How to fall off a motorcycle – Gracefully? The ups AND DOWNS of motorcycle travel!

It had to happen eventually but why did it have to be so public?

Hello and welcome to the Great British Biking Adventures Coast Series. In this series we are travelling around the coast on our motorcycle, a Honda VFR1200X Crosstourer.

A lot of our viewers are bike enthusiasts but this series will appeal to a wider audience. Why? Because there’s so much more to the Coast series than motorcycles. There’s the challenges, the journey, geography, history and people. You get to travel the entire coast of England and Wales with us, see how we did it, share our ups and downs, experience English culture, the history and hear about the people that made Britain ‘Great’!

What’s also good about the coast series is it doesn’t matter when you start watching, it’s like one of those open top bus tours – you can get on at any point and just keep going until you arrive back where you started.

Who are we? We’re a husband & wife living in an unremarkable coastal town in England. We’ve been married 35 years and were brought together by motorcycles. One day, Esther’s Honda Melody broke down and she brought it to Jarrod’s motorcycle shop – the rest (as they say) is history.

One cold February day, we started riding along the seafront and just kept going. We wanted to record the experience to have something to watch in the future – the YouTube channel was an afterthought. Take a look at those first few episodes to see just how novice we were, cobbling together what little phone footage we had to try to make a story. To make up for our amateur recording and shyness we added information in the editing. This set the tone and style of our videos, we hope you like it. We like to think we’ve improved and hopefully you’ll agree, take a look, compare our earlier videos with the later ones and let us know in the comments.

There’s also the filming and production journey. When we started we knew nothing about filming, video and audio production, editing, YouTube and the like. We’ve learnt loads and spent loads in time and money along the way but it’s been almost as enjoyable as the journey itself. You’ll hopefully appreciate how far we’ve come.

But what’s with all those bible verses we hear you say. We know some of you don’t appreciate this aspect, one or two have told us in the comments! That’s fine – it really is. All are equally welcome here, believers and unbelievers. It would be a pity if you enjoyed everything else but just stopped watching because of the Christian references but we completely accept you’re free to do as you please.

Our faith has prompted us to include a bible verse in our videos and sometimes a Christian perspective on the things we talk about. The channel is not about Christianity but our faith cannot be separated from it. We hope and pray that it will make you think, inquire and even bring you into a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ.

What a road yeah absolutely who needs the Pyrenees exactly wow if you’re new here we’re traveling the coastline of England and Wales on our Honda VFR 1200X Cross Tour we finished the last video climbing out of oran’s gorge on this gorgeous road to hear more about it and the

Interesting Village at the bottom of this Steep Hill check out last week’s episode we’re in Wales on the Linn Peninsula a place we’ve never visited before we’re hoping to get around the peninsula in this episode our satnav says it would take 2 and 1/2 hours but if you’ve been following us you’ll know

How unreliable our timings have been stick with us to find out why it took a lot longer at the end of last week’s episode we spoke with a local man Ian who has become one of our regular viewers he was explaining the Welsh tradition of ice stford we didn’t plan or realize we

Would be here during the week it was chosen to host the 2023 I stedford I know it’s a lame excuse but unfortunately our schedule didn’t allow time for us to visit but we still experienced one of the quirks of I stford tradition as we entered the Lin Peninsula we couldn’t help noticing the

Abundance of roadside signs Flags mannequins and all manner of homemade paraphernalia promoting I stford the time and effort put into making and displaying all of this gives an indication of just how important the festival is to the Welsh as you may know I’m not afraid to tackle Britain’s sensitive and complex

Cultural and historical Traditions but I might just be biting off more than I can chew trying to explain I stford especially as an Englishman nevertheless here goes it is clearly more than just Arts Festival it’s a unique cultural institution in short it’s being described as a Renaissance Fair a Celtic

Festival a music festival a literary festival and the Supreme exhibition of the Welsh culture the term I stford means sitting together and essentially it’s a gathering where people peacefully compete in the composition recital and performance of Pros poetry singing and playing music the first documented incidence of I

Stford took place at cardigan Castle in 1176 however with the Edwardian conquest of Wales the closing of the bardic schools and the anglicization of the Welsh nobility it fell into a Bance the current format owes much to an 18th century Revival help Along by the gore said kumry a secret society of poets writers and musicians whose beliefs were a compound of Christianity druidism philosophy and mysticism despite the druidic influences the I stedford Revival was embraced and spread widely by the church their

Efforts proved enormously successful and is credited as one of the primary reasons for the continued survival of the Welsh language literature and culture eight centuries after Edward I’s conquest of Wales the iead fod is steeped in strict rules rituals and etiquette that has been likened to tolkin Lord of the

Rings there I hope I’ve done it some justice in the short time available but please let us know in the comments if I’ve missed or got anything wrong yeah have a there on right f it it’s impossible to explore the British Coastline without encountering some steep climbs but there are regions that

Have more than others we can now say the southwest and Wales are in another League not only in the number of steep roads but the gradients this one looks steep even through the wide angle of the GoPro lens that normally flattens the image it was not only steep but the

Corners were tight and very close together however this is nothing compared to what’s ahead in the next episode we find ourselves unexpectedly heading for a 40% gradient and unable to bail out our Turning Point well there cars beach oh yeah yeah okay yeah yeah cool yeah I know it’s difficult on a

Bike cuz of the slope you fing yeah yeah we are give us away a few moments later yeah we want a good run run up don’t we yeah we are but we got we got to get a good run up okay cuz we so you carry on is fine we got to

Make sure it’s clear cuz we can’t stop on the corner on the hill he’s of go Yeah than thank You That’s right you stop there yeah we we did the worst didn’t we I think that was worth popping down too lovely little bed I completely agree we plan our routes in advance using Google Maps I’ve done a whole video on how you can use way markers to force it to accept unconventional routes

Google Maps is supposed to be able to work offline but that’s not always the case also it can’t cope with more than 10 Way markers and so we have to stop and load the next route nothing behind three oh even though we’ve downloaded the maps for offline use Google will often not load

The next route without an internet connection so yeah cuz this doesn’t take us straight to our but I think what we’ll I’ll end up doing is just picking up a a sign and following my nose when they do get there cuz I’m not sure the

Next map will load I think we’ve got one more left in 20 minutes to get to it there’s probably a better way to do it let us know in the comments what if anything you use L go do you remember Yeahs and Beach campsite and Beach this

Way okay it’s it’s sending us this way Oh private no public right of way admission for the beach oh vehicles and pedestrians P station motorbike motorbikes uh £22 okay you got a couple of quid on you so we’ve had to pay £2 to come through the farm to get ourselves to this beach so we’ll see what it’s all about

Around this corner looks like there’s camping [Applause] that is a beautiful beach It’s A it off going to a home My w we go oh we’re riding a fully loaded Honda cross tourer it has a 1200 cc V4 engine and is fantastic for munching road miles looking at it you may think it has some off-road capability but I expect many of you are shaking your heads right now and

Let’s be honest you’re right but that doesn’t stop us from having a go when the opportunity presents itself as it did on this day having already planned our route we discovered a byway open to all traffic that went right through the middle of a golf

Course yeah I think it is that road I think can you see on the map coming to the other end of it there’s your way marker out there look to the left isn’t it yeah and I think that that’s the road ah we just come up from might just take

A quick look down it yeah we missed the first turn to drop down from the road we were on but couldn’t help ourselves taking a look and seeing if we could get to it from the other end the road just here on the road we were already running late and I

Had just been stung by a wasp shortly beforehand also it was busy with golfers and Walkers I was reluctant and almost decided against it until I saw a car emerge from the lane I just had to give it a go wonder if it is a byway it’s not go

Club approach see it’s not stopping anybody there’s a car coming towards us there you see so does it swing back around to the left I think the be I think it’s a road does it say no entry or golfers only no it doesn’t it doesn’t say no

Vehicles it’s open car is coming this way H he look local y I’ve been riding motorcycles for over 40 years and have done a fair bit of green laning even on the cross tour the path itself looked straight forward but I quickly realized it was a lot more

Difficult than it looked the puddles concealed some really quite deep rcks and poth holes I pressed on but as you’ll he I quickly started to have some reservations about my decision I’ve probably biged up what happens next it caused more embarrassment than damage to either us

Or the bike we’ve decided to include it because it’s all part of the adventure The Good the Bad and the Ugly as they say enjoy and learn the lessons at our expense I think they just find themselves in a by way going through their land but we’re going in the wrong

Direction when we are had we picked it up properly to begin with though we wouldn’t be oh I see what you mean this is the road that you said I found a road I found this a lane I said yes I’ve seen that and I spent ages looking at it and

Thought it goes for a golf club and I think I Ruled at eight so we got to turn around and go through it again well I might just Lo rain but we yeah we may have to turn around come back yeah I mean if I hadn’t been for seeing

That car coming through I wouldn’t have done it but yeah no I’m I’m on the verge of bailing out here because I don’t really know which way and look at your map oh I don’t know my map’s dying this but it says do a little triangle here

You can do a triangle you can go straight on and come back around can you okay all right okay sorry thank you for that yeah oh lift your bum up I think it goes both ways In fairness except that’s a bit of a big one really I don’t want to get wet feet

Okay you’re on the lead and I can’t grab it okay go around the other side and get the stand get the side stand down and come back this side you come back this side I’m going to try and hold it I don’t really want to use the side Stone

Okay hold it there yeah I got it I got It all right everything’s all right three Oh okay right let’s see now little bit of mud on a few bags and I think that’s it so it didn’t actually go all the way it just leaned into the bank didn’t it yeah which was okay wow that’s are stung on the lips falling off the bike yes Lord help us to

Overcome yeah well we have overcome we thank you for that just pray you’ll keep us safe Lord thank you that we weren’t hurt the bike wasn’t hurt yeah not even the case was damaged or scratched obviously it would have lent on the case yeah but with such slow speed yeah

Yeah we’re on our sides as well w we yeah we went down on the ground definitely I was a bit worried at that point the the bike was landing on me and then I thought no it’s okay cuz it will rest on the box the box in the bag yeah

So it’s quite good for that point of view oh yeah yeah but that’s the first time I think isn’t it that’s first time yeah we can laugh out now but at the time it’s always a little bit concerning what’s happened to the bike or yourself trying to take a very tight

Turn yeah on a very Stony quite slopy as well it was yeah and into water well you couldn’t see what was underneath and as it transpired there was quite a bit of um it was very gravity underneath and that’s what we hit but our will turning we hit that gravel didn’t we

Yeah and it just didn’t want to go in the direction it should have gone on but it’s all good and we we could spend all week on this particular section because it’s taken us about 5 hours to do 2 hours so on our route plan it was a 2hour journey

And we left at what time 7 this morning yeah yeah good we completed yeah we completed that 2 hours about an hour ago which was about 1:00 7 8 9 10 11 12 1 6 nearly yeah probably nearly 6 hours so yeah we’ve got some great footage including us falling

Off lovely Little Harbor in Abck WoW golly that looks like you’re abroad yeah that’s what I was Thinking [Applause] So we had to take a detour because the road was closed by the police and everybody has had to come this way and basically it’s ridiculous a few minutes later there’s a whole lot reversing crazy is it a few inches later so yeah what an eventful day a little

Later well it’s unusual for us and a motorbike to be stuck in traffic yeah but even we’re too wide it’s just too narrow is it yeah they shouldn’t have diverted them this this way much later no I think at this point we might just let these two go by I

Think we go this way much much later I don’t think turning around is going to do anything need to get back on that main road much much much later why do we do it well I ask myself that why do I do it with Jared I could just be at home reading a

Book and crochet you could be doing it on your own that would be no fun though eh the right answer this way 40% 40 oh my goodness lordy Lordy