The Off Road Skills course run by ten-time Dakar champion Simon Pavey and organised by Compass Expeditions is now an annual event in Australia. Cindy and I did the course late 2014 in Mansfield which gave us very good preparation for our nine day Chile trip in January 2015. In late 2015 we signed on for a repeat two day Off Road Skills course on a farm near Launceston, and decided to take it up a notch by joining the five day “ride out” around Tasmania afterwards.
The preparation for the event was disrupted by my broken leg in July 2015, but thoughts of cancelling were happily over-ruled by the reasonably rapid healing progress and a confidence building weekend ride in Utah in September on a hired F800GS. The Back to the Bush trip to Stanthorpe with the BMWMCQ club in October 2015 was the final off-road fitness test, successfully completed on some interesting farm roads. The plan regarding the Tasmania trip motorcycle hire was similar to the Off Road Skills course in 2014; we would fly down to Melbourne and pick up the bikes from the gnarly GS Safaris organiser – Grant Evans – at Off-Track Motorcycle Rentals in Tullamarine.
The travel plan was adjusted at the last minute to include a side trip to Sydney to attend the Australian Geographic Awards dinner due to one of our oldest friends – Andrew Maffett – receiving the Adventurer of the Year award with three team mates who completed a kayak circumnavigation of South Georgia Island in celebration of reaching their 50th birthdays. The dinner fortunately included seats for Cindy and me next to the Young Adventurer of the Year, Danielle Murdoch, who had completed a 4½ year epic motorcycling trip through Asia and Africa. Danielle is the sort of “what’s the big deal?” person who makes you realise that the key to achieving things is just not to put all the unknowns, uncertainties, and fears up as roadblocks, but control what you can and just do it. Danielle’s blog can be viewed at motomonkeyadventures.com. It was good to see a motorcyclist honoured by the adventure community.
Once again the Off-Track experience on arrival in Melbourne was very simple and satisfying and within a very short space of time the F700 GS (mine) and the F650 GS (Cindy’s) were cruising around Melbourne looking at the bay and expensive real estate while trying to kill some time before the ferry. At the allotted time, we joined the queue with a lot of other motorcyclists and cars and prepared to embark.
The ferry is a nice experience if the commitment is made to get a cabin on the overnight trip to Devonport, with good food and beverages and very comfortable lodgings. At 6am as the ferry arrives into port the wake-up call is given, and at 6:30am the drivers and riders are at their vehicles ready to disembark. Any driver who sleeps in or loses their keys and isn’t ready risks being lynched by everyone parked behind them, fortunately all were on the ball on our trip. Except Cindy and I who didn’t realise that the crew use elastic bands to hold the front brake on for motorcycles during the crossing, which did make it a little difficult to take off until the high-pressure issue was resolved.
The air was fairly crisp in Tasmania, so the short trip west to Ulverstone for breakfast was littered with bikes stopped while extra layers were added. After Ulverstone, and the mandatory stop for a hot chocolate at the Anvers chocolate factory in Latrobe, we decided that as we were starting an off-road skills course we might as well go to Launceston via some back routes and do some sight-seeing. Even though we’d lived in Tasmania for eight years, we didn’t ride due to a young family and work commitments, so there were plenty of roads with untapped potential. Google maps must have realised we were on holidays and did something very unusual and plotted a direct route to the Tamar Valley, even though it turned out that some of that route only barely classified as a road. After reaching the Tamar dusty but unscathed, we headed up to the north coast to Badgers Beach, a very picturesque place with the glorious weather and completely deserted.
We had a lunch stop at Beauty Point on the way to Launceston, with an interesting discussion with a Suzuki V-Strom rider who had just returned from a 10 day round trip to Ayres Rock organised by his brother-in-law who had no idea of the distances involved, resulting in about half an hour being spent at the rock and the Olgas before turning around and riding straight home.
After checking in to our accommodation at Archers Manor in Launceston, it was time to meet the rest of the Off-Road Skills group and the Compass Expeditions organisers. There were 28 of us on the two day weekend course, and 20 were booked onto the following five day ride around the island. As with our first course in Mansfield, the group were a mixture of highly experienced continent circumnavigating riders down to rank beginners, but as always the common thread of motorcycling led to no awkward pauses in conversation at the welcome dinner. The trainers line-up was Simon Pavey (10 times at Dakar for 8 finishes) and his son Llewellyn (also a Dakar rider), Chris Northover (famous for his stunt riding, check out Storm the Embassy on YouTube), and the Off-Road Skills general manager Simon Hewitt.
On Saturday at 9am we were all assembled in the enormous hotel car park to commence the first activity – setting the bikes up. Each bike (about 90% were 1200GS’s) was checked and the handlebar and levers were put into the right positions, with the grips horizontal and the levers slightly down allowing comfort while sitting and definitely while standing.
Following a short ride out to a farm near Launceston for the training, the first step was to split into groups of similar skills. As per our training weekend in Mansfield there are the hard core stars who do level 2, the beginners and skill top-up realists in level 1 who recognise that they are not ready to attempt to ascend K2 on a GS, and the level 1.5 in-betweeners whose egos drive them toward level 2 while retaining enough emotional intelligence to understand the potential consequences of getting it wrong. Cindy joined level 1 for a confidence building refresher while I sat on the fence in level 1.5, no point getting above one’s station. Or capability. I’ve noticed in both ORS courses that there is minimal swapping around once the groups are initially formed, which probably indicates that most people bring a realistic understanding of their skill level.
The first day was mainly about clutch and throttle control and braking after the always useful repeat of lesson one for all – picking up the motorbike. In the level 1.5 group lesson one was fairly cursory as it was assumed that we’d all get plenty of practice along the way if we weren’t already veterans. Best lesson one stories were swapped, my dropping of my gleaming new 2015 Triumph Tiger XCx in the car port as I brought it home for the first time was trumped by a fellow level 1.5 rider who had dropped his Tiger XC pulling back into the dealership after the test ride, he was so embarrassed that he bought it. Not that he didn’t already love it.
Braking is always a valuable lesson for off-road riding. The ABS was turned off to demonstrate how utterly useless the rear brake is on dirt roads, even more so than on bitumen, with plenty of fun had trying to do the longest skid. The front brake lesson with front wheel skidding is always scary, but provides a good reminder about the risks of just grabbing at the front brake lever like it was a passing drinks tray at the office Christmas party.
The next lessons were about slow speed manoeuvring, with a slalom course set up across the side of a hill and a few minor “offs” had particularly when going slowly uphill and turning sharply around a cone to go back down. The day included my least favourite activity; riding around inside a square of cones about 4.5m apart. It was proven that listening to music while doing it definitely helps, unless it is something by Boy George which makes it more difficult as the tendency is to keep trying to look over one’s shoulder for some reason.
The afternoon was all about tracks around hills and throttle control and braking. The paddocks were filled with nasty little round rocks, which always managed to get under the tyres and cause violent shifts in steering. The braking on hills practice started with some “first gear, engine braking only” easy downhill slopes which quickly moved to steep downhill controlled braking. The discovery for me was that when coming down to the bottom of a steep slope the weight on the front wheel is so great that grip is very strong, allowing the bike to nearly stop and turn on a dime.
As always it felt good to be able to finish up the day and get back to the hotel for a few beers and wines and an enjoyable dinner with class mates to strongly critique the level 2 group’s riding skills (not to their faces obviously) while promoting the level 1.5 group’s demonstrated capability.
The second day started with a warm up around the paddocks on tracks following the leader. Helen, one of our level 1.5 group members had an unfortunate crash on a downhill, resulting in a dislocated shoulder and leaving Cindy as the only female out of 27 participants. While waiting for our trainer Llewellyn Pavey to help Helen and organise extraction to the Launceston hospital outpatients, our group did the normal male thing when farms and motorbikes are involved; we organised a structured study tour to find some big hills and then ride up and down them lots of times.
The fun came to an end when Llewellyn imposed some un-necessary discipline on the group with momentum exercises, this involved going up a slope using momentum only with just enough speed to get to the top, before turning sharply up or down another slope. This involved a lot of concentration and control, particularly turning up the slope. Some fairly spectacular “offs” were had by practically everyone. As always I could only absolutely nail it when no-one was watching. The final exercise of the morning was “gnarly country stopping” which is based on the ridiculous theory that one will not always be riding on laser-levelled concrete, so while standing up on the pegs the bike is stopped and one boot is hopefully (and as was proven by a few lesson ones – not always successfully) placed on a selected rock or tree stump or heavily sedated wombat to provide balance.
The afternoon was spent by everyone on a fun ride out around farm roads and bush trails and sometimes worse to practice the newly learned skills. After the end of the ride, it was back to the hotel for the award of certificates and the final course weekend dinner and drinks to discuss other rider’s shortcomings while exaggerating one’s improvements. As most of us were joining the five day around Tasmania ride, we were given a briefing which consisted of the planned route and the overnight stops, and the administrative details such as luggage handling.
After farewells to the departing trainees, it was off to the room to do some re-arrangement of luggage between essentials and all the other stuff that you found would become essential the next day when you didn’t have it. Then it was to bed with a mixture of anticipation and wonder about the chances of survival for the five day ride-out.
TO BE CONTINUED IN PART 2
travellingbennetts 