The TIGER that came to CLYDESIDE
Getting older brings a lot of changes. Physical ones of course – the greying at the temples, and the thickening at the waistline. Mental ones too; mild forgetfulness, odd wistful memories of the past. And as an economic immigrant to England, those memories for me are often about my homeland. I’m from Greenock in Scotland, and still call the area around Glasgow ‘home’. It’s where I grew up, it’s where I learned to ride a bike. And after a hectic year as a despatch rider in 1993, it’s where I picked up most of my ‘bad’ habits on a bike too.
I’ve been away more than 20 years though, and in those two decades, I’ve not actually ridden bikes round Scotland much. So when I got an invite to ride the new 2018 Triumph Tiger 1200 round Loch Lomond, I was pretty excited. Even better, Mikko here at MSL suggested I ask about riding home to London – and the good folks at Hinckley gave me the nod. So, a day riding about Loch Lomond and the Trossachs, a night out in Glasgow toon, a jaunt back to Greenock to visit family, then the long dark teatime of the soul which is the M8/M74/M6/M42/M40 and M25 home to south London.
A tempting prospect then – although my constant checking of the weather forecasts throughout the Christmas break and into the New Year was tempering my enthusiasm a little. Scotland was getting hit hard, with feet of snow in the Highlands – had I bitten off more than I could chew?
I packed my kit bag like a man preparing for an assault on the Arctic.
Of course, riding a bike in terrible weather is much easier now than it was in the early 1990s, even without the hot grips,
