2012: The Iron Butt Association

Location: Prague

Total number of countries: 4

Total distance travelled: 1020 miles

The Iron Butt Association is not, as my good friend Robbie recently suggested, some kind of kinky Nazi social group. Instead, it's a club that you can join after proving your ability for to ride big distances on a motorbike for a long time, and the entry standard is 1000 miles in 24 hours.

All the usual clichés come out when talking to people about touring on a motorbike - "it's about the journey, not the destination", "live for the moment" or, if you are Jon Bonjovi, "I'm a cowboy, on my steel horse I ride..."

...Maybe not that last one.

The fact is that it's about both the journey and the destination, and on a trip where you have only a limited amount of time it's constantly about working out the best way to strike a balance between the two - do I take the motorway to get to that town I always wanted visit, or do I take the scenic route and not worry about having enough time to visit it properly? Do I spend an extra couple of hours here and enjoy the destination, or do I pack up, crack on and find that cross-country route with panoramic views and twisty bends, with blue skies and mid-afternoon sunshine? It's a constant, but enjoyable, balancing act.

So to be honest I don't really get the IBA approach to riding a bike. Maybe if you have a Honda Gold Wing or Harley Road King that allows you to sit back, put the radio on, light up your pipe, put your slippers on and rest your feet on the handlebars (Charlie DC take note), all at 70 mph, then maybe I can see where you're coming from. But even so, that seems a little boring to me, and it doesn't really strike a balance.

I'm in Prague having ridden my Bonneville solo across Europe to get here, and I can't help but think that there is something a little bit mental about that.

It's not exactly traversing the Sahara or completing the Dakar Rally, and Prague is like other European capitals, but the journey travelled to get here makes what is already a pretty cool destination even cooler. To put it another way, it brings a very different feel to visiting then if I had hopped on a plane from Heathrow to come here for a weekend trip.

Next stop is the Polish border.