Heading to France AGAIN, really? NO, north Italy this time, phew…

Well here we go again I guess, but this time the story is somewhat different. My mate Brian has finally decided that he wants another motorbike, I tried to convince him for years that life without a bike is a sad life. He met with some mates recently who asked him to join them on their next European ride and so he asked me what I thought.

Given that he works for the BEST Yamaha bike shop in the whole world (Alf England of course) he can always borrow a demo bike but not take it overseas I guess for insurance. He recently bought himself a lovely Honda VFR800 but then he discovered that it was not really suitable for long distance riding two up so he promptly sold it on. I had an older VFR800 a few years ago and I loved that revvy VTEC engine but it is physically quite a compact bike so not an ideal tourer for two plus luggage.

Also Barnes does not really want a new bike as a big tourer like the FJR1300 would cost upwards of 16k Pounds so he asked me about my trusty old Honda VFR1200F. I bought my VFR last year as I had read alot about her and I wanted to experience the bike for myself. For Honda this bike was never a commercial success as she was very expensive and fell between two stools: they launched her as a sport tourer but the bike was too heavy to be a sports bike and carried too little fuel for touring. My 2012 bike is the 6 speed manual version (Honda also offered a DCT version) and is fitted with the larger fuel tank, she also had the big service (valves et al) completed before I bought her.

Barnes rode the VFR down to our meeting in France and he was really impressed, the bike is an amazing long distance mile eater for sure. He was cynical mainly because as he knew they were never a commercial success, but a long ride is always very interesting.

Stop press: Meeting point is now fixed as Barnes booked a flight to Bergamo near Milan so I have booked us a hotel. Here we go!!!!!! North Italy instead of France this time…..