HONDA’S TOO EASY TO RIDE ON THE LIMIT

The previous version of the Honda NC750X was designed as a sort of commuter adventure bike.

Naturally. The adventurous commuter has long been ill-served by motorcycle manufacturers, and I had a rather adventurous moment on this when I was overtaking a disturbingly orange Ford Focus with a lorry coming the other way. The rev limiter cut in with a vengeance at about 7,000rpm. It was as if someone had thrown an anchor out, and I squeezed back into the left lane with inches to spare.

As a result, the first thing I did with the new version was check when the rev limiter cut in. The answer was 7,500rpm, which was at least 500rpm higher.

Apart from that, the changes are mainly a bit more power and ride-by-wire throttle, which means you can have four riding modes, namely Rain, Standard, Sport and User for bespoke tweaking.

In Standard, progress is perky not astonishing, as you’d expect with 58bhp and 214kg of bike, although it is significantly lighter than the previous 229kg version.

The problem is that the engine doesn’t really get going until 4,000rpm, picks up a bit more at five then six grand, and makes maximum power at 6,750rpm. And with the rev limiter throwing its toys out of the pram at 7,500rpm, that leaves you a very small window for things like overtaking bright orange Fords.

As a result of all this, passing anything on the open road needs to be fairly finely judged. The good news is that thanks to the riding position, low seat height, wide bars and relatively lightweight handling, it’s a joyful marriage of delicacy and instinct.

Right, time to try Sport mode, which gives the power delivery and engine braking a shot in the arm, holds on to the revs longer in each gear and reduces the traction control.

Now that was more like it. Until I completely failed to work out where to put the fuel in – where the tank normally is had been replaced by a luggage compartment big enough for a full face helmet.

After some head scratching, I rode back and asked Kieran at the dealers. “Under the back seat,” he said. Of course it was. Where else would it be?

How I made it from India to Belfast, Chile to Alaska, around Australia and around the world is a mystery to me at times.