BMW Motorrad Days: I Took The Ultimate BMW Pilgrimage, and So Should You

Wherever you are in Garmisch-Partenkirchen when BMW Motorrad Days is running, you’re at the event. It doesn’t matter that the festival itself is contained within the car park of a ski school - for several days every year for nearly the past two decades, the whole town gets taken over by riders on a BMW pilgrimage.

Well, every year except 2023, when it moved to BMW Motorrad’s Berlin home to coincide with the company’s centenary, a shift which a lot of people - including, you get the feeling, some within BMW - weren’t awfully chuffed about. For 2024, it’s back to its original venue in Garmisch, and wherever you go in the postcard-pretty Alpine town, the hills are alive with boxer twins.

Walking out of our hotel for the event, the first thing I see is a gaggle of GSs rumbling past. And then some more. It’s BMW’s consummate touring weapon you tend to see most of heading towards the show, but reaching the bike parking, there’s a bit of a mix of everything. F900s of various types, R Nine-Ts, the odd S1000RR, and even really obscure stuff like the only R1200C (the bike made famous-ish by James Bond riding one in Tomorrow Never Dies) I’ve ever seen in the metal. But, perhaps understandably, not a single C1. I can probably live with that.

The show itself isn’t massive - you can easily cover it in less than a day, with an inevitably expansive array of sausage-based lunch options should you be sticking around long enough. It is intense, though, with plenty packed into a small area.

If you’ve not seen enough legends and oddities in the car park, you’re sure to get your fix inside the festival. There’s a whole row of early R models including a few R51/3s, and they’re not roped off on some fancy display, either - they’re just sat in the June sunshine for all to enjoy.

It gets much more special than that inside BMW’s own display tent, which proudly displays the bike that started it all - the R32 of the 1920s. There’s barely anything to it, making it seem a world apart from the modern star of the show - the very chunky 2024 GS Adventure, revealed on Friday at the festival - but, of course, there’s one important thing other than the BMW roundel that links the two - a boxer twin engine.

It’s this horizontally opposed oddity which is the heart and soul of the festival, really, with some of the most interesting and historically significant bikes here packing one of those grumbly little so-and-sos.

Along with, yes, all manner of GSs past and present, there are the vintage R models, plenty of R Nine-Ts, and a whole host of custom R18s that give me a whole new love for BMW’s underappreciated cruiser. Meanwhile, a live area in the middle of the show provides entertainment including riders performing various stunts, albeit not always on BMWs. Sorry. 

There are also plenty of ways to part with your cash. I’m not just talking about obvious things like fancy panniers, keyrings and stickers (although there are plenty of those knocking about), but truly weird stuff like a barbeque you can mount on your GS luggage rack or a double drinks holder for an R18. Needless to say, I now want both of those things, despite not owning a GS or an R18.

The fun doesn’t stop after dark, either, although it becomes a little less related to motorcycles. This is Germany, and that means a beer tent serving steins of German lager and weisbeer with sausage-based accompaniments your guts aren’t going to thank you for the next day. And, once sufficiently fed and watered, a covers band good enough that anyone not so much into motorcycles you’ve dragged along for the day might just forgive you.

Is it worth going to BMW Motorrad Days?

For BMW Motorrad fans, it’s a must. Although the festival itself isn’t massive, the sight of a whole town getting taken over by bikers riding your favourite kind of motorcycles is an amazing sight, if you’re in the market for some shiny new metal, there are plenty of test ride opportunities to take.

Even if you’re not the biggest BMW geek, it’s still a fun, immersive biking experience to tick off the bucket list. Plus, the evening entertainment and the Alpine location with its associated activities like hiking means the whole trip doesn’t have to just be about two-wheeled stuff, so it doesn’t necessarily have to be a trip you take solo or with biking mates.

Speaking of, Garmisch-Partenkirchen is about 10 and a half hours if riding directly from Calais, so if you split the journey into two and aren’t coming from too far north in the UK, you can craft a nice route that goes through the German Black Forest, as we did in a small group of British journalists switching between an M1000 XR, S1000 XR and - inevitably - a couple of R1300 GSs. The final stretch into Garmisch, which briefly ducks into Austria, is good fun too.

The best of it all, though? BMW Motorrad Days is free. So long as you don’t end up splurging a load of Euros on a GS-mounted barbeque.