I’m not sure if I actually qualify as a fully-fledged motorcycle obsessive or not. I am, regrettably, too old for posters on the wall but I do have a few models of bikes I’ve either or want to own around my study. The same study also has several shelves filled with motorcycling related books from the great (Jupiter’s Travels by Ted Simon and Twist of the Wrist by Keith Code to name but two) to the not so great. One thing I have learned is that counter to the claims on Amazon and all the dust jackets is that you can’t learn to ride from a book. It sounds obvious I know, but the only way you can learn is to actually get out and ride.

However, this is today’s point. You can get out and ride the same stretch week in, week out on your favorite bike, but will it make you a better rider? It certainly won’t make you a worse rider, but in reality it will probably just make you learn that one stretch of road – where to place your breaking points, when you can roll the throttle on aggressively /etc. To be a better rider, as with most things in life, you need to stretch yourself.

One way you can do that is to use our site to search for and share your favorite routes. Make you add categories and points of interest along the way to help each other learn what makes a good route. Remember, the more you tell us about each one, the better we can make the site and to that end, if there is something about the site, make you tell us. You can use the contact form to do that.

Personally, one of the ways I like to improve my road riding is to ride in the dirt. Now, this might sound strange. How can riding at usually low speeds on loose surfaces help with high speed tarmac riding. For me, it’s about the unexpected. Your typical dirt bike session can involve tearing up some fire-trails, or it could be single-tracking in the woods trying to negotiate through trees barely wider than your bars. It might involve climbing rocks or fording water or avoiding wildlife. Whatever you face, there are two elements that you really need to master to really enjoy your dirt biking: Anticipation and Control.

Anticipation is obvious – with a loose surface and (usually) a torquey motor, there is a tendency for the rear wheel to step out under throttle. Similarly, the front may wash under braking. Dirt biking makes you think about the path ahead, not just to the next apex but all around you. You also have to learn to relax and trust the bike. If the rear wheel moves, let it. Gyroscopic forces will take care of balance as long as it’s not heading towards a cliff.

The second aspect is control and the levers and everything else on a dirt bike are the same as the road bike. Just like a road bike, dirt bikes don’t like having the clutches dumped or the brakes wrenched on. As such, you learn to use the controls smoothly, unless that is you like falling off. Dirt also teaches you one other thing that a lot of road riders never get – rider position affects how the bike handles. Most of us know that if you’re accelerating, you should weight the bars. Dirt biking teaches you other stuff, like leaning the opposite direction to keep your bike from falling in a low speed turn, or to use your legs for more grip to avoid weighting your arms.

I could go on (and I usually do) about this, but the simple truth is that if you have never ridden in the dirt before, you should. There are usually lots of trail riding schools that offer a day out in the woods, everything included. You literally turn up and get out there. At the end of the day, you’ll be aching, sweaty and grinning from ear to ear. I should know – How do you think I got started?

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