Off road TDM Grrr!! (Again.)

[pa_broon74]

Folks.

(Originally in the Scottish Section again, but I think it comes under 'exploration.' No section for muppet-inspired stories either. )

I'm not normally an impulsive person, but I have my moments. Earlier this evening (Sun 24th) I headed down the A68 to Carfraemill, there's a hiking route between Tollishill and Longyester we're doing next weekend with some young folk, I thought I'd recce it.

Got to Tollishill and the road into the lammermuir hills looked pretty good, I thought; I can make that on my bike!

So the road started out well enough, finely graded gravel to begin with. It soon turned to well rutted with larger rocks, but again, not to arduous.

Ha!! Then it went totally tits up!! Got to Lammer Law, big parking area, looked like it was designed for cars but clearly it isn't as you couldn't get up there in a car. (4x4 yes, saloon no.)

I'm thinking ok, lets finish this off, bearing in mind I've done 75% of it, the rest (from memory) should be plain sailing. Ha!! Aye right then . I took a wrong turn, well, I took the better looking road. I had a choice of two and you'd of thought the better one would go somewhere, its a well walked route in the hills. Alas no, I ended up on short grass at a gateway into fields.

I thought, well, this road comes from no where so it must go somewhere through these fields. Through one gate, then another all the time heading down hill. Finally, I had to stop. It was getting darker and more boggy.

All this on my crappy TDM! I know this area well, I've walked there more times than I can remember. But I was totally lost and stuck, I couldn't go back because I had no traction (road tires) and if I went forward, I didn't know where I'd end up. Every time I moved, the bike fishtailed or the front twisted and dug in.

So I stopped. I had to put my gloves under the sidestand to stop it sinking. I take my helmet off and walk down the hill a bit to see if there's another gate. At this point I can hear an engine, I thought it was a prop plane in the distance but it turned out to be a young farmer in an Isuzu Jeep.

While I wouldn't have died or anything, he totally saved my bacon. I was stuck, couldn't go back, didn't know where to go forward. No idea how to get out. He said, "Ocht its fine, head down that way and I'll meet you at the gate."

Now, I couldn't see the gate due to the hill in the way. As I approached the lip it was impossible to tell how steep it was. I crest the top and its pretty steep but not unmanagable thinks I . I make my way down. I've never been so close to dumping the bike on the ground, it just picked up pace, the wheels just slid, no amount of breaking seemed to make any difference.

It was one of those heart in mouth moments, the front was digging in and the rear was fish tailing wildly, plus, it was gathering speed heading straight for a big black fucking cow!

By feathering the front and back break I managed to get the speed down. The ground leveled out and the cow bolted, the young farmer was standing with a pretty strange look on his face. I shit you not when I say I nearly shat myself.

Anyway, he led me out, through some pretty hairy terrain. The thing with this bike is, it has no torque whatsoever in low revs, you have to rev it really high to get it to move, so on the slippy grass hills it was all over the place. I made it back onto tarmac, didn't drop it, although that was more to do with luck...

Strange though, coming down that slope, no control probably doing about 20 or 30 mph... All I could do was laugh, I was so close to just losing it completely... I mean how the hell would you explain that to the insurance company, how the hell would you get the bike out of the rut it made for itself? Do the RAC cover that type of thing??

Note to self. The TDM is not for off road use and I'm an arse for thinking so.


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Didn't catch anything.

[EuropeanNC30R...]

Reminds me of the time I took my vfr400 off road in Wales. It wasn't intentional, I'd passed what looked to be a police car at a rate of knots and had turned down the first lane available.

It got rockier and steeper until eventally I was on a signposted mountain bike track. As you say no torque and no grip makes it more than a handful, real-life nightmare. You're glad when you make it out though!

[G]

Try lowering your tyre pressures - a little under 20psi maybe; can't go too low without proper off-road kit.

I reckon a TDM would be fine for the sort of thing you're trying, but far from ideal to start on - best to play about on light bikes with trail tyres and work back from there .

Ok not quite the same and the pic doesn't make it clear quite how steep the hill was, but this is a van with 18psi in the rear tyres...
https://gees.zenfolio.com/img/v2/p236601856-3.jpg

[pa_broon74]

Yeah.

Been off-road on a DT125 for a day which was fun. This though was something else, just ran out of road.

It would've been fun on a smaller bike with proper tires, maybe even on my TDM if it had off-road tires on... For a novice though, not good.


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Didn't catch anything.