I bought these heated gloves last December on an impulse after reading a positive review in Adventure Bike Rider. I have worn them once for a very short ride after installing the wires through my jacket and today rode from Cambridge out to Eye in Suffolk and back – about 100 miles. The temperature varied between 7 and 9 degrees. It was dry with bright low winter sun and a little wind.
Here they are.
First, let’s backtrack a little. Buying items like helmets and gloves, or clothing on line, i.e. without trying on different sizes and directly comparing how they feel is hazardous. I have wasted money on a helmet that when I got it could not decide whether it was too small. In the end I decided to keep it and wore it out and about. But an hour’s ride showed me that it was too painful to wear and it had to go – on ebay and at a significant loss because it was too late to return it. Wearing a helmet around the house is just not the same as actually wearing it for a couple of hours in the open air. I also bought these gloves, following the sizing guide on the website, trying them on, thinking yes these are a little tight but will probably stretch, lets keep them. Today I wore them on my first extended ride – 2 and a half hours – and set to their highest heat. The fingers were rather uncomfortable, especially over the knuckles causing me to try to hold on and operate the bike with straight fingers. By the end of the two hours I was feeling that they were rather hot in places and I could not quite manage to turn them down while riding along a motorway, though they are simple to move between the three levels of heat when stationary. But it wasn’t until I got back and took them off that I saw the red marks on my hands where the heating elements run.
An hour later I had this painful blister caused probably by a combination of too much heat i.e. a burn and the pressure.
When I wear them again, if I do, I will try wearing silk liner gloves underneath and keep the heat turned down. I wonder if this is another expensive mistake. In the meantime, I look forward to the Spring and temperatures in double figures.
Even though the KTM catalogue from 2019 – its the last one that made it into my house – shows their middle-wieght adventure bike, the 790 Adventure, fitted out with black aluminium panniers, most riders seem to put soft, weight-saving luggage on the bike. The brand in vogue seems to have been Mosko Moto. You can fit a surprising amount of travel gear into their Reckless 80 litre bags.
I got drawn into that but always secretly wanted the convenience of some hard luggage, especially when going on a short ride or to do some shopping. And my Touratech aluminium luggage left over from my last BMW was still taking up room in my garage which is also full of a kitchen, old vacuum cleaners and furniture. And a topbox is a handy place to store your helmet while you are in the supermarket. I tried some nice strap-on tail pack from Kreiga, mounted to the Perun rack that I fitted soon after buying the bike a few years back. It was great for carrying some tools on a ride but not much else. Eventually I have caved in and started investigating fitting the mount for my Touratech top box onto my 790. You have to buy the whole set up to get the tubular mount. But Touratech in the UK could not tell me when the black version would come into stock so we agreed to try the kit made for the Husky 701 as they are very similar bikes. The cost was £150.
The kit arrived and on my first attempt to fit it I found that the Husky and the KTM have very slightly differently placed holes for the bolts that fit the rear rack. My second attempt involved fitting the tubular mount onto my Perun rack which was fiddly but possible. And it does not look too bad.
The top box would be much better if black but is fine. I don’t think the taste police will pull me over for it.
It started as a trip up to my garage to search for my lost angle grinder. Once I had realised that it was not to be found (how can I have lost it?) I decided to work on my newfound confidence and ride the short section of the Icknield Way again. Its a short and not bad ride out there from Cambridge, through Fulbourn and Balsham, so why not? This time I wanted to record it so took my GoPro mounted on my helmet and another camera pointing more or less at me. I arrived at Balsham and turned everything on then set off, past the ‘Unsuitable for Motors’ sign (assuming that this didn’t actually mean ‘motors are prohibited). Things started off well. The track is gravelly in most places, straight and pretty flat. A little way down things started to get muddy with the the huge and soft tyre marks left by a tractor. I had one moment of instability on the slippy mud and then managed a climb. Further on, the muddy tyre tracks covered the whole track – apart from about 18 inches on the side that I only noticed afterwards. Heading across them at about 18 mph the bike quickly went into a slide and I ended up in the hedge and on the floor for the second time in as many months.
Unlike my fall in Wales, this time I wasn’t hurt and got up feeling optimistic I could pick up the bike and get going again. But for some reason the side stand had come down and was jammed in the mud. With a great deal of heaving I moved the bike out of the hedge but could not lift it enough to get the sidestand up. It was completely stuck despite some digging around it with my Leatherman blade. I did too much pointless heaving and tugging and pretty soon felt a sharp pain where I had broken my rib two months earlier and could not believe how stupid I had been to do all this.
I looked up and down the lane but it was clear very few people came down here. I started thinking about walking to the nearest house, but to ask anyone to come out and help me seemed a bit unrealistic, especially if they did not like the idea of people riding motorcycles on this route. Eventually I remembered my Cambridge based bike-riding friend. I hesitate before asking people for help but I could see little option. Luckily there was enough signal to reach him and kindly he agreed to ride out and help me. I was hugely relieved but while waiting for him I did more useless heaving. I thought about the advice not to ride potentially tricky terrain on a bike like this alone.
He came, and methodically helped get the bike into a position where we could both lift it and rode it up to a place where the ground was dry, then rode with me back to the garage where I surveyed the not-too-much damage on the bike.
The GPX file even shows my meeting with the hedge (yellow) followed by some moving around (red)
What is the moral of this little story? Don’t be an idiot. Get a lighter bike if I want to ride even these ‘easy’ tracks alone (I was looking at reviews of a Yamaha Serrow on the way home…). Yes the adrenaline of the first moments after falling can help you lift a bike, but it is good to survey the situation carefully before putting in unfruitful and potentially injuring efforts. Having a few friends is much better than having none. Another thought – which I am adding a few days later after having looked at the Icknield Way official websites – is that I should check on which stretches of the Icknield Way motors are allowed and which they are not. There are plenty of Youtube videos of people riding adventure bikes on tracks around fields claiming that they are riding the Icknield Way but if I were out walking I would certainly not want to meet up with a large motorcycle travelling at some speed and possibly in a group on these often narrow paths.
Last night I went up to Cambridge and dropped by the garage. It is very bleak on a cold winter night (it was Halloween). I had never been there in the dark before. I also saw that everything was covered with mud.
Can you see my angle grinder?
The contents of the flask were very welcome on a cold foggy night
Today, on an unusually warm sunny day in September, I took the train up to Cambridge with the intention of exploring on my motorcycle some off road route near to the city. Its part of the Icknield Way an ancient walking route from Buckinghamshire to Norfolk that passes near Cambridge on its way to Suffolk and Norfolk. The part that I rode turned out to be quite a safe and easy gravel route, occasionally sloping up hill and very occasionally wet with muddy puddles. I can imagine that it would be not so easy to ride after wet weather. But it was a confidence booster. The last time I took my highly off road capable bike off the tarmac was in Portugal to try part of the ACT heading south from Braganza and that was a more tricky ride, with lots of turnoffs to avoid and all done in 35 degree heat. This reminded me of the Bardenas Reales in Spain which is a much easier and entertaining route. I need to do this more often.
An interesting time, at a kind of crossroads or fork in the path. I’m not sure which it is, or a liminal period.
I got back on Tuesday from a short motorcycle camping trip to north Wales, via Ludlow where I stopped in to visit Jane Robinson my old PhD supervisor – which I mentioned earlier. The choice to investigate north Wales came after Jane made contact and invited me to see her and have lunch. Before that I was planning to revisit the Yorkshire dales and then head further north to Scotland and a particular forested area where there are meant to be some good gravel path routes. So I was quite curious to visit a new part of the UK for me but compared to trips to Europe, UK motorcycle trips lack a certain excitement that is guaranteed without any special effort – just by choosing and planning to go to a far flung, exotic place. And at the back of my mind has been a question that I was trying not to allow to develop too much – how much longer do I want to keep making these annual and heavily anticipated and planned for motorcycle trips? Is the original excitement and even intrepidation wearing off? And that thought re-emerged riding in Wales. Some of the routes were beautiful and fun to ride, but some, particularly where there was a stream of cars, really not that much fun even though they were included in the Bikers Britain Best Routes. As ever I was toying with the idea of coming home a day early. Then I arrived at the last campsite, set in a farmer’s field, surrounded by loudly mooing close-up cows, with some basic facilities (three composting toilets and a open air wash basin) but absolutely no shade – and the sun was now unexpectedly hot – hitting 30 degrees. Part of me feels that this style of ‘almost like wild camping’ campsite is a little cynical and is an excuse for not investing much in the site – but this was not expensive so it is fair maybe. And perhaps in a different mood I would have enjoyed it more. Another thing to mention is that at both campsites I stayed, I chatted to people who were walking. At the first site two young guys – one of whom was sweet and articulate who was wearing what I thought was a really stylish top but turned out that he was wearing it back to front. These walkers obviously have a very different pace to motorcycling and the man at the second site told me that he had also experience of motorcycling and cycling trips which I found a little confusing as I had thought of the people that do these different activities as fundamentally different groups, not the same people doing different things. This is all a preamble to the main event which was a tumble off the bike on a steep country lane trying to squeeze slowly past a car and landing heavily on my side in a lot of pain. I mentioned it in the last post. The miracle of then getting the bike upright and moving again (walking trying to slip the clutch but also hold the bike from rolling backwards) on this steep lane is another story, then dropping it again once I got to the campsite. It was 2 parts bad pain but 3 parts, at least, anxiety about how would I pack up and get home. Before I lay down to sleep, I was considering staying another night in the tent and having an ‘easy’ day walking and hopefully would be in less pain a day later. But a painful difficult night on the ground made it pretty clear that I needed to get going. The ergonomics of the campsite – sinks that were far too low with a crazy pain etc. were just not working. But waking up at 6am in pain and crawling around to get my clothes and boots on made me think that I would not be able to pack let alone climb on the bike and ride the couple of hundred or so miles home. I got up to make some coffee but as I waited for the water to boil, I began to feel so panicked that I almost fainted and had to lie down on the bench. Somehow though, with the help of Brufen and taking things very, very slowly I got everything packed up. I had the feeling that the action of climbing on the bike would not be agonizing as some other twisting movements were – and still are as I write this – so I climbed on and rode carefully out of the site. I rode past the turning to the steep road that was the scene of my undoing and carried on until I joined the A5 and then it was major roads all the way home which started at least as a kind of relief. After a couple of hours, I could definitely feel the pain killers wearing off but on the M6 had to keep going for much longer than I wanted to before a service station appeared, so even moving the indicator and shifting my weight was becoming painful. But after a dose of brufen at the service station, waiting half an hour, followed by a dose of paracetamol I set off on the rest of the journey eastwards to Cambridge. The M6 turns into the A14 and that goes all the way to the outskirts of Cambridge.
It was hot (I just noticed from my video that it was 34 degrees when I arrived in Cambridge) and there was heavy traffic so it was not enjoyable riding. I just wanted to get back. Eventually I arrived in Cambridge through the very familiar Girton Road toward the city centre then got to Davy Road where someone had lined up wheelie bins across the entrance to the garage, giving me anxiety as I squeezed through. I managed to get changed, unpack the bike, lock it up and throw what I needed to bring home into a bag and walk slowly to the station and sat on an air-conditioned train to Blackfriars. I don’t know if you can see how uncomfortable I was from the picture here.
That’s the narrative. Now the reflection is partly prompted by H voicing her anxieties about my habit of riding a motorcycle. In my mind now, adding up the questioning and fear of a waning of enthusiasm about biking that I mentioned earlier, my asking how long do I really want to keep doing this, my sense of being quite different to much of motorcycling culture, it feels like I am entering a period of deciding about this. One of my instincts is to just throw more money at it – I was checking out body armour: it can be both extensive and expensive, then I’d need a different style jacket to go over the top… Then there is the lure of trading in for a lighter bike… as I originally dreamed about along with the building of a workshop in Suffolk. Maybe a KTM 690 or a Honda… (recently, after another fall, and being unable to lift the bike, I thought about the Yamaha Serrow – 20 horse power).
But I have forgotten to mention the details of the tumble. I fell on my right side and when I hit the ground I had the feeling of something inside my abdomen bumping into the inside of my ribcage – whatever that actually means in terms of injury. (I think my boots stood me in good stead. One was stuck under the bike but eventually I lifted it enough to move). But the effect is that I have intense pain in my side when I make certain slight twisting movements: even burping sends some muscles into painful spasm. The next day at home I went to the doctor who thought it might be an inflamed nerve judging by the pattern of pain as she palpated and I have had an xray, but no result yet. I’ve since read quite a few m/c riders talking about the pain of cracked/broken ribs and their experiences of strong pain killing meds – constipation and hallucinations. I have the feeling that though, very painful, I have not broken any bones. (I finally got the xray result and I did fracture a rib). I am finding just now that regular Co-codamol does protect me from the worst of the pain. Nights are the most painful time, getting into and out of bed, or any movement from my back to my side while lying down. And I am in a mood of anxiety and suspended routine, but with my routine, habitual thinking, just starting to re-emerge.
I awoke at 7.30 and left the campsite by 10.15. I set the GPS to Bala, arrived there and rode through the quite pretty High Street, took a left past the lake and rode a lovely shady road around the far side of the lake, back into Bala in an elongated circle. I found a cafe there and ordered Eggs Benedict and a tea. I sat outside to eat. When the eggs came they were swimming in mayonnaise which looked disgusting but I managed to avoid most of it. (I have just looked up the recipe and mayonnaise is a standard ingredient.) Then I took one more lap and parked briefly at a spot behind the lake where some people were sitting around it on the ground. It reminded me of Ruislip Lido in the 1970s but this place had its own little narrow gauge railway station. The weather was getting warm. Then I pursued a mixture of small and major roads towards this site, Offa’s Dyke Farm Campsite.
About a mile before you get here you have to ride up a very steep and very narrow road then more lanes before turning right, through the sheep on the road, into a field. On entry I was struck by the cows mooing loudly and the complete lack of shade against the now fierce sun beating down. The view, though, is beautiful. The facilities are I suppose very basic, masquerading (I wrote) as ‘wild camping’. And cows on three sides – one calf ‘escaped’ into the site and a second seems to be calling for its mother. At that point I began to wonder about this site and whether I’d go home after one night here but resolved to see what the evening would be like.
I put up the tent with not a lot of enthusiasm and went off to find Tesco Superstore in a nearby town. Unfortunately, a key road to get there was closed so my journey was hugely roundabout with many false turns all in the heat. Finally there, I parked next to a couple in a 1970s VW camper van and I complimented them on it. I enjoyed a slow shop in the air-conditioning and bought more ice (useful later in an unanticipated way).
On the return I decided to film (to follow – it just needs editing) my ride up the steep lane commenting that I wouldn’t know what to do if I met a car coming the other way and…. I did. To cut a long story short I tried to squeeze past but at the last moment stalled and dropped the bike and fell and felt immediately a lot of right sided pain when I hit the ground. Somehow with the help the the late middle aged female driver and her older passenger and large doses of shock and adrenaline, I managed to get the bike upright, still on a steep incline. I tried to move it in first gear with the engine but it was tricky and I stalled a few times and very nearly dropped it again. (I was trying to remember advice from a Plumb video about what to do if you stall uphill. Let go of all the controls and the bike will not go anywhere – if you are in gear which you would be.) A couple of cars came down but backed away pretty quickly seeing me struggle. Once I managed to inch up to a not so steep part of the lane I managed to lean over enough to put down the side stand without the bike rolling back. I could climb on and then ride on up to the campsite. Once here, though, I must have been so shaken and distracted that I dropped it again on the grass (even though the film shows that the bike thought that the side stand was down). This time I hurt too much to pick it up and decided to wait for one of the other campers to come to help. But a – I have to say quite beefy woman appeared from nowhere (I must have been lost in anxiety) and offered to help. She was the owner of a chopper type motorcycle parked over in a corner by a tent. She was very helpful in the best possible way, asking if I wanted to wait or to pick it up now or recover a little. She could see I was frazzled and in a bit of shock. Together we lifted it up though unfortunately my GoPro ran out of battery just before recording us getting it upright. It turned out she was from Nunhead, not that far from where I live in London.
I texted H, took some Brufen and held my bag of ice against my painful side and back for a while. This pain is very different to the muscular pain of my bizarre gardening accident injury. [I have just learned, six weeks later, that I did fracture rib number 10 on my right side – a displacement fracture. Its still painful though not nearly as much as in the first week after the fall.]
I’ve now had a couple of gin and orange drinks sans ice and will cook my chicken noodles and pad thai sauce. I wonder what my night will be like with this pain.
The farmer has just come by. There are three of us on the site, a solitary man in a car and large tent, the woman with the Honda who was on her way home from a women’s motorcycle event in Wales and me. Now there is a forth – a young guy walking the Offa’s Dyke way with a predictably very small tent. All of us are in solitude in our own worlds sitting looking out over this beautiful and peaceful vista. The walker told me he had motorcycled and cycled but now is walking. I thought – would it be ‘resilient’ to give up biking after one small off and start a new path of walking?
