My Bikeground

I started riding motorbikes as a teenager, when my dad bought a brace of dirtbikes - a Suzuki RM125 followed by an RM250.  These were amazing bikes for bouncing around on sand dunes.  The suspension travel was huge, and their ability to soak up heavy landings was nothing short of miraculous.  Also, being strokers, they revved like crazy, which somehow resonates with teenage boys.... me and my brother (and later, my sister) spent many a happy vacation day riding around the dunes of Abqaiq.

The 3 pictures that follow are not the actual bikes - just as close to identical as I could find.  I need to dig through mine and my parents photo stash and scan some pics, which I will do when I can.

Suzuki RM125  (1977)

(This is not the actual RM 125 - just one that's just like it.)

Suzuki RM250 (1977)

(Also not the actual RM 250 - but a very clean specimen nonetheless!)

A couple of years later I bought a Honda CD200 Benly off a mate to use whilst I was at College.  I loved that bike.  It wasn't especially powerful or fast, but it was solid and reliable, and was so very cheap to run - always important to a student.  And as my digs were in a quiet suburban street, the fact that it was a reasonably civilised 4-stroke was appreciated by my landlord's neighbours...

Honda CD200 Benly (1980)

(Lovely clean Honda CD200, same colour as mine was)

The Benly & I got into quite a lot of trouble together.....  When I bought it, I had no no worries about the fact I had not passed ANY form of Motorcycle test.... I had a car license, so figured that gave me the right to ride a bike as well!  Unfortunately for me, after a couple of months, Somerset & Avon Constabulary discovered where I lived, and started laying in wait for me in the mornings.  After I had clocked up over £1000 in Magistrates fines... I decided I should do something about it.  I sold the Benly when I moved to London to work as a roadie!

I really didn't need a bike in London, as public transport was cheap and plentiful, and the bike would have been nicked - FACT.  London was a memorable phase of my life for other reasons.  The job didn't take me very far, as I met my future wife and we both decided that the future (for us) was elsewhere, and got the heck out as quickly as possible!

After a short while, we moved to Somerset, got married, had children, and eventually got stable, lasting employment that payed a bit more than peanuts!

And before you know it, 30 years have passed.  All the children have left home, most are married, and our first grandchild is born.  Suddenly, we have time and some resources to ourselves.

My hankerings to get a bike again started around the summer of 2016.  A hiking trip to Bulgaria with my friend Jez led to us meeting with Richard, who had just spent 5 days riding his Triumph Tiger from his home in Wiltshire to Bansko in Bulgaria, a trip of over 1700 miles.  We enjoyed a boozy dinner at a fantastic local Mehana that evening with Richard and his family (who had travelled over in a T5 camper) and talked bikes, travelling - and other stuff - into the night.

Jez had regularly ridden bikes up until the early 2000's, but hadn't had one for quite a while.  The more we chatted about bikes, the more we got fired up about the idea of future trips; Romania, for instance.  Why not?

Then Angela & I got busy buying a new home, and fast forward to August 2017, when at a barbecue in our back garden, that conversation got seriously re-ignited.  Scott, who owned a Harley Davidson at the time, myself and Jez plotted long into the night.  Standing around the bonfire, drinking beer, smoking cigars, and plotting tours of Europe.

Within 10 days, Scott had test ridden an R 1200 GS, fallen in love, and bought one!  Within another 2 months, Jez had bought an R 1200 GS Adventure.

That just leaves me to get my act together....