1978 Hailwood Ducati 900 - that's the kind of thing I mean by heritage.

Many years ago, among my earliest experience with motorcycles, I recall gaining an insight that made a strong impression. This insight came about because I had the opportunity to ride two ostensibly identical bikes, back-to-back, in direct comparison; the less-than-glamorous subjects of this were two Honda CD175s. The bikes each belonged to a couple of mates, one was red and the other blue, and I recall that the red one was affectionately referred to by its owner as ‘The dinosaur’ – a name which accurately and succinctly reflected both the styling and performance of the CD175. Anyway, the most striking thing was that while obviously much was similar (and, frankly, similarly rubbish) about these two identical versions of the same model, there were also some clearly perceptible differences too. But these differences all resided in intangible qualities such as feel, heft, and responsiveness; revealed in the bite-point of a brake lever or the clutch, or tiny variations in the response of the suspension in corners or when braking. I concluded that these small but still appreciable differences resulted from differential use and wear since each bike had left the factory. But, by far the most instructive part of the experience for me, was coming to appreciate so clearly that machines possess inherent qualities that reveal themselves only in the tactile experience of using them. I think I also rather liked the idea that a machine could acquire ‘personality’ throughout the course of its life – as if, like us, they too are shaped by their experiences.

It’s always instructive to experience another vehicle, as it enables us to gain a fresh perspective on those that we’ve become familiar with using. Of course most of us don’t have many opportunities to gain first-hand experience of a wide range of bikes or cars, and I suppose it’s our curiosity to know more about such things that keeps motoring journalists in work.

So when I recently had the opportunity to test ride a KTM 990SM this was clearly something to be seized upon. And what a truly extraordinary and satisfying motorcycle it was. For a while afterwards I even seriously entertained the possibility of buying one, but to do this I would have had to give up the 749, and in the end this wasn’t something I’d be prepared to do at this point in time. In fact, it was going through the process of considering this that revealed to me what a deep emotional investment I have in my yellow Ducati.

For all that the KTM was brilliant – and I must reiterate that it was a beautifully balanced and responsive motorcycle – it was, of course, quite different as a riding experience. I was particularly surprised to discover how refined the 990SM was to ride, given that it comes with a fearsome reputation for dwelling out on the extreme fringes of the motorcycling spectrum. Or rather, I should say how refined I found it to be in comparison with my 749.

It served to remind me just how unrepentantly focussed, demanding, challenging and visceral the 749 actually is. I’ve become so accustomed to it that I took these things for granted, and had begun to imagine that all bikes were like that. But stepping straight from the KTM to the Ducati really emphasised just how much DNA the 749 shares with all those raw, thoroughbred race bikes that trace their roots all the way back to the era of Paul Smart and Mike Hailwood. It’s a well-trodden line that racing has always been central to the spirit of Ducati, but the truth of this is there in the bikes. I’ve found that you can’t just ride the 749 so much as commit to riding it – anything less and you may as well not bother going out.

Beyond the enduring position at the top of the ‘cool brands’ chart, and their occasionally questionable merchandising decisions, at their core Ducati have remained resolutely committed to building superb if somewhat single-minded motorcycles, and doing so on their own unique and often quite idiosyncratic terms. 

I’m reminded that during my time with the Ducati 749 I’ve been fortunate to experience a motorcycle that feels like nothing less than a precision instrument, possessing a depth of capability developed to equal the skills of some the world’s greatest and most accomplished riders. A machine that represents a sublime evolution and refinement of the form, created by the craftsman’s hand and an alchemical translation of the accrued wisdom and expertise of generations into something really rather special. And this must be why the 749 never ceases to impress me, and continues to engage, absorb and reward me every single time I ride it. And when you’ve come to know something like that, you realise that on some level you would always miss it once it was gone.

It’s these qualities – the tactile, moving and memorable experiences of riding the bike itself – that make it so difficult to countenance the idea of moving on from it to something new. Perhaps if I’d owned the latest consumer superbike from one of the Japanese factories then now, after three years of ownership, it might have begun to seem a little jaded and out of date. Yet somehow Ducatis manage to stand aside from the ebb and flow of fashion; each model instead becoming an enduring example of a specific era of engineering excellence in its own right, a singular expression of Ducati’s ethos and vision at that particular moment in time. While this does seem to be a phenomenon common to many of the small European (and mostly Italian) factories, it’s not their exclusive preserve – a bike like the Honda NC30 could also be said to pull off the same trick. But it does seem that with the Italian marques each model becomes … I’m trying not to use the word ‘classic’ here … but certainly part of a heritage, rather than simply a product that’s passed out of date.

I’m sure that this way of thinking is why so many motorcyclists (or at least comparatively wealthy ones) end up with garages full of different bikes. It’s because the experience of riding them is so involving, so often rich and rewarding, and because (at least with the very best motorcycles) each bike has its own unique feel and character that we come to know and understand. We build a relationship founded on shared experiences with a bike, and because of this it becomes so very hard to consider letting go of them.

This is me descending the shot-line on another dive - a bit like riding a bike, as it happens.

I’ve just been reading something by a Sunday newspaper columnist who had, doubtless out of professional desperation to fill her weekly column inches, written a humorous and gently derisory critique of adventure sports enthusiasts.

In this account she appeared to be using the terms ‘seize the day’, ‘live every day as if it were your last’ and ‘live in the now’ interchangeably, as equivalent expressions of a particular kind of hedonistic attitude. I found myself slightly irritated by this, because whatever your views upon seizing your days and living them as if they were your last, I don’t think it’s at all the same as ‘living in the now’.

Many eastern philosophies and spiritual practices make much of the benefits in terms of emotional balance, calmness and contentment that can derive from locating our awareness in the present moment.

So much of our mental life can be characterised by either reflections upon the past or worries and anxieties about the future. More often than not our minds are anywhere but in the here and now – even though, of course, the present is in fact the only place that we ever are. And while this capacity for memory, reflection and imagination is central to what makes us human, it is also clearly responsible for much of the anxiety and stress that we experience on a day-to-day basis.

Placing our awareness and consciousness in the present is a state that’s easiest to achieve when we are actively doing, rather than reflecting – engaged with something that absorbs our attention and fully occupies our senses.

I used to do a lot of scuba diving. And not just gin-clear, warm, tropical holiday stuff either, but most of it diving on shipwrecks in the cold, gloomy and challenging waters around the British coast.

Surprisingly, for all the astonishing things that I’ve been privileged to witness in places like the Red Sea, it’s the memories of all those cold, gloomy dives in the UK that I cherish most. Perhaps it was because of the very challenging nature of those dives, the test of nerve, skill, control and experience that they demanded, that I was most absorbed into the moment by them.

One thing that frequently struck me about the experience of scuba diving was that, no matter what might have been occupying my mind, once I dipped below the water’s surface and started that descent down the shot-line I was always instantly bang in the present moment. After all, you have to be really; entering into an environment such as that, where the tiniest issue or mistake can rapidly escalate into a genuinely life-threatening situation, you need to be operating in a state of complete mental focus, with an acute awareness of your surroundings and giving full, thoughtful consideration to the actions you are taking on a moment-by-moment basis. Indeed if you’re not then you probably have no business being there in the first place.

Mostly I dived because I loved swimming with the fish, and to experience the incomparable joy of graceful weightlessness which made that possible. But there was also something immensely satisfying that was intrinsic to the experience itself. It always ushered in a kind of profound calmness and a heightened awareness of simply being where I was, perceiving my surroundings, my experience and interaction with the environment in a manner almost entirely uncluttered by any of the broader concerns or considerations of my life.

For various reasons, most of them to do with practical opportunity, I’ve not dived for a few years now, but it has often occurred to me how similar in many ways it was to the experience I have now when riding a motorcycle.

Indeed most sports, and certainly the adventure variety, have an element of this about them, but there are plenty of other activities that can have this effect too. Certainly you can get into this ‘zone’ when driving a car, but I think when riding a bike (as with diving) it is the heightened element of personal risk that somehow amplifies the effect, together with the far greater opportunity to slip past the traffic and ‘make progress’. Come to that, and while not even remotely being a gamer myself, I can also imagine that this total sensory immersion is part of the appeal that makes video games so captivating, although wherever possible I prefer to get my sensory input from the real world.

It seems that I can’t help but ride in a state of anything less than full engagement and complete absorption. It’s not uncommon for me to be kitting-up before a ride thinking to myself, ‘Just take it easy; a nice, gentle bimble…’ and yet find that by the time I’m a couple of miles from home I’ll already be locked into it with all the focussed commitment of an F-16 pilot in a dogfight. Attacking every bend, running in hard on the brakes, trying to nail the apex and drive out with a hint of shimmy from the rear as it grapples to get the power down. Continuously assessing the threats posed by the traffic around me, while my eyes scan the road’s surface and constantly changing surroundings for any and every little clue that might presage the unexpected. With the engine’s note and wind roar providing their own rich information about velocity, and feeling, through hands and feet and butt, the myriad tiny signals of feedback flooding in every second from the tyres and chassis.

Don’t get me wrong here though; I’m most definitely not talking about going ‘brain-out’ bonkers. In fact safety – both my own and that of others – is always my paramount consideration. But nevertheless I’m still aiming to find the smooth, fluid rhythm that comes from feeling fully in command of the bike and its actions. And in this respect my 749, like most Ducatis, responds best to a firm and assured hand on the tiller, and really only begins to give fully of its considerable capabilities when ridden with a certain élan.

And just as it was when diving, this is an activity that necessitates placing all my effort and awareness into existing right in the present moment, leaving no spare capacity to process anything other than what’s going on right there and then. And that’s precisely what I love about it so much, why I find riding a motorcycle so liberating, because it gives me access to a very particular kind of mental freedom and escape from my everyday concerns. I’m absolutely convinced that this sort of thing is good for you; it simply never fails to make me feel happy.

So an experience that to some might seem frantic and intense is, for me, actually the catalyst that transports me to a state of wholly centred calmness and allows me to dwell for a while in a condition of pure, sub-rational awareness of the here and now. And the rich and rewarding personal experience that I gain from this certainly isn’t just some tired cliché, nor is it the practical equivalent of living every day as if it were my last.

Ruben Xaus making it look easy on the Ducati Hypermotard

It’s funny how sometimes, often in extreme moments, you can discover capabilities that you didn’t know you had. Not so long ago I had an experience that demonstrated this.

I’ve watched the supermoto aces many times, marvelling at the graceful elegance of their controlled slides. I understand, at least in principle, how ‘backing it in’ works, but I’ve never been able to do it consciously or deliberately.

The principle of backing-in, as far as I understand it, is this: you come barrelling up to the corner and just before you start to tip it in you bang down the gearbox, usually about two gears so that, were you to fully release the clutch, the engine-braking effect would be sufficient to lock the rear wheel. In pretty much the same smooth, fluid motion you also move forward to transfer as much weight as possible over the front, while hard on the front brake – this loads up the forks and lightens the back end. As you turn in, still carrying a certain amount of front brake, and with the front wheel pointing into the curve, you gradually release the clutch, allowing the engine braking to begin slowing the back wheel. Feed in too much engine braking and the rear will lock up, and you’ll be toast; you need to gently feather the clutch, so that just enough force is applied to the rear wheel that it’ll be retarded below the rotational speed of the front and thus begin to break traction, but the wheel must still be able to rotate freely. This isn’t skidding – you may be using a little dab of rear brake to control and modulate things, but you definitely don’t want to lock the rear at any time. Then, with the rear wheel in a controlled slide, still rotating, and gradually coming back into synch with the speed of the bike, you allow it to slide just enough so that as you hit the apex the bike is now pointing out of the turn, with everything back in line, and you can stand it up, get on the gas and drive out.

(In theory, if you have a slipper-clutch fitted you don’t need to worry about modulating the power input with the clutch lever – you can just let the mechanism sort it all out for you).

Allegedly the benefit of backing-in is that it squares off the corner, and is the quickest way to get the bike to a position where you can start to apply power to drive out of the corner.

There’s a great video here of MotoGP rider Nicky Hayden getting seriously sideways:

As I’ve said, while I understand the principle, somehow I’ve never been able to bring myself to do it. Two reasons really, or facets of the same reason: to get the slide going properly requires a high degree of commitment, you can’t do it in small measures and build up gradually  – you just have to go for it. I can’t overcome the strong instinct not to mess it up and risk slinging my bike down the road and, as a corollary of that, I have an even stronger aversion to the possibility of going through months of physiotherapy again; been there, done that – it’s a world of shit.

So one day, a while ago, I was out on my Honda FMX650 (which is a kind of a ‘soft’ supermoto, or maybe a ‘citymoto’).

Coming through a big roundabout, at a reasonable clip, I was accelerating into my turn-off. This particular exit from the roundabout is an odd one, as it comprises two lanes, the right-hand one of which is a filter up to some traffic lights and, as is often the case, this had a queue of cars in it. The left-hand lane just goes on straight; I was exiting the roundabout, on the gas and heading into this clear and empty left-hand lane.

At precisely this point the driver of the last car in the right-hand lane’s traffic queue decided he wasn’t going to wait there any longer and, without so much as a rearward glance or any indication, swung his car out and right across my path.

What followed all happened so quickly that there wasn’t any time for conscious thought; it was all pure instinct.

I was already hard on the front brake and banging down through the gears from the moment I’d noticed the car’s front wheel begin to point left. As the car continued to pull out at an angle, to completely block the lane, I can recall thinking that there simply wasn’t enough road left to pull up in a straight line, and I was pretty much convinced that I was about to run straight into the side of the car.

Again without any real conscious consideration, I think I must have calculated that the only thing to do was turn the bike sideways. The front forks were heavily compressed, I’d changed down two gears, and I’d involuntarily shifted my weight forward and to the left of the bars. As I fed in the clutch the FMX’s big single applied its considerable engine braking effect to the rear wheel, which broke free and swung out to the right beneath me. Keeping the front wheel pointing straight I was now sliding fully sideways, whilst pushing the bike down beneath me.

By now the driver had realised his mistake and hit the brakes. If his reactions had been any good he might have realised that the best thing for him to do was keep going forward, to increase the amount of road I’d have to stop, but he didn’t.

I actually glided to a stop almost perfectly parallel to the side of the car, my right knee perhaps six inches from the passenger door, but without making any contact. The driver gave me a very sheepish look, and for my part I was too stunned to say anything. He then drove off, and I gathered myself up and carried on too.

And of course the point is this: I’d effectively just pulled off a backing-in manoeuvre. On some purely instinctual level I’d been able to do all the right things at the right moment, found the right balance and control. But I know that I still could not deliberately and intentionally do it again.

At the top of the Gospel Pass

It seems that I’m often the last person to know about many things and this certainly appears to be the case with the extraordinary motorcycling resource that is the Brecon Beacons and Black Mountains region of South Wales.

Although no stranger to South Wales, I only visited the Brecon Beacons for the first time just a few weeks ago and I can’t believe that I’ve been oblivious to it all this time, sitting there a mere 45 minutes ride from Bristol.

However, having since been back several times, it’s now clear that this motorcycling nirvana is anything but a well-kept secret, as attested by the number of bikes in evidence everywhere. I’m always inclined to nod a greeting to other bikers passing in the opposite direction, but riding around here you find you’re doing it so frequently that it begins to take on the characteristics of a nervous tic.

Of course this area, bounded to the east by Abergavenny, and with the town of Brecon, its namesake, at the top, is a National Park, so as you might expect the scenery is spectacular. However you may need to make a conscious effort to take in the views, because it is the primary A-roads that skirt its northern edge (A40) and criss-cross it (A470, A4067) that become the main focus of your attention, offering mile after mile of the kind of smooth, sweeping curves that are the very essence of riding satisfaction.

For sheer spectacle though, it’s hard to beat the B4560. For the best effect approach from the A465 to the south, turning off to follow the sign for Llangynidr. At first this briefly takes you through an innocuous residential area, but shortly after you cross a cattle grid and suddenly find yourself in open heathland. This road is an absolute jewel; a sinuous ribbon undulating across the rocky landscape, just like the ones you used to see in car adverts (or indeed Top Gear and Fifth Gear, who film around here from time to time). Remaining mindful of the very real possibility of encountering sheep in the road around any corner, you eventually reach a crest and are presented with a stunning panorama. From here the road dives off down the hillside and into a series of hairpins that would be an untrammeled delight, were it not for the fact that the tarmac on each apex is alternatingly ridged, shiny and dusted with gravel, thus deserving a measure of caution.

The town of Abergavenny presents a natural gateway to this area, and in its central car, bus and coach park there’s a tea and snack bar that is a well-established destination where bikers gather (on a weekend it seems there can be literally hundreds here – a kind of Box Hill west), making it an ideal start or end point to a circuit of the area.