I've always had a burning passion for riding motorbikes. It started back in my early teens when I got a taste of burning about in farm fields on my friend's dirt bike. He (Booey) upgraded his bike and agreed to sell me his old one for the bargain price of 25 pounds. I lived very close to my Grandad's farm so finding riding terrain was not going to be a big problem, although I would have had to ask his permission to tear up his fields on a noisy bike which he would have been reluctant to agree to, but that was a secondary matter after I got my hands on the machinery. I sold my old Raleigh Burner BMX to raise the funds and agreed an exchange date. At the last minute I learnt that my (so called) friend had taken a far better offer of 75 pounds (without consulting me) and that was the end of that! To this day I wonder what would have happened if I had have got that dirt bike. I would have almost certainly been more into bikes today, but who can say, and I wouldn't change my current life for the world so it was probably fate.
Being *middle aged* now, I regularly have pangs of needing the thrill of explosive two-wheeled horsepower. I have given up counting the number of times that I have asked permission to get a road bike, but Gill keeps batting it down with a common sense argument that they're dangerous and other road-goers can't be fully trusted to give bikers the leeway that they need to be safe. I have been given an amber signal for taking my thrill from off-road riding but there's some logistical challenges to overcome to make that work.
So it was one day when I saw a post by MCN reporting that MCIA were offering 100 lucky riders a chance to experience off-road riding for a day free of charge. After a speedy Internet registration by Gill, we found ourselves booked in and it happened on a fantastic sunny day in September in Northamptonshire. The photos and the video below tell he rest of the story.
This will no doubt lay the foundation for a lifetime of motorbike riding in the future. We're already planning the possibility of buying some second hand bikes next year. Let's see where it takes us! If you want to try a similar day out like this and don't mind paying for it then check out the training schools listed at: http://rideoffroad.co.uk/about.php
By Darrell Grundy - visited on 14 September 2012