watch out in my recent review of this Royal Enfield classic 350. I said that I think it's
one of if not the best back road motorcycle you can buy and most people agreed with me
but a few people didn't of course I'm right but I decided to put the theory to the test and I
rode this bike and that bike on exactly the same road one day this bike one day The Next Bite to
see if my theory is right or wrong but not only that I actually rode the BMW r18 on exactly the
same route as well and you might be surprised at what I found out first of all let's define what we
mean by back roads now back roads are obviously those little country lanes off the Beaten Track
little narrow roads windy undulating blind brows blind bends detritus on the road now detritus is
the official term for gravel and stuff that's left on the road surface and you get that a
lot in this country uh mainly because capsules don't think it's their job to clean it up but
you encounter all those sorts of things potholes little streets even in pretty Villages and towns
those little narrow roads that you can get through on a motorcycle uh fairly easily so the back roads
are what we're talking about in this video by the very nature of Back Road riding you're not
going to be traveling at very high speeds we're talking about 10 miles an hour 20 miles an hour
maybe up to 50 miles an hour on a straight bit of road but generally you can't see over the
next brow or corner and the road surfaces can be really appalling and take you by surprise so you
tend to be poodleing along at lower speeds and my theory was that a bike like this with that
low power is much more manageable and enjoyable at riding the back roads on my test that proved
to be the case it was wonderful you don't have to worry about all that power you're not holding
much back so when you've got a more powerful motorcycle like the t120 for instance as it's here
it's got a lot more power so if you open the throttle it will be moving extremely fast in
no time at all whereas this it won't of course now yes you can ride this on the back roads I've
ridden the Triumph Speed Triple on little back roads I've ridden Harley Davidson's on little
back roads I've ridden the KTM Super Duke or little back roads as well as other roads
so I do talk from experience here and my findings were that the lower powered bike
something like this it doesn't have to be this but this makes a very good example they're just
so easy to ride and so forgiving that you're less likely to get yourself into difficulties
and you can enjoy the ride and enjoy the view much more than when you're trying to hold back
a lot more power on the very same roads on this triumph t120 which you would describe
as a mid-powered bike a high-powered bike would be the Honda fire blades the Superbikes the KTM Dukes
um the Triumph Speed triples that sort of bike with tons and tons of power this is a mid-powered
bike and at lower RPM it will poodle along but it's not so happy at 2000 RPM which is about the
RPM you'd be doing on some of these very narrow little back roads as that is that's much more
happy and much easier and much more forgiving than this is and of course if you let the revs build on
this it starts to accelerate much more quickly than that does and whilst in a lot of situations
that can be and is very enjoyable sometimes less is more and really I do think that this still
makes the better back road bike for those reasons now I don't know about you but if you're riding
along somewhere pretty you tend to sort of be in your mind in your thoughts you're looking around
at the beautiful views and you're not going fast but you can get caught out you can hit a
pothole that you didn't see you can get into the rough gravel in the middle of the road and find
yourself in a bit of a situation and I actually did that on this and on this but more so on this
I found and when you're in that situation you could be thinking about the view you go along
you're coming up to a corner and there's detritus in the middle of the road and you suddenly imagine
gosh if there was a car coming I wouldn't be able to break because I'm in this Gravelly bit
and it makes you think concentrate concentrate on what you're doing before I go any further um
probably get people commenting who haven't watched the whole video saying oh you're all
saying that back's not as good as this but this this bike is amazing absolutely amazing and the
better bike if you perhaps want to go further longer distances at faster speeds it accelerates
better it's faster top speed et cetera It's a Wonderful motorcycle and of course it will do
the back roads as well but if your main aim in getting a motorcycle is to explore the little
back roads then this is really a better option and that's the better all rounder
it just so happens that I was watching a video yesterday on YouTube
a chap on a BMW GS adventure bike was riding the very same road that I rode these two bikes on and
he came along and found himself in the middle of the road on the detritus that Gravelly stuff
and obviously couldn't break so he came off onto the side of the road and he then crashed the bike
as he tried to get back onto the road perhaps he could have stayed off on the side of the
road and tried to stop but in a split second you don't always have that benefit of time to think
and that's another reason why this bike being low powered low to the ground easy handling would make
the perfect backroad bike because Adventure bikes are very top heavy and very tall and very big and
very cumbersome and not always the best in those sort of situations let's try and help get that
point across with a little analogy think of this like a really good quality walking boot a very
comfortable very supportive boot that you put on and you can walk all day from Miles and Miles very
comfortably very happily this is your trainer you can run in it it's got a bouncier soul more spring
but perhaps for walking it's not quite as comfortable and then you could have the other
end of the scale with your KTM dukes and your speed triples and your fire blades those sort
of bikes that's your running shoe with spikes and you could go for a walk with your spikes
but you wouldn't be very happy in your spikes you'd be much better in your nice comfortable
walking boot so that's what this bike is it's the walking boot of motorcycles that brings me
on nicely to the BMW re team which I rode on the very same back roads as these two bikes
and one thing you need to understand with the r18 and the same applies to the Harley-Davidsons the
big Cruisers uh the Milwaukee engines and the engines before that the 110 the 103 they have
immense talk at low RPM and they're very very happy burbling along at low RPM you've got like
and they love it they can go on all day like that and that makes a very enjoyable ride on
the back roads because they don't need to rev uh to be enjoyable and you you're using that torque
of course if you open it up you've got immense talk and it's huge but all that talk is at the
lower end and as the revs build it sort of tails off slightly and you don't get that surge your
immediate surges at the beginning and that's more controllable whereas a bike like this and a much
more powerful bike named the bike anything more powerful at low RPM they will go along and the
power if you looked at the power on The Talk curve it's very low it's not giving out much power at
two thousand two and a half thousand RPM as you hold the throttle open the revs build and you get
that sort of feeling where it all comes in later in the Rev range and that's what perhaps makes a
less enjoyable backroad bike because once you're in that High Rev range it's not where you want
to be we're on the little windy roads where you don't know what's going to be around the next Bend
we've got a bike coming hopefully soon fingers crossed that will be a bit of a surprise to all
of you so stay tuned for that if it comes off it's going to be a good one so hopefully if you've been
able to read between the lines in what I'm saying is that it's like the saying horses for courses
you choose the right horse for the course you're riding so if your course is the little back roads
mainly you want the right horse for the job which is this one if you do a multitude of different
things this is your better option if you want to go faster if you want to travel further at higher
speeds and then of course if you want to go mad like Barry Sheen then you'll want something very
fast and if you don't know who Barry Sheen is that shows your age and it shows my age but there we go
that's the purpose of having Different Bikes for different purposes so one isn't better than the
days and I'll miss it it's been a great bike I really do love it the Royal Enfield classic 350 is
staying with us for a few months so we've got lots of videos planned with this bike so stay tuned for
foreign