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Britain’s best-loved…

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Back to their roots

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Slipping away

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February 2025

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Can two wrongs make a right?

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Screw threads

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January 2025

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Reassuringly simple

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How hard can it be?

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Honda Transalp

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The fastest ever 750

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Honda Hornet v Suzuki GSX-8S

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Taking the Mick

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Treat yourself to a Bike subscription

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Bolton Wonderers

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Everyone loves a roundabout

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WHEN A BIRTHDAY PRESENT TURNS INTO THE ADVENTURE OF A LIFETIME…

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New bikes

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’81 Triumph TR7T

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Easy as that

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‘Y’know what? I want one’

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SAM SUNDERLAND

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Trackday Clobber

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SIX MONTHS FROM HOME

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BRADLEY RAY

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THE VINTAGE MOTORCYCLE CLUB

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DAN LINFOOT & HIS DAD

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THE KTM DESIGN TEAM

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A RIDE WITH MICK GRANT

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A RIDE WITH RANDY MAMOLA

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Glorious ride: A land lost in time…

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GOING THE EXTRA MILES

Features

A Ride With

Travel Stories

Know How

Offers and Competitions

Latest Competitions

Latest Offers

Magazine Issues

Bike Magazine

Latest Issues

Members articles

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Get set for showtime!

Grab your tickets now, as the Devitt Insurance MCN London Motorcycle Show roars into town February 14-16, 2025. Celebrating the best of all things two wheeled, the show promises displays of the very latest models from the world’s leading manufacturers, a live action extravaganza which will see racing heroes go head-to-head, three fantastic stages hosted by your favourite motorcycling celebrities, the latest premium kit and accessories at bargain prices, with much more still to be announced.

Come and see the latest 2025 models on display from the world’s biggest manufacturers, featuring Honda, Ducati, Harley Davidson, Kawasaki, KTM, Triumph, BSA, CF Moto, Agusta MV, Artisan Electric and Royal Alloy. More coming soon!

**Live flat-track fun**  
Prepare for hair-raising live flat track racing action as the biggest names in British biking battle it out on a thrilling indoor circuit. A purpose-built indoor flat track circuit, a squadron of Britain’s best biking talent past and present, and three days of adrenaline-pumping action. How does that sound?

Taking place inside London’s ExCel, riders include 23-time Isle of Man TT winner John McGuinness, and current TT lap record holder and Bennetts British Superbike star Peter Hickman. The pair will be in the mix among more of Britain’s top racers competing on a tailor-made flat track circuit in an effort to become the 2025 Devitt Insurance MCN London Motorcycle Show mini indoor flat track champion.

**Henry Cole Live Stage**  
The new-for-2025 Machine Mart stage sees TV’s Henry Cole, Allen Millyard, and Guy ‘Skid’ Willison, come together to tell unheard stories, provide plenty of laughs, as well as astounding you with their legendary motorcycles and engineering expertise. Fans will also get the opportunity to meet Henry and his guests for a chat and even a quick selfie!

**Boorman’s back**  
The king of motorcycle adventures returns to host the popular Charley Boorman Adventure Base Camp stage, supported by Oxford Products. Expect new tales from his latest TV trip, the

Long Way Home, a pannier load of useful tips and tricks to use while planning your next adventure, and how to overcome challenges on the road and plenty more insights from the Long Way series star.

## Save cash by booking advance tickets now

#### …helmet, and biker café, and race meeting, and more. Here’s motorcycling’s most popular everything of the past 12 months (and beyond)

Which helmet is the UK’s favourite? What race meeting has the biggest crowd, and which place for food, tea and bike-based banter is the most popular? To try to find the best by any sort of credible yardstick, we’ve applied some ‘science’ and, where not available, asked the experts in their field and referred to suitable polls to find out the best-sellers and biggest award winners. Here are the most popular of all in 10 of the most popular motorcycling categories…

Phil Martin, manager for _MCN’s_ dealer team sales: ‘They’ll never win an overall Dealer of the Year award because they only deal with second-hand bikes and a few new 125s. But I would say they’re the biggest dealer in terms of used bikes – and the UK’s biggest in terms of overall numbers.’

Race meetings are all about attendance figures, but TV viewer numbers are also important – although exact numbers are often (and annoyingly) highly guarded for commercial reasons.

‘We wouldn’t give crowd figures,’ explains Laura Stevens, media and PR for the British Superbike championship. ‘But traditionally, the top three rounds in terms of crowd would be Brands Hatch finale, Cadwell Park (August bank holiday), and the first visit to Oulton Park.’ And TV/Eurosport figures? ‘The viewing figures usually correspond the same, however Donington Park second visit was high, too.’

As this is being compiled before the end of the year there’s still some selling to be done.

However, the MCIA’s official figures for the year to date (Jan-Oct) are a solid indication of which new bike will top the chart.

In 2023, the BMW R1250GS Adventure continued the GS’s ongoing reign as the UK’s best-selling new bike (over 125cc – Honda and Yamaha shift way more scooters and tiddlers). There were 1697 sales. In 2024, even with two months of sales to be added

BMW had shifted 1606 GSAs… but Triumph had beat them, having flogged even more examples of the new Speed 400 with 1625 bikes. You can read what makes it so popular on page 52. And, just to cement Triumph’s league-topping position, the Scrambler 400 X variant has been all-but-matching the Speed’s sales success. Small bikes genuinely are where it’s at.

#### **Textile jacket:** Oxford Mondial Advanced

‘This jacket was always a revelation for Oxford as it had a laminated waterproof membrane and cost about half as much as an equivalent Gore-Tex jacket,’ reckons Keith Roissetter of Sportsbikeshop in Harlow.

‘It’s been replaced by the Mondial 2, but we’ve had good stock of the original throughout 2024 and at £200 it’s a steal. The membrane is bonded directly to the back of the jacket’s outer shell, so it doesn't saturate like jackets with a separate waterproof liner. That’s why the Mondial is such good value and why it’s been the most popular jacket this year.’

#### **Biker Café:** Jolly’s Bike Stop, Devon

This one’s less of a ‘best attended’, more a popularity contest. A recent poll by the UK Biker Café Facebook group attracted more than 3500 votes for the ‘Top UK Biker Cafés of 2024’ and this year Josie’s Bike Stop at The Jolly Roger in Bovey Tracey, Newton Abbot, Devon, came out tops. Praised for its regular Thursday bike nights and friendly atmosphere, it’s a popular stop for ride-outs and groups. Second was The Old Stores Motorbike Café in Mold, North Wales. Third went to the Owls Nest, Llandovery, while the _Bike_ office lunchtime regular – Two Flags at Morcott, Rutland – came fourth.

#### **Used bike:** Honda GL1800 Gold Wing (!)

How do you find the most popular used bike in Britain? You sneak into the _MCN_ offices while they’re enjoying an extended ‘working’ lunch and delve into the data from their online Bikes for Sale to find the most-searched-for models.

The top ten for the past 12 months is either a) an eye-opening revelation and proof of the cruiser’s huge resurgence, or b) evidence that a lot of people who search for used bikes online are perhaps not actual buyers but rather non-riders typing in famous model names that they’ve heard. We’re going with the latter, given that there are two Harley-Davidsons in the top five. Still interesting reading, mind.

Biggest bike bash of the year? Motorcycle Live. This year’s show at the NEC attracted ‘just under 90,000’ visitors, with 11 colleges and universities attending ‘career days’ to encourage new riders and jobs within the industry. Good stuff. It remains easily the UK’s best-attended show. In comparison, ‘over 30,000’ attended the two-day Devitt MCN London Motorcycle Show in February, with around the same going to the Classic Motorcycle Mechanics Show in Stafford in October. The ABR Festival at Ragley Hall, Warks, in June, was capped at 17,500.

#### **Dealer:** West Coast Motorcycles, Glasgow

Potentially contentious as we’re not after the biggest or the most commercially successful, but the somewhat subjective ‘best loved’. So we challenged an expert: _MCN_ dealer team sales manager Phil Martin. ‘There are no league tables – different dealers work with different manufacturers, there’s new and used… But the most recent dealer to win _MCN’s_ Dealer of the Year award is West Coast Motorcycles.

‘Having had significant success with Harley-Davidson, they opened up with Triumph in the last year or so and that seems to be going really well. They do a lot in their community, put on regular bike nights, and they’ve got great customer feedback.’

#### **Helmet:** Scorpion Exo‐1400 Evo Carbon Air

Sportsbikeshop is the ‘biggest online motorcycle clothing and accessories retailer in the UK’, which means they know lots about kit and clobber. The clothing and accessories retailer has nine stores nationwide, stocks all the leading brands, claims to get more website visitors than any other online UK motorcycle store, and therefore knows better than any what sells.

‘This is Sportsbikeshop’s top-selling helmet for the first 10 months of 2024,’ Keith Roissetter, manager of the Harlow branch, tells us. ‘It’s thanks to a mix of light weight, practical features and cool looks. The carbon-fibre shell is light and looks great – and there’s a tinted visor included as well as the standard clear one, which definitely adds to the appeal. The Airfit system helps, too, as inflatable pockets behind the cheek pads mean we can tune the fit to suit a lot of riders without having to replace the pads. The price has been another big factor: there’s a new model out, so this one is less than £250. Thankfully we’ve still got a good supply in the core sizes.’

#### **World championship race:** British MotoGP, Silverstone

If you watched this year’s British GP on TV and thought it looked a bit quiet in the stands, it’s perhaps because you were watching on telly instead of being there to witness Jake Dixon’s Moto2 win. Silverstone was better attended than in 2023 – total for the weekend was 117,867, which was a slight increase. Shame the number for Sunday’s race day was slightly down, from 48,564 to 42,529.

In comparison, weekend attendance at the Donington Park World Superbike round was 52,743. Which is clear proof that we require another Foggy. Back in the late 1990s, at the height of ‘Foggy Mania’, WSB comfortably whupped GP’s ass when it came to spectators – in 1999 when Carl Fogarty was chasing his fourth title, the Brands WSB round was witnessed by a staggering 121,000 fans. It was the biggest single-day attendance at any British sporting event that year.

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###### **5 BIKES THAT REALLY MATTER THIS MONTH**

#### CCM reveal **Project X,** an off-road successor to the much-loved GP450

It’s easy to forget what an off-road powerhouse CCM used to be.

Back in 1977, for example, a couple of CCMs led the British motocross GP, keeping swarms of Japanese factory bikes behind them. They didn’t ultimately win it, but the episode was enough to scare Honda Racing Corporation (HRC), who bought a CCM and took it back to Japan to forensically examine. And now the Bolton firm are heading back towards dirt with this, the Project X.

As with all recent CCMs, it’s Spitfire based, with the same 600cc single-cylinder engine and TIG-welded steel frame as the popular road bike range. But thanks to a bigger fuel tank, long-travel suspension and new wheel sizes, Project X has become a serious off-road tool according to CCM.

‘The Spitfire range has been really successful for us,’ CCM’s new managing director Jason Broome tells _Bike._ ‘But CCM purists have been asking for a bike that’s closer to our roots, so naturally we wanted to deliver. But we needed to be practical at the same time. Developing a whole new bike will take years.

‘In the meantime, we asked ourselves, “can we make our existing engine and chassis more targeted at our heritage?” The first problem was the fuel tank. If you want an enduro bike it’s got to have sufficient range, but a fuel tank isn’t something you can just knock up. It takes time. We’ve developed an injection-moulded plastic tank with a cover, just like a competition bike would have. We’ve also relocated the fuel pump to get an extra litre of fuel in. It’s now between 17 and 18 litres, which equates to a 150-mile range.’

Apparently the other major request from long-standing CCM fans was an airbox – none of the Spitfire variants have one. ‘Again, that was a challenge,’ says Jason. ‘But we’ve done it. Along with the long-travel WP suspension, 21in front wheel and 18in rear, plus sump guard and new mudguards, it’s resulted in a capable enduro bike. Each one will be made to order, so customers can specify whether they want them in enduro or road trim.’

The Project X will cost £13,995 when it arrives in June 2025.

Beautifully made steel trellis, lovingly TIG-welded together in Bolton.

Sort of. CCM’s 2022 ‘Retro Trailie’ concept looked remarkably similar.

Rorty 600cc single from the Spitfire, making 55bhp and 37 lb.ft of torque.

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#### _Bike’s_ datalogging expert **Bruce Dunn** deals with the side effects of his trade…

I’m replacing the clutch plates on this 2014 Suzuki GSX-R750 with both guilt and satisfaction. Guilt because the clutch’s demise was down to me performance testing it; satisfaction that I achieved excellent quarter-mile data… before it cooked itself.

So then: aftermarket or original? The Suzuki parts add up to just under £400, but a quality aftermarket kit from EBC with heavy-duty springs is just under £115. I put the bike on its sidestand – with it leaning over this stops oil running out when the clutch cover is removed. This won’t apply to all bikes, but can save faffing around with drain trays. The GSX-R’s clutch is conventional, with actuation via a pushrod from the left-hand side of the engine. Just make sure there’s ample free play at the lever, or if there’s an actuating lever on the clutch case side you can release the cable. Undo the cover’s bolts and make a note of any different lengths. Tease the cover off, keeping an eye for locating dowels; if it refuses to budge have a look around the edges for pry points, but use them carefully.

The outer pressure plate is secured by the springs. Undo these, and remove the plates individually, keeping note of the order: it’s usually friction plate then steel plate, repeated until the last friction. Make sure your new plates are the same and offer them up. Check your manual as there’s often an anti-shudder shim or additional sprung retainer. First and last plates sometimes differ too – on the GSX-R the last friction plate is thinner than the rest.

Clean the clutch drum and basket with brake cleaner. Use a brush to agitate heavier deposits, and rinse with a blast of brake cleaner. Clean the inside and outside of the pressure plate and cover, too. Scotchbrite is good to get traces of old gasket from the engine and cover. Soak the new frictions in the oil used in the engine or gearbox for at least an hour. Smear oil on the steels, too. Fit the plates in the correct order, ensuring the steels are in the right way – the round edges usually face a specific way (inwards on this GSX-R). Fit the pressure plate; sometimes there will be marks to line it up with the clutch basket. Refit springs and nip them up evenly, then torque them as per your manual. With a pushrod system, check in the manual for any screw or locknut adjustment.

Ensure cover-locating dowels are in place and fit a new gasket. As the clutch cover goes on remember to engage the actuating lever. When the case is seated nip the bolts up then deploy the torque wrench. Run the engine up for a few minutes, stop it and check the oil level. Check the clutch lever free play before a test ride – it’s likely this has changed, so give it a tweak.

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Packed with iconic machinery and astounding engineering, this issue celebrates the very best of British. We name Blighty’s greatest ever bike, showcase the world-beating engines, and reveal Britain’s best-loved… well, everything, from helmet and jacket to dealer and biker café.

The best-selling new Triumph Speed 400 takes on its fabulous 400cc-ish rivals, and the latest Honda Fireblade bangs heads with the BMW S1000RR on British B-roads. We expose the tech secrets inside BMW’s funky new F450GS, go behind the scenes at the European drag racing finals (0-260mph in six seconds, anyone?), and Mat Oxley chats with factory Ducati MotoGP rider Fabio Di Giannantonio. Plus, all the insight, humour, and entertainment you can only find in the UK’s best-selling motorcycle magazine…

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#### Today’s bikes are capable of mileages our forefathers would have deemed impossible – and we have two rather unexpected things to thank…

  
As children, most of us were told that two wrongs don’t make a right. But for bikers two things that can make our noses wrinkle – cars and exhaust emissions – can, it turns out, make things good for us. They’re the primary reason why bikes don’t break and do massive mileages.

Clean air is what we all want and need. Worldwide there’s been progressive tightening of emissions limits in this regard for many years, with the first regulations raised in California in 1966 due to ever-worsening air quality. The car industry, of course, fought back in their normal way by claiming there was no real way of meeting the regulations and it would bankrupt them. They squealed and squealed until it was obvious The Man wasn’t going to back down, then met the rules after all. However, the cost in good ol’ American hosspower was monumental. ‘Derated’ doesn’t even begin to cover it. ‘Eviscerated’ would be closer.

In 1973 the first automotive catalytic converter was produced, enabling a massive step forward in emissions control. The first ones were simple ‘two-way’ jobs that only converted hydrocarbon (HC) and carbon monoxide (CO) emissions, but they did allow tuning options that the previous best technology – thermal reactors, basically big empty boxes in the exhaust that kept gases hot for as long as possible in the hope HCs and CO would miraculously disappear – could not. Oxides of nitrogen (NOx) were later dealt with in a two-stage catalyst system where the engine was run slightly rich to reduce the NOx using some of the HC and CO in a first cat, with what was left of those then being oxidised in a second one after air had been squirted in by a pump. Complex, but it worked. Then it was realised that with sufficiently accurate control of the air/fuel ratio a single cat could do the job, and so one of the most fantastic devices ever was invented: the three-way cat (TWC).

Call me sad, but the TWC is a stupendous piece of kit. In this smallpackage all the hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen atoms magically get rearranged to produce just nitrogen, water and carbon dioxide. Once it is ‘lit’ this happens with 99.99 per cent efficiency as exhaust gases fly through. There is absolutely no doubt it saved the spark-ignition engine.

Anyway. When cats were introduced, engines were down on pre-regs outputs, but it was obvious it was a device that could massively reduce emissions. Obvious to all, including legislators. The stage was thus set to keep ratcheting down emissions limits, and to require compliance over ever ‐longer mileages. And to keep increasing requirements to a level that would have been impossible beforehand, while monitoring things over longer periods. Naturally, this gave rise to evermore powerful engine control systems (fuel injection, electronic throttles, variable timing – you name it).

As an example of increasing requirements, for cars we have to show emissions compliance for over 150,000 miles. On-board diagnostics have been mandated in the US and Europe so that sensors continually diagnose whether other sensors are working properly, and if not the dreaded malfunction indicator lamp (MIL) is thrown. Any problems have to be reported. In the US, if your product shows a tendency to fall out of compliance the Environmental Protection Agency can force you to recall and fix them. Every. Single. One. Through MIL lamp reporting the agency also noticed that, in general, cars had a tendency to show problems with their emissions systems after someone had spannered them badly, so they made it illegal to require any maintenance to anything in the ‘air path’ (from air filter outlet to catalyst system outlet). Except the spark plugs, which I always think is weird. This included cam drives and boosting devices. Both had to take a massive leap in durability as a result.

Other things were needed. Oil consumption had to be nailed because of HC emissions, so understanding of piston/liner dynamics had to be improved. Friction had to be reduced because burning more fuel inherently leads to more emissions (we really had to do this for CO2 emissions reduction, but it’s true for criteria pollutants, too).

> ‘Next time you smell clean air, remember achieving it has been good in more ways than one’

It’s all harder with direct injection (DI) and we haven’t mentioned particulate emissions. But you can see that, due to technologies developed and deployed because of emissions regs, the modern engine is an astounding achievement. At modern emissions levels it cleans the air; it’s way cleaner than cigarettes, barbecues, or cooking your Sunday lunch; it’s more efficient and powerful than ever; it’s super-driveable even with ridiculous power; it’s durable like you wouldn’t believe; and it’s convenient and cheap, providing great utility – in exactly the way that a battery electric vehicle doesn’t.

If you’ve got this far, you’ll be asking what on earth this has to do with motorcycles. They’re not subject to the same emissions limits – either in absolute terms or monitoring. The fact is that bike and car manufacturers share the same suppliers and consultants, their engineers move between them, and they use the same processes and tools to develop and make their products. Consequently, the whole ecosystem just improved massively. Bikes just couldn’t help but get better as well.

When I was a greenhorn engine development engineer at Norton and Lotus, I used to bemoan evermore difficult emissions targets. Then an experienced old hand said to me: ‘No, lad, you’ve got it wrong. Meeting these limits is bloody hard. And bloody hard means more people are employed for longer…’ Ever since I’ve said bring it on. Effectively the only limit we cannot achieve cost-effectively is zero. So they can ban the engine – that’s exactly what the politicians have set for tailpipe CO2 . Given the historical efforts of all those super ‐clever engine engineers, that’s hardly fair, is it? Especially when it’s the fuel that’s the problem, not the engine per se.

All that said, I find myself horribly conflicted on one thing. Emissions regulations have taken something big from the biking world – the two-stroke engine. However, this was mainly down to the type of stroker that we had grown to love: the crankcase-compression type. We could now fairly readily meet bike emissions levels with a two-stroke using things like DI, stepped pistons (as used on the Wulf engine), and variable compression ratio (easy-peasy with a two-stroke – just see the Lotus ‘Omnivore’ which used it to be able to consume pretty much anything). In these challenging times no one is going to invest in that sort of thing. Or will they? Hope springs eternal…

So, there you have it. Meeting ever-decreasing limits over longer distances and continual snooping by the vehicle controller itself has made everything super-reliable and durable over pretty enormous mileages. Everything had to step up. It’s been improving steadily and quickly over the past few decades, and the result for every vehicle fitted with an engine has been remarkable. Next time you are out for a ride smelling the clean air, remember that achieving it has been good for us in more ways than one.

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#### Classic bike engine builder **Rupert Farnsworth** crams his two-hour thread lecture (really) into 300 words

Generally you know where you are with a Japanese bike because all the threads are the same type, although you can get different pitches (the distance between thread crests) for a given size. But when you move into British stuff it gets much more interesting because they use everything.

For example, on my 1971 BSA Lightning \[a 650 twin – Ed\] you’ve got British Standard Whitworth – a coarse thread – and British Standard Fine (BSF), the fine version. Then you’ve got the later American equivalents, Unified National Coarse (UNC) and Unified National Fine (UNF), which started to take over from the British stuff. Because the British and American pitches are mostly the same, you’d think they might be interchangeable, but they’re not because the included thread angles \[a measure of the ‘pointiness’ of the thread – Ed\] are different. So, if you pick up a 7/16th Whitworth bolt, which is 14 TPI (thread per inch, a measure of the pitch), and use it instead of a 7/16th UNC – which is also 14 TPI – you’ll get in a right mess when you tighten it because the included angle in a Whitworth is 55 degrees and the included angle in a UNC is 60 degrees.

There are also British Standard Cycle threads (BSCY), which are a hangover from bicycle manufacturing days. They’re quite good because all their bolts are the same pitch – 26 TPI. Well, apart from two really small ones. There’s also British Standard Brass, which you need to know about if

you’re rebuilding a carburettor. That’s also 26 TPI, but has a different pitch angle so isn’t interchangeable with BSCY.

Then there’s British Standard Pipe threads and British Association threads. In my workshop over the course of a couple of days of spannering I’ll encounter about 20 different thread types. Because I’ve used nuts and bolts all my life, I remember which are which, but I can see it might be confusing to some people.

**»** **Need** **an engine rebuild? Contact Rupe on 07950 234497.**

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In 1948 Brian Adams turned 21. For his birthday his father offered him the choice of a slap-up party or a motorcycle. Brian chose the motorcycle – a 500cc Matchless G80. It cost £112. Brian added the option of a pillion seat, which brought the price up to £120. During the war the Ministry of Supply sent Brian to university. He graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering. Had the war persisted Brian was destined to be a boffin at Farnborough, but with the outbreak of peace he had two weeks to kill before starting a career in industry. What to do...?

Inspired by The Motorcyclist magazine Brian decided he and the Matchless would head for Europe. Friend Barrie Edwards (a metallurgy graduate) would share the pillion and the expenses. And so on 10 August, 1948 Brian, Barrie and the Matchless G80 rolled ashore in France, complete with homemade panniers, a modified pillion perch (Barrie was 6ft+), a diary and a camera. Welcome to post war Europe from the saddle of a very stout birthday present. Brian, in his own words...

We landed at Dunkerque after a night at sea in an unpleasant atmosphere. We left the docks at 8am and rode to Arras and the Hotel L’Univers. 15/- each for dinner.

We walked around Arras, purchased some peaches and set out. The road was good. We rumbled along at 60mph sucking peaches and admiring the view: sweeping fields of grass and corn, fields with wild poppies and military cemeteries with their thousands of crosses. On reaching Laon we climbed the steep hill to the town and ate our lunch after looking over the cathedral. Reims was reached shortly afterwards and the Matchless was a source of interest to the crowd of tourists in front of the cathedral. This was a peculiar place – beautiful but with an air of commercialism.

Beyond Reims a patch of clay on the main road took the front wheel away and the ‘whole issue’ went down with a hell of a scrape. We sustained a few bruises and two stays were broken on the panniers. We spent the night at the next hotel in Vitry- le-François. ‘Yes we can let you have a room for the night. Passport?’ I’d lost it in the spill. An hour later the Gendarmes in Reims rang through, they had found it.

We left Vitry at 11am. The roads were excellent and we cruised at 60mph in spite of the pouring rain. The rain persisted until Langres was reached. We rode all around the city’s malodorous but picturesque back streets. We booked into the Hotel du Commerce, then later walked around the ancient city walls.

We spent the night of the 13th miles from anywhere in the Hotel Greffier. We woke to a downpour, strapped on the luggage and started a zig-zag descent with sheer drops to the Lyon-Geneva railway. Beyond Thonon we climbed for two hours through the bottom of the rain clouds before coming to the most delightful place you ever saw: a small village of Alpine houses and buildings at the foot of two snow capped peaks around which clouds swirled at amazing speeds.

Last night we stayed in the Chalet Nantegue. Then this morning, as we began to ride there was a strange noise. It was caused by 1000s of grasshoppers on the slopes at the side of the road.

We descended for many miles towards Clues. Outside St Gervais we ate a six course lunch in our shirt sleeves. Mont Blanc could be seen in the distance towering above nearer peaks.

St Michel was a dirty town and so was the hotel we stayed in. However, the food was beautiful (as was the mam’selle who served it. Dinner, wine and bed & breakfast was 15/- each and this was the only hotel where we had to wash in the old type handbowl with jugged water. We rose at 7.30am and I purchased some 1/2in thick wire from a cycle shop to strengthen the broken pannier. We were going to cross the Col du Galibier via Valloire. The Col is famous for the passage of the Tour de France. The road went up the side of an almost precipitous hill and I should think the average gradient was about one in eight for about eight miles. Amazing scenery and a most shocking surface.

Stopping for a rest I examined the machine and discovered one of the pannier bags had gone missing. I left Barrie at the side of the road and retraced my steps, standing on the rests and peering over the sides of the road, looking for the bag which held my best shoes, hair brush, some of Barrie’s shirts and my waterproof leggings. Farther down the road an attractive French girl helped me in what was unfortunately a fruitless search.

I got back to Barrie in the late afternoon. He had enjoyed the most amazing solitude imaginable, while just occasionally a distant bell tinkled and broke the silence as a cow moved.

We descended the Galibier and eventually reached Briançon. The bike had become plastered in grey Alpine mud and dust till only the wings on the ‘Ms’ on the tank could be seen. We too were quite filthy and pleased to find a hot bath.

We set out at 8am and climbed the Galibier pass. Four miles from the summit the surface was so bad Barrie had to dismount and walk. Through the tunnel at the summit we drank our reward ‘pick- me-up’ at what must be the highest road house in Europe.

Today we climb the Col de la Cayolle. It was raining and as we climbed the torrent at the side of the road became very swollen. In some places nimble mountain sheep jumped off the road onto what seemed like sheer drops. That night we stayed at the Hotel de Terminus near Nice.

It was now Wednesday and we had to be in Dunkerque for the Saturday night boat. We set off towards Grasse. We spend the night in La Mure where our bedroom was over the sewer-less public lavatories.

A horrible skull and crossbones marked the descent into Grenoble, frightening enough for me to change down to first

We reached Paris. After lunch we pressed on through yet more rain. We ‘hooked-up’ with a Jaguar and French motorcycle for about 15 miles to pass away time. We rolled into Dunkerque at 19.30.

Landed in Dover and accompanied two other motorcycles as far as London. Reached home at Hednesford at 18.00.

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Next year’s new bikes have been announced and there’s a swarm of tantalising new machinery. _Bike_’s experts cut through the marketing guff and delve behind the headlines to reveal the 13 motorcycles that matter in each category. Yamaha’s updated MT-09 and the new KTM 990 Duke battle with the venerable Triumph Street Triple R on glorious British B-roads, and the fabulous new Suzuki GSX-8R takes on our fabulous old GSX-R750 at Cadwell Park.

Mat Oxley has a jaw-dropping natter with sidecar legends the Birchall brothers, and we peek inside the WP factory. Plus, there’s an adventure spectacular: we wade into the Peak District on the glamorous MV Agusta Enduro Veloce, get completely out of our depth in the BMW GS Challenge and do some leftfield adventuring too, heading to overlooked Corsica on the underrated Triumph Scrambler 1200 XE. Plus, all the insight, humour, and knowledge you can only find in _Bike_…

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###### 13 BIKES THAT REALLY MATTER THIS MONTH

#### Shake paws with the **Bear 650** – the Royal Enfield with an odd name but straightforward appeal

Way back in 1960, the Big Bear Run in the deserts of California attracted 765 entrants. Big-name racers slogged it out in the ludicrous 150-mile event, including Triumph-supported legend Bud Ekins, but it was won by a spunky teenager called Eddie Mulder. He was riding a 499cc single-cylinder Royal Enfield Fury.

Fast Eddie’s famous win – at 16 he was and still is the youngest ever victor in the epic race – is why this new bike is called the Bear 650. But ignore the strange choice of moniker. Ignore too all the promotional pictures of it being ridden by hip types in clobber worn by no one outside of California/Shoreditch. And instead get ready to make a beeline to a Royal Enfield dealer.

Turning their excellent and hugely popular Interceptor 650 into a scrambler might be mildly predictable, but the execution is cock on. Perched a tad higher and with an extra 10mm of ground clearance, the Bear has Himalayan-looking big piston upside-down forks but with more road-biased 130mm wheel travel, and twin shocks with 115mm of movement. Interceptor wheel sizes are 18in at both ends, but for scramblering the new bike has a 19in front and 17in rear. Wheelbase is up from 1398mm to 1460mm and there’s a larger rear brake disc, too.

Clearly, then, this isn’t a motocross bike. However, the desert sleds that tore around the US in the 1960s were generally simple, stripped-back roadsters with a few parts beefed up for romping across the scrub. And this means the Bear is convincing.

Those generally home-brewed sleds often kept the original low exhaust, which is why the new 650 doesn’t have a high-level pipe. That, and the fact it means there’s room for luggage and your passenger’s legs won’t get grilled. The two-into-one system saves a kilo (kerb weight is 216kg with the 13.6-litre tank 90 per cent full) and is responsible for the changes to the output of the air-cooled 648cc parallel twin. Maximum power stays at an A2-pleasing 47bhp but there’s extra midrange thump and 3 lb.ft more outright torque, resulting in 42 lb.ft at 5150rpm.

All the retro-ness is balanced by the neat colour TFT ‘Tripper’ display, which has phone connectivity and supports Google Maps for navigation. The 650 also has a USB-C port and LED lights and all that gubbins.

There are loads of colour options, with prices starting at £6749 – a few hundred more than an Interceptor. Bikes are expected before the end of the year. Form a disorderly queue.

It’s the chirpy but flexible 648cc twin used in the other 650s, but there’s more low and midrange shunt and a boost in peak torque.

Forks and shocks are by Showa, and give the Bear more wheel travel front and rear plus additional ground clearance. The rear ABS can be turned off too, but don’t get carried away – think beach blasts and light trails, not extreme enduro.

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#### Answer: very. BMW’s GS Challenge is well organised and welcoming. And bollocking difficult…

By **John Westlake** Pics **Dave Mackison/BMW**

Look up ‘delusional’ in the dictionary and it says: ‘A motorcycle journalist who believes he will cruise through the GS Challenge because he did a trials course two years ago’. I genuinely believed it wouldn’t be that difficult. Fool.

The off-road event started in 2008 as a way of selecting the British team who would go on and compete in the GS Trophy – a massive global competition for BMW riders that’s been held on the planet’s most glamorous dirt locations, from Patagonia to Thailand. That’s clearly hardcore, but the UK event I’m at is open to everyone – novices are welcome. Hence my misplaced confidence. The delusions start crumbling on sight of the first challenge. The aim is to ride an R1300GS round a small, slippy pen while picking up tennis balls from the top of traffic cones with your right hand and then dropping them into a pile of tyres, without ever putting a foot down. ‘So you have to ride round full-lock corners on dirt while your throttle hand holds tennis balls?’ I ask the BMW man in charge, just to be sure. ‘Yes. And you’ve only got 40 seconds to do it.’

Needless to say my run is a lurching, foot-dabbing, cone-bashing disaster as I utterly fail to steer, balance and manipulate tennis balls. I score maximum penalties within eight seconds. Stupid fricking game. How can anyone do that? The next contender is the only other member of our group who’s never done the Challenge before, and he crashes into the barriers. See, impossible.

Then one of the veteran GS Trophy contestants has a go and chugs round on tickover, calmly doing full-lock, one-handed turns while tucking tennis balls into his jacket and then firing them neatly into the tyre receptacle, like some GS-mounted Roger Federer. Barrier-crasher and I desperately want another go to redeem ourselves so we can feel less incompetent, but we’re ushered to the next challenge.

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