IN THIS MONTH'S DIGEST

The Planck Time (tP), as I understand it, is recognised by sections of the scientific community as the smallest measurable unit of time. For the sake of this article a figure of 10 to the power of minus 43 seconds is adequate and is the time it takes light to travel a Planck length - another thing that’s so tiny (1.616252(81)×10-35 metres) as to be unimaginable and useless. Folk who claim to know about these things argue that any time shorter than 1tP is either impossible or completely insignificant. Well, I beg to differ.

When the Editor phoned me out of the blue and asked me if I would care to test ride a bike I was naturally keen to know more. When he told me it was a Ducati Multistrada 1200 I believe I chopped the Planck Time up into little bits, grated it into a bowl and put it through a mincer. Not wishing to show my hand too early I said, “Yeah, alright” in much the same tone as Basil Fawlty used when the bloke brought Mrs Richards’ money back from the vase shop and he said “Nope, I’ll give it to her”.

I should point out at the outset that this is the first ever fully-fledged critical test I have done on any motorcycle. As it also happens to be, in virtually all departments, far and away the very best motorcycle I’ve ever ridden, including my sadly-missed Pan Euro, it’s going to be very difficult for me to find anything wrong with it.

At first glance I thought, “My God, I’m never going to be able to touch the floor.”

The bike is tall - very tall for a serial shortarse. I picked it up from Ducati Coventry and received a brief run-down from a very helpful young chap called Jinks who was about the same height and build (apart from not having a ten stone belly) as me. He’d not exhibited any difficulty in bringing the thing to a halt outside the showroom. Nevertheless I elected to wait until he disappeared into the back of the shop to have a go at getting on board. It took a few moments to work out the choreography but I managed to mount the beast in a manner that was, if not elegant, at least none too demeaning.

The first few hundreds yards must have been a joy to behold for anyone fortunate enough to be a passer-by. The riding position is, to all intents and purposes, standing up. I felt like I was riding a pair of step ladders and had absolutely no idea what was going on around me or where the road was. Once out of sight of the dealership, I pulled over to take stock, realised I could touch the ground comfortably, albeit on tippy-toe, if I sat a bit further back in the seat and that, actually, this bike was going to be very easy to ride once I got used to it, which took about two miles on a very busy main road.

On the motorway trip back home I played around with the four ‘modes’ – Sports, Touring, Urban and Enduro (which I will describe below in my only attempt in this review to deviate from jumping up and down with imbecilic glee at having the chance to ride this thing), Then there’s the overkill that is the digital display, which tells you everything but the time on Pluto. I decided that none of it added to or subtracted from the fact that this is an awesome machine that awakens in me the same emotions exhibited by Will Smith when he gets to pilot the alien spaceship in Independence Day.

The four Modes are changed by pressing the indicator kill switch until you find the one you want and then holding for three seconds and shutting off the throttle. At first, I had noticed very little difference between any of them but, once used to the bike, that changed. Sport Mode, as the name suggests, turns the bike into a two wheeled Lambo Diablo, engine output shoots to nearly 150 bhp and the throttle action becomes, for want of a better word, responsive. There are changes to traction control and suspension which I will not go into here, mainly because I don’t understand any of it. Other far more knowledgeable reviewers have already gone into great detail about this sort of thing, I’m sure. Touring Mode brings the elephant kick to the small of your back down to that of maybe an irritable zebra, although the horses are still there. It’s only when you select Urban and Enduro that you notice the power drop - to a pedestrian 100 bhp. Enduro is ideal for the narrow, hilly tracks of the Long Mynd near my home. I found myself using Sport on the open road and Enduro whenever the terrain got a bit 3D-ish.

During my first coffee-and-a-self-satisfied-smirk break a chap pointed at the bike and asked, “What’s it like, then?” My instinct was to point back and say “A bit like that.” I didn’t, of course – I just said something banal about brilliance and admitted that sadly, it wasn’t mine. “Wouldn’t want one anyway”, his friend said. Yes, Mate, actually you would. Unless you’re a stamp-collecting train spotter or have the get-up-and-go of a sloth on Mogadon. Anyway, as you don’t have one, your life must be problem free. I, however, for a too-short ten days, do, so… byeeeeee!

In fact, the weather was so crap during the time I had the bike that I didn’t meet many other bikers on my travels. Much of the time I spent haring across the hills and plains of the Shropshire and Powys Borders encountering little but grumpy-looking sheep and even grumpier-looking walkers but I was determined to have at least one proper run and a stopover somewhere nice. The Lleyn (or, more correctly, Llyn) Peninsula, I thought. Never done that. A leisurely run up the A5 to Bettws-y-Coed then over the Lanberis Pass and on to the peninsula by way of Caernarfon. Sweet. The issue of what to wear, bearing in mind the weather and lack of any sort of luggage space led me to take the risk of not wearing my waterproofs, which, by the way, Frank Thomas, despite my glowing review some time ago, are now NOT, despite following your instructions to the letter and spending a wedge on re-proofing materials. Still, that’s for another time. If I wore them and the sun did come out I would melt and if I didn’t and it pissed down I could find some digs and stay where I was. Forced to stop at the Rhug Takeaway, an excellent, if expensive, café and farm shop just outside Corwen because of a hurricane, I had my first, and only, sensible conversation with a fellow biker who was suitably impressed by everything except, yet again, the height of the seat.

The Llyn Peninsula was something of a disappointment. This may have been more to do with the howling gale and intermittent sharp showers that plagued me all day than the lack of interesting things to see and do. Certainly it has that ‘end of the line’ feel peculiar to remote outcrops and other topographical extremities, but the scenery, though impressive enough, is maybe not as spectacular as parts of the Cambrian Coast south of Aberystwyth. I intended to stop in Aberdaron and find a bed for the night but the total lack of anything going on apart from a few bored looking tourists mooching about dissuaded me, as did the prices demanded by the few hotels and guest houses (which were no more than what I eventually paid but in a far better quality gaff).

I decided to head off and find the viewpoint over Bardsey Island that the chap at Rhug had insisted I couldn’t say I’d lived without visiting. Well, I can’t fully agree but it was good enough to prompt a couple of photos. The one in three concrete track, lack of somewhere to turn round, the stiffening wind and manoeuvring without any foot-to-ground contact to speak of, imparted an element of derring-do to the moment and there were occasions when I felt there was no way back without dropping it. Luckily, that didn’t happen. I took my piccies, did a precarious seventeen point turn and high-tailed it back down to a level where breathing apparatus was not a requirement.

Typically, I chose the day when the comet hit for my trip and ended up racing the weather to Barmouth. It was a race which I won. I booked in at the Tyr Graig Castle Hotel and tucked the bike safely under wraps for the night while the monsoon raged outside. Soup, roast duck and trimmings with half a bottle of house red and I slept like a log.

The day before the bike had to go back I called round to a mate’s house. His reaction was what I came to recognise as the norm; didn’t like it at all at first sight, sat on it and didn’t feel comfortable – too ‘in the bike’ rather than on it, too tall, too weird – sat there for five minutes and realised that he’d fallen in love with it and didn’t want to let go. And that’s without firing up the keyless ignition and catapulting himself into the jet stream.

You would never use anything like the full potential of this bike on the roads. Not, that is, should you wish to preserve you driving licence and, ultimately, your liberty or life. There are already bikes out there capable of well in excess of twice the national speed limit. The trouble with the ‘Multi’ as it’s increasingly becoming known, is that it does it so covertly that you could well be into three figures before you realise it. Blipping the throttle at about 3-4k in third gear, when you are already travelling at points and fine velocity, will lift the front wheel with ease and require a change of underwear for the more nervously inclined.

One thing I didn’t attempt during my brief tenure was to carry a passenger. I’ve never been a fan of this pillion’s head three feet above mine trend at the best of times. That, coupled with my lack of leg length would have made it foolhardy in the extreme. Common sense, I’m afraid, won the day. There is a lower seat option apparently and, when I win the Lottery, that’s what I will opt for. Because, yes, I would have one. No doubt about that. This bike is so cool, so awesomely quick, with a suggested top speed of 160mph, and so easy to ride that I don’t feel right without it. Of course, the national speed limit being 70 and me being a law-abiding citizen I have no idea what the shit hot, sod the consequences, bloody hell this thing goes like a bullet, top end performance is like. At all.

Thanks to Ducati UK for the loan and Ducati Coventry for prepping the bike

Words & Pics: Andy Sanson