And I would ride 500 miles…

RFollowing on from last month’s 4000-mile test, I thought I’d further bother the Blade with a 500-mile winter day. And still it excelled…

IDING 500 MILES IN A DAY on a modern sportsbike in winter is no big deal (except perhaps on the latest R1, which is bloody uncomfortable). But it usually throws up a few strengths and weaknesses. Here are the findings of my 500-mile Blade day. There’s a lot of practical goodness going on. The battery, for example, is easy to get to, should you wish to plumb in heated clothing and/or a sat nav power feed for your trip (as I did). Oddly, you don’t even need the ignition key – just undo two allen bolts and the seat comes off. There are enough places to strap luggage to, the fuel range at 85mph is 160 miles and the electronics are so easy to use, that you actually do. The riding position is remarkably civilised for motorway cruising. Sitting with straight arms lifts your head and – depending how tall you are – the tops of your shoulders into the breeze, providing enough support to take weight off your wrists. At 6ft I found the wind pressure on my lid at 85mph let me relax my neck muscles almost completely. The pegs are high, but not absurdly so. At the end of 250 motorway miles with just one petrol stop I had no neck ache. Towns are another matter though – without the breeze my neck was agony after 20 minutes. Once you’ve cleaned the bike a few times and taken off a couple of fairing panels, you get a sense of invincibility about the Blade that’s reassuring on a long trip, particularly towards the end when you’re lost, it’s cold, dark and has just started sleeting and you could really do with nothing else going wrong. Everything on the Blade is just so well put together. A few months back I doused one side of the engine in an anti-corrosion brew as an experiment, to see if the bolts on the other side would corrode. While doing it I suspected it was futile – even the most hidden fasteners were either stainless or had what looked like heavy-duty plating. Sure enough, I found no corrosion three months later. And when I removed the tank cover to route the sat nav lead I spent a good five minutes marvelling at the way Honda had fitted a rotary steering damper into no space at all. There’s a lot of thought gone into this bike. One mate in the market for a sportsbike put it like this: ‘I’d rather pay a little extra for the Blade’s build quality than the supposedly faster lap time you might get from a Suzuki or Kawasaki.’ Also, in 4000 miles, the Blade used no oil.

‘I’d rather pay extra for the Blade’s build quality than the faster lap time you might get from a Suzuki’