We've done something new and scary. We made a video. It's very audio heavy so we thought we'd turn it into a podcast. Obviously, that's what we do, but it's also available as a video on YouTube. So if you wanted to watch this rather than just listen to it, go to YouTube, search up the Trail and Adventure Motorbike Podcast no surprise there and have a watch, or just carry on and have a listen. If you're in the car, don't watch the video, keep your eyes on the road.
So the idea is we're going to go and visit people with bike or bikes in the barn, in the garage, in the shed, talk to them about their bikes and let them tell their fun and interesting stories. And as an experiment, I thought I'd go into my little cow buyer first and tell you about my bikes and my history of motorcycling. Let's know what you think. Hello and welcome to the Trail and Adventure Motorbike Podcast with me, clive Barber, but without my good friend Noel Tom. Instead, I've got my oldest son, archie, behind the cameras helping me out. Today we're doing something slightly different. Today We'll see how it goes. We're doing something called bikes in barns, when we're visiting interesting people with interesting collections of bikes and to talk about their history and bikes and to tell some of their interesting and fun stories. And I thought what better place to start than my own barn? I say barn, it's not actually a barn, it's a cow buyer. This was basically an old barn and I've had to take a few of the stalls out where they used to keep the cows before we moved into the barn next door. You can probably guess whose barn we're going to visit next, who's got the amazing Honda Museum. So hopefully we'll be visiting Noel next time round, but after that we don't have any plans. So if you've got an interesting collection of bikes even if it's just two bikes, with some good stories to tell about where you've been and what you've done, please get in touch and we'll come visit you.
So I can't really remember a time when I wasn't completely obsessed with motorbikes. So I was born in 65, so sort of the mid 70s. I was becoming aware of things and I guess at the time around the mid 70s it was all about Barry Sheen winning the world championship and being the massive character he was. I think in 1979, graham Noyce won the 500 cc motocross world championship and he used to get scrambling on the telly on a Saturday afternoon, which Murray Walker used to commentate on. So they're really exciting times really. And also my dad had a history in motorcycling as well. He had triumphs and I think he had an AJS and in 1977, he got me my first bike. And he also got himself a bike. He bought a 250 Honda trail bike which he actually traded in three weeks later for a 404. And that was the bike that we toured Europe on. So I was on the back of his bike. As a 12 year old I absolutely loved going on the back of that bike. Most weekends we used to generally just go to motorbike shops and just look at the motorbikes and I'd collect the leaflets. And on my bedroom wall I had my bedroom wall was completely covered in pictures of motorbikes. I was utterly obsessed and I could tell you pretty much every bike in the mid 70s just by the sound that it made, because that's when bikes were all different, right. And also I used to get trials on motocross news and there was a column in there which was the diary of a motocross GP mechanic and I used to love that. I've always still want to be a mechanic. Really I'd love to have done that for a living.
The bike I want to talk about first is this one. It's not actually this one, but I had the same one Back in 1977, I had a I think it was in 1975, honda CB125S and it was converted from a road bike into a schoolboy scrambler. So basically the stripped off as much of the electrics as needed to be stripped off. There was no alternator, I only just had to charge the battery every time we took it out. I absolutely loved that bike. It was the first bike I ever had. I was 12 years old, I was racing it. It had a red tank Obviously sprayed with a rattle can, and it had blue plastic mudguards on it. And I was absolutely rubbish at it, but I absolutely loved it. I was so obsessed with motorcycles at that time I even made this, which is basically a version of this engine. I think I got a C minus for this in art class, which I was pretty pissed off with. Really I should have. I think I should have got a much better score than that. So I did race on this bike. After this one, I went from a from the 75 Honda and I got a probably about the same age, the KX125, which is a two-stroke proper race bike at the time Absolute. Going from this to a two-stroke race bike was absolutely terrifying. But again, once I got used to it, absolutely loved it.
This actual bike I probably bought more than 10 years ago and, like most projects, when you've got small children, they just sit in the barn and they gradually decay. It's probably in a worse state now than when I actually bought it. So I've got a time constraint on this. I've got about a year to actually get it running, get it registered and get it out on the road, because I've been challenged to go and do the next shite light bike challenge with a few guys. So that's my aim to get this up and up and working and ready. So this is actually bike number four for me.
Between the race bikes there was an FS1E, yamaha FS1E. It was the last year of the, the model before they brought the restrictions in. So my dad bought it a year early from my brother to drive so he wasn't going to be restricted to 30 miles an hour. He'd had an accident on it, hurt his leg and I followed suit, had a really nasty crash, broke my tib and my fib compound fracture, spent three months in hospital and six months on crutches Not a good time, really. From then there was a massive gap until I moved.
After working in London for 15 years, I moved up to the Lake District, where we are now, and I got this beast in 2005. So this is a 2005 KTM 400 EXC. It's phenomenal, a phenomenal bike. I think the EXC is still now one of the most popular bikes for trail riding, for enduro riding, whatever kind of riding you do off-road. The EXC and the Husker Vanna versions and the and the Gas Gas versions are very popular. So I rode this bike pretty much non-stop for 16 years, until 2021.
We've actually got the next bike, but we'll come onto that in a minute. So I've done hair and hands. I've done enduro's mainly done trail riding. I've done some fairly big TET trips as well. We've been through Belgium, holland, france and also we've done a trip through Wales on this bike as well. That said, it's been a fantastic bike. It's been fairly faultless, apart from standard maintenance issues and sometimes, when I haven't maintained it properly, it's caused problems. But it's got to the stage now where it's 16 years old and I kind of stopped trusting it. It's when the rubber seals inside the engine start going and things like that that you start worrying about it. So I thought it was time to invest in a new trail bike and get something, sadly, a little bit tamer but probably an awful lot more reliable and with less servicing needs. In 20 years of trail riding, this is only the second trail bike that I've ever had, so it's a 2021 Honda CRF 300 rally.
It's been upgraded with rally raid suspension, front and rear. For somebody my size and weight, the suspension it comes with is totally inadequate, so you do need, if you're my size, to beef up the suspension. I love it Within reason. It's too heavy. I do miss the snap that you get from the KTM, but it does everything I want it to. It's great on the trails. Now the suspension is there. It's fine on the road. We've done a couple of big trips. This has been through Spain and it's also been through Scotland as well the Highlands and Islands and it's completely adequate for what I need it for. So I'm actually very happy with this. I know whenever I come in here and turn the key and press the button, it's going to start. It doesn't need servicing every 20 hours like the KTM does. It's every 6,000 miles or 8,000 miles, I don't even know what it is. I'll look it up and make sure I get it right, but it does everything that I need it to do. It's great.
If you are going to ride off-road, I strongly recommend you get one of these. This is, I think, in 2009, 2010, not really sure Beta Evo 300. It's a two-stroke. I think I do a four-stroke now, but all of the best extreme enduro riders Jarvis and all of those guys I've all got a trials background. Riding one of these for a day or more, hopefully, will improve your riding skills no end. I'm a very, very poor trials rider. Hardly ever get a chance to go out and play on this, but I have found that it just teaches you so much every time you ride it.
I think I paid about £2,200 for this. It's road registered. I've actually got give me one minute a seat and tank unit to go on it, which will convert it into sort of a long-range trail riding bike. So the idea is, as I get even older, maybe this will be the perfect trail bike for me to take out and carry on enjoying the trails. 67 kilos, plenty of power, plenty of go, amazing things just get one. So, despite what we say on the podcast. No garage is complete without a big bike. I probably should have changed my t-shirt for this one right?
This is a 2015 KTM 1050 Adventure. So there's a 1090 and 1190, a 1290 and I think there's going to be a 1390 now, but this is a relatively low level of tune. I think it puts out about 100 brake horsepower. It's a V-twin. This is my second big adventure bike. The first one I think you may have heard me say I had a KTM 990, which, again, a utterly awesome bike. I had to sell for a certain son to afford to send him off to college, but during lockdown I managed to find the money and got a second hand one of these. Again, I absolutely love this bike. The power, even though it's 100 brake horsepower is completely addictive.
There's a group of mates based in Kendall that we travel down to the Alps with every year for about five years on the trot, and we did it on these big type of adventure bikes Camping, hooning around the up and down the Alps Absolutely brilliant fun, eating up the miles. My wife comes on the back with me. We go off for weekends away Absolutely awesome. I did vow when I got this I was never, ever going to take it off road. It's purely going to be a road and touring bike but as you can see now I've got all the protection on slightly knobbly tyres. I think the first or maybe the second time I took it out I ended up going off road on it. So it's equipped for going off road as well and for doing some big trips, and hopefully we can have a big tour coming up this year, either to, I'm thinking, norway or potentially the Alps. So before I got the big KTM's, a bunch of guys that I go trail riding with decided they were going to do some road touring, and there are a couple of them on GS's. Noel was on a big Honda VFR 750 at the time and I thought, yeah, I'm really fancy having to go at that. So I got myself a Honda CB500, the old inline twin version, not the CBX version, the one before that, I think. I paid about £900 for it and I toured Europe on that with them, got the bug for riding on the road and for doing the big tours, and that's when I got my KTM 990, which obviously led me to get this one.
One thing with moving up to a new part of the country sort of 250 miles from where we used to live in South London. Is you kind of move without all of your friends? A lot of my friendship group now living up in the North West are motorcyclists, which is great because you've always got something to go out and play with. The podcast over the last four years has also been another way of meeting some really great people, whether they're listeners or the people that actually appear on the podcast. Have made some really good friends and met some great people and got to do some really interesting things through doing the podcast and let's hope that continues.
So a massive thanks for watching this, the first TAMPodcast video. I hope you like it. Let us know what you thought in the comments. Go easy on us. It's our first one. As I said at the beginning, if you've got an interesting couple of bikes in your garage or your barn or your shed, give us a shout and we'll come and pay you a visit and make a film with you and the podcast too. Right now I'm off down south to the Peak District for weekends with the trail riding. See you soon.
