Best Island for a Scooter Holiday?

Davina40

Looking to go away for a long weekend in May or June, hire a couple of scooters and potter around an island in the Med somewhere.

Any recommendations? Preferably somewhere with nice quiet roads and some decent out of the way places to explore. And easy to get to from Manchester and London.

z1a

One with a hospital.

PeacefulWaters

Med somewhere

Rules out Isle of Man then.

discat11

I wouldn't use a hire company scooters unless you are
a) reasonably experienced 2 wheeled riders -even twist & goes of 50cc need some skill.
b)Taking your own crash helmets, gloves etc. (hire places have rubbish helmets and gloves are very rare).

Even then I would pick only a larger place with a quality brand like peugeot or piaggio/Vespa and avoid anything I'd never heard of or which looked knocked around.

Islands -I've ridden on Corfu (Kerkyra) and Kefalonia as well as driven on most other Greek Islands and you need your wits about you even on smaller less busy islands as there will be stupid tourists on other scooters and in hire cars weaving about being idiotic, in the event of a crash a scooter will always come off worse and hence an EHIC111 and a main hospital as well as good travel insurance are an absolute must.

I'm not trying to put anyone off -I've travelled to more countries on 2 wheels than any other means, but you need common sense, and lots of experience to be able to avoid paying for others mistakes.
On a nice sunny island a bike can be the best thing ever!

Voyager2002

If you are willing to go a bit further, I strongly recommend the Seychelles (only place where I have ridden a motorbike, and it was a good experience).

fifeken

One like this?

YorkshireBoy

Pefkos/Lindos in Rhodes.

This will be our 5th year, and we usually have a 125cc Kymco Agility for the whole 2 weeks. Costs around 160 euros.

Can ride across the island from Pefkos/Lindos to Kameiros/Mandriko/Monolithos via Empona and see less than 30 moving vehicles the whole way!

Obviously need your wits about you going North-South on the '95', and especially in Rhodes Town, but inland is very safe...and very enjoyable.

LUHG1878

Just out of interest, why an island specifically?

If you based yourself somewhere like Malaga you could ride down the coast as far as Gibraltar in a couple of hours, or Almeria going up the coast.

Flights won't be hard to come by from MAN and there are plenty of apartment options so you should be able to find something, whatever your budget.

Voyager2002

LUHG1878 wrote: »

Just out of interest, why an island specifically?

If you based yourself somewhere like Malaga you could ride down the coast as far as Gibraltar in a couple of hours, or Almeria going up the coast.

Flights won't be hard to come by from MAN and there are plenty of apartment options so you should be able to find something, whatever your budget.

The coastal road from Malaga is extremely dangerous even in a car, so on a scooter it would be suitable only for the suicidal.

LUHG1878

Voyager2002 wrote: »

The coastal road from Malaga is extremely dangerous even in a car, so on a scooter it would be suitable only for the suicidal.

Definitely not my experience, i've even cycled parts of it.

NoodleDoodleMan

I believe that travel insurance may be renedered null and void if you've had an accident and alcohol has been taken, regardless of liability.

There were so many scooter accidents in popular Med tourist resort areas that Thomsons and Thomas Cook stopped their reps from acting as agents for scooter hire firms some years ago.

That's the down side.