KTM 790 Adventure R hits the dirt and Ducati’s Scrambler Café Racer makes new friends
KTM lives up to all the hype as the trails in Wales get rough
The start of every year is always filled with the high expectation of rides, adventures and quality time on your bike. But life is also often so busy it’s too easy for the summer months to drift past leaving you suddenly staring down the barrel of a UK winter without having achieved the plans made so exuberantly months earlier.
With over 12,000 miles covered on the 790 R since its arrival at the end of March there has undoubtedly been plenty of time in the saddle, but with many of those spent in motorway monotony they haven’t all been the ‘big smile’ miles hoped for.
So, feeling that winter was edging ever nearer, I managed to engineer some time to make a trip to Wales – destination Snowdonia in a bid to ride the 790 R as its creators intended. With the bike’s Bumot Defender Evo panniers (£949 including racks www.adventurebikeshop.co.uk) fitted and packed I hooked up with guys at ridethewild.co.uk who offer bespoke rides throughout Snowdonia whatever your level, whatever your bike.
It was also a day of reckoning for the 790R. Having been on the original press launch of the bike in Morocco I’d already had the chance to ride it hard, but riding super-fast wide-open pistes and sand dunes under the blazing sun of North Africa is a world apart from sodden Welsh tracks, ruts and rocks under a greasy autumn sky.
There is no getting away from the fact that the KTM is a tall bike. Its 880mm seat height combined with my 32in (812mm) inside leg means I can get my feet on the ground – but not always fully planted. That’s nothing new to me having ridden plenty of big adventure bikes but what makes it less of a problem on the 790 R is the balance of the bike with its low-slung fuel tanks lowering the centre of gravity and making it feel incredibly manoeuvrable and agile even at low speed.
But where the 790 R really excels is the moment you stand up. KTM’s off-road pedigree runs deep and the 790’s riding position is unique among its adventure bike peers. High foot pegs and compact ergonomics mean the distance from the front of the seat to the headstock feels short. This in turn means that, when standing up, you inevitably get a lot of weight over the front of the bike which is key to its off-road strength. Being able to feel what the front tyre is doing because it’s loaded by the rider’s bodyweight makes such a difference and enables accurate steering and the added benefit of the front-end feeling planted even if scaling a rocky climb or negotiating a never-ending rut.
We got lucky with the weather. Yes, we got wet, but the rain was simply part of the day and easy to forget the moment the sun appeared to reveal the beauty of Snowdonia and the joys of riding in the UK.