03/27/08

Welcome to Our site!                             

About us.

We are George and Kathy Edwards, we live in Nottingham in central England, I suppose we are nearly in the exact middle of England which means everywhere is within easy reach.

          Kathy is an accounts manager, and George works for Impact Handling. We love our biking and all the places it takes us and people we meet, there is certainly something about fellow bikers. There is a certain camaraderie amongst them, and as soon as you meet a total stranger on a bike you can talk about bikes and biking straight away.

We now have a new BMW R1200RT, it is  Dark Graphite with Silver Lowers and chrome exhaust. We have traded in our trusty R1150RT, which we have had for four years now, and it has been an excellent bike. We only hope the new R1200RT delivers as much fun for us as our last two RT's, the 1100 and 1150.

When we were looking at getting another bike, back in 1995, we wanted something that would take the two of us and our gear reliably all over the place. Our previous bike was  a Triumph Tiger 900, it was a real fun bike, we went to Germany and Holland on it and it coped well, however it just fell short of a proper tourer.

          A proper tourer, now that is a wide description, some folk want the kitchen sink and some just want a large fuel tank. We read up on all the available bikes and the consensus seem to point to Honda’s ST1100 Pan European and BMW’s R1100RT.

          Money pointed at the Honda but the write ups seem to say if you can stretch yourself, the BMW was the better of the two. I know I will upset a lot of Pan owners with my critique as they will swear by the Jap mile eater. But having trawled the bike press for Pan’s and looking at 8 pre-owned bikes, I just did not get the buzz I was after when I saw what was available, nearly every Pan had a rotten exhaust and the dealers seemed amazed that we wanted to have a test ride, whereas all BMW dealers were more than willing to give us a test ride.

          We talked about it a lot, and decided that as it was going to be a major purchase, and if the Pan was not exactly what we wanted, then we would be daft not using the extra money and getting what by now our hearts were demanding.

For the extra £1500 we could get ourselves a great R1100RT, and after looking at a few of them, the difference in the finish, build quality, and how well the owners had treated them, we had to have one.

                        George Singapore 1963    USA tour 2000       Bob our best friend 1992-2005                             Jak, born Dec 11, 2004 - present

          Finally found one in Dorset, and drove down to see it. Could not believe the mileage on it, 2000 in a year, and it was in immaculate condition, it even had the BMW pannier inner bags, and heated grips, the complete package. We took it for a good long test run, and agreed we loved it, so we arranged the insurance, and rode it home, they even threw in a pair of leather trousers for Kathy

   We got our  R1100RT in May 1998, it had only done 2000 miles so it was in great condition and was no where near run in as I was to discover. I noticed it was using a little oil and thought I had bought a dud, but I soon  found out that they all use oil up to 16,000 miles, which normally means that they are run in. These engines are made for serious amounts of mileage, as can be verified by the high mileage accredited to them on numerous web sites and actual bikes that I have seen.  

 Talmine, North Scotland. June 2002

                         We traded in the R1100RT for the R1150RT, when it was launched in May 2001, it was indeed a great bike and served us well for the 4 years we had it. With various trips to France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland and nearer to home, Scotland and Wales. We kept the top box from the 1100 as it just swapped straight over, we put a few extras on the 1150, the last being a HID headlight conversion, which lit the road up brilliantly.

In May 2005, again we traded up to the R1200RT, now this is a whole new ball game. The bike is so much lighter, and has a lot more power and torque. The handling is excellent, as is the fairing and general ergonomics of the bike.