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 21^st-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…