On the road to Garmisch - day one

415 MILES on a GS. No worries,right?



Wrong. If it’s BMW's new F850GS, then the short enduro style screen makes for unbearable buffetting.

I’m on the way to BMW Motorrad’s annual German knees up - Motorrad Days - and after 400 miles of France’s finest autoroute my ears are ringing and my neck aching. But this is a minor blip on an otherwise brilliant bike, which makes motorway miles as amusing as can be. 

The F850GS is my new long termer and in just a week together we've hit 1,500 miles - to the dot in fact, with the odometer ticking over as we rolled into tonight's hotel. We've been on and off road, and she is as capable as I remembered from both launch and the UK first ride. 

There's six of us riding together, and we averaged almost 70mph today. We’ve just made it across the border to Baden-Baden tonight and headed straight to the nearest Italian for a pizza and a Weiße beer. Talk about a culture clash. 



Tomorrow the delights of the legendary German B500 road await us - finally some twisty Tarmac after what feels like a million miles of dead ahead Autoroute...