between granite walls six hundred metres high.Rugova, Kosovo · 3 min readRead The Field Note

A brown bear sitting at the edge of the asphalt

Hard Roads

The Transfagarasan: Romania's mountain road, and the bears that live on it

Romania's most famous road climbs to two thousand metres through the Fagaras mountains, and it runs through the largest brown bear population in Europe outside Russia. On 28 June 2025 one of them came at Jacko and me from seven metres away.The Fagaras mountains, Romania · 7 min readRead The Field Note

A brown bear sitting on the stone wall at the edge of the Transfagarasan road

The Hard Roads

Romania 2024: a burnt alternator, a bear on the road and Dracula's back door

September 2024. Turkey turned me back at the border, so the map turned north instead. What followed was a burnt alternator on a beach outside Pitesti, a workshop that took two days, bears on the Transfagarasan, a castle I got into through the back door, and two refusals at the Moldovan border in a single afternoon.Romania · 9 min readRead The Field Note

Rodrigo standing among fields of spent rocket casings

The Hard Roads

Ukraine: the country that was never in the plan, ridden in the third year of the war

Turkey turned me back over paperwork, so the route was rebuilt through countries I did not know. In October 2024 that took Jacko and me across Ukraine, from Chernivtsi to Odesa, Kyiv and out through Lviv.Ukraine · 6 min readRead The Field Note

Rodrigo on the motorcycle in front of the Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood

The Long North

Saint Petersburg and Karelia: out of the palace and into sixty thousand lakes

August 2022, on the third Eurotrip. In at Saint Petersburg, then north west into Karelia, where the roads turn to gravel and the country becomes forest and water.Saint Petersburg and Karelia · 4 min readRead The Field Note

The Silk Road

The Russian Caucasus: Grozny rebuilt, the Sulak canyon, and five days on eighty euros

September 2025, on the way to Kazakhstan. Foreign cards stopped working in Russia when the war began, so I crossed North Ossetia, Chechnya and Dagestan on the cash in my pocket. I kept stopping anyway.The Russian Caucasus · 7 min readRead The Field Note

A boy looking at the loaded motorcycle and Jacko among the ruins of Mosul

The Silk Road

Northern Iraq: Mosul in ruins, a citadel older than history, and a welcome nobody expects

Six days across northern Iraq in August 2025: the wreckage of Mosul, a citadel lived on for seven thousand years, a prison kept as it was found, and one invitation to tea after another.Iraq · 6 min readRead The Field Note

A tent and the loaded motorcycle on a salt flat at sunset, with Jacko lying in the sand

The Silk Road

Wild Kazakhstan: camels, salt flats, a drowned sea and the road to the stars

Two thousand kilometres of steppe between one town and the next, a family of judo champions who took me in, a Silk Road city I camped outside, and then, on an empty road in the desert, the motorcycle simply stopped. Kazakhstan, in the autumn of 2025.Kazakhstan · 8 min readRead The Field Note

Origins

Kirkenes: four months of polar night, working for a motorcycle I did not own

This is where all of it begins, and there is no motorcycle in it. Four months working through the dark in Kirkenes, in the far northeast of Norway, a short drive from the Russian border, saving for a bike I had not bought yet.Kirkenes, Norway · 9 min readRead The Field Note

Rodrigo holding a Chilean flag beside his motorcycle at the Grand Canyon

Origins

The first ride: no experience, one new motorcycle and four states ahead

A new motorcycle bought with the money from an Arctic winter, no riding experience at all, and a summer spent finding out what I had got myself into: the Pacific coast, the gold country, Death Valley and the Grand Canyon.California, Nevada, Utah and Arizona · 7 min readRead The Field Note

Rodrigo beside the globe monument at the North Cape

The Long North

The North Cape: from the Finnish border to Hamburg, the long way down

Out of Russia into Finland, up through Lapland to 71 degrees north, and then the whole Norwegian coast south: the fjords, the Lofoten, the ferries, and out through Denmark into Germany. Four weeks in the autumn of 2022.Finland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark · 9 min readRead The Field Note

Jacko sitting on Rodrigo's loaded BMW motorcycle beside Ruta 40

Hard Roads

Ruta 40: the 72 kilometres that marked three motorcycles

Between General Gregores and Tres Lagos, a 72-kilometre section of loose gravel and Patagonian wind gave my group a direct lesson in consequence. Three of the four motorcycles finished with damage. Jacko was fine.Ruta 40, Argentine Patagonia · 6 min readRead The Field Note

Riders and adventure motorcycles overlooking Patagonia

Field Record

Patagonia 2026: what riding the far south taught us about the next expedition

The March 2026 archive is the clearest public proof of my working life around riders, motorcycles and the practical rhythm of a guided journey. It also explains why the next Jacko On Tour expedition will feel very different.Chile and Argentina · 6 min readRead The Field Note

The loaded motorcycle on a wooded road in Snowdonia

The Long North

Wales twice: a slate town in November, and the road north to the Irish ferry

November 2019, at the cold end of a long ride, and again in July 2021 on the way to Ireland. Two crossings of the same small country: one that ended a season, one that started the best part of another.Wales · 6 min readRead The Field Note

Jacko looking over a winding road through southern forest

Write the next field note

The next expedition is taking shape.

Rodrigo will lead a maximum of four riders. The route and timing are still in development.

Explore The Expedition