Hey, I'm Bora.

Adventure riding is full of decisions that cost real money and, sometimes, real safety: which helmet, which jacket, which tyres, which route, which night to push on and which to make camp. When I started looking for honest answers, most of what I found online was the same recycled marketing copy — long on specs, short on judgement, and impossible to tell apart from an ad.

So I started Bikes & Bays to do the opposite: dig into the details properly, lay out the trade-offs plainly, and tell you what I'd actually steer a friend toward — and what I wouldn't.

How I research these guides

I want to be straight with you about how this site is made, because it changes how you should read it. I'm not a sponsored test rider with a garage full of free gear, and I don't pretend to have personally ridden every road on this site. What I do is research hard, and refuse to publish anything I can't stand behind. For every guide that means:

• Manufacturer specs and certifications — CE ratings (EN 1621, EN 13594, EN 17092), GORE-TEX and membrane claims, weights and materials, read from the source rather than the sales page.
• Aggregated owner feedback — patterns across hundreds of real buyer reviews, rider-forum threads and long-term owner reports, so you get the consensus, not one lucky or unlucky experience.
• Cross-checking the experts — comparing independent reviews and tester findings to see where the people who do ride for a living actually agree.
• Routes built from real data — distances, road surfaces, seasons, fuel stops and rules pulled from maps, official sources and the riders who know each region, then written up clearly.

When something is a judgement call rather than a fact, I say so. When I genuinely don't know, I'd rather tell you than fake confidence.

What I actually ride

I live in Bartın, on Turkey's western Black Sea coast, and I ride a CFMOTO 250NK: a small naked bike, not an adventure bike. The coast road from Amasra through Çakraz and Kurucaşile to Gideros is my home ride, and the photos of it in the Black Sea route guide are mine. Everything farther from home, and every product I haven't owned, is researched the way described above, and the guides say so.

Why honesty over hype

There's a reason so much gear and travel content feels hollow: it's written to rank and to sell, not to actually help you decide. I'd rather build slower and be the site riders trust. If a budget glove is genuinely good enough for most people, I'll say that instead of pushing the premium pick. If a famous route is overrated for the kind of riding you do, you'll read it here.

How the site makes money — transparently

Bikes & Bays earns through affiliate links: if you buy something after clicking a link here, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. That commission never changes a recommendation. The picks are chosen first, then linked — not the other way around. You can read the full affiliate disclosure any time.