RiDE March 2020

‘Now’s the right time to be planning for a brilliant 2020’ Welcome to the Tour 2020 issue of RiDE magazine. For me, the dormant, fallow period of January and February is always a time of planning for the new biking year and if you’re the same, there will be plenty of inspiration for you in this issue. There are few things more exciting than heading off on a road trip on a bike, whether it’s a sneaky weekend away or a big continental tour. After reading our guide to great touring locations, I’m gagging for a trip to the Cairngorms this year and working on the wife to let me out for enough time to head to the Pyrenees. The UK trip is more likely than the Spanish one sadly, but I…

Steve Herbert-Mattick, art editor As a keen, novice off-roader, can KTM’s Adventure school help me with my local green lanes? PAGE 110 Jim Blackstock, product editor I’ve worn rucksacks on bikes but is it worth spending four times as much on a specialist one? PAGE 105 Martin Fitz-Gibbons, contributor Honda’s Africa Twin is great but extra poke and more gadgets will make the 1100 even better. Right? PAGE 32 Introducing Ownable a new way to buy kit We’re introducing a new feature to RiDE’s rated pages. You can now use the Ownable app to buy what you see on the page.…

Atacama Desert, Northern Chile This photo is from a recent bike trip which my wife and I undertook. The trip was touring the bottom half of South America (Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil) using our 2002 Africa Twin, to which we added a Ural sidecar! We covered a leisurely 15,000km over five months, ranging from Patagonia in the south to the Atacama Desert in the north to the sub-tropical forests of Southern Brazil in the east, crossing the Andes a couple of times in the process. It was a wonderful trip and mostly off the beaten track. We discovered the ‘Hand of the Desert’ sculpture crossing the Atacama Desert in Northern Chile and camped next to the Pacific Ocean in Pan de Azucar National Park, Chile. Mark and Debbie van Blommestein Get your…

Elan Valley, Wales Here is a quick picture of our bikes at the top of the Elan Valley from a recent camping trip with Mark and Steve. Although smaller in size, the Tiger 800 XRx happily kept pace with the larger Yamaha Ténéré 1200 and BMW R1250GS. Peter Genet Brecon Beacons, Wales This is me and my mate Keven on a weekend trip to Wales. As it was a beautiful sunny day on the way, we stopped in the Beacons to take this picture. Mark Purkiss Almodôvar, Portugal This is my Ducati Monster on the ride back from the Algarve to the UK. I took in some fantastic roads along the way and even enjoyed good October weather to go with it! This picture is taken just north of Almodôvar. Simon Cocks Netzschkau, Germany Earlier this year,…

‘I spent nine days riding through Nepal with my partner Anna. We covered around 1200 kilometres, at least half of which was off-road.’ Duncan Costin ‘This was Norway on a 12-day tour to Nordkapp, covering France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Finland.’ John Meikleham 'I covered 4037 miles across 18 days touring the North and South islands of New Zealand. I cannot recommend it highly enough.’ Mark McGuinness ‘I’ve just come back from a tour of Peru aboard a Royal Enfield Classic 500 with Vintage Rides, exploring places like Machu Picchu.’ Mark Leonard ‘This is the foot of Mt Ruapehu, New Zealand, halfway into a 700km ride on my Kawasaki W800. The trip saw me reach 5000 miles.’ Rich Easton Sign up now! www.facebook.com/#ride5000miles…

GRAHAM BELL’S AN interesting sort of chap. Officially, he’s a company secretary but in the past few years he’s been, among other things, a chauffeur, a motorcycle cop and a wizard. Eh? Come again? “I get to work as a ‘Special Skills’ actor — anything where they need someone who can drive, or ride, or use a sword or has any other specific skill, but can also take direction and act a bit. So I was the chauffeur in Downton, a motorcycle cop in London Has Fallen and yes, I was a wizard in one of the Harry Potter films.” He was in Star Wars - the Last Jedi too but today, his Special Skill is piloting his KTM Super Duke R down some of East Anglia’s prettiest roads. The ride The…