Hello
In the past month I’ve done perfect laps of Cadwell Park on a yellow Ducati SPS, nailing the tricky blind apex at Charlie’s corner for maximum drive onto the straight. I’ve blasted over sand dunes in Morocco on a Husqvarna , my off-road skills having received a miraculous injection of talent. There have been amazing rides on empty Alpine passes, sun kissed tours in Scotland, frantic (but error free) TT circuit laps and humongous third gear wheelies that went on forever. And I’ve also acquired several more bikes: in the last hours alone I’ve bought a Triumph Rocket ; Aprilia V Factory; Yamaha XSR and a 50cc Derbi race bike. Amazingly there’s still plenty of room in the garage for more.
Well, we can still dream. Anyone who’s witnessed my riding skills will know that fast laps and third gear wheelies are pure fantasy, but that trip to Scotland will happen (though maybe I’m being optimistic about the sun), at some point events will start up again and we can reward ourselves by buying new bikes too.
In these strange times we’ve tried to make Bike an oasis of escape and calm, but without being able to ride it’s been a challenge – all the action photography in this issue was done before lock down. Still, we’ve been looking for an excuse to revisit the back catalogue of features for ages and this is the ideal time to remember the Suzuki RGV and Tim Thompson’s road test from . It’s on page , and if there’s a past feature that you’d like to see again then write and tell us, we’ll run one a month until we can get out on bikes again. And keep sending T-shirt stories and other mail too. With no face-to-face conversations happening, your correspondence has helped shape this issue more than ever.
A final apology. The Post O¡ce have stopped Saturday deliveries which means subscriber issues arriving two days later than we’d like. We’re trying to fix this by moving print slots, but as you’d expect, it’s not simple. And a subscription is still the best way to get your magazine every month. Enjoy the issue.