Hi Chaps,

Just done my first off road trip on the Tenere, only a couple of miles on green lane in my county.
I got from one end to the other without falling off but I cant say it was easy.
I seem to find that the steering input ie how heavy the steering is and how much sort of kick back you get higher than I thought, and also the front and rear seem very twitchy.
Most of the ride was loose chalk and gravel with some muddy craters but with also some really deep 4wd ruts.
My only previous off road has been on trials bikes.
Tyres new tkc80s.
Any advice?

Cheers Spyke

I've just started doing some lanes on my XTR and I know what you mean. In the dry, the lanes were great fun and not too taxing. Riding on Friday with the mud and grass damp was a totally different, frightening experience. I managed 10 miles before thinking a big off was inevitable and heading for home. The TKC80s were sliding all over the place and at one point I spun 90 degrees in the mud. I still don't know how I didn't go down. Suddenly 100kg 250cc bikes with 10psi tyres and rim locks make a lot of sense!

Relax as much as you can, most of the time, especially on loose gravel, small stones the bike will wriggle like a snake but essentially keep going where you want. Lower your tyre pressures, keep speed respectable, not too fast & not too slow. I regularly 'green lane' on my XTZ, although it can be a handful at times. Did the coast to coast off road with the Teesside and North Yorkshire TRF this summer, made it to the penultimate lane before the crap tourance tyres and my stupidity met head on and left me with a couple of cracked ribs ! Still, it was fun up to that point

+1 That's exactly the sort of advice that helped me.

Back in the old days, when I had an 1150GSA (�1 in the swear jar), I had similar problems getting my head around the front always feeling like it’s wanting to washout, so I can empathise with how you're feeling. I’d only ever ridden featherweight trials bikes off road. It was my first experience of riding a heavy bike off road and TBH, initially it wasn’t that pleasurable, until… I realised (well, was told actually) that going faster makes it easier!

When the going gets tough everyone’s natural reaction is to slow down, it’s human nature. The thing is, the amount of stability a bike has is completely dependent on forward motion. As speed increases (to a point) so does stability. Going too slowly will cause the bike to move around more and make it feel a squirrely, especially at the front, which is what you don’t want. A wandering rear end is a lot easier to deal with (which you tend to get more of if you go quicker). I remember at the time, I was given these words of wisdom: “Ride a bit faster than you feel comfortable with – and for god's sake relax.” It helped - a lot.

The other minor issue related to pace on soft ground (with TKCs) is that if you don’t go fast enough, they don’t self-clean very well (which they aren’t great at anyway compared to a dedicated off-road tyre) and you end up riding on what basically amounts to a pair of slicks!

Now I must point out, I’m by no means an off-road expert, far from it, in fact I’m still too slow (but working on it), and would probably class myself as poor to mediocre with a lot more to learn!

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The surface that caught me out was a slightly cambered, slightly rutted mud track with a bit of damp grass. The back end was sliding side-to-side all the time and eventually jumped from one rut into another, causing the spin.

What tyre pressures can I run safely? I need to be able to do 50/50 road/off-road without changing pressures as there are a lot of roads connecting the local tracks. I'm guessing that anything below 20psi has a danger of becoming unsafe on the road or causing the tyre to slip and damaging the valve. Is 20psi a reasonable pressure to try?

I have to confess, I am now monitoring ebay for a �2000 250cc dirt bike. My reason for green laning is as practise for some adventure tours on the XTR. If the XTR with me on-board is going to regularly come a cropper riding it on green lanes through the winter, maybe I won't have the mechanical faith in it come summer to head off on tour on it.

Fit a more dirt oriented front tyre more enduro like spec. It should calm down the twitches from the front a bit.

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I'd say practice is key here. I went a full weekend off road with tourance metzelers while there has been heavy rain for 2 weeks. Everyone was driving enduro and adventure bikes with TKC 80 or off road tyres and I managed myself slowly and hard until the end ! I dropped the bike like 6 times and got some minor scratches on it but hey its an adventure bike and if you are afraid of dropping it you shouldn't be riding an adventure bike offroad :P. practice until successful !

I would think he has probably learnt by now in the 2 1/2 years since they wrote this.

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Bike: 2008 XT660Z Tenere with various bits and bobs added or subtracted