FINALLY another bike trip, to France!

Well we have had almost two years of lockdown and restrictions thanks to this awful COVID virus (which is of course still with us) plus Boris has carried through the awful Brexit idea, so I have been staying home and avoiding risks.

I bought a lovely car in Feb 2020 and since then she has only done about 6k kms in Italy, and my bikes have also lived most of these two years locked in the garage sob. Well, recently I decided I wanted to restart my bike activities so I asked Martin to find me a VFR1200 Honda https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_VFR1200F cos over this lockdown time I have been doing loads of reading and I decided that I really wanted a big Honda V4. I had a VFR800 for a year and loved that amazing VTEC engine, I greatly admire Honda engineering and I had never tried the 1200. The VFR1200F was a major commercial flop for Honda mainly because it was launched as a sports tourer and fell between those two stools: it was too heavy to be a real sports bike and had too small fuel capacity to be a tourer PLUS it was very expensive, perhaps because that V4 engine is very difficult to manufacture.

So as a dealer Martin has always avoided these bikes because they did not sell. However when I asked him, he took a while but found me a lovely 2013 bike which was the second generation with an increased fuel capacity and with the manual gearbox (cos it was also offered with the DCT gearbox which was ahead of its time BUT not to my taste nor totally reliable) and low miles too, about 20k miles. She is black and silver and looks GREAT. Well, I asked the Chas Mortimer company about bringing her down to me and guess what??? They must now go thro’ customs and I must pay 20% VAT?????? Madness, total madness, the bike is already registered in my name.

So, how can we overcome this? I do not really want to visit the UK yet cos it seems that they have not really got the COVID situation under control, thanks Boris. Instead my good mate Brian agreed to bring the VFR down to France and then return with another bike, I do not really need the amazing MT10SP Yamaha. See some pics below and then I will add some more when I return. Thanks.

WHAT an amazing bike, really. I have ridden many bikes over the years mainly Honda and Yamaha but this VFR is like nothing I have ever ridden before. More power, more comfort, more everything than any other bike really, amazing. This second generation fixed some of the problems but not all…..

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