There was a series on the TV called “The Long Way Down” in which actors Ewan McGregor and Charley Borman made a trans continental journey on BMW 1150GS Adventure bikes. BMW sales grew overnight but the 1150 and 1200GS bikes were too big for Annette so we had a look at the BMW F650GS. It was a 649cc single cylinder engine in a bike that was big, robust and heavy. We bought it second hand and had the seat changed to the “tall” version. Annette has long legs so tall bikes are never a problem. The bike had been imported into this country from Germany by the dealer and as a result it had had the clocks changed to UK spec showing MPH. This meant that when we picked the bike up it had 7 miles showing on the clock but in actual fact it had done the equivalent of 3000 miles in Germany. It proved to be a great bike and I made many a comfortable trip to Liverpool, only having to stop for fuel rather than having to stop to revive some feeling into my gluteus maximus, which had always been the case before. Unusually the fuel tank sat below the seat meaning that the bike had a low centre of gravity and the fuel cap was at the side of the seat. The riding position was excellent and you were sat above the traffic which afforded a good view. I actually took it off road once on some forest tracks, one of which was a bit too downhill for my liking but the bike handled it well. It would happily sit at 90 MPH on fast roads and although it only had a nose cone, it was enough to deflect the windblast. We now had 2 single cylinder bikes, because the CCM404 mentioned earlier was still in our “stable”. It made sense to swap the CCM at this point, so after a couple of year’s service the CCM was the next to go.
