Valheru Rides!

For those who haven’t seen the latest mildly deranged promotional video which Indian Motorcycles’ put out last week I am going to spare you pain. It’s essentially Indian trying to poke fun at Harley-Davidson for various different reasons but, in what is a decidedly shitty way. I freely admit I was no fan of HD appointing their current CEO fresh from a background of Pizza and Golf, in fact I even…

As anyone will know who has followed my ramblings online in the past few months, I have a bit of a thing for wearing different motorcycle gloves, in different conditions versus just having something that is multifunctional. I’ve not always had the best of luck in the past as some of you might remember, most recently with these gloves I had purchased from Texspeed. I was a bit wary considering…

For a guy who says he never does reviews this is somehow my second in only a very short period of time, so let’s see how this plays out. Thank you Sheepy, for the gift of this copy. The stage is set. As many of you might remember hearing about this in the motorcycle socials in late September this year, the short video (1 hour 30 minutes) documents the struggles of Ryan Edwin to beat the world…

I don’t know about you, but there’s always something magical about a red Italian motorcycle tearing the road up as if its existence depended on it. While everyone thinks of a Ducati, my absolute favourite had to be the Moto Morini 3 1/2. The original 3 1/2. Regardless of the actual specs it looked fast, and while I never want to be leaning that far forward while riding a bike, you have to love…

If you’ve ever considered using the toilet at the Maccy D’s situated adjacent to the A47/A17 roundabout in Norfolk, seriously just don’t bother…. The offending location. When I say the experience was movie like, I mean in the sense that the car park looked like a group of monsters had just had to call ‘The Wolf’, I’m pretty sure I spotted some scoundrel in a darkened booth blow away a Rodian…

With the continued rise of the small bikes in Europe that eventually managed to get Honda off its butt into releasing the CB350 (now one of their best selling motorcycles in the UK – who would have thought eh) I think Kawasaki needs to follow suit and give us a new generation of Estrella. Called the W250 since 2017 and only distributed in Japan currently (though the W175 is available elsewhere),…

So for some reason you’ve decided to travel to East Anglia in late autumn/winter, possibly because there’s practically zero chance of anything more serious than a light dumping of sleet, or perhaps just straight to Thetford Forest eh? Insert your own Alan Partridge joke here… Anywho, now we’re back to that time of the riding year, I thought I would don my cap and provide some level of public…

I still like the look of the Jawa 42 bobber, especially now the later iterations have so many more colour options than on initial release. It would look even better with cast wheels….but hey, almost. It’s interesting to note this is on the original Jawa 42 platform and not the later 42FJ (a.k.a The BSA Bantam) platform with no reported update. Maybe Mahindra will surprise us in the future by…

I think a lot of folk think I dislike the Honda H’ness (a.k.a CB or GB350) but frankly absolutely nothing could be further from the truth at all. Since it’s unveiling in September 2020 I have many times on social media listed it as one of the motorcycles I would most like to see in the UK. We had to wait 5 years for it, but it finally touched down this year and to be honest despite my initial…

Unless you were living under a rock recently you would have seen the announcement a week ago that Triumph considered the 400cc Bajaj built line so successful, they would bring out a 350cc line up. This would have Triumph positioned, very much like RE with a bike at both A2 price points. Then bang! Friday we got this bag boy teased via Bikewale. A 350cc incarnation of the Bonnie. We don’t know…

So a few days before writing it was announced that Harley Davidson would replace its departing CEO Zeitz with Artie Starr, formerly of *checks notes* Pizza Hutt and some golfing gig… It was kinda ironic that the incoming CEO mentioned the “community and rebellious spirit” in his statement, a pretty much sure sign that he must be thinking about a different Harley Davidson, or at least one that…

Well, I saw this: Just….what….no…. Ride the NC500 in a weekend? Right I am going to ignore every piece of information I’ve been given about this route in regard to the traffic, changeable weather conditions, winding roads and speed limits here, I’m not debating the physical ability to just beast a distance, because with the right fuel management and appropriate wee stops you could easily figure…

So Sunday morning, for no apparent reason my body clock decided that 5 am was just the kind of time I needed to be awake for. After staring at the glare of my phone for some form of indication of the days weather I got up and decided that today, I was riding to Derbyshire. The time is of course heavily dependent on the A17, which is like being dependent on a borderline alcoholic to give the mini…

Well to be fair he pops, but let’s not split infinitives on a Sunday afternoon eh? Anyway the reason I’ve started with a strange reference is that I wanted to more closely look at the more obvious differences between my 2024 (reg 25) Meteor and his predecessor from 2021. The controls. Right I’m not saying the switches on the 2021 felt cheap, they were good enough in the way they didn’t feel…

For the vast majority of you here, you will no doubt be aware my bright blue Meteor was sadly written off following an RTA at the start of May. Following the general annoyance/insurmountable rage of the loss I had to sit down and evaluate what motorcycle to replace him with. Whatever I bought needed to be: Fairly small. Good fuel efficiency. Comfortable. Affordable. Tripper Options for all…

For anyone who’s ever followed or interacted with me over the last few years, you will have noted that I hardly comment on, or mention other motorcycle vloggers channels or trips. This is not out of some strange protectionist mentality, or a desire to appear segregated from the moto community. Its origins directly lie in how we all view, consume and appreciate different vlogging styles, and not…

I’ve been formulating this post in one way or another since June 2023 when I started noticing quite a bit more the behavior and general road habits of many of the other users that I cohabit the road with. I’d really like to be able to write one of those really deep, meaningful life lesson posts that sound like it was written by a guru about not sweating the small stuff while out riding. But…