YOU might think vision and touch are the two most important senses for riding a bike and clearly, at a practical level, you’d be right. But our sense of smell contributes greatly to the emotional pleasure of riding, in ways that might not be immediately obvious.
We’re all familiar with the idea smell has practical biking value – a whiff of dung before you come round a corner to find the road full of either horses or cows is valuable, as is sniffing out a diesel spill before you arrive at it. Or indeed, smelling the bullshit on a website.
But while a healthy nose for niffs might keep you alive in a literal sense, there’s nothing quite like the heady fragrances of biking to make you feel alive. From the honk of fresh tarmac to the sweet smell of oilseed rape, the morning glory of a roadside breakfast bap to the tang of hot metal and oil, biking, basically, smells like heaven.
But why? What is it about the smells of motorcycling that makes us feel so good?
It’s because our perception of odours is closely linked to our emotions. When the volatilised molecules of a particular scent bind to receptors in our nasal cavity they trigger an electrical signal in our olfactory bulb, located at the base of the brain. The olfactory bulb is part of the limbic system; the part of our brain that deals with memory, behaviour and emotion. We have a memory of smell, and smell evokes memories.
There’s a solid evolutionary reason for connecting smell to memory: prior to developing the capacity to reason, it would be useful to remember what food smells like in order to tell the difference between edible and inedible. Smell can also stimulate sexual arousal, familiarity with surroundings, and is a key in connecting a new-born baby with its mother; a provider of food, comfort and protection.
So it’s natural for a particular biking-related pong to elicit a powerful emotional response from a motorcyclist, stimulating excitement or elation, or linking us to an earlier memory connected to a positive experience – the oily, woody tones of your dad’s garage, the natural high of Castrol R, the delightfully bovine funk of a brand new set of Crowtree leathers etc.
Here are ten of the most obvious biking smells we love.