This weekend was the first European trip for my GT and if I’m honest up until Saturday I hadn’t convinced myself it would be comfortable for longer trips because the only other time I’d ridden 200 miles in a day I ended up with a small amount of neck ache and couldn’t get myself comfortable.
I’ve now changed the screen for a Puig touring one which is a couple of inches taller and it’s a totally different experience. I rode 350 miles on Friday, about 160 on Saturday and 375 today and each time it was great. The two longer days were probably 2/3 motorway and 1/3 messing about in the Ardennes and Saturday we didn’t go near a motorway of any description but did ride like idiots all day and it was basically faultless.
I used a Ventura luggage pack on the back and as is normally the case took more rubbish than I needed because there was room and had a small tankbag fitted for my wallet, passport, phone and other small items that the modern rider now finds they can’t go out without and it worked well.
Now the bike has got about 1500 miles on it the engine has freed up a bit more and the fuel consumption has improved so sitting at 80mph on a motorway gives better than 50mpg and when I filled up this afternoon I’d done just over 250 miles and the bike claimed it still had 20 miles left but I bottled it and didn’t push it any further. I’m more than happy with that because that included the normal messing about getting on and off a ferry, queuing up at passport control etc so I’d say that on a motorway ride across Germany most days of around 500 miles would simply be a one stop strategy if I was in the mood to just get somewhere without messing about.
The handling in the Ardennes was as good as anything I’ve owned before and we were getting a move on a bit with me on the GT, another rider on an S1000XR and a third rider on a Kawasaki H2 SX though both of them had passengers but neither worry any too much about pushing it a bit with passengers and both are currently racing at National level with one being the happy owner of about 5 Replicas from the Isle of Man TT & GP so he’s no slouch. I reset the maximum speed previously recorded on my satnav and apparently I took it up to 130mph on Saturday but it says a lot for the bike that I didn’t realise I’d been that naughty.
I was going to try the standard seat on the GT but when I got it out of the box I checked out the lack of padding and put it back in the box straight away
I’ll be taking the GT on a summer trip of about 4k miles later in the year and until this weekend I’d been unsure about whether my knackered body would need too many Ibuprofen to get through the day but now I’m happy enough to just go for it and not worry
I’ve now changed the screen for a Puig touring one which is a couple of inches taller and it’s a totally different experience. I rode 350 miles on Friday, about 160 on Saturday and 375 today and each time it was great. The two longer days were probably 2/3 motorway and 1/3 messing about in the Ardennes and Saturday we didn’t go near a motorway of any description but did ride like idiots all day and it was basically faultless.
I used a Ventura luggage pack on the back and as is normally the case took more rubbish than I needed because there was room and had a small tankbag fitted for my wallet, passport, phone and other small items that the modern rider now finds they can’t go out without and it worked well.
Now the bike has got about 1500 miles on it the engine has freed up a bit more and the fuel consumption has improved so sitting at 80mph on a motorway gives better than 50mpg and when I filled up this afternoon I’d done just over 250 miles and the bike claimed it still had 20 miles left but I bottled it and didn’t push it any further. I’m more than happy with that because that included the normal messing about getting on and off a ferry, queuing up at passport control etc so I’d say that on a motorway ride across Germany most days of around 500 miles would simply be a one stop strategy if I was in the mood to just get somewhere without messing about.
The handling in the Ardennes was as good as anything I’ve owned before and we were getting a move on a bit with me on the GT, another rider on an S1000XR and a third rider on a Kawasaki H2 SX though both of them had passengers but neither worry any too much about pushing it a bit with passengers and both are currently racing at National level with one being the happy owner of about 5 Replicas from the Isle of Man TT & GP so he’s no slouch. I reset the maximum speed previously recorded on my satnav and apparently I took it up to 130mph on Saturday but it says a lot for the bike that I didn’t realise I’d been that naughty.
I was going to try the standard seat on the GT but when I got it out of the box I checked out the lack of padding and put it back in the box straight away
I’ll be taking the GT on a summer trip of about 4k miles later in the year and until this weekend I’d been unsure about whether my knackered body would need too many Ibuprofen to get through the day but now I’m happy enough to just go for it and not worry