V2XS

This was a two week trip, split into two parts. The first week was with a bunch of old work buddies on even older bikes pottering round the lanes near Saint-Lo, the second week was dedicated to trail riding near Gace with my mate Dougie.

Normandie Old Duffers

What started as a one off post COVID get together has now turned into an annual event, involving five retired engineers getting together to bumble around on unreliable old bikes. Last year we visited the Isle of Man and next year we are planning to head over to Ireland, but this year’s destination was Normandie. I booked an AirBnB near Saint-Lo to the West of Caen, which was about a seven hour drive for me. Keith “Deadrock” was coming over from Northern Ireland but caught the ferry from Dublin to Cherbourg and actually had the shortest distance to cover on the road – just as well as it turned out as he had the oldest and least reliable bike, a 1953 Francis Barnett. As usual Dougie “Bert” was running a bike collection and delivery service with his van and made his way down from Yorkshire to catch the Portsmouth-Caen ferry. Richard “Strad” rode shotgun in the van and Dave “Clothead” let the train take the strain down to Portsmouth. They were due to catch the afternoon ferry but a hold up on the M40 meant they were delayed and had to get the overnight boat instead.

Our visit happened to be a week or so before the 80th anniversary of the Normandie landings and there were a lot of preparations underway. Although we hadn’t planned it in advance we visited quite a number of the sites and museums of interest and learnt a lot about the preparations, the landings and the subsequent battles. This included visits to the American and German cemetries which were very poignant.

On the first day we took a gentle run into Saint-Lo to make sure the bikes were working OK and to take a look at the market. Dave was also keen to buy some local ingredients for the Normandie Pork, cider and apple dish he had promised to cook that evening. I was expecting to see an old market square with historic buildings and hopefully a little cafe but in fact everything was relatively new – a result of the town being flattened during the war.

The next day we set off for Omaha beach and the Overlord museum. The American forces had been allocated Omaha beach and it was here that the losses were heaviest, by far the worst of all the landing beaches. Once you see the beach you can understand why – the beach itself is flat but an escarpment rises up immediately and this was heavily mined and with German gun emplacements on the top.

Overlord was the code name for the overall landing operation and the museum of the same name gives a good overview of the preparations and progress of the landings.

On subsequent days we visited the airborne museum which told the tale of the American parachutists and glider landings, followed by a visit to the American cemetry.

Apart from a bit of fettling, the bikes had been running well, but it wasn’t to last. After visiting the cemetry Deadrock’s bike refused to start…

Carrying a full set of tools for such eventualities, Keith was quickly able to partly dismantle the engine and diagnose the problem – the contact breaker points that provide the spark for the engine had broken. Initially it seemed that this was going to need a recovery operation, but on closer inspection it appeared that they might be temporarily held together with some tie wraps and a piece of wire.

Amazingly the repair worked and held together all the way home, where Keith was able to make a more “permanent” repair using Araldite…

We did have one other minor mechanical issue during the week, if not an actual breakdown. I noticed that my Honda 500 was “popping and banging” in the exhaust more than usual and on investigating discovered that the bolts holding the exhaust clamp in place had come loose – a nice easy fix.

Keith’s Araldite repair seemed to hold up well for the rest of the week, but on his way back to Northern Ireland it broke down again in Dublin. Not clear yet if this was a new problem but he decided to leave the bike with friends and get the train home.

Part of the fun of these trips is that we take it in turns to cook for the group and most of us have little to no experience in the kitchen department. But with a bit of Googling for recipes and a “how hard can it be?” attitude some rather spendid dishes were produced

When we weren’t riding or fixing bikes we managed to amuse ourselves by discussing the finer points of bike design, or playing with the Scalextric that Dougie had brought with him.

The third museum we went to visit was in Arromanches, which is where Gold beach was located and was the site of the construction of the Mulberry harbour which the museum covers in great detail. The landing stages which were made of steel have long since disappeared, but the breakwater can still be seen and even visited at low tide. The huge concrete sections were floated across the channel and sunk into position to provide protection from the open sea.

When we visited the American cemetry we weren’t able to get very close as it was being prepared for the 80th anniversary commemoration. In contrast the German cemetry which contained almost 12,000 bodies was deserted and we were able to walk all round it with a feeling of immense sadness.

We went to visit Bayeux and the tapestry, which was very well presented with an audio guide explaining the story told by each of the panels. I certainly learnt a lot.

On the way back home from Bayeux we got pulled over by the Gendarmerie who wanted to check our papers and tell Dougie off for standing on the footpegs of his bike to stretch his legs and back. Apparently you have to stay sitting down on a bike in France ?

On our last riding day we took a run over to the west coast for a play in the sand in the sunshine.

It was raining on our last day so we elected to take the vans down to Le Mont Saint Michel.

And that was it for the Old Duffers week, so Richard, Keith and Dave set off for home and Dougie and myself relocated to our next AirBnB which was about an hour further south.

Normandie Trails

Dougie and I had previously been trail riding in Normandie on an event organised by Chris EVANS. This was some years ago and in November but our lingering memory of the trip was that there was mud everywhere. We had hoped that being nearly June the weather would be much imporved and that the trails would have dried out. Unfortunately that wasn’t the case and they were just as muddy as ever.

The weather during out trail riding week was a bit mixed with rain and some sun, but the temperature was reasonable. When we are away on these types of trip we tend to take it one day at a time, depending on the weather and level of enthusiasm. Dougie is the master of the routes and usually plans out a possible ride in the evening ready for the next day. I think he also uses the route planning task as an excuse to get out of cooking duties – as with the previous week this was a self catering set up. The trails were very muddy and we were regularly getting bogged down or having to wade through knee deep water. Dougie’s bike was fitted with 50/50 tyres (Anakee Wild) which are not well adapted to thick mud, but they were brand new and performed surprisingly well. There were just a couple of climbs he wasn’t able to manage. My bike was fitted with proper “knobbies”, but they were well passed their best so I didn’t fare much better.

The other difference between our two bikes was the weight, Dougie’s CRF was about 150Kg and much heavier than my 105Kg KTM. For road riding this makes no difference (in fact the Honda is better) but when you have to start man handling the bike through mud and water the weight makes a big difference.

And then it was all over… The next trail riding trip will be the VINCE in Spain in September. The next Old Duffers trip is planned for June next year and we are looking at exploring Ireland. As this will likely involve a fair bit of road riding, we have decided to relax the rules about “old bikes” – watch this space for more…

Over the winter I had a call from Raytcho, one of my trail riding buddies, asking if I was interested in coming to Montenegro to do a bit of trail riding. Originally from Bulgaria he now lives in London but has a holiday home near the coast in Montenegro and likes to spend the summer there. He had been working on an idea to set up trail riding holidays using their holiday home as a base. The house is already set up for guests, having three seperate studio apartments on the ground floor : https://www.booking.com/hotel/me/apartmani-simba.en-gb.html
He had a plan to get hold of some Honda CRFs that could be used as rental bikes and the last piece of the jigsaw was to work out what routes to use, so he put out a few calls to friends to see who would be interested in helping with some scouting of trails around the area. My mate Dougie agreed to come along and planned to fly in together with his daughter Millie. I decided that driving was a better option as it seemed there might be a shortage of bikes and I always prefer to use my own bike if possible. In retrospect flying was probably the more sensible option as it took me four and a half days each way to drive with three overnight stops. On the plus side I did get to see some parts of the world that were completely new to me.

I drove through France and used the Frejus tunnel which connects France to Italy (70 Euros for the van!), across the top of Italy to Trieste. From there I had to pass through a small amount of Slovenia, where the road changed from motorway to winding A road. Then into Croatia onto a superb motorway that runs almost the length of the country. All of the above are in the EU so there were no border formalities involved. However, Montenegro is not yet in the EU, although they have adopted the Euro, which meant a 1.5 hour delay queueing to get through the border check point. You also have to switch off data roaming at this point to avoid exhorbitant charges – Raytcho was quickly able to sort out local SIM cards for us at very reasonable prices.

When I mentioned to some of my French friends that I was going to Montenegro to do some biking, the reactions were along the lines of “aren’t they still fighting ?”, “is it safe ?” and “isn’t that near Ukraine ?”. Well I can tell you that it is perfectly safe, although we did see some rather unsafe driving behaviour, and everyone we met was very friendly and welcoming.

We stayed close to Bar, right on the coast in the south of the country. For our scouting trips we limited ourselves to routes that were achievable in a day so that potential clients would be able to return to base every night. This ruled out much of the North of the country which would require staying overnight, but as this area is quite mountainous and there was still snow on high ground, it was the sensible option. We did go as far as Albania in the East and Bosnia in the West.
Montengro is about half the size of Wales and has about 20% of the that country’s population at 630,000 people so it is quite sparsely populated. Relative to the UK it is very mountainous – the highest we rode was 1840m, the highest point in the UK is Ben Nevis at 1345m.

I had brought my KTM 300 TPI, Raytcho was riding his GasGas ES700 Enduro and also had another KTM 300 and a Beta Alp available for guests to use. Dougie was hoping to be able to use a CRF250 which was also part of Raytcho’s fleet, but that had unfortunately been sold the previous week. However, once he had fiddled about with the suspension he felt reasonably happy on the KTM – apart from the piece of 2×4 that KTM call a seat. In the end Raytcho and I rode for a total of 10 days and covered 1350 Km, we were joined most days by Dougie on the KTM and some days by Millie or Raytcho and Iva’s daughter Yanna riding the Beta. The general routine was that Raytcho would work out a possible route and then we tried to follow that, making sure it was all safe and rideable and looking out for other possible trails to add in. We were using the Outdoor Active app to track our progress and that proved surprisingly accurate in identifying the difference between rideable routes and hiking routes (which were generally too difficult to ride).

On the first evening our hosts suggested going out to “Starry Bar”, which I assumed was some sort of cocktail bar with a view of the night sky. It turned out to be nothing of the sort, “Bar” is the name of the neighbouring town and “Stari” means the old part of the town. In fact Bar is a fortified town and was originally built inside a walled fortress on top of a hill which is now abandoned but open to visitors.

Following one of the routes, we spotted what looked like an abandoned church high on a hill so decided to go up for a closer look. Once we got there we discovered it was not abandoned at all and was in fact a working Monastery that had recently been restored from a ruin. There were five monks and an Abbot living there and one of them came out to meet us. We were a little apprehensive – four grubby bikers, parking their noisy bikes on sacred ground, but we needn’t have woried as he was extremely welcoming and took us inside for a tour of the monastery. We were very lucky to have Raytcho as our guide as there didn’t seem to be any English spoken. Even luckier when he asked us to sit down at a table outside and then brought coffee, cakes and fresh orange juice.

The next day Dougie and Millie chose to have a more relaxing day so Raytcho and I decided to head up into the mountains to the North on a longer ride (200Km).

Heading North from Bar it’s about 45Km of road to get to the capital of Podgorica (which also has the main airport). On the way we passed the absolutely enormous freshwater Skadar lake. Once out of Podgorica we started to climb, inially on a twisty ribbon of tarmac that resembled a go kart track which then gave way to more broken tarmac and then to a gravel trail. We could see quite a lot of snow on the higher peaks and did wonder what it would be like when we reached the top. In fact we didn’t encounter any snow until we arrived at the pass – the highest point of the ride at 1840m. It didn’t look too difficult, “How hard can it be ?” said Raytcho as he set off into the snow. He didn’t get far before the rear wheel dug in and he was stuck. Although it looked harmless the snow was quite soft and about two feet deep – the weight of the GasGas and the massive torque turned it into a trench digger. He quickly gave up and went ahead to look at what lay in store over the other side of the pass…

There was more snow on the other side and a lot of downhill hairpins. If we did continue there would be no going back – it was bad enough making progress on the level, going uphill in the snow would have been impossible. Between us we manhandled the bike through – the trick was to get right over to the edge and pick up some grip where the snow met the gravel/rock. The KTM fared better being a lighter bike but still not easy.

We dropped down the other side to an isolated lake for a lunch stop, very glad of the picnic lunch Iva had prepared for us. The lake had several “summer houses” nearby, including Hagrid’s hut…

Back home safely we decided to rule out any routes going over 1800m on this trip, as there was sure to be more snow.

On the way home on this day we decided to pay a visit to another fortified coastal town to the South of Bar, called Ulcinj. We followed signs towards the old part and were surprised to find it was quite busy with lots of sombre looking people walking through the streets. As we weaved our noisy bikes through the throng we arrived at the front and realised we were in a funeral cortege and there was the hearse and cemetry right in front of us. Lower down in the village one of the locals on a scooter had tipped us off that motorbikes were allowed inside the old town so were fortunately able to make our escape through a hole in the defensive wall. As if we hadn’t suffered enough embarrassment we felt very conspicuous riding bikes through the very narrow cobbled streets. It was true there were a number of scooters parked in the streets, but no-one with full sized enduro bikes. We made our escape through another hole in the city wall, tails between our legs.

At one of our coffee stops we checked the map to look at our options. We found a gnarly looking trail heading down the mountain that should meet up with the road further down. Raytcho and I decided to check out the trail while Dougie took a break and agreed to meet us further down the road. The trail was a beauty and we had great fun riding it and then rejoined the road to meet up with Doug. Just as we pulled up to where he was waiting for us Raytcho’s chain fell off and he lost all drive. Our first thought was that the chain had snapped but on closer inspection it appeared that the axle nut had come loose, fallen off and then the axle locating block had followed. This allowed the spindle to slide out and the wheel to twist, throwing the chain. It was very fortunate it had happened at zero speed on the road rather than on the bumpy trail we had just ridden.

We propped the bike up and got the spindle and wheel out, fortunately there didn’t seem to be any damage. But how were we going to fix this so far from home and with limited tools ?

We left Dougie to try to improvise something while we retraced our steps along the trail to see if we could find anything. Nothing doing, so bodging was the only option. Dougie had spotted that the chain adjuster could be backed out sufficiently to support the axle in the right position, it would just need something to stop it moving backwards and on the other side something to stop the axle sliding out. We found a few scraps of material and got to work…

It was a long a slow ride home, but it all held together. A spare wheel and axle block/nut off a KTM 690 soon fixed the problem once back at base.

I managed to get in a morning run on the beach most days – we were blessed with great weather for the first ten days of the trip. It was very quiet as the town is only slowly gearing up for the season. Apparently it is heaving with people in the summer.

On the last day before the rain arrived we went up into the hills behind Stari Bar again to try to find some rock carvings and a waterfall that Raytcho remembered from years ago. There was a monastery nearby and apparently the monks use the waterfall for baptisms. It took a long time to find as it was not marked on the map and there was no information sign.

And then it was all over… Ten days of riding and 1350 Km. We found enough routes to easily provide a week’s worth of riding for potential guests. With such mountainous terrain it seems that every track has an amazing view and you have the benefit of being by the sea as well.

My return journey followed a similar route although I did use a different tunnel through the Alps (Montblanc 55 Euros). The fuel in Montenegro and Croatia was surprisingly cheap at 1.45 per litre – I paid 2.20 at a services in Italy ! To try to avoid getting stuck again at the border Iva and Raytcho gave me a route to a smaller border crossing known only to locals. It involved a slight detour but was much quicker – no queue at all. On the Montenegro side there was just a man in a shed recording the vehicle and passport details in a hand written ledger. Of course once you enter Croatia (and the EU) it was much more professional but still very quiet. Having got used to day time temeperatures in the 20s it was a shock to get to Limoges and find it was close to freezing.

A huge thank you to Raytcho and Iva for the invitation and being perfect hosts, we thoroughly enjoyed the trip and hope to see you again very soon.

The CRF300L is a great do-it-all trail bike that can be used for commuting on the road and off-roading at the weekend. There used to be many bikes like this in the old days : Honda XR, Yamaha XT, Suzuki DR and similar. But these general purpose bikes have been out of production for years although still with a loyal following and surprisingly high prices on the second hand market. The general purpose trail bike market seemed to disappear in the late 90s and split into two : the more off road focussed enduro bikes and the more road biased adventure bikes. In fact the adventure bike category became the highest growth sector of the bike market and is still hugely popular today. For many years there was really noting available in the trail bike category – you either had to choose a more focussed light weight off road bike or a bigger a heavier long distance adventure bike. Many riders simply went back to the old school solution of an air cooled Japanese trail bike. It seems that Honda spotted this gap in the market and introduced the CRF250L as a no nonsense do everything bike with electric start, fuel injection and modern suspension and ergonomics. It has proved to be very popular and has now been superseded by a 300cc version. If you could only have one bike, this would be a pretty good choice.

At the various events I attend over the year, the CRF has gradually become the bike of choice and it seems that almost everyone has one, or is looking out for one. Austin VINCE is a Honda brand ambassador and misses no opportunity to sing the praises of the little red bike and having done many long distance adventure trips on his CRF250 he knows what he’s talking about. My mate Dougie used to ride a KTM Freeride, a much lighter off road machine, but had never ending reliability issues. It broke down on the VINCE one year and he borrowed Austin’s CRF as a replacement. He was very impressed as it just worked – he had to have one !

My stable of motorbikes used to consist of a Montesa Trials, Suzuki DR350, KTM 250 enduro and a KTM 950 Super Enduro. Of these the DR350 (a traditional air cooled trail bike) was my go-to general runabout and shopping bike. However, I had originally bought the DR for my son Alexander to use and had made some modifications to make it more suited to him and he decided he would like to buy it. So I started looking for a replacement as a local shopping bike. I knew Dougie was keen on the CRF and thought it might be interesting for us to ride the same machinery on some of our adventures. However, they are much less common in France and the waiting list for a new one was over 6 months. And then one suddenly came up locally and I bought it. It was almost brand new (300Km) and the price was reasonable so it was hard to refuse.

I’ve had the bike two years and done over 8000 Km and it hasn’t missed a beat. I’ve used it as a shopping bike and done some joint events with Dougie on his CRF, but the highlight was taking it round Maroc on a trip covering over 3000 Km. Although it worked perfectly throughout the Maroc trip showed up some of it’s limitations as a long distance road bike – limited performance and lack of wind protection. Which is why I bought the GasGas Rally for the Maroc trip last year. I was also never really happy with the CRF off road, especially compared to my KTM enduro bike : it’s much heavier (145 v 105 Kg) and feels slow to respond, the controls are very light but don’t have the instant snap response of the KTM. As a result the CRF hasn’t had much use since the Maroc trip. Part of the reason for this is that I am fortunate to have a few different bikes and don’t have much use for a do-it-all bike. For off road I prefer to use the KTM and on the road I prefer something with more performance like my GasGas Supermoto. So the Honda needed to go…

Text of the advert on Le Bon Coin…

8800 Km
25/02/2022

I bought this bike in early 2022 to use for local journeys, mainly on the road (I have a KTM enduro for off road riding). It proved to be very capable and comfortable and I decided to use it for a trip to Morocco over the winter of 2022/23. This was a trip of over 3000Km of road riding and the bike performed perfectly. However, since that trip it has had very little use and is now being offered for sale. I am under no pressure to sell as I still find the bike useful for local journeys and have the space to keep it.

Honda France offer a 5 year warranty on the CRF, which still has 3 years to run, until 25/02/2027.

Modifications

• hand guards
• engine protection guard
• USB port
• tail tidy

The rest of the bike is completely standard.

It will be supplied with a complete stainless steel Moto-X exhaust system which I purchased from Le Bon Coin but is not fitted to the bike.

Servicing

The Honda service schedule requires an initial service at 1000 Km and then a service every 12,000 Km.

The 1,000 Km service was completed according to the schedule.

The next service would be at 12,000 Km, but as a precaution I carried out an additional service at 7,500 Km which included changing the oil and filter:
HiFlo HF103 oil filter
Castrol Power 1 Racing 10w-30 synthetic oil
The paper element air filter was replaced with a twinair foam element filter.

Next service would normally be due at 12,000, but taking account of the 7,500 service this could be done later.

Tyres

Pirelli MT21 Rallycross (50/50) tyres front and rear in excellent condition.
The tyres are fitted with BIB Mousses – no punctures and suitable for both on and off road use due to the light weight of the CRF.

More photos here : https://v2xs.com/CRF300L/

If you’ve read the post regarding my Maroc trip in Dec 2023 you’ll know that the GasGas Rally is the bike I intended to use. Having previously done the trip on my Honda CRF300L I felt it was lacking in performance for cruising on the road and no wind protection. The GasGas adresses both these issues. Having researched the type of bike I wanted, searched for one on line and then done a seven hour round trip to buy one it was a massive disappointment that I wasn’t able to use it for the trip. This was due to the registration documents getting lost in the post and without them I wouldn’t be allowed in to Maroc. Fortunately I had a back up plan which worked out very well. In fact the most fun I had was riding the sand dunes at Essaouira on my KTM, which I think would have been too risky on the GasGas (on my own).

Having returned from the trip I started to wonder where the GasGas fitted in my now quite extensive bike collection. And the conclusion was that it doesn’t. I still believe it is an ideal lightweight “adventure bike” – but don’t have any trips like that planned in the near future and although I plan to be in Maroc next year I’m not at all sure how I will get there.

I do have a trip to Spain for the VINCE in September, where we are planning to ride there on the back roads rather than take the vans as usual – a trip known as “Dougie’s Tours”. The GasGas would be great for the road trip to get there but I’m not sure about the off road aspects of the VINCE itself. I’m sure the bike would be able to cope, but am not sure my skill level would be up to it. I’m much more comfortable riding my KTM enduro bike in any off road situation and it is supremely capable in this role. Where it is much less able is on the road, but for me I think it is a better compromise. We will be covering the road miles in convoy with most people on CRF300Ls so it should be able to hold its own. So the GasGas had to go…

Below is the text for the ad in Le Bon Coin.

First reg : 29/06/2023
3000 Km
Ready for adventure ? This bike has been fully prepared as a lightweight adventure bike. 160 Kg 74hp/55kW and a fuel range of 250-300 Km. This bike is the same as the equivalent KTM 690 Enduro R and Husqvarna 701 Enduro. It was manufactured in the KTM factory in Austria using KTM parts. The biggest difference is the colour of the plastics. In the future Gas Gas models may be diferent to their KTM equivalents but for this bike they are almost exactly the same. The bike is covered by the 2 year Gas Gas manufacturers warranty which runs until 29/06/2025.

The bike is in excellent condition and has mostly been used for road riding around my local area. I have done some gentle off road riding to check the capability of the bike ready for the trip, but it has never been dropped and has no scratches or damage.

Standard features on the ES700 include :

• gear position indicator
• switchable engine modes for on and off road
• switchable ABS and traction control
• gearchange quickshifter and blipper for up and down changes

Modifications

The bike has been prepared for adventure touring with the following modifications:

• Rally navigation tower in Carbon from Rade Garage with LED headlights and a USB port (1500 Euros)
• Rally foot pegs (100 Euros)
• Engine/radiator protection bars (75 euros)
• Heavy duty aluminium engine guard (100 euros)
• Carbon engine case protectors (50 euros)
• Handebar risers and cushion grips (50 euros)
• Rear luggage rack (150 euros)
• Wings exhaust (400 euros)
• Graphics kit (170 euros)
• Tail tidy

Over 2500 euros of parts

Servicing

The GasGas service schedule requires an initial service at 1000 Km and then at every 10,000 Km.
The 1000 Km initial service was completed on schedule by GasGas.
The next service will be due at 10,000 Km.

Tyres

The bike has been fitted with new tyres – Pirelli MT21 front and Continental TKC80 rear. Heavy duty tubes fitted and filled with anti-puncture liquid.

Lots more pictures here :
https://v2xs.com/ES700/