Mini Adventure

Setting off for a ride around the Peak District set me thinking back to the days before people started talking about 'adventure motorbikes’.

- David Robinson-Smith

When I learnt to ride, every bike was an adventure. Thirty-odd years ago I bought a tired, maroon 1980s Kawasaki Z250 and rode it from Melbourne to Cairns in Australia. I did over 10,000 miles on all sorts of highways, back roads and farm tracks with a rucksack tied on the back. That was an adventure bike.

There’s no doubting the new breed of adventure bikes are impressive, and I’ve owned a few, but how much technology do you need on a bike if (and it’s a big 'if ') it's going to be used in all terrains? I can’t help thinking, when it comes to all-terrain mile crunching, we may becoming a tad over gadgeted.

And so I set off in search of new green lanes in and around the Peak District on my six-year-old BMW Sertao (G650GS). The Sertao is a compromise bike. On the one hand it’s an under-the-radar machine that excels at nothing. On the other it is as happy to sit all day at respectable motorway speeds, leisurely sipping fuel through its single cylinder, as it is having a good go at any off-road terrain you point it towards. It’s also a bike that other bikes overtake (both on- and off-road). But in a sort of tortoise and hare way, it may be the first to arrive. It's all-day comfortable, does

FLOAT YOUR BOAT

I found my first B.O.A.T. (byway open to all traffic) just outside Ashbourne, an easy, hard-packed gravel road leading to the village of Kniveton. It’s a good feeling to get away from traffic, stop the bike, turn the ABS off, open a gate and head off. I was taking my time travelling alone. Pace-wise, think more bumbling than blasting, but that did mean I could enjoy the scenery, looking over the hedges on the pegs. It was a bright, spring day with nothing but the dull thud of the single cylinder to distract the lambs.