“Isle of Wight? Pile of Shite more like.” For a caustic response to an idea by one member of the Visordown staff, this one was not only surprisingly eloquent, it was also direct and to the point. When I mentioned the idea of spending a day on the island famous for, err, dinosaurs and Level 42 the reaction was lukewarm to say the very least.
“The Isle of Wight is where people went in the 1970s before Majorca and cheap flights were invented,” features editor Hogan continued, before being backed up by another member of staff who claimed to have flown over the island in his aeroplane and seen nothing of any interest whatsoever, apart from a lighthouse that looked a bit tatty and a bunch of hippies at a festival.
Things were getting desperate, and faced with the choice of either a slog up the motorway to Liverpool to explore the ‘city of culture’ (is it a coincidence that the word ‘culture’ is also used to describe a petri dish containing a germ population?) or a ferry ride and a day out in Cowes, I knew I had to pull out my trump card.
“There is loads of cool stuff on the island,” I said, desperately trying to come up with one of them, “it has the UK’s best fish and chip shop and a garlic farm.” Okay, I admit at this point I was clutching at straws, as the laughter in the room confirmed, but you know when your mouth says something before your brain has actually had time to catch up...
The truth of the matter was, however, that just two weekends before I had spent a miserable two days in a caravan (don’t ask) on the island during which time it had only stopped raining for a brief period, just long enough for me to empty a container of dirty water and pour half of it over my already soggy foot. But despite all the wetness the island showed glimpses of fun and I was sure we would have a good time. It also, from what I could see through the water on my car’s windscreen and the dense mist, had some beautiful scenery and fairly decent, if more than a little bumpy, roads.
For our trip we rounded up the three best streetbike middleweights, and one of the very first Triumph Street Triple Rs to leave the factory gates. nothing has changed on Yamaha’s Fazer 600, Kawasaki’s Z750 or Honda’s Hornet 600 for 2009, but Triumph has capitalised on the success of the Street Triple and created the R version for next year. To all intents and purposes it is the same as the stocker, but for £500 extra you get the fully adjustable suspension from the Daytona 675, radial brakes, a funky two-tone seat and a set of chunkier bars. Oh, and a slightly odd feeling matt paint scheme in either orange or grey. We had grey, because Triumph hasn’t yet made a run of orange ones. Beggars can’t be choosers.
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