During the week I picked up, or rather was hand delivered, a tall R1200GS Adventure windscreen from Ebay. Unused and at nearly half the price I would have paid had I stuck with plan A and asked BMW to fit one at the next service. I was partly thinking of that long and possibly cold and rainy journey across northern Europe that I plan to take in September but also wanting to ‘adventurise’ bit by bit my ordinary 1200GS. My old 2007 white air/oil cooled Adventure had an idiosyncratic style that makes todays new GSs look a little mass-produced. The new model Adventure looks great – in my view – but is a Behemoth, huge, taller that the standard GS and heavier to boot. I had no intention of buying one when I traded in Belinda. Getting my wheels powder coated black would be a nice touch and a move in that direction but expensive I imagine.

Here’s a useful comparison:

Today after fitting the screen (thanks to one of the many instructional videos on YouTube I did it the easy way – very easy – and not the hard way which The Missenden Flyer shows) I dithered about which set of urban roads I should head down but chose to look at Gravesend. I wonder how it got that rather gloomy name. It is one of those Victorian towns on the Thames estuary that, I think, has a naval history. At least in my imagination it does.

Interestingly GPS took me north over Southwark bridge then close to the Tower of London and down through the Blackwall Tunnel getting on to the south side of the river again. Of course I took the wrong turn on the entrance and had to make a huge detour up the A13 (or was it the A12?). The A2 slithering East South East from London is unremarkable but at least moves quickly and doesn’t feel like driving through a city.

Gravesend is rather a dump. It has a small pier and a historic ‘quarter’ that reminded me strangely of how Bury St. Edmunds used to look about 20 years ago. By the river you look over to the docks at Tilbury on the north side of the Thames where the Empire Windrush brought future NHS workers from the West Indies in 1948 and where H’s parents left for Australia in 1961. I didn’t stay long.

So how was the taller screen? It is a bit like comparing two different marmalades. It was similar but I want to swap them back and try again. Then do it again. Once at 70 I had the feeling that I was having a more peaceful ride. So I have no regrets about this small not very rigorous experiment.

The merino base layers are good. The temperature hovered around 10 degrees so was not freezing but the air was very damp and rain started to hit the roof about ten minutes after I got home. Walking around Gravesend I was cold but once with everything zipped up and on the bike I was completely comfortable – just that slight chill at the top of my legs which must get the wind from underneath the windscreen. So another good purchase and cheaper than identical items made by other companies.

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The gap in the picture below is the Blackwall Tunnel. The short red vertical line is my wrong turning.

Since my last visit to this hidden gem I have been wanting to return to replace the leather trousers that I bought on ebay while I was learning to ride back in 2007. They cost well under £100 then and were one of the more successful on-line cut-price purchases that I made in the first excitement of riding a motorcycle (the others were pretty bad and needed to be replaced quickly). Finding, a few years later, that they had pockets for hip and knee armour made me all the more pleased with them. I remember taking the tube down to Heine Gericke in Stockwell after work and buying some black rubber armour that looked a bit like place mats. However, at my first trip to Hideout Leather a few months back it was pointed out that they were far too big for me. I knew that but was in denial. Despite being held up by braces with pictures of cows on them, the knee armour ended up about halfway down my calves (no farmyard pun intended). So back I went to replace them with something more fitting. This is what I ended up with, the shop’s own make.

And at £395 with some substantial armour they are pretty impressive. My usual size just did NOT fit and I felt like a woman in the changing room trying to get into a size 12 dress when they are a couple of sizes bigger. OK, I could just fit into the ones I ended up riding away in. But the sweat I worked up trying out the smaller ones made the whole process so much harder. It was then that I discovered the wonders of baselayers, in this case made by the firm EDZ. I’d read about baselayers and vowed I would never wear such weird looking stuff, however, once on, at the suggestion of the woman in the shop, the leathers slipped on a treat (so to speak). I am converted. In fact I also bought an EDZ top while I was there and wore that on the way home. The idea of course is that it ‘wicks’ away sweat when you are hot (whatever that means) but keeps you warm when it is cold weather. For something with a 100% Polyester label (rather than merino wool), I am not sure how that is achieved – and how long it lasts – but it seems to work well for me. Here’s a review from web bike world. As it says, this stuff ‘makes it easier to slip in to or out of leathers, especially after a sweaty ride’. The review also suggests that most bikers have no idea what this is – which describes me. I told the assistant that I was afraid of tearing the seams of these trousers, they felt so tight, and she assured me, with a rye smile, that they were designed to withstand 100mph meetings with tarmac. OK, I get the message.

Trips in summer are definitely better taken in a well-ventilated BMW Rallye Pro suit (read an impressive in-depth comparison of this and some other textile suits from Road Trooper here) but for other short trips around, and in late autumn/winter/early spring which is basically nearly all we get in the UK, this kit from Hideout Leather seems incredibly confidence inspiring in terms of protection – and doesn’t look too bad.

Here’s the track of the journey down there. This time I didn’t get lost.

Note a few days later: These trousers really are tight fitting – I was told they would stretch a bit but after my second short ride in them I feel like me knees are being dislocated. 

A 60 mile ride out toward Linton then a left through Balsham and Newmarket. My plan was to take the road from there up to Ely and back down the A10. At Soham, I turned left and started thinking about the Soham murders back in 2002 and that I hadn’t realised Soham was so close to Cambridge. As a result of my wonderings, I got Soham confused with Streatham and rode in a big circle. Asking the GPS to take me home did not help. I disobeyed and turned back through Swaffham Prior as the sun started to come out and the temperature rose a couple of degrees.

The helmet seems to have shrunk since I bought it two weeks ago and felt a little tight. GPS messages seem a little quieter perhaps because the speakers slip into pockets rather than just velcro to the inside. Overall the helmet is quieter I think than the Arai and seems more wind-sealed with the visor down. Having a new visor is like looking through clear glass again. The sun visor is handy, not too difficult to find the control toward the back left hand side on the top of the helmet. It doesn’t have much coverage when fully down but enough to help in case of dazzling sun. Because of its peak it has a balance point in the vertical angle: move up a degree or two and it just catches the wind; move it down and it doesn’t. There was no low sun but I had the sense that the peak was not as wide as the Arai so felt like it would be less use as a shade when riding into the sun in the evening. I like the way it is dismantleable without tools. With the top plate for sticking a camera mount making it just too tall to fit in a Touratech top box, I was able to save the day by simply removing it. Its still too early to say whether it is a hit or not.