Yesterday I rode down to SBW Motorrad in Welwyn for a booked test ride on the F800 that I have been mentioning, my thinking being to move to a lighter more manageable bike but one that still has some style and presence. When I got there it turned out they had sold the test bike and didn’t have another. Not a good start, so as I had spent the best part of an hour getting down there I asked whether they had a 1200gs (the current version of Bertha) for me to try, more out of curiosity. They did and I was shown a TE version with spoked wheels which I rode. Again, more out of curiosity I asked the price and this demo version seemed surprisingly reasonable, not that much more than the smaller machine. So what was it like? Once astride it feels suprisingly similar to my current bike and apart from being noisier (I forgot to put in my ear plugs) and the gears clunkier (mine are well worn in) it was a very familiar experience. But this bike seemed much lighter and easier to get around corners. All reviews say it is much more responsive than the old model but it was hard to compare. Very quickly I realised that this bike was clearly the more manageable bike I was after, with the wind protection and motorway capability that I feared losing on the smaller F800. I loved it. Here it is in a lay by near Welwyn:

Pleasant surprise number two was the offer I got for Bertha’s trade-in. If all goes to plan next Wednesday I will drive down on Bertha (all that cleaning and repainting was worth it) and drive off with a 2014 1200GS TE with just over 1000 miles on the clock, very many extra switches and dials, plus alarm, and I shelled out for the overpriced but clever BMW GPS. I was so excited that I barely slept last night. The Touratech catalogue is on my desk.