After Christmas I had a couple of solid weeks of riding nothing but the Yamaha X-Max 250 scooter. That’s several hundred miles on a twist-and-go automatic with a feet-forward riding position, small wheels and a great big luggage space under the seat. I valued its convenience, its practicality and its economy, while ignoring its lack of speed, its slightly cramped riding position and its limited appetite for smoothing out poor road surfaces.
But when, at the end of January, I needed to ride to Herefordshire on a foggy Sunday morning to visit the Napier Trail riders at Trailquest’s rural HQ, I commandeered Steve Herbert’s Yamaha Fazer8. It’s a trip of about 100 miles each way, and I’ve done several longer trips on the scooter, but I wasn’t in any doubt that this time I wanted to ride a proper motorcycle.
Why? I think it was the ‘Sunday morning’ aspect of the trip that swung it in the bike’s favour. I figured that the roads would be pretty quiet, especially on the way there, and that would give me an opportunity to have some fun. Not the Audrey Hepburn zipping about Rome kind of fun that a scooter can offer, but the kind of fun only a motorcycle can bring: changing up through the gears, feeling the engine come alive, judging a bend well, leaving the cars way behind.
I didn’t consciously think any of that before I nabbed Steve’s bike – I just knew I needed it. And I was right. The weather was pretty horrible, with the fog sometimes freezing and visibility poor in places, but the roads were quiet and not slippery. And I really enjoyed the ride, which took me via Banbury, Stratford, ?Worcester? and blah, using the A43, B4525, A422, A46, M5 and M50.
Meeting up there with Paddy Tyson and Nich Brown from Overland magazine and the Motorcycle Action Group, who’d travelled by Suzuki Bandit and Yamaha Tenere, we all had a quick moan about car drivers not using their lights and about potholes, but we were all warm enough, dry enough and exhilarated enough to all be very glad we’d travelled by motorcycle.
That’s not to put down the benefits of a scooter. But a scooter can’t bring the same pleasure as a bike, or at least a Yamaha 250 scooter can’t. Soon we’ll be riding the bigger-engined new Yamaha T-Max, reviewed with enthusiasm (up to a point) by Jon Urry in our April issue, and the intriguing BMW C600/650. And then there’s the Honda Integra and the Aprilia SRV850, both of which look like they might close the gap between scooter and bike like never before.
Colin Overland
