Going Chinese? I don’t really think so!

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Would you buy a brand new bike off the showroom floor that couldn’t be delivered on the agreed date because it had a part missing? No, me neither! Which is a shame, because it was all going so well…

My wife, Peter, used to have a full motorcycle licence. She’s owned a Suzuki GSX750, a Yamaha Star 1100 and a V-Strom 650, and ridden a whole host of 1980s bikes. She currently owns a Triumph Tiger 800XC and a Yamaha TW200. Unfortunately, she let her South African licence lapse while living and working in the UAE (sadly, no licence-till-you’re-70 there) so needs to get a new one.

She duly took her CBT training and  started to get some current UK two-wheeled experience on the Suzuki Address 110 scooter she took over from our emigrating son. She wanted something more substantial with a ‘manual’ gearbox to ride before taking her test, so we went shopping online for a suitable 125.

That was an interesting experience. It’s been about 45 years since I last rode a 125, a Honda CG125 I had on test for Motorcyclist Illustrated. I recall it was a thoroughly nice 125, albeit woefully underpowered for the commute from our home in Gravesend (at the time) to central London. My first surprise this month was the price of new 125s from the big four Japanese manufacturers: some of the best cost more than £5,000! Low-mileage, one-owner used examples were also well into the £3,000 mark. To get down to the £1,500-£1,800 we fancied paying for a bike that Peter would use purely as a test-passing vehicle, we were looking at much older, multi-owner bikes.

Along  the way, I found an ad for a Hanway 125 SC, which looked impressively like a Ducati Scrambler. A review of some road tests showed that it was well-received by the media and produced 15 bhp, which is the maximum for a learner 125 and significantly more than the 10-11 bhp offered by more mainstream bikes. Even better, there was a brand-new, pre-registered example on sale for £2,699 at a dealer near us.

We drove there and examined the Hanway, a pre-registered Benelli and a two-owner Honda CBF125, all at roughly the same price. Peter felt the Hanway, a stylish beast for its size, looked like the best bet, and I agreed, so we paid a £100 deposit and agreed to pick it up the following Friday.

We called first thing on Friday to say we were on our way to collect the Hanway. The salesman we’d been dealing with was out but a colleague asked us to wait until 11:00 so they could get the paperwork ready and make sure the bike was clean from its brief road-test by the mechanic. Our original salesman, a very impressive and helpful guy in my opinion, called shortly afterwards to explain that there was a problem.

They’d discovered that a mechanic in their workshop had cannibalised the Hanway to source a part from the switchgear for some other bike. They’d have to order a replacement from the parts depot, but it was close by and they should have the part before the end of the day and they’d fit it as quickly as possible. We were disappointed, naturally, and a little concerned. What kind of dealer would allow a mechanic to cannibalise a new bike on the showroom floor and not at least order a replacement immediately?

We called mid-morning the following day and spoke to the manager; our salesman wasn’t there that day. He said the part had arrived but they didn’t have workshop staff on site till Monday; however, they’d get to the bike as soon as they could.

“I have to say I’m not very impressed,” I told him. “Why would you allow a mechanic to take a part off a new bike and not order a replacement straight away?”

“It seems we did,” he told me, “but unfortunately that part never arrived. Anyway, cannibalising showroom bike is a common practice – all dealers do it.”

He may well be right, but the “part never arrived” bit did it for Peter and me. We’d been willing to take a punt on a Chinese brand we’d never heard of because the price was good, the test reports were favourable and it looked great. But this was a new bike, already missing a component, and the parts ordering system had proved fallible. The dealership had a workshop that didn’t work on Saturdays, and they couldn’t give us a firm delivery date beyond “as soon as we can”.

We did the logical thing and cancelled the order, and happily they didn’t fuss over refunding our deposit. I went online straight away and found three Honda CBF125s for sale at Staffordshire Honda in Newcastle-under-Lyme, so we headed there. The three bikes had between 250 and 850 miles on the clock. The lower-mileage white bikes were ex-demonstrators, whereas the red model with 850 miles was a one-owner bike in seemingly excellent condition. We bought it on the spot, for £100 less than the Hanway. The dealer said his workshop was fully booked for the next two weeks but since the bike had had its first service only a few weeks earlier they’d put it through the workshop immediately for a safety check and we could ride it away. Had we gone for either of the white models, it would have been 10 days before we could have taken delivery.

I rode the bike the 20 miles home and found it perfect for the job it was about to do. Peter loves it and gets out to practice her skills as often as she can. I can’t speak highly enough of the service we received from Staffordshire Honda that day – it’s worth a visit even if only to see the wonderful collection of modern classics on display there. I’m not going to name the Hanway dealer, because it seems well-rated online, the salesman was a solid guy, and maybe this was a one-off. He lost one certain sale and another likely one (a BMW K1600 GTL on the showroom floor that took my fancy). But I can’t help feeling that we had a narrow escape and ended up with the better brand and the better bike.

45 years on, I finally bought a Wing!

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I rode my first Gold Wing in August 1979; three years later I wrote the book Gold Wing; but it’s taken until last Saturday for me to actually own one. Almost 45 years is quite a wait, and I haven’t been disappointed.

That first Wing ride was memorable for many reasons. As a motorcycle journalist at the time, I’d recently come back from the launch of the 19709 BMW range in America. I’d joined seven other British journalists to sample the then-new R100RT, R100T and a few others I don’t now recall. It was probably the sheer joy of stunning California and Arizona scenery in 80-degree (Fahrenheit) weather in February that turned my head, but I liked those bikes – so much so that I ordered a new R100 Autumn Special in a glorious metallic green when I got home. I wanted that bike so much, and was thrilled when I picked it up from Slocombe’s on V-plate day, 1 August.

The following day found me at Honda’s UK headquarters in Chiswick to collect a brand-new GL1000 K3 Gold Wing. By the time I arrived home in Gravesend, I knew I’d made a mistake in buying the Beemer. To my mind, the Wing was the better bike – and it would have cost me £30 less to boot! I rode both bikes back-to-back that week and found the Honda smoother, quieter (the BMW had a tappet rattle that never went away), more comfortable and more powerful.

When I was asked to write a book on  Gold Wings in 1982, the logical place to go was Wing Ding, the annual gathering of Wing owners in the US. That year it was held in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, and I rode there on a spanking new metallic brown and gold Aspencade on loan from Honda US. Again, I admit to being seduced by the ride and the scenery: through the San Bernadino mountains, across the Mojave desert, into Las Vegas at 1 am and out again at 2 am, vast stretches of nothingness in which at one stage I didn’t see a light or sign of another human being for 30 minutes. It was 95 degrees at midnight, and what I did see was the “billion stars all around” from The Eagles’ Peaceful Easy Feeling. Fabulous bike, memorable ride over several days, awesome trip.

Yet I didn’t buy myself a Wing. There was a mortgage to pay, young children to raise, so I focused instead on more affordable second-hand machinery: a CX500, a CBX (should never have sold that one), a new Firestorm, a Kawasaki 1500 Vulcan, two Honda Valkyries, a Suzuki TL1000S, a Ducati Sport Classic, a Rocket III and finally a third Valkyrie. Oh, and then a Rune. But no Wing. Until last Saturday.

The Valkyries always appealed to me because on balance I have preferred naked bikes, and the Valk is basically a naked Gold Wing: same 1500cc flat six (until the Wing went to 1832cc and left the Valkyrie behind) but with the look of a traditional motorcycle: an engine, a petrol tank, two wheels, lots of chrome, and plenty of smooth, silky power. None of that plastic nonsense!

I borrowed a new Wing in ’88 for a week and loved it; I rode a friend’s 1800 down to Devon to buy the TL in 2005 and loved it; my wife and I rented one in Colorado for a week in 2011 and we both loved that, too. I was looking for a replacement for my Rocket III Touring and found a lovely Valkyrie in Blackpool, so for the next 10 years that became our primary tourer. But our trip to Norway 18 months ago got me thinking that the Valkyrie wasn’t necessarily the answer anymore. I messed up the rear suspension settings and that made the bike harder to manage at low speed; the handlebar position and angle seemed to cause me arm pain that didn’t happen on my other bikes; and the lack of modern amenities like built-in satnav, heated grips and easily lockable luggage suggested that maybe the time had come for a replacement.

Online reading suggested the Triumph GT900, which weighed about 100 kg less and had lots going for it: flatter bars, built-in satnav, heated grips. Or the BMW R1250 RS, which added shaft drive to the mix. Then while shopping for a new 125 for my wife to re-take her test (blog to follow) I saw not one but three BMW K1600s at prices that seemed more affordable than I’d have guessed. A test ride or two seemed in the offing.

Then last Friday I rode my Rune to Bill Smith Motors in Chester to have a new front tyre fitted. The tyre stuff didn’t work out, because the mechanics reckoned it was too hard to raise the front end of the 440kg Honda to get at the wheel. While I waited, however, I spied a very nice-looking red 2007 Gold Wing with 39,500 miles on the clock. A return trip that afternoon on the Valkyrie allowed the dealer to consider a trade-in offer. They called at 11:00 next morning with a deal that I felt was fair, and by 3pm I was riding home on my first Wing.

Initial impressions confirmed what I already knew: it was smooth, powerful, very comfortable, very sure-footed and a pleasure to ride. The riding position promised an easier time for my right arm, the centrally locked luggage system suggested easier moseying while touring, and the general amenities (fairing, great seat, radio, MP3 player, reverse gear, heated seats, heated grips, air-adjustable suspension) augured well for our future tours. Only time will tell. It’s been a long wait, almost 45 years, but I sense it’s all come right in the end.

A Knysna journey into my biking history

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It was like a window back into my personal motorcycling past, laid out across the vast open floor for my delight: there was my 1977 Yamaha XS750 triple; my Triumph 3TA 350 twin; my Jawa 175 split-single two-stroke; my friend Kevin’s Triumph Tiger 200 single. Interspersed among them were several bikes I had ridden during my years as  a road-tester: a BMW R100RS, the BMW R100RT I’d ridden across the Arizona desert; the Honda 1978 CX500 whose launch I’d attended in France, the Yamaha XT500 single, the Honda CB750F from 1981…

I was on a much-postponed visit to The Motorcycle Room, a museum in Knysna on the Garden Route in South Africa’s Western Cape. It’s about 25 minutes down the road from our home in Plettenberg Bay, and I’d been meaning to go there since it opened, with some 85 bikes on display. The wait wasn’t entirely in vain, though, because by now its collection has expanded to some 150 motorcycles. And this January day, I had the whole place to myself, alongside my friend Pete Meadowcroft, a BSA owner from way back.

Knysna is a quirky town, built along a beautiful tidal lagoon on the Indian Ocean, with a busy marina, a nice mic of touristy shops and restaurants, against a backdrop of the Tsitsikama Mountains. If you’re in the area, it’s well worth a visit and a meander, even if you’re not into old motorcycles.

The museum isn’t entirely my cup of tea, to be honest. I like my classic cars and bikes to be in mint condition, restored if need be to better than new – none of this “patina” nonsense so beloved by Wayne Carini of Chasing Classic Cars fame, and so many other classic vehicle buffs! Some of the bikes in this collection are in great condition, and one or two of the more recent BMWs look brand new, but many are a bit tired and some are plain rusty. And that’s the stated intention of the museum creator, Colin Stunden, a former enduro racer. He’s picked up a wide variety of old and not-so-old bikes, some designated as barn finds that await some degree of restoration.

My interest is mostly in road bikes, too, which means that about half this collection isn’t really my thing at all: there are scores of off-road bikes, most of them seemingly KTMs, which is great if you’re into that sort of thing but otherwise not very compelling. Others who admire the world of knobbly tyres will doubtless be engrossed.

There was a lot of metal to hold my attention, regardless. One of my first-ever bikes was a Jawa 175, bought from a scrapyard for a fiver in Dublin in or around 1969. My good friend Seamus, a wizard with things mechanical and electrical, was able to make it run – as long as it was connected to a transformer that was plugged into the mains! I don’t recall riding it very far… Here in Knysna were several examples of the same split-single concept under the Jawa and CZ brands.

The Triumph 3TA was of the bathtub variety and black, with that strange upturned rear mudguard thing. Mine came without the bathtub, happily, and was an ex-police bike, also black, that I had professionally painted in the metallic green of the Opel Reckord of the early ‘70s. I lingered over that Yamaha XS750, which brought back happy memories. My wife and I bought the then-new triple back in ’77 with a wedding gift that was intended to buy a three-piece suite. It was one of the first Japanese bikes with shaft drive, presenting an attractive alternative to the BMWs of that era. We rode it from London to Rome and back and enjoyed it hugely, although the XS850 that followed it a year or so later was even better to ride.

Memories were triggered too by the Honda CB750F in the Knysna collection, because I had one on test the week my daughter Elizabeth was born, back in June 1981. I remember being so elated at her safe arrival that I rode home from the hospital through country roads at about 1:30 in the morning, pulling a joyous wheelie the first chance I got. The bike was okay, as I recall, although the 900cc version was more fun.

Other machines in this eclectic collection include an 80cc version of the ubiquitous Honda 50 step-through, made in India under an Indian brand name. There was the odd Matchless, a smattering of BSAs, a few Ducatis, a Laverda or two, an Aermacchi, a few scooters, a Harley and a host of scramblers, motocrossers, adventure bikes and trail bikes. If you’re ever in the area, it’s well worth stopping off and spending an hour browsing through The Motorcycle Room. You’ll find it on Thesen Island, clearly signposted near the end of the quay, with several excellent waterside restaurants and bars a few steps away. Entry costs R160 (about £7). Maybe you’ll meet a slice of your own motorcycling past there, too.

The curious case of the missing magneto rotor

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Did you ever buy a motorcycle part, pay for it, and then find it’s been delivered to some unknown person 890 miles away? Me neither – until now!

Having left my ailing Suzuki V-Strom in my garage in Plettenberg Bay for the duration of the European summer and the South African winter, I turned my attention to finding a second-hand magneto rotor in the British parts market. Should be easy, I figured. Hah! There weren’t any. A new one would set me back all of £670, or R15,000, compared with the R8,970 I‘d been quoted in South Africa. So no solutions in the UK, then.

Now back in South Africa to escape the British winter, my wife and I decided we’d sort out the V-Strom ourselves. The local repair shop had told me back in May that they’d found fragments of metal in the oil and that therefore they’d need to strip the engine completely and rebuild it, at a total cost of R22,000, which is now about £950, which was both expensive and, I thought, perhaps a bit unnecessary.

My first move was to drain the engine oil, and out poured the cleanest, clearest oil I’ve ever drained. Not a fragment of metal or anything else foreign in there. The oil filter was equally pristine. Even the small magnet in the drain plug was free of swarf. On that basis, I figured there’d be no fragments of magnets elsewhere, so set about stripping off the magneto cover. That showed the stator windings to be undamaged, which boded well – and there was no sign of any magnets, whole or in bits, anywhere! The mechanic at the repair shop had clearly taken them out and not put them back when he replaced the cover and trailered the bike back to me, at my request, unrepaired. If they were all broken or damaged, fair enough, though it would have been nice to tell me.

Mt wife’s ex-husband (a total Suzuki fan whose GSXR 1000 weighs only 166kg) recommended a used parts emporium in Cape Town, which didn’t do used parts anymore but recommended another parts dealer, which did. The price was a firm R5,000 (about £220), which seemed a tad high for a second-hand part but not extortionate, given the paucity of rotors. Shipping to my nearest depot in town was R110 (a mere £4.80).

The dealer was good enough to warn me that extracting the old rotor required ideally a blow torch and a compressed-air-driven impact driver. Not having such exotic equipment, I phoned a friend who has a friend who has everything I’d need – including a trailer with which to transport the bike to his workshop. What a result!

I waited the quoted three business days for the rotor to arrive. There was no sign of it. I asked for a tracking number. The dealer said he’d had trouble getting the rotor off the donor bike due to load-shedding, a peculiar South African practice whereby whole segments of the country are denied electricity to conserve supplies. It’s been going on for ever. Anyway, it was a plausible explanation, so I went with it. Chased the guy again a day or two later, and now he said his air tool wasn’t working properly – please give him a few more days. I had other bikes to ride, so I said fine.

Almost three weeks after buying the rotor, the guy said the part was now off the bike and on its way to me by express delivery. I called next day to get the tracking number, and that’s when he confessed there’d been a terrible mistake and it had been sent by the courier company to Mpumulanga – a province in the north-east of the country and about 890 miles from where I live! He apologised profusely and volunteered to refund the money. Damn straight! The R5,000 price was duly refunded, but not the R110 for the courier. The guy said he’d get the part back and send it again. I decided not to hold my breath.

I thought I’d chase it up again today, not expecting any progress. The guy was again most apologetic, saying that several branches of his nationwide parts business had been seized by gangsters who were trying to extort money from him to get the branches back. You’re thinking, nah! Didn’t happen.

But you know, it could actually be true. I know a guy who went out with a friend to buy a car trailer advertised in the press. They drove to the address they were given, only to be seized by seven armed gangsters who shoved them in the boot of their own car, drove them to a warehouse and roughed them up a bit, then used their cards to steal money from their bank accounts. They released them after about seven hours, dumping them by the roadside. They walked to the first house they came across where the clearly very poor occupants gave them food and a place to sit until someone came to fetch them.

That absolutely true story has an interesting ending – two interesting endings, in fact. My friend went to the police station to report the abduction and theft of money, cards, bank funds and car. He told the cops that he wanted to thank the people who’d helped him. “How will you do that?” the cop asked. “Give them some money?” My friend answered yes, exactly that. “It would be much better if you could give their son a job,” the cop replied. And now their 22-year-old son has a job as a well-paid intern in my friend’s IT firm. Great result.

Another twist was that a week after the incident, the gang tried the same stunt again – but this time their ad was answered by another gang, who showed up armed to the teeth and shot all seven of them dead!

So, in this beautiful but strange country, it’s entirely possible that my Suzuki magneto rotor supplier was telling the gospel truth. Regardless, I’m on the lookout for another rotor!

Farewell, old friend! Goodbye Ducati Sport Classic.

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This morning I said a final goodbye to an old friend: I sold my Ducati Sport Classic 1000. Its departure marked a confluence of its appreciating value and my depreciating physical flexibility: I simply had to acknowledge that, no matter how much I enjoyed riding it, the very sporty riding position required more contortion than my 69-year-old frame found comfortable.

I first acquired an interest in Ducatis when Cycle magazine, which was my motorcycling bible in the 1970s, gave a glowing review of the GT750. The same engine, or a breathed-upon close facsimile of it, won the Imola 200 in the hands of Paul Smart in 1972. In 1977, a similar Ducati, ridden by Cycle editor Cook Neilson and built by Neilson and fellow Cycle journalist and tuner Phil Schilling, won the Daytona 200. That Daytona-winning Duke was more than a little bit special, featuring custom parts in titanium and magnesium, and a close-ratio gearbox built by the racing car transmission specialist Webster Gears at a cost of $1,400 – about the price of a new Honda CB750 in those days.

Both Smart and Neilson’s achievements were remarkable because they beat strong fields of the best and most powerful bikes of the era. Neilson said in an interview 40 years later: “There were bikes in the field that went fast, and bikes that handled and stopped. Only one that day did all three.” That combination came across clearly in Cycle’s review of the GT750: here was a bike that wasn’t as powerful as the Japanese competition, but it was lighter, had better brakes and handled like it was on rails.

I bought one, a 1974 model, second hand in 1976 and loved it. The handling was every bit as good as the tests claimed, and the smoothness from the 90-degree V-twin was uncanny. I owned that bike for 12 months and rode it for six; the other six were spent in and out of the repair shop. The quality control wasn’t great: oil would come out of a breather tube and foul the air cleaner; the feeble contacts in the rear light would vibrate and blow the bulb (nine times on one night-time trip through Wales). I recall working on that bike in the roadway outside my flat that winter with snow swirling around me. The service agent wasn’t great, either: I picked it up from the Italian Motorcycle Centre in Clapham late one afternoon, parked outside the local chippie in Lee Green to buy supper, and when I kickstarted the beast the rear carb just blew straight off! I’d had enough; sadly, it had to go.

When Ducati brought out the GT1000, Sport Classic 1000 and Paul Smart replica in 2006 as a modern-day homage to the 750s of the 1970s, I had to have one. Standing around in the dealership waiting for my 750 to get fixed 30 years earlier, I would gaze with great admiration at the yellow 750S on the showroom floor, so I naturally gravitated towards the Sport Classic. A test ride at Daytona Motorcycles in West Ruislip put a wide grin on my face and I was sold: this was what the original 750 should have been!

Back at the dealership, I had to choose between the yellow, black and red. The black spoke to me. The brand new bike on the showroom floor had been fitted with a Termignoni racing two-into-one exhaust that was lighter than the original, looked superb and sounded awesome. The salesman asked whether I wanted it with or without the Termi system, which he said cost £1,200. That was a helluva price for an exhaust system 15 years ago (and still is today, in my opinion), but the salesman spoke to the manager and they offered it to me for £300. I guess they didn’t want the hassle of talking it off and re-installing the original. Anyway, I know a bargain when I see one, and the black Ducati with racing exhaust was mine.

That was early February 2008. I rode the bike whenever the fancy took me and the weather was right. I soon tired, literally, of the original low clip-ons and replaced them with higher Ducati bars, still clip-ons but giving a slightly less stooped riding stance. I had two other bikes at that time, a Valkyrie and the Suzuki TL1000S, and a car, and work took me overseas, and then I got engaged. So the single-seat Ducati got used less frequently than it perhaps deserved. It was a joy to ride, though: fast, responsive, tracking true through the twisties, looking fabulous and sounding like a motorbike should! It was an elemental bike, stripped to the basics: a 1,000cc V-twin engine, two wheels, a tank and a saddle. I thought of it as the sort of bike Ogri would ride of he ever lost his Vincent.

A year after buying the Duke, I got married and we moved to Dubai where my wife was based. In 2010, I took a job in Abu Dhabi at Yas Marina Circuit and shipped my three bikes out to join me there, the Valkyrie having since been replaced by a Rocket III. The idea was that I’d get to ride them more often if we were all at least in the same place, but the reality was different. For some of the year, it was too hot to spend much time riding, with summer temperatures often in the mid-40s and occasionally touching 50 degrees C; and the vast majority if the roads were wide, straight highways with nary a wiggle in them to get the juices flowing. So in 2011 I shipped the Duke and the Suzuki to South Africa, where we planned to retire, eventually.

In South Africa, the Sport Classic was rare enough to attract lots of admiring looks and fun enough to get me out riding whenever I was down there. Regular readers (I have regular readers?) may recall my complaints about the 1.2km of dirt road that connected our home to the nearest tarred road. The road was so rough that it caused the indicator supports to break, and cost me a taillight, so sadly the bike didn’t get out much there either. Eventually, two years ago, we shipped the Ducati (and the Rune I’d bought in Cape Town) back to the UK, and I put about 500 more miles on the clock. I became increasingly conscious that the riding position was causing me neck ache, which hadn’t been a problem in the early days. I was now more of a sit-up-straight biker. So logic dictated that it was time to sell the Sport Classic, which happily had appreciated considerably in value over the years. I think it’s gone to a good home, to a collector who already owns an impressive array of modern classics. As we loaded it on to the van a few hours ago, I noted that it had 3,490 miles on the clock from new. I think the new owner has got himself a bargain. Farewell, old friend!

Where have all the Dubai bikes gone?

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The motorcyclist in me is never far from the surface, even when I’m on a (rare) non-biking holiday. We’ve been spending a few weeks in Dubai, a former stomping ground, and I’ve been surprised by the explosion of bikes on Dubai’s roads since we left – and by the dearth of bikes on Dubai’s roads!

The explosion has been caused by the massive increase in food and grocery delivery services, all courtesy of hundreds if not thousands of 125cc Hondas and their Chinese derivatives. Deliveroo is much in evidence, along with countless local versions such as Talabat, bringing a vast range of takeaways to your door. Forgotten a litre of milk? Need more bread and cereal? Order them online and a biker will deliver them in no time. It’s instant gratification on wheels – literally. The riders generally wear long-sleeved T-shirts, jeans, boots and gloves, often with strap-on metallic guards for forearms, elbows and shins. That amount of protection is an improvement on what delivery riders used to wear in 2017, which is good.

The dearth of non-delivery bikes is harder to explain. In summer, only the foolhardy venture out: we were there a couple of weeks ago and one day it was 47 degrees C. I had to ride from Dubai to Abu Dhabi once in 47-degree heat and it was very challenging, as in boil-the-blood-in-your-brain challenging. But we were also there last winter when the midday temperature is around 30 degrees C and it’s actually really nice biking weather. In three weeks last November, however, I saw six bikes beyond the 125cc army – two sports bikes of indeterminate origin, two feet-forward Harleys, the neighbour’s Sportster, and a parked Suzuki. Maybe they all gather at weekends and ride to some biker café, but otherwise the lack of bikes is puzzling.

Luxury cars, however, are in greater abundance than ever. The supermarket near my daughter’s villa, where we were staying, boasted two highly exclusive SUVs in its car park the other day: a Rolls-Royce and a Bentley. There were three Bentleys within less than half a mile on the Sheikh Zayed Road (SZR) last week, and another R-R SUV being loaded on to a low-loader from where it had broken down in the fast lane… oops!

The SZR is a massive highway that flows through the middle of Dubai, with up to seven lanes in each direction. In older, wilder times I’ve seen cars weaving in and out of the traffic at 100 mph there. Luxury shops are arranged along much if its length, selling every imaginable out-there item. Car dealerships with impressive frontages line certain sections, where you’ll see Bentley alongside Ferrari, Maserati, Lamborghini, Jaguar and all the mainstream, upmarket brands. In among them are often-sprawling showrooms for every imaginable supercar, new and used, from Bugatti to Koenigsegg. It’s literally an awesome spectacle and, if anything, that whole scene is bigger than ever.

It does give one pause for thought, especially if you’re a visitor. If you live in Dubai you get used to the abundant wealth: it just is. As a visitor, though, it’s so in your face that you can’t fail to do the odd double-take. It’s not just cars, either, but everything: the new villas being advertised at £5 million plus, the shops, the kids’ clothes, the malls, the boats – everything. Going there at a time when the pound was at a near-record low didn’t helped. It used to be six Dirhams to the pound back in my day; last November it was four, thanks to Liz Truss; this past week it was 4.3, so everything still costs the earth!

I lived in Dubai for two years and in neighbouring Abu Dhabi for six, so these past two visits have also been a bit of a nostalgia trip, too, for my wife and myself. We visited the spectacular Louvre in Abu Dhabi for the first time, having watched it rising slowly out of the sand for several years, and finished the day with dinner at Yas Links, a favourite destination across the road from Yas Marina Circuit where I worked for 18 months.

With the setting sun over the blue waters of the mangroves, the palm trees waving gently, the roof of the futuristic Yas W hotel slowly changing hue from cream to red to green, the good times came flooding back. I could even imagine riding home on our Triumph Rocket III, which took that route with me many times. I can recommend the whole Yas and Saadiyaat Island experience to anyone (there are many more attractions open these days, including a new Sea World, plus in December the impressive-looking Zayed National Museum). It may not be cheap but it’s a great experience, especially in winter.

The unattractive truth about loose magnets

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The news from the motorcycle repair shop wasn’t good. The battery charging issue with the V-Strom, they said, was down to the flywheel, not the regulator, but they couldn’t get their hands on a second-hand example anywhere. A new flywheel would set me back R7,810, plus VAT, plus labour. Oh, and flywheels were back-ordered and delivery would take six to eight weeks.

That wasn’t all: the problem was with the flywheel’s magnets, which had come loose. The mechanic had found shards of broken magnet in the oil, so the recommendation was to strip down the engine completely to ensure that there were no other shards waiting to destroy the engine from within. The total cost of the repair would be around R22,000, which is a shade over £900, which to me is a lot.

The deal-breaker was the six-to-eight-week wait for the part; I had to head back to the UK in three weeks and wouldn’t be back till much later in the year. So I had the bike trailered from the workshop to our home for a very reasonable R450 (about £20) and there it now sits while I consider my options.

I paid about £3,500 for the bike in December 2010, and as a going concern it could be worth around £2,500 in South Africa today. The nearest bike-stripper will give me about £600 for the Suzuki, which ain’t enough, frankly. So the decision now is based on whether I can find a second-hand flywheel in the UK, bring it back in my luggage on our next visit to South Africa and fit it ourselves (my wife and me); check out the price of a new part in the UK and see if it makes sense to buy it there; or go ahead with the South African repair and costings.

It’s primarily a financial decision now, as the propensity of V-Strom 1000s to shed their magnets seems all too high, according to the owners’ forums, and so I have no massive desire to keep the bike. Once again, it seems as if our horribly bumpy dirt road has claimed another victim; it could so easily have played a part in shaking the magnets loose. I’ll do some parts-shopping and reach a decision this summer.

It’s a shame in another sense, too. I’d been thinking about replacing the UK-based Honda Valkyrie with a smaller, lighter bike. I’ve been experiencing an irritating but not debilitating pain in my right arm when riding the Valkyrie over the past year, which I have attributed to the riding position. A few years ago I burst one of my bicep tendons and decided against having it repaired, as the majority of people who went for the repair seemed to be body-builders or serious weight-lifters. For everyday life, you can get by with just one tendon, and I have – until now. I think that the angle of the Valkyrie’s bars, their height, and the need to hold the throttle open manually for long periods have conspired to cause me pain in my wrist, forearm, bicep and shoulder. It sets in within an hour, whereas I can ride my wife’s Tiger 800XC, the V-Strom, the Ducati Sport Classic and the Suzuki TL1000 without any pain.

Okay, that’s not entirely true: the Ducati and the TL are beginning to be a pain in the neck, literally, from the need to keep my head up from their naturally head-down riding position, but that’s another story! But the new Triumph 900 GT Pro seems to have a lot to offer as a tourer, along with the same flat bar as the Tiger 800, and the V-Strom likewise. The reputation of V-Stroms for alternator and regulator issues, however, has eliminated in from the list. I plan to try the Triumph anyway, and probably the Yamaha Tracer 900 and the BMW 1250 RS. They each offer a useful weight saving over the Valkyrie – more than 100kg in the case of the Triumph – which might be welcome as the years advance.

In the meantime, I’m not quite ready to walk away from the wonderful Valkyrie. It’s my third, and I’ve owned one for a total of 18 years. I’ve tried to tackle the problem from the other end – me! Can the arm problem be fixed to the point where the pain goes away and the Honda becomes a pleasure to ride again. I’ve started with six sessions of acupuncture to my arm and neck. The chiropractor reckons he’s found a few issues that he can deal with, and that’s already having a positive effect. A bit of gentle work with weights, gradually increasing the load, might help complete the task. I shall be reunited with the Valkyrie in mid-June and can’t wait to see if the problem’s been sorted. Otherwise, it’s bike-shopping time!

The joys of warm-weather riding when it’s cold at home

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I’ve always loved out-of-season motorcycling. The earliest example I can remember was attending the Honda CX500 launch in the south of France in December ‘78. I seem to recall it was snowing back in the UK when we left, but warm and sunny in France. The same thing happened two months later with the launch of the Honda CBX at the Vallelunga race circuit near Rome. Happy days!

So it was with great anticipation that I opened the garage door of our South African house in mid-March, after nine months away, to find our four bikes nestling under dust covers and all charged up and ready to ride. It was dry, sunny and 24 degrees C outside and I was raring to go after a long, cold north-west British winter with no riding.

The Suzuki TL1000S fired up instantly, as did my V-Strom. Even the Yamaha TW200 farm bike fired up with a bit of encouragement from the kick-starter. But my wife’s Tiger 800XC responded with that clicking noise that lets you know your battery is lifeless. Like the others, it had been connected to a trickle charger, an Optimate that has served me well for years, but the 15-month-old battery was flat.

That meant that the V-Strom was the first to hit the dirt road, en route to the town of Knysna and the battery shop. It was bliss to be riding again, warm sun beating down, the sky crystal clear, traffic light. What a lovely change from the British northwest! I needed petrol, and the current price in South Africa is £1 a litre, which was another pleasant change! It was too nice a morning just to buy a battery, so I spent a couple of hours swinging through the two-lane N2 towards the town of George before heading home to rescue the Triumph.

The new battery cost about £45 and that soon had the triple barking beautifully. With the weather set fair, the Tiger and then the TL provided a few more days of sun-filled riding pleasure. Tyre pressures had dropped typically from 36 to around 30 psi in the nine months, but apart from adding air and fuel all three bikes were just as I’d left them. In truth, the only negative is that in our part of the Cape there are basically only two ways to go on tarred roads – east or west. And that’s a bit limiting, hence the popularity of adventure bikes in these parts. There are lots and lots of dirt roads, if that’s your thing, but it’s never really been mine: too dusty, too uncomfortable and, if I’m honest, just that faint fear of the front or rear end washing out on gravelly bends.

I’ve been toying with the idea of replacing my faithful 2002 Valkyrie in the UK as our main European touring bike. The Valkyrie is a firm favourite of mine: I’m on my third, and it’s a wonderful tourer. But last year’s trip to Norway highlighted the fact that the Valkyrie, and the Valkyrie alone, causes me pain in my right wrist, forearm, bicep and shoulder. I think it’s something to do with a proximal biceps tendon rupture a few years ago, and the angle of my arm and wrist while cruising and holding the throttle steady could well be the cause of my problems now. It’s fine for the first hour or so, then the arm starts to ache.

One option for a replacement is the new Triumph Tiger 900 GT Pro, which usefully weighs 100 kg less than the Honda, has a new version of the 800cc triple, and offers all sorts of mod cons like heated grips that were unheard of as standard in 2002. It shares the same riding position as the 800, so I figured a two-up, five-hour trip to visit friends near Cape Town would be a good test. The weather, however, had other ideas. Rain was forecast for the days we’d be travelling, so we resorted to taking our pick-up truck; we don’t have wet-weather gear down here, and I don’t enjoy getting wet.

It’s a good thing we didn’t take the V-Strom, which is another potential successor to the six-cylinder Honda. In January last year, we set out on the DL1000 for the west coast, north of Cape Town, only for the bike to die just over an hour into the ride. We made it safely home to swap the bike for the pick-up, and the problem was later traced to a faulty regulator that I got replaced. The V-Strom continued to provide reliable service for that and a subsequent visit to South Africa, but this week it let me down again, failing to re-start when I stopped for a while in Knysna. My local battery guy said the bike wasn’t delivering enough charge to the battery, so I nursed it a few miles to the same dealer who’d fixed it just over a year ago. He happened to have a brand-new regulator in stock but ran some checks with it and found that the new part wouldn’t solve the issue. He diagnosed a problem with the alternator (V-Stroms are renowned, it seems, for only two problems: the regulator and the alternator!) and he is currently trying to source a second-hand unit to save me a big bill.

Sunny weather has returned to our area for a couple of weeks, offering more warm riding opportunities that have been gladly taken, but we’ve just been hit by the first of three days of heavy rain, giving me time to ponder our next move in the world of European touring bikes for the summer to come.

Stiffer shocks sort low-speed weave

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It’s official(ish) – I’m not losing the ability to ride a heavy touring bike, two-up, with luggage, at low speed. Phew!

Readers may recall my mentioning that I found the Honda Valkyrie harder to manage at very low speed in traffic during our Scandinavian odyssey this past summer. It felt like a pendulum, the back end wanting to sway and me wrestling with the handlebars more than I ever had to do before. It was only when we arrived home, three weeks later, that it occurred to me that my failure to raise the pre-load on the rear suspension might have been to blame.

The only way to check was to load the bike back up to holiday levels and try again. Before that could happen, Ihad to get my Givi brackets welded. My wife Peter had spotted that the welds on the top of both brackets had started to split, which in itself might be an indication that I’d been overloading them for years. Found a local welder in Middlewich who repaired them for £20, which I though was reasonable. Refitting the brackets went against the grain, because the bike looks a while lot better without them, but needs must.

I filled the two panniers with clothing and camping materials to take them to the 9 kg apiece they’d been in the summer, refitted the Kuryakyn roll bag and long waterproof roll-bag, filled them with the same kit we’d carried in August, and added the windscreen and magnetic tank-bag (a handy if heavy item, but at least the weight is carried where it can’t cause any real issues). I jacked-up the rear suspension to level 4, where it should have been, instead of 3 where it had been, and set off.

Happily, the tendency to slalom at low speed and the need for constant tiller-like adjustments at the handlebars had all but disappeared. I stopped, raised the setting to 5 and tried again – even better. So I wasn’t surrendering my riding skill to old age – just the mental alertness to realise more quickly that the shock settings might have something to do with the problem. In any event, I’ll be ditching the Kurykyn roll-bag for a second plastic roll-bag, saving 3.5 kg of high-up, behind-the-axle weight in the process.

I’d been prepared to change bikes for something lighter if the suspension changes hadn’t made any difference. My head had been turned by a BMW R1250RS, which weighs only 236kg compared with the Valkyrie’s 309kg, and the new Triumph Tiger 900 GT Pro, at just 198kg and 21st-century features like built-in satnav and a phone charger. There might still be a reason to switch, however, because the Valkyrie still generates a pain in my right arm in four places (wrist, forearm, bicep and shoulder). I reckon that’s down to a ruptured bicep tendon some years ago. Not much I can do about that now (if it was going to get reattached, it needed to get done within weeks, and the evidence suggested it wouldn’t be worth the aggro). I find that I can ride my very sporty Ducati for a couple of hours without triggering the arm pain, but it can appear within 30 minutes on the Valkyrie, even one-up without luggage. So the latest plan is to build my arm muscles with weights and see if that helps. If it doesn’t, then a new bike might still be in order. I’ve got the winter months to find out…

The Norway trip: stuff that worked, and stuff that didn’t

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Every motorcycle tour teaches me something, which I then try to incorporate next time to make the whole experience even better. You’d think that after 46 years, with some time off for other pursuits and more conventional family holidays, I’d have it all sorted now, but either I’m a slow learner or you never stop learning.

One innovation we tried this year was to bring very few clothes. Normally I’d bring a spare pair of jeans and maybe a week’s worth of T-shirts, underwear and socks. My wife Peter is usually a bit more sensible but generally we’d both carry more stuff than we needed. This time, to save weight and space, we cut that right back: we carried only two to three changes of underwear, T-shirts and socks. Mrs Peter had seen an ad for men’s underwear designed for camping and said to be fast-drying, so I bought three pairs. At a sale in one of the camping shops I bought a pair of very light, thin, Factor 50-rated long trousers for wearing off the bike, which meant I could ditch the spare jeans. Speaking of jeans, it took me years to work out that the pain in my backside that seemed to set in within hours, regardless of what bike I was on, was largely down to the seams of the rear pockets. When the world seemed to switch to stretch jeans, and conventional non-stretch ones were hard to find and very expensive, I followed the herd and bought M&S stretch jeans and found that not only are they supremely comfortable on a bike, the pocket seams are far softer and the sore bum problem has disappeared.

I forgot to include this colourful, hand-painted 2CV at our Dunkirk campsite in a previous blog

Travelling with far fewer clothes worked just fine, the new underwear less so. It took exactly the same time to dry as conventional items, so that was a tenner wasted. Obviously we had to wash our clothes every night or second night, but it made perfect sense. Our microfibre towels dried almost instantly and are indispensable. The attempt to take less stuff almost had us leave our traditional Kuryakyn roll bag behind, but at the last minute I decided we needed the extra space for stuff like trainers, flip-flops and sleeping bags; we’d have been better off without it, as the extra weight high up and far back proved to be a pain. We’ve had the Givi panniers for several years; they work, but aren’t waterproof, aren’t pretty and are too wide for easy filtering, so we’re exploring affordable alternatives, which may not exist. Even a scuffed pair of OEM Valkyrie hard panniers seems to command £1,000 on eBay, which just seems too much.

The Oxford magnetic tank bag is invaluable and is a definite keeper. It weighs a lot, due to the magnets, but the weight is not in a place where it causes problems, and we’ve long since perfected a double-act for removing and holding it during refuelling. The waterproof cover is a bit naff, billowing away in the wind but never actually disappearing.

One area for future improvement is our riding gear. I’ve long been a fan of Motolegends, the Guildford-based bike clothing specialists. They send out regular missives about great gear, and a few weeks before we left they wrote at length about the unsuitability of winter waterproof suits for summer touring. What they said made perfect sense, but I didn’t fancy spending a fortune on new stuff – have you seen the prices of riding gear these days? Wow!

My Rukka jacket and trousers are 19 years old and, barring one 100-mile rain-soaked trip in 2020, have always kept me dry and warm. As an older laminated suit, it’s also quite heavy and devoid of air vents, so it’s far from ideal on a 30°C day in summer. For that, I have a Hein Gericke summer jacket with plenty of air vents, but it’s not waterproof and it’s not warm. We’d been advised to expect temperatures between 5° and 30° in Norway, with possible rain, so I wore the Rukka. Next time, I’ll follow the advice from Motolegends: wear a summer riding jacket and maybe Rokkertech jeans (at £300-odd a pair!) and pack a waterproof Scott jacket and Scott trousers for rainy days. My wife swears by her Scott jacket over her leather one and says it keeps her warm, too. It should mean I stay much more comfortable on warm-to-hot days and won’t have to find room to stow the bulky Rukka pants.

My short Daytona boots were great, staying warm, dry and comfortable throughout, but not too warm on hot days. My Triumph winter gloves were perfect for the wet, cold days, but the well-worn IXS summer gloves I’ve used for about eight years have started bunching on the right palm and causing callouses on my throttle hand, so they’ll have to be replaced. Our Shoei Neotec 2 helmets are basically fine, especially with the convenience of the neat intercom system, even though my head is between two sizes: one removable liner is too tight around the forehead, the other lacks padding on the top of the head. The ‘accessory’ sponge Motolegends supplied solves the top-of-head issue most of the time. In any event, with £560 invested in the Shoei, it’ll have to last a few years yet.

The Garmin satnav was the subject of a separate blog. It still works, and God knows we’d have got totally lost without it many times, but I think it’s time for a change to something more modern and less clunky. So there are a few things we need to do before the 2023 touring season in that endless quest for perfection.