I've come here today on the Royal Enfield classic 350.
and I'm going to tell you in this video why I think it's one of the best back road new
motorcycles in the world today
it's a very beautiful looking motorcycle and it doesn't look at all out of place in this
stunning landscape and the classic looks and the style go beautifully with anything that
is equally as beautiful I've taken my time getting to this spot today a couple of hours
of riding just enjoying the beautiful scenery looking left looking right stopping here stopping
there and this is the perfect bike to do that on you see this bike doesn't have tons of
torque and power but that's what makes it such a good back road bike because when you've
got a very powerful motorcycle you're always holding back that power so when you're riding
on the little narrow Lanes where you don't know what's around the next Bend or over the
next brow it makes riding those sort of Roads very unpleasant sometimes but on this you
can forget about all that and just look at the scenery enjoy every mile
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this 350 cc single cylinder engine produces 21 brake horsepower at 6100 RPM 27 newton
meters or 20 foot pounds of torque at 4000 RPM and on paper that doesn't sound very much
at all does it but in the real world it's perfectly okay and for the back road riding
it's absolutely all you need
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I've purposely taken this bike up some very steep hills to test how much torque it has
and whether in the real world someone with significant weight can get up a hill and it
can it pulls up the hills very nicely indeed first gear second gear uh on the hills and
I'm talking Hills like that it won't accelerate or power up like a bigger capacity bike but
it will certainly pull its way up and not bog down so you don't need to worry about
that at all
the views aren't they magnificent today I'm in the snowdonia national park in Wales and
it's a beautiful place so I'd highly recommend you come here to explore if you like these
sort of Roads the weather today is a little bit showery it's one of those days where you're
going to get showers but you don't know where unfortunately on the way here I was caught
in a bit of a downpour um but that gave me a chance to test the mud guards and I've talked
about that in many videos but these beautiful classic mud guards that cover the whole wheel
like that are so practical not only I think they look very nice indeed I really do like
them but the bike after riding through uh Mucky roads in the wet is pretty clean to
be honest they do function very well and a lot of modern bikes need to take note of that
because function is very important as well as design and these old-fashioned mud guards
they got it right in the 60s and they're right now this bike as you see it it's 4619 pounds
brand new in the UK and obviously check the prices in your country but that's a cheap
bike isn't it you can find a very decent second hand Classic Bike for at least that amount
of money if it's been restored or more far more so it really does hold its own and if
you took this bike to a classic motorcycle meet and people were walking around they would
look at it and say wow that's a lovely bike and people would think it's from the 1960s
because it looks like that this is really a classic motorcycle that's just got enough
modern technology to make it reliable in the real world and it feels like riding a proper
Classic Bike the exhaust sounds really lovely it makes a lovely tone um I was thinking before
I got back on it I hadn't ridden it for for over a year um you know you could change the
exhaust pipe and get a louder pipe but actually it sounds quite loud perfectly loud enough
to be honest
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if I do have one criticism of this bike it's the throttle is a little bit uh delayed so
on and off so if you throttle off it then does it if you throttle on it does it it's
a sort of Split Second between you doing it and the bike reacting to it and in a situation
where you'll come around a bend and there's something there and you throttle off and for
a moment the bike's still pulling that can be a little disconcerting now that's probably
down to mapping because they have to get it through all these EU tests and what have you
I'm sure they could make it not do that but I'm pretty sure that's the reason why so if
you've got one of these and you had that problem that I mentioned with the throttle on and
off tell me if you manage to solve it
when you come somewhere like this you don't want to be worrying about running out of fuel
and this bike is so economical it does 107 miles per gallon that's UK miles per gallon
or 89 USA miles per gallon so you can go a long way between Phillips there aren't really
many motorbikes you can buy today brand new that look this classic let's go through the
bike from front to back like I said you've got these beautifully functional mud guards
that work very well lovely spoked wheels disc brakes that work perfectly fine for a bike
like this you've got a very classic designed headlamp with a little cap there to to our
guests to reflect some of the light back down to the road and you've got a lovely instrument
to analog speedometer there with a few functional bits and pieces in there very nice looking
lovely tank full of petrol that's what you need not electricity uh beautiful exhaust
pipe the catalytic converter is hidden behind that single cylinder engine beautifully made
beautiful beautiful design beautiful casings all shiny all lovely a little panel you can
open at the side there to get to your battery and bits and pieces either side once the air
filter ones the battery and the electrics uh it's got twin shock suspension a couple
of grab handles there a rear seat which can be removed Nice metal rear mud guard and a
little frame support there that if you have a bag on the back stop it hitting the wheel
as you go along beautifully designed bike you can get them in all sorts of colors there's
a color for everybody I quite that look at the military ones the signals versions but
the engines are blacked out on that and I love the shiny bits on the engine so for me
I'd go for one of the shiny ones this or the red one it's very very beautiful indeed now
that brings me on to the point that design in the past used to be very much a combination
of practicality and style all in one today um it's a it's apparent to me that people
go to design college or university and they learn how to design but they've never experienced
the practicality side of things so they come up with a crazy design for something whether
it be a motorcycle or a kettle or a cheese grater but they don't really know how to use
one and that shows in their design because these old-fashioned looking bikes function
so well yet they're beautiful at the same time and that's very important and that's
something that is very much lost in today's world
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now I'm becoming very nostalgic lately and for good reason I've seen the world in different
times to what they are now um and people of my generation will understand that I can remember
when you would be in a village in the countryside in my case Danbury in Essex and you'd get
two or three cars going through a day and you'd see the people in The Orchards picking
apples 30 people picking apples putting them into beautiful wooden boxes and taking them
off and you'd have Mrs Smith's shop on the green and people would go in there and buy
their things they weren't supermarkets in those days I can remember that just about
when I was a kid and now everything is press a button and instant results and that's a
shame in a way because the world was different it was more laid back there were less people
it was quieter it was prettier and unless you've come from the past like I have and
I was born in the wrong era I should have been born five or six hundred years ago I
think I'd have been much happier even though there weren't motorbikes but I'd be on a nice
horse
times are changing and I think you would probably agree not for the better no there's a few
drops of rain in the air now these clouds are quite dark I was hoping that they wouldn't
drop any rain but it looks like they're going to but while I stand here and talk about the
motorbike there's this red kite bird of prey swooping around it's incredible to watch where
it flies and just changes Direction almost goes upside down when it changes Direction
just beautiful when you've finished watching this video have a look back at my first review
I did of this bike about a year and three or four months ago I loved it then and I love
it now it really is a brilliant bike it's so different from the normal modern bikes
that you get today and I think all the better for it it's beautiful it's stylish sounds
really nice it goes beautifully it's the perfect backroad bike for exploring the world getting
off the motorways and it's brilliant it will go on the motorways it will do 70 miles an
hour to push 75 and but it's not a bike that you want to be caning it down the motorways
crunching miles and miles of course you can if I was going to take this on a long journey
to go somewhere like this and I didn't live so nearby yeah I'd go on the motorway but
I would sort of cruise at 60 miles an hour and take my time and stop off here and there
when I felt like it it's not about you want to Crunch the miles on um but on a bike like
this you have to change your mentality you know it's not super powerful and super fast
so you make allowances for that and you ride it differently and once you've got that mindset
you'll really understand what this bike is all about and it is fantastic
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