Northstar, Enduro in Greece

Friday, 4 May 2018

Single riders event in 26 Sep 2018 to 30 Sep 2018

In 2018 we started to create the so called single booking events to start saying YES to all those lonely souls that contacted us, whirling to join our rides alone and we could not host them.

Riders usually ask why we don't take single bookings and the answer is that we can not take the responsibility to attach a rider in to a group that he doesn't know the rest of the guys.

I mean face it. Some groups are welcoming riders they don't know, but when the level is kind of different, the situation turns to OMG and 3 LOL as we use to say in Greece.

We have some rules in NS concerning riders safety :

1. We don't split groups

The Reason: if anything happens to the single guide, group is doomed, bikes are not secured, riders are in numerous dangers, risks level rises and we hate rise risk level

2. We don't put riders in danger

The reason: we love riders. Plus compensation would cost us our lives. That's why we always use two guides and a team that follows the group from the HQ so in case of a. Injury a car shows up out of nowhere and takes you to safety, (hospital, or private MD) b. breakage second guide is waiting for the bike to be replaced by our magic car OR takes the bike to safety and gets another one, so the group riding pleasure is not spoiled. c. pirated attack, never happened but we are prepared :)

3.Riders satisfaction comes first this why we always invest in nice new bikes, good comfortable gear, appropriate support vehicles, trained staff, experienced colleagues and partners (that know what the hell they are doing) and we keep things organised and maintained 24/7.

Following our own rules made it difficult to accept a single rider to an already existing group. That individual would be in danger following more experienced riders, or bored following some lazy enduro enthusiasts that like to stop and smoke every 5 minutes, he would not be satisfied and would not get what we want him to receive as a customer satisfaction that is the primary goal of our work.

How does a "single riding event" solves these problems?
You sign up to a certain group and you know and agree that everybody is a stranger among the group, you accept the fact that you will be asked to lower or try to rise your level with that of the majority of the group, you accept the fact that you agreed to join an open group with all the limitations such an actions brings following the group rules established by us and designed to satisfy the majority.

We strongly believe that if you don't have any riding buddies, this is the only way to join and enjoy our rides as an individual.

How does it work ?

A. You book alone

Go online at http://www.enduro-touring.gr/book and click on the single riding event banner on the right of the booking calendar.

Choose the number of riders that want to attend (1 to the rest of the available seats)

Type in contact data (Name, email, address and tel. no.)

Check if you want to use a single room

Check and Inform us if you need Gear or have any special demands

Proceed to check out, you will be asked to deposit a 10% by PayPal or wire to secure your booking

And finally let us know about your flight schedule, basic plan is that pickup will be from the airport of Thessaloniki at 21.00 so be there before or let us know if you can't so we organise something.

B. Fly to thessaloníki on IN date,

Event includes 4 nights at the hotel and 3 riding days so the first day is free. For this event in September you have to be in SKG on the 26th September before 21.00 to be picked up by our van.

C. Wake up on the 25th to go riding

Van will take you from the Hotel to our HQ, so you get geared up and start riding.

D. Van will take you back to Thessaloniki SKG

In the morning of September 29th, van will take all riders to SKG Thessaloniki according to the first flight time from the group. So if a rider flies back at 8.00am we will start the trip at 5.00am. Others will curse so make your flight hours reasonable please.

The results of the first 3 single booking events we already did so far were exceptional. Riders had good chemistry and the days flew by in riding pleasure, laughs and cheering.

At dinners, riders exchanged cultural data, such as cursing in local language, riding experiences from home and other usual stuff under the sent of Greek beer and food.

Bottom line?

If you are riding alone and want to join us, a single riding event from our calendar is the right event for you to join.

Have more questions? I am here to answer, so info@enduro-touring.gr for more details.

See you soon...

Thanasis

tour.manager

north.star

Thursday, 3 May 2018

photo rides

North Photo Rides Issue 13

Thanasis 23:55

Issue 13 Cover by Sofia Tsagaraki

Welcome every body to our North Photo Rides Magazine.

As You already know, our magazine is made from all the material we gather during our rides but also crazy stuff and unlimited creativity by our graphics design department (yes we do have such a thing) and crazy ideas by the Boss.

To define crazy ideas, take a look at older issues where you will find a Shaman Enduro photo session, a Horse ride on Enduro gear and other crazy stuff we come up with to impress you, our audience.

"Do not hesitate to contact Thanasis

at info@enduro-touring.gr

if you have any crazy ideas

that you would like help to accomplish"

Walking through the magazine, you will notice that not much needed to be done with the pictures from the rides, since, usually the landscape provides the beauty and Adobe Lightroom the enhancements.

If you have been in our rids, you know this spot, if you are still thinking about it, this is what we call the "Oregon Canyon" in Kavala. The viewable villages across, are of great historical significancy as all three, hosted refugees from old wars, that were also victims of the Greek civil and WwII, adding another sad stone of history painted with blood on that ground. Enough said on this sad matter, the route that leads here can be demanding or touristic, so all levels have the privilege of a nice shot with the view to the canyon.

Oh my god skies from the another historical mountain, that of "Pangaio" where our ancient fathers, Alexander the Great and King Philip where digging caves and achieved great supplies of silver, iron and gold, to support their empire economy. Word is, that "Xerxes" moving back after his lost the war he started, defeated and in stress, buried most of his treasures somewhere on the same mountain, not able to cary it safe back to his lands. (That explains the hundreds of holes you see on the mountains by gold diggers)

To ride on that land is a fantastic experience.

An architectural sight of what we call "the bow bridges" is often viewed in our rides. A controversial sight, making you wonder how, with the tools of the time (1200-1300ac) they managed to handle the rocks with such a delicate and smart way, to create a bridge or many bridges that people today find demanding to make. Those bridges are still standing, after millions of kilos passed above them with great pride and today they become a sight of wonder for our territory.

The city of Kavala from "Stavros" viewing point. Some say, the big cross above the city was established when Bulgarians left the city and the war was over, some others believe that when the Turkish occupation of Greece ended, people installed a cross that later was bigger and more modern up there to remind us the day. In any case, that point above the city is the best place to admire it on a sunny day. Thassos Island, Samothraki Island, The Holy Mountain "Athos" and Pangaio mountain are clearly viewable on a sunny day from that spot.

Every time we see a tree like that, our head guide Andreas, needs to trim it with some bikes and get the adequate photos. I am always impressed on the way he balances the bikes, and the technique that he is driving them up there. Impressive shot no doubt.

Kavala had a Ski resort. Yes its true, in its glorious days, the city was able to support and preserve a ski resort on the top of Pangaio mountain. Its remains are a sad sight these days. Make you thing of the potentials of the place, being ran by the stupidity of the politics always on dead ends and beaurocratic procedures that never end. Nothing we can do about it unfortunately, years now.

"The glory of the past covered in rust,

defeated by narrowness of minds"

Land marks and trails that never end. Issue 13 has 38 pages that if you belong in them, you can only understand what they are about. Words to describe the feeling of the rides are not enough and certainly not able to deliver the feeling.

A nice video presentation of the magazine lies below.

I will try to be a more frequent blogger these days, despite the lack of time, this form of communication with our friends gives me great pleasure.

Thank you once more for your time

Tour.Manager

North.Star

Tuesday, 25 April 2017

wildlife

Greece Blue Sky Sea Mountains

Thanasis 01:46

How can I describe beauty in words? Sometimes, I witness the most breathtaking images in our rides and I am searching of the right words to describe them. Most of the case can't find any, trust me I am not poor in words, its the magnificence of the image that rises the standards.

Sometimes, I witness the most

breathtaking images in our rides

Our city Kavala, is an area of great history and tradition. The majority of the areas we ride, is used from the local populations some thousands years ago. We ride after all in the same territory where prehistoric habitants decided to occupy due to the territorial benefits, weather and geopolitical conditions since the Neolithic ages.

Typical Arc Shape Bridge

Sights like the picture below is typical, plenty and often in our rides. Built decades or centuries ago, these bridges are made to last the weight of tons on them. They supported the transportation of armies, horses, canons, animals, refugees of war, immigrants and so many others according to the historical data of the area than standing next to them makes you feel insignificant.

Always respect locals

A herd of sheep and a shepherd is also a common and often sight. Growing a herd of sheep was a major occupation and still is in the villages around. Lately, with the increased demand on organic and local products, in combination with the economic crisis in the EU people turn to this profession more and more each year.

The Monastery of "Prasinada"

White churches with blue round roofs and bell tops. Every city has tens in it, but the most beautiful and meaningful can be found on the mountains. If you pay a close look at the image above, you will see that there is a construction at the edge of a rock, but the real monastery lies right below the trees and the rocky hill next to the church. An amazing construction in the middle of nowhere, where your mind can use the quietness to seek and meditate. If you believe in God, well, this is the place to communicate with the Boss.

━━━━━━━━━━━

If you believe in God, well,

this is the place to communicate

with the Boss.

━━━━━━━━━━━

The heights of the mountain in our area lies from 600m to 1990m with an average of a 1000m in various peaks. Lekani mountains, Pangeo mountains, Symvolo mountains and so many others around the city, turns the area to an enduro paradise with all sorts of terrain for every rider, entry level riding to extreme enduro guys will be left absolutely satisfied by the length of the trails and the difficulty or the ease depending on the levels wanted.

Self made bridge on destroyed trail

Water is everywhere around. Streams, rivers, lakes, waterfalls big or small will occupy your pictures. We stop in every chance to enjoy water during spring, fall and summer but we strongly avoid getting wet the winter months due to its temperature and the fact that no one wants to ride with wet boots on a chilly afternoon.

Our dear friend Con in love with the river

Our dear friend Sandro drinking from the spring

The weather is nice. Lately we are witnessing changes that our elders call them natural phenomena. Winters are short but colder, summer is also short and cooler and spring and autumn longer and naturally warm in reasonable levels. Snow is often but not for long, enough for having some fun snow rides.

Snow rides

Wildlife is plenty around our rides. Domestic animals, dogs and cats make their presence often while wild animals like hogs, hawks, horses, foxes, rabbits, deers, bears and wolfs will constantly leave their marks or rarely be visible during riding.

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Bears and wolfs will constantly

leave their marks or rarely

be visible during riding.

━━━━━━━━━━━

A baby rabbit

Salamander

Nope we did not eat it, just pet it and let it go

We respect nature as we respect our mother. It is hard to understand our relationship with the life around us on these mountains. We are the strangers there, so we make sure we leave no mark, no damage and hassle. We also ask our riders to show the same respect, otherwise the images we admire, soon there be no longer available.

━━━━━━━━━━━

It is hard to understand our

relationship with the life

around us on these mountains

━━━━━━━━━━━

So with a total respect in nature, co ordinated with the wishes of our riders, we designed and planned routes that will cover all tastes in riding, sightseeing, experiences, tastes and everything else that an enduro rider seeks in his journeys.

This is North Star, this is enduro on the Greek mountains.

Monday, 3 April 2017

App

Enduro Training App, yes we are making it.

Thanasis 00:09

ᐃ

↮ Train at home ↮

Evi is the model performing all exercises

Within the next few days, you will be able to purchase online an app, that will guide you in detail through a group of exercises designed to improve your riding skills.

First of all, enduro is an extreme sport and If you want to perform in this, you need to support your rides with extra body training. And this is actually the purpose of our app. To prepare your muscles and make them flexible so they perform in this demanding sport. So again riding enduro is really an extreme sport, Of course you can take it easy and do only flat roads and ride in safe terrain but if you keep up riding you will soon end up in steep uphills, trails and rocky river beds and that's a promise. Isn't this an awesome way to stay fit and healthy? The training you will receive during your rides is an excellent way to keep you body in a good shape. But what other benefits you get when you devote your weekends on those two wonderful wheels?

Our application is here to help you additionally by preparing your body before your rides, make it strong and flexible in ways you will need in enduro riding, training your muscles in positions and angles needed to achieve better results with longer lasting strength and flexibility.

1. Go out: People of all ages can get up and get off their couches and go outside. Nature elements such as sunshine, rain, fresh air, images of nature provides nutrients that help your body function at an optimal level and helps relieve stress

2. Burn Calories: Using your core, legs and arm muscles every single second trying to balance the motorcycle on rocks, jumps, turns, uphills and downhills, demands great energy consumption and lots of muscle burns. Taking a wild guess we would say you can easily burn 900-1200 on an average ride keeping a heart rate average of 130 bpm.

3. Increased Heart rate: Riding an enduro bike is similar to jogging or bicycling. You can easily keep a pace of 130 bpm and rise to 180 bpm when you hit and obstacle, or called to ride a steep uphill. Your heart will pump blood harder during most of your ride, flooding those fatigued muscles continuously.

4. Increased Focus: Most of the times during your rides you need to be constantly watching your surrounding environment for dangers, alternative routes, tracks you have to choose and difficulty level so you prepare mentally. Your brain is active all the time making thousands of calculations on physics concerning your ride and thoughts on making it happen.

5. Increased strength: After a couple of rides, you will feel your body stiff and your muscles growing stronger on parts of your body you would never believe you could exercise. Lifting your bike from the ground will soon give the feeling you have an iron back, while trying to stick on the steering bar all the time is similar to making push ups all day. Your legs will work out 100% during riding, using all their muscles. Your chest is going to take all the power of the obstacles your motorcycle hits and defend your body against them. Total body workout.

6. Balance: You will need to balance and improve your skills at it. Using mostly your leg muscles when you ride and all your body trying to stay on the bike, varies muscles will be tighter improving your balance skills.

The amount of continuous time spent on your dirt bike will help improve your cardiovascular health by improving your endurance.

7. Endurance: You improve your cardiovascular health by riding and so you get better endurance. The more you ride, the more you achieve better results in these. Let's say you ride for an hour, you use your arms, legs, chest and back continuously all that time, improving also your cardiovascular performance. The combination is a unique form of exercise that makes your body able to perform under the most weird circumstances.

8. Ride for an hour, its like attending the gym for an hour: You may thing its easy but, to pick up a bike from the ground, is actualy a variation of barbel deadlifts, and you can't cheat on the kgs. During the ride, you may do a thousand sit ups, and pulling or pushing the steering bar, some hundred of reps of bench presses or seated rows. You will need to push the bike uphill, you will need to stretch and

9. You will be fir and healthy, again, it's not an easy sport and most of people don't realise the amount of muscle energy needed to complete a ride. Using your core muscles, your legs and arms, your chest and back in every ride will only bring healthy benefits.

10. Improved posture: You need to create a perfect posture on the bike to perform and this will be achieved only by riding and trying to improve your riding style and techniques. When you achieve this, then you will use it in the gym, bicycling and other activities improving your performance also.

And here is a sneak peek:

Saturday, 18 March 2017

News

Ladies and Gentlemen, The Enduro Cabins

Thanasis 10:04

⤲

⬳ Enduro Cabins ⟿

Time to dream big

Photo from the web but also our actual plan !!!

Latest news on our activities, is that apart from the purchase of new fleet , renovation of the HQ, trimming new trails and train like crazy in order to be able to guide the groups that start to show up here weekly, we also purchased a big piece of 💚 land 💛 in the woods, in one of our most beloved mountains of which the name is less significant right now, since its Greek, complicated and unknown.

NS Land

The trees you see in the photo above are Nut trees and we have approximately 30 in our land. On the right side there is water stream a couple of meters wide with some yearly nice flow of water that reduces the summer months and increases rapidly after fall. Water is freezing and pure, since I personally took samples to the chemist three times, three different seasons and the results came pure and safe, in one word "drinkable".

Bikes among the Trees

The idea is to create an enduro shelter. A place that we will reach at the end of the first or second riding day. Reaching the area after a long days ride, the place has to be ideal for the rider to relax, has to offer warm water and a calm natural environment, cold beer and a steak, quite night sleep with the water of the stream to be the only sound that can annoy him.

A land full of water and ... nuts !!!

When you leave the hotel, you will have to pack a bag that our staff will bring it on the cabins so you find stuff you need for a night stay over on the mountain later. We are committed and devoted to make this an experience of a life time, having in mind that during your ride here, you need some calm nights on the mountains and some crazy city nights, you can have both.

Existing trails

We scouted years to locate the right land to do this. A place full of existing trails, great history and tradition as all Greece. The stone building you see in the middle of the picture was a Mill, milling flour that locals brought with the horses and the donkeys from the trail that you see on the left of the ruins. Imagine that in our area, there is a huge network of trails connecting villages and destinations that old people used to work and live.

People usually ask me if enduro will be the only purpose of the cabins. My answer is no. We will make the cabins available to people that want to use them according to our rules to enjoy the land and nature. Enduro is our life and primary goal and purpose of the cabins though.

Estimated completion of the project: October ~~2017~~ 2019 If the authorities decide to look at our license application.

Wednesday, 15 March 2017

BETA RR 300 M.Y. 2017 OMG

Thanasis 10:08

You may think the opposite, but our job is not easy. Its pleasant, but not easy. I know that you going to disagree, having in mind the saying that says, "make what you love a job and you will live happy all your life" but things are not covered in roses exactly here.

Andreas unboxing

When you are a free rider, you don't care about what others going to say about you. Nor you give a dam about if your bike is new, or mind competition and after all, when you don't like something you just leave, or don't do it. We can't do any of the above. We like it or not, we have to be there, patiently waiting the beginner, scared with half eyes closed behind the extreme rider, trying to balance everything, keep the clients and the bike safe, follow the schedule that is usually strict and tight. I don't want to complain, I am just saying, our job is not easy. But this is not the purpose of this article.

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The Promo Video

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One of these days, we woke up early in the morning receiving the good news that a truck full of 2017 Beta RR models is reaching the city, destination North Star head quarters.

Four Boxes, full of Beta bikes and their parts to be assembled as quickly as possible due to the fact riders are going to be here sooner that we are thinking they are and the bikes have to be ready in all aspects. Break in the engine, install protection items, pipe guars, skid plates, lever / hand protection etc.

Andreas Vitara, our big trailer (the one we built to host 5 bikes on, more info here) and drive to the transportation company of our good friend Kostas Papadopoulos in Kavala city in Greece to pick up our goodies.

The Fuoristrada Co, the official importer of Beta Motors in Greece, had also arranged for us two Beta Tents/ Gazebos and lots and lots of parts in boxes.

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Its not a days work. The distributor him self told us that it would take a week for him to finish the bikes and prep them for riding. We of course didn't leave our HQ until we saw all bikes in place. It was actually the only way to sleep at night.

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If you plan to visit us anytime soon, keep in mind that 2017 Beta RR 300 model with zero at the moment hours await for you to ride them and enjoy the quality and their features in our trails.

We work hard, in order to provide the best quality services and products to you and this is the only reason we don't stop and work around the clock.

More Photos:

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