Popped over to South Queensferry to pick up my bike from George. No problems encountered, so now I have the R1100RS serviced for the year and also fitted with new suspension and heated grips.

The new suspension is superb, and as the weather improves I expect to be able to try it out more. It already feels less harsh but also less bumpy. I saved up for them for a while and ordered a set of uprated units through Tim Rose of T.R. Engineering from a company in France called EMC Suspensions. The units come with blue springs as standard, but for a small charge can have practically any colour you want. Blue is fine for my bike, so I got the springs and dampers set to cope with my weight (xxl).

And heated grips are usually part and parcel of BMW bikes, but for some reason my bike just had the switch. After a few months of trying the switch at different settings and thinking how dumb I was not to notice the difference, I had the fairing off and there was the connector for the wiring cable-tied to the loom but not connected to the further wire to the grips. And right enough, the bar-end weights didn’t have the cutouts for the wires of the heated grips. Saving up again I forked out for the BMW retrofit kit from Motorworks and George fitted these for me too. Thankfully the bars themselves were the correct type with a hole through the centre of the casting to accept the wires, and I now have new grips and bar end weights etc. And they are excellent, I now have a proper BMW with touring kit and nice warm hands behind the GS handguards.

And I took the long way home from South Queensferry, via Linlithgow, twice…