What route to take?

Via Francigena - London to Rome.

For the tour, I considered walking to Rome. Hilaire Belloc did the journey - albeit from central France - and plenty of others have walked from England along the Via Francigena. However, I reckoned such a walk would take me over six weeks and this was a too long to ask my family to put up with. I could of course travel by car (boring), camper van (great fun, but we didn't own one) or train (feasible - but this limited me to towns).

According to Google Maps from London to Cagliari is about 2,100 miles.

One option - a more exciting one - was to tour by motorbike. Although I have my license I haven't ridden for nearly 30 years! But the more I thought about it, the more appealing the idea became. I could ride the whole length of Italy and finish up in Sardinia where Marilena would be visiting her parents. Cool - riding across Europe with the wind in my face and the sun on my back. What fun! But how to get back on a bike again? And would I be able to handle one, now that I was so much older?