You’ll have seen our feature on the trip we did down in the Cederberg Mountains a few weeks ago. That trip was done on the 21 inch wheeled small tank, manual Africa Twin ADV Sport. For the return ride to JHB, Honda insisted that we ride the small wheel DCT Adventure sport for the journey. Remember – this ‘oke’ is a bit old school, electronics and stuff is a puzzle, but even he had to confess:
“This is an amazing bike for a long journey like this…”
You Take The Long Way Home…
That’s the understatement of the century. We left the Cederberg Oasis on a balmy Monday morning for the return. We’d find a place to sleep and complete the journey to Gauteng in two days.
Running direct is boring, right?
These chaps wanted to see more stuff, which is absolutely the correct thing to do on any epic adventure. The ride went something like this:
Cederberg, Worcester (Like the sauce), Montagu, Oudtshoorn, Graaf Reinette and on to Nieu Bethesda (We HAVE to kuier there again!) for our overnight stay. Then it was a dash for home, Colesberg, Bloemfontein and onwards.
We were all on the CRF1100 Africa twin, but our speeds were limited by the tyres that were fitted for the previous weekend’s off-road shenanigans. Our bike had a set of Mitas ADV tyres fitted, so speed ratings are critical to follow – or you’ll find the tyre delaminating. Speeds inside the national speed limits were adhered to (Not!), but we had to keep things tidy in order to avoid any bugger ups on the road. This bike also runs tubeless tyres. You’ll understand when you get a flat, tubeless are quicker to plug than changing a tube on the side of the road.
As with any trip like this, our motley crew had mad types of weather throughout from freezing cold mornings to sweltering midsummer temperatures. Icy Rain and – by gum, the biggest baddest hailstorm any of us had ever seen. Seriously, that was ridiculous!
Sure this feature is a little bit about the trip. The little villages and spectacular mountain passes that make South Africa the world’s greatest motorcycling country, but more importantly, it’s about Honda’s latest distance traveller.
Two glorious days in the saddle have told us everything that you should know about the bike:
Comfort:
We’ve ridden just about all of the adv tourers on the market and in terms of comfort, we’ll tell you this:
The Honda AT Adventure Sport is absolutely one of the most comfortable that we’ve spent time on. You can tell how Honda has incrementally made updates to this model over the years and by gum they have got it right!
Despite the long distances that we travelled between stops, we were all pleasantly surprised to be able to hop off and wander around without having to do jumping jacks to unwind all the joints. Seating is absolutely neutral, natural and – we have no idea what’s been used for the seat, but it is well shaped and is also a good balance between soft and firm for those long voyages.
The screen – well, that’s good too, all adjustable via squeeze clips on the sides and all in, the cockpit is a nice place to be. Although the TFT screen is one of the busier ones on the market, it tells you everything that you need to know.
Convenience.
The smaller 19” wheel makes the bike less of a chore to climb on and off – and to get your legs onto the ground, and that‘s why Honda has gone this route. It makes the bike a bit more accessible to more riders. After riding the big wheel through Tankwa and all that, I’ll absolutely attest to that. In terms of the way that the bike rides – we could find no fault.
In the gravel, you need to watch a bit more for rocks and lurkers because the 21” offers slightly more clearance. On our route out of The Cederberg, we rode plenty of gravel – and we also hit a long section of gravel into Nieu Bethesda (In the dark and the rain nogal!).
Here’s a little nod to those Enduro Trail Plus Mitas tyres…
We rode more than 2200 KM’s from brand new in CT, through to Tankwa, around the Cederberg and back to GP. We rode these things in every kind of terrain including wet, rainy passes, thick sand, hard pack roads, tar and did we mention that insane hail storm? We fully expected to slip and slide through the snottier terrain and expected lots of butt clenching moments, but – we were disappointed. They performed perfectly in all terrain – and no punctures! And the AT’s headlights cut a swathe into the darkness. Good stuff this!
DCT.
Man, it’s good. And in terms of response time it has improved a lot over the early models of this bike. We do understand why it’s so popular. Select your rider mode, click the bike into drive and simply open the throttle. The bike then works out all the good stuff. On those long Karoo roads, engage cruise control, sit back and watch the world whizz past. It’s brilliant. No radar, but you can accelerate and decelerate through the switch on your thumb if you feel too lazy to hit the throttle.
Performance:
At one of the stops someone asked how the electronic upgrades have changed the performance – and reading up on it all, we see that Honda beefed up the torque by 7 percent via mapping and all that. Without riding the previous model with this one – it’s quite difficult to say. When Honda beefed the 1000 up to an 1100, they nailed it – that made plenty of sense and the performance upgrades were significant… last year’s model already felt really good – so does this one. The bike’s parallel twin engine just hums along with plenty of power in the upper gears for when you need to overtake.
Running along between towns is a very chilled affair. The electronic suspension (This Adventure Sport comes with Showa’s electronic suspension as standard) feels tight and controlled through everything we rode. It’s firmer than the Africa Twin with conventional suspension and you can feel a difference when swapping between modes with its hardest setting making the Honda more sporty for the twisties. The big 24 litre tank never had us sweating between refuels. Nope, we did not think to work out the consumption, but we headed into each town for top-ups with loads of fuel still in the tanks.
What else?
Not much to say really.We will say that for a journey like this, the Africa Twin Adventure Sports would be one of the choices at the very top of our list. Seldom have we been so comfortable for so long – and that’s really important when you need to eat up distances…
