BMW s1000R

Miles and miles and miles. That’s what I’ve done on the red rocket this month. Spying the chance for a bit of a road trip round the UK, I dug out a massive Givi X Stream tail pack and loaded the thing up with a couple of days’ worth of crap and hit the road. Before I could ride, I felt I had to change the tyres. A full day and a half of scrabbling round for a tyre shop on the Kent coast had me scratching my head. I didn’t want to announce that I was a spoiled journo on the phone, I’m new in town and thought I’d play by the rules. I’ve never struggled as much as I did to carry out the simple transaction of riding into a shop with a pair of tyres around my waist, giving a man some cash and having a set of tyres put on. One place in Folkestone said it would cost me more than usual as the bike had a double sided swing arm, then told me to come back tomorrow afternoon as the guys were busy (busy eating sandwiches and scratching their arses from where I was stood). Another said that tyre disposal wasn’t cheap and a fair chunk of the 65 sheets I’d have to pony up would go on disposal. 
I checked it out and am happy to clarify that the three pounds it costs to dispose of tyres is defi nitely not a large portion of £65. If you struggle for tyres on the Kent coast, go and see the chaps at Tagg Racing in Ashford.

They found the time to fi t me in and did a lovely old job. Professional and prompt, it looks like I’ll be pestering them some more in the future. They even have a dyno room, which is handy. With my fresh Metzeler M7 RRs levered into place I hit the road and covered 650 miles within 24 hours. Up to Leamington Spa, down to Somerset to ride the Ariel Ace and then along the coast back to the new house on the Kent coast. I made a deal with myself that the last leg of the journey wasn’t
allowed to include motorway miles and had a brilliant afternoon on the BMW.

If you’re planning a touring trip abroad and you haven’t discovered the roads we have right here at home, save some money and take a tour of the UK before you go looking further afi eld. I got home with a stack of miles on the BMW, unloaded the very handy and easy to attach Givi tailpack and found my laptop and all my clobber was bone dry. A day or so later, I crammed a set of leathers back into the same tailpack and set off for Silverstone for a quick run out on track. I completely cocked up the tyre pressures and went for 30/30. Once the tyres were warm and I started trying to push, I got the feeling the rear was overinflated still and fannied out of going too fast. This is the first time I’ve had the S1000R on track and I was looking forward to finding out how it’d get on. For all my clever talk about switching between riding modes on the road, I completely forgot on track and instead focused on trying to go as fast as I could while screaming in my helmet like a lunatic. The bike is superbike-fast on track, I sucked myself into trying to run quicker here and there and only realised that I hadn’t put the suspension in hard mode with a couple of laps left, I pushed the button and noticed an immediate improvement, but by then I’d rocked my own confidence by not having much feel for what the tyres were doing.

A professional racer would have said afterwards that the session was abandoned, I’m just going to put my hands up and say I got carried away and forgot to do any actual research while I was on track. Still,  it gives me the perfect excuse to go and do some more research somewhere else.

I called my man at Metzeler and was told I should try 26psi in the rear next time I’m on track. I’ll do that before I pass judgement on the tyres. I’m over a thousand miles into life on them, expect an extended evaluation in the magazine next month. Elsewhere, a sticky kill switch has had me scratching my head a few times, it could be linked to the bike cutting out every now and then. I’m sure the next service will highlight if I’m right or wrong. Obviously I also took full advantage of having a huge garden as well (new house by the sea after 12 years in London) and spent an hour
giving my daughters 3mph joyrides on the mag’s longterm Honda CRF 250L.

No helmets, no gloves, nothing, it was complete lunacy, I can tell you.