History of the Horizons Unlimited Travelers Meetings, and What it's all About

Our Travellers Meetings aren't the usual motorcycle rally you've been to.

We don't have a band, there's no burnouts at 3am, no party-all-night atmosphere, and no drunks falling all over you. What we do have is a lot of people who want to travel by motorcycle, and want to learn how - and whether - it's possible.

We focus on learning,

...with seminars and tech tips, and inspiration with Travellers Tales from all over the worlds, and some of our Meetings are in awesome riding country, so we do a lot of riding too!

If you really want to travel,

...you REALLY want to come to a Meeting and meet your fellow travellers! You’ve read about their adventures in the Horizons Unlimited Travellers’ Ezine, now you can meet them in person and ask all the questions you want. There will be travellers from all over the world attending any of the meetings, with slide shows and seminars on everything from tire changing to HOW TO do a RTW trip, stories on travellers trips, and much more. This is your best opportunity to find out what it takes to get out of the rut, meet travellers and see what this long distance travel stuff is all about. Join us for a great time, lots of opportunity to exchange information, have a chat with those who’ve been there, lived to tell the story, and are planning on going back!

HU Travellers Meetings in paper:

Click the "page" above for a readable version. Published in Motorcycle Voyager, nicely written by Sam Manicom.
(Reproduced here with permission)

More about HU in the press here.

Short History of the Horizons Unlimited Travellers Meetings

After attending a couple of the popular travellers' meetings (reise-treffen) held in Germany, I thought that we needed one for the English speakers. So, the first Horizons Unlimited Travellers' Meeting was held in our garden in May of 2001 while we were living in the UK. That first event had almost 40 people show up, and we were especially pleased that some came from as far away as Norway!

In 2002 we had moved back to Canada, so we organized a meeting in Nairn Falls, British Columbia, and also asked Chris Bright and Glynn Roberts if they would organize a second UK meeting since we couldn't be there. We had a small but enthusiastic turnout for the Canadian meeting, with folks coming from as far away as Missouri (almost 3,000 kilometers!), Alberta and California, as well as two round the world travellers, from Switzerland and the UK.

But the Brits really exceeded our wildest expectations. Almost 100 people came to the HU UK 2002 event, and had a great time. No rock bands or beer bashes, just motorcycle travellers and would-be travellers getting together to share experiences and tips - what a concept! For the HU UK 2003 event, almost 200 enthusiastic folks came together over several days and this is now well established as the premium travellers annual event, now in it's 17th year, with some 500-700 people attending and getting inspired.

Ken and Carol Duval hosted Australia's first HU travellers event in 2003. Since then we have had many more events added in Europe, Asia, Africa and South America.

It's wonderful for us to come to the meetings and visit with the many friends we've only met over the internet, and of course for everyone meeting up and sharing stories - and planning to meet in Ushuaia next year!

We've learned a lot from your feedback, and we plan to have even better meetings in the future, and more of them. In 2018 we held 26 events in 15 countries, on 6 continents!

The Meetings keep getting bigger and better, but still hold the same original concepts of a great atmosphere, good people excited about travel and seeing the world by motorcycle. We intend to add more meetings in more countries, so if you're interested in one where you are, just let me know.

See you at a meeting this year!

Grant and Susan