Cotswolds and Oxon Loop II - 4-6th August 2017

First topic message reminder :

After the success of last year's ride-out, we're doing it again this year from Friday 4th August to Sunday the 6th.  

Basing ourselves again at the Holt Hotel on the crossroads of the B4030 and the A4260 near Steeple Aston. There are other accommodation options available, B&B's from about a mile away and a  camp-site about 4 miles away, ask if you'd like to explore these options.
Meet at The Holt from Friday evening for those staying over, those close by who would like to join for the day's ride-out are most welcome and can join us in the hotel car park Saturday morning. Conveniently there is a petrol station opposite the hotel.


The price of the hotel (per person per night) BB: £40, all the rooms reserved have a double bed

To book your place, please call the hotel 01869 340 259 and mention Raymond's Thundercat motorcycle group booking, if you can also post here so we can update the master list. Hotel is full - sorry.

Hope you can join us

Questions and discussions are welcome in this thread.

Confirming for the ride out only. Looking forward to it

Have a safe & great weekend, i will be thinking of you all while having a beer on the beach or by the pool.

Paul

Had a blast last year.
Couldn't make it this time round.

Have a good one guys and gals.

Cheers
Rosco

Enjoyable days riding, just on 300km. Mostly dodged the storms! Well led Bob!

Many thanks to all who came along - it made the preparation worthwhile. And good to meet some new (to me) faces. I hope everyone got home safe and dry.

Lots of piccies on Facebook if anyone's interested, though I've not yet seen the now-traditional group shot at Broadway Tower - hope it came out OK. That will have to be a compulsory stop on all future runs, which is no hardship - it's one of my all-time favourite views.

Shame the AV8 Café at Cotswold Airport was closed (no water, which was a bit ironic considering the weather!) But at least there were a few little toys there to keep Radar happy. And weather-wise we were quite lucky, managing to steer a course between the worst of the showers - thanks to SteveCat who suffered by keeping his waterproofs on, even after the sun came out, to keep the rain away. Most of the roads were in fact dry, though there was enough wet muck in places to coat the back end of the bike, so a quick rinse-over is this morning's main job.

Here's to next year!

A big thanks to those who came on the ride, even if it was just to have breakie and Tea! Thank you Bob for the route prep and leading us.

I'm pleased the weather pretty much played ball for us, looks like the timing was superb (or me keeping my wet gear on!). Bike's a bit mucky, but it's going to bed like that.

I gave the bike a hose down today to get rid of the worst. I checked the rear tyre when I was re-lubing the chain just now, and pulled out a small but sharp flint. There was no immediate danger of it going right through - it's a fairly new tyre with plenty of meat on it - but I'd rather not leave it there in case it eventually worked its way through. I can't be sure it was from yesterday's ride, but it's just those damp conditions on gravelly back roads that are most likely to have been the source. So if you have a few minutes, it might be worth checking yours.

Incidentally, the tyre, a Dunlop Roadsmart 2, is looking in very good shape after nearly 2500 miles. The original D214 only lasted just over 4000, and this should possibly even double that. Admittedly it has a less pointy profile, which must help to spread the wear over a larger area. It does also noticeably slow the handling - but actually that's not such a bad thing as the original suspension on the MT-09 is too easily disturbed by bumps, so a bit of stability is quite welcome. I recently changed to a Roadsmart on the front as well, because the old D214 was wearing on the shoulders and getting too "pointy", making the bike "tramline" in the wet - not pleasant. I've had good experiences of Roadsmarts in the past on the Fazer 6, but obviously the MT-09 has rather more tyre-shredding grunt, so we'll see how they go in the long term.

Thanks Bob, I've taken to checking mine lately and quite often do find the critters lurking in the tread. There was plenty of opportunity for them to adopt a tyre this weekend.

The slow handling is something many 09 owners report they find with the Michelin Pilot Road's too, quite a number have gone Metzler 01. I know a few people with the same model as yours and went Angel's but didn't stay with them. I'm not aware of many Tracer owners buying Roadsmarts, if they do they are keeping quiet about it. The mass hysterical power of the internet has everyone believing the original tyre is the worst possible and as the closet replacement is a Roadsmart so they must be rubbish too! I'm sure most of the keyboard warriors weren't riding when they were all genuinely terrible tyres.  

It's all about confidence in the tyre irrespective of what brand is stamped on the side-wall.
You ought to get more mileage out of the replacement tyres, I found the Tracer tyre life far lower than an after market, purely because there was less rubber in the factory fitted.  A bit like some ink-jet printers, give enough ink to print a few pages and then hold you to ransom buying the full cartridge costing nearly as much as the printer!