A video I shot on my phone at last weekend’s sand racing at Kirkcaldy in Fife, Scotland. The weather was atrocious across the country but it was an excellent event.

The quality of instruction and course content of Level One at Off Road Skills are excellent and I thoroughly recommend it. I would also recommend the R1200GS as the bike of choice but I might be biased because of my size. My hope is finances permitting (I did go and buy a new R1200 GS Adventure this year) that I will be able to do Level One again next year. It is longer than helpful from a learning perspective but we all have to live within the limitations we have.

Things I took away:

• The R1200GS is the easiest bike for me to ride (ok well I haven’t tried the F800GS to properly support that statement).
• Shifting body weight on the pegs is essential for turning off road.
• Keeping my legs straight most of the time cuts down fatigue (and later quad muscle pain).

Things I would like to achieve by going again (and again):

• Not slipping the clutch – just dipping it when needed.
• Being comfortable with counterweighting and the slow speed techniques.
• Relax Relax Relax.
• Better machine control so I can do a complete run of momentum.

I would also thoroughly recommend the package arranged by Motorrad Central  – it is a new idea from them to support the opportunity for their customers to attend the ORS events without the considerable effort to bring ORS to Scotland. The travel and accommodation costs are a given, so being able to share these with others makes great economic sense and also brings the support of a group for the learning experience. I paid £649 which compares favourably to the base cost of Level One with ORS of £479. Big thanks goes in particular to David Brown who both looked after the group on and off road and did all the driving.

Most rider training courses I have looked at are one day, so I used to think the cost of the ORS school was a bit steep. What hadn’t really clicked is that the course has always been two days and in that light makes a bit more sense, even if it is the other end of the country. One thing that reinforced the point that I had chosen well was the multinational mix of attendees, I’m not sure but I think that there were attendees from mainland Europe on the course.

On Monday morning Nicky did a fantastic job of sorting us out for breakfast with a full house of folk (full English breakfast for me again) and got our stuff on and headed to the van. Ross was really proud of his new GS boots which he had got at a cracking price at ORS (they sell end of line surplus BMW off road kit at great prices) and Graeme extolled the virtues of the thinner off road gloves that he had got hold of.

Then it was a quicker process at the venue, sign on, get keys, kit up and off on the bikes. We grouped up just beyond the entrance at the Arena and went straight in to trail riding. For whatever reason the confidence I had at the end of Day 1 had gone, and it was obvious to the others – David and Jonathan could see I was gripping too hard, dropping my shoulders (and view) – all the classic survival / panic stuff. To be honest I don’t know whether it was just plain tiredness or mental fatigue but once the nerves set I struggled to force myself to relax. I think I am still too early in the process of learning this stuff to know a quick technique to settle myself. Given enough time though I will get it.

At some stage on day 2 I managed to fall off – I think I will classify it as a proper “brain fart” when I saw a small ditch to cross and decided that some throttle would be a good idea to shift the weight back on the bike giving the front suspension more travel. That was my train of thought. What happened was I shot forward and fell off. What Simon reported seeing was me getting air and rapidly heading towards a bank, falling off and the GS coming back towards me. I think I must have effectively bunny hopped an R1200GS over a bank. Oops. I went down on my left side and at some stage bashed my knee which later was quite sore and stiff, but otherwise it was just my confidence (and ego) that got bashed.

But before that we did the follow-up to yesterday which was hill recovery. The idea behind this (as demonstrated by Kevin) was to learn the technique of what to do if you get stuck on a hill. Most if not all of the slopes we were riding up were too steep to approach from a standstill, so on this exercise we would ride up the hill, stall the bike, then turn the bike to face downhill so that we could go through the hill start process. As before there is a step by step approach to it that means the bike is kept under control (even when you are at times sliding down in the mud). I got on reasonably well with this – my height and reach making it ok to do.

We later did a straightforward ascent of the hill, well I say straightforward but like most of the hills I’m sure it got steeper and rockier farther up. The process was to get the bike up into second and let the traction control do the rest – quite freaky when changing gear standing up is an experience, I only had a short distance and it was another 90 degree turn at the bottom of the hill. I found myself gripping things a bit too tightly, Kevin suggested getting further forward and relaxing which did the business though surprisingly hard to do when the bike is bouncing around. This was one of the exercises where the result was no problem but the experience from memory still equates with more of a roller coaster ride than riding a motorcycle – this was an illustration of how impressive the machine is and all of my work is to not get in the way of it doing its job of steering and putting the power down.

We then did the loop in reverse, coming down that same hill. By this time I was also beginning to target fixate and was looking at a nice ditch at the other side of the trail at the bottom of the hill. My two first runs ended up in me grabbing some brake and the abs kicking in at the bottom of the hill – plenty of room but not quite the turn right that was planned. Kevin (at the top of the descent) noticed this and suggested looking where I wanted to go. This worked, the bike didn’t fall over, explode or fly – we just turned the corner no problem…

Finally we had the momentum, which was described as the opener for Level Two and a test of machine control (Uh-oh). I had a bit of Deja Vu as there had been a mini version at Knockhill with a little hill followed by a tight turn immediately after. As you may have picked up I was having general issues and just thought oh dear! I looked at it from two perspectives, rational brain thought – what an excellent test of slow speed manoeuvring, throttle control and balance. My panic response was – OMG I have to ride up and stop on a hillock that is higher than my head after turning round a boulder in a tight space and then loop back and forth.

Rather than the skilled control of say a trials rider, I just flashed to panic and thoughts of roller coasters. I had a couple of goes but didn’t have the control to do it. I want to though, and immediately filed the ambition to “Crack Momentum”.

There was also a part with riding through water which I baled from – I was giving up then, I wasn’t as bothered about it as I was with momentum but I want to do that bit again too.

We then headed back to gather together with the other groups to try other bikes. I was completely away by then and retreating in to my brain – as far as dropping my view and completely missed Jenny directing me to put the R1200 beside the other 1200 bikes – organising bikes in to groups. I waved an apology and moved the bike. I stood out as I reckoned the F800 was too twitchy, the R1200GS was the best bike and I had ridden the G650 at Knockhill.

Then things wound up, we gathered back near the entrance with the enduro guys and got our photos taken with Kevin and the bikes and even managed to get Simon Pavey in the photo too! Pictures on the Motorrad Central Facebook page.

Then back to the Industrial Estate to get our Certificates and back in the Van to get showered at the Old Tredegar  and pile in to the van for the journey back to Scotland. David did a great job of driving us home, and dropping Simon off when we discovered that Dumfries and Galloway doesn’t do taxis after Midnight on a Monday.

And then it was back to Dalkeith around 2/3 in the morning to get the bike. I did contemplate getting a taxi home from Dalkeith but David had my bike out and ready for me and I rode the Adventure home in the dark for the first time ever!

So having pottered about on the flat area we headed off in to the forest for some riding on trails and getting used to standing up. The position to adopt was described as “standing at a bar” which we all seemed to understand. The trails involved a number of different surfaces, though with the rain mud was a common feature. We went from graded roads of a mixture of gravel and mud, to quite muddy trails up to gravel roads. Understanding peg weighting made a big difference and to this day I’ve still to reconcile that with the California Superbike “no body steering” thing.

But another point came up – being 6’5” tall and standing on the pegs means I have to (as Kevin directed) pivot at the waist. This is fine to reach but makes it very hard not to lean heavily on the bars and thus cause an issue with off road riding. This happens on-road to an extent, but off road the steering on a bike is continually correcting itself for the terrain and odd slips that happen. For this reason I understand the idea is to anchor yourself to the bike with your feet and lower legs – as explained to me that is why the insides of motocross boots (and sometimes trousers) have grippy material. The only thing is that with my inside leg of 38” the top of seat of the new R1200GS in low position came to about the top of my boot, and it felt like I had little purchase on the bike. Certainly it didn’t feel like I could pivot at the waist without leaning on the bars. I use the word feel deliberately – later in the day it wasn’t a problem and I just got on with enjoying the riding and even spinning up the rear a little. The next day was a different story – I went backwards a bit in confidence.

One of the exercises I think we did on this day was descents. I had a rough idea of what we might hear but when you are there on a muddy and flinty hill at the gradient we practiced on it is something else! The idea (and I believe four wheel drive cars are similar) is to let the machine do the work, and not to use the brakes or accelerator. The hill we were on was just at the limit of what you could walk up and down, and yet as expected the machines had no problems.

Then on the same hill a few twists were added. These included starting the machine on a slope – back in the day when I did my road test we had a hill start which was a a little real world test of all the things we had learned in coordination of hands and feet with the machine, with a nice dose of gravity thrown in. We would move on to momentum work later (more on that in a latter blog) and part of this is that you don’t (can’t) start upwards on the slopes that these machines will cope with. So it was a downhill start for this, but it still had a sequence to it – which of course I’ve forgotten already but it was logical. That said as with the previous descents it seemed to involve plummeting down a hill without any brakes on and a 90 degree turn at the bottom. Again it was just a feeling but I felt like I was hanging over the back wheel to stay upright. The turn at the bottom was a great illustration of looking where you want to go – I forgot this temporarily the next day.

Then to twist it up Kevin suggested trying second gear and some braking effort – brakes sounded fine to me (gently) but I’m not sure about second gear.

I think the other stuff we did was the next day. We rode around a few more trails – up high to where the wind turbines lived (they sound quite strange close up) and down. Some of the wider trails were third gear – all good stuff and I was happy with how I was getting on on the GS.

So we headed back to regroup near the entrance, which was a nice descent through the forest and gave an idea of how hilly the area was – we seemed to be descending all the way down for a few miles. Then a road section back to the industrial estate and we piled in to the van to get a shower back at the B&B. I’d had a good time, learned stuff, and not fallen off! Back at the B&B we got our wet and muddy stuff off in the drying room – the Old Tredegar conversion to a B&B showing a bit of thought.

Part of the course is an evening meal at the Abercrave Inn, when Simon Pavey and the other instructors join the participants. All well documented in various articles I’ve read over the years in magazines and we had a good time talking to one of the other instructors called Glynn Barraclough. He had looked after David & the rest of the Motorrad Central group the previous October and tried to get us to sign up to the ORS Portugal trip.

Then it was back to the Old Tredegar for more chat into the wee small hours – that said I baled out early on them to try and get some rest for the next day.

This is where it gets tricky – as things progressed there was more and more learning and as such the timing blurred and there is going to be stuff I forgot, and will no doubt mention in the wrong order. As far as groups are organised all of the folks from the Motorrad Central group were put together rather than streaming on experience, and we got Kevin Hammond as our instructor. As David was along from Motorrad and had already shown himself as a confident off road rider – he was to be the tail end. As far as I could see the other groups had two instructors.

As with any good training course it is progressive. What I mean by progressive is that it builds on what you have just learned, and when presented with something you have not done yet you have the tools to deal with what might happen.

The first few (or it might have just been a couple) of hours were spent on a large flat area on top of a hill. When I say flat I mean you could see for several hundred yards and it was flatter than the rest of the places we went. But it had puddles and ruts and lots of mud from the extensive rain that had fallen for the previous days and continued to fall on the day.

So with an off road motorcycling course we started with how to pick a bike up. Kevin illustrated by lowering his Adventure on to its side and showing the technique. There are a few different ways (YouTube is your friend) but as far as I can tell all rely on using your legs as the main lifting muscle. The great thing about the boxers is that they end up resting on the cylinder head – poor Ross on the F800 had further to pick his bike up but at least his was lighter. This is where I’m not 100% confident whether I am remembering correctly that I had a shot with Kevin’s bike but he claimed it had a full fuel tank and the technique using the bars as the lever was straightforward.

Then we looked at how the bike feels balanced on its wheels and keeping it upright while moving around the bike, walking (well shuffling) round it in both directions to get the confidence that it wouldn’t leap to the floor at the first opportunity.

Then we got to ride the things again – unlike my off-road riding in Yorkshire with i2i we spent all of our time standing on the pegs – no sitting down and sticking a leg out which must be a motocross or supermoto thing. Another directive which I’ve still to get the hang of was no clutch slipping – off road is all about preserving the machinery. I didn’t get the hang of this (and later on I could see others slipping their clutches) but will put this on my list of “I would like to be able to and will try until I can”.

Then there were riding exercises with the usual slaloms and circles etc. – stuff I hate but know how great it is when it works. I say that, but it has been years since I did full lock U-turns on the R1100RS without hyperventilating and my arms going to jelly. Early on in the process it was evident how much peg weighting makes a difference, but also counterbalancing. It’s an area I need to work on but made progress – steering had been harder than it needed to be. I must admit I ran through the exercises but need lots of work and practice in the area. As usual stuff was rushing through my head (stories in i2i parlance) and these were around being able to steer tightly when the surface was rough and muddy and trying to find something to balance on during the process.

Then we had some more fun stuff – deliberate skids. This was the only time we were told to turn off the traction control and abs, something you have to do every time the GS is switched on. Thankfully I’d done this before but it still takes a bit to be told to get up to a decent speed and then deliberately lock the front wheel. It was that that stuck in my mind, we may have done rear lock up too but that tends to be pretty uneventful.

Then it was off to the trails to try stuff.