Getting back on a bike and back on the road after 277 Days

12/03/2026

Getting back on a bike and back on the road after 277 Days

You may recall that back in June last year my day on the bike didn’t go quite to plan.

A bike I thought I would never sell and would always have (my BMW RnineT) ended up so badly damaged it was written off.

I was also damaged but thankfully not written off.

Not over medicalising things here

This isn’t the place to relive the accident, or everything that happened. I mention it only because riding means so much to me, and losing it shook me quite a lot. The knee injury I picked up was serious, needing hospital stays, two surgeries, and months of exhausting physio.

It has been a painful, draining chapter, leaving my left knee with far less flex than before.

There are many issues that still affect daily life, and recovery slowly continues. I have accepted it because quite simply it is what it is.

Had to say goodbye

Saying goodbye to the RnineT was unavoidable, as the accident meant it was written off. The last time I saw the bike was when I left the scene and headed to A&E.

My injuries eventually created further challenges around future bike ownership. At first, I genuinely thought I would never ride again – I just didn’t think I could face it.

As things settled, my wife took me to several bike shops to help me look at bikes. We weren’t there to buy, just to browse touch and smell bikes again.

We also visited the NEC for the Motorcycle Live show in November. I left the show feeling flat and disappointed. My left knee’s limitations meant no bike offered a workable or even tolerable seating position.

In my heart of hearts

In my heart of hearts I knew another decision had to be made.

I have absolutely loved my BMW F900 XR TE, Some of my most memorable trips in a lifetime of motorcycling have been done on that bike.

You can read at the following links about my Iberian adventures – 2023 trip and 2024 trip.

I also had a couple of trips to Scotland and a trip to Southern Ireland which were superb. But on occasions I could find the F900 a little difficult to move around the garage or to move around in a car park – probably in part, because of the seat height and handlebar position.

It wasn’t a bike I could ‘flat foot’ either. In general day to day use that wasn’t a problem, but with my new ‘knee issues’ was potentially problematic.

Additionally there are occasions where a foot needs to be put down quickly. Sometimes this is to steady the bike, or perhaps when you pull to a stop on an uneven cambered road and the reach to the ground isn’t quite ideal.

For context I’m about 5′ 7″ my confidence in being able to do the above safely based on many years of biking experience had been significantly reduced. These issues moved me past what I felt to be an acceptable level of risk.

Safe motorcycling and confidence go hand in hand – so something had to change.

It might never happen…

Waiting for a recovery that is almost certainly never going to happen, (by which I mean full range of motion at pre accident levels) wasn’t an option for me. And so it was, that I found myself looking at other options.

Looking at other options led to the purchase of a very different style of bike than almost all I have previously owned (apart from a Kawasaki Vulcan S 10 years ago)

I have bought a new Honda CMX 1100 DCT SE – and traded my much loved F900 XR for.

Hal Borland said…

In the post after the NEC event I quoted the the writer and naturalist Hal Borland. Hesaid ‘no winter lasts forever, no spring skips its turn‘

So here we are heading for Spring and I have a new bike. I had it delivered from the dealers (Youles in Manchester) and at the same time had the F900 collected.

The new bike was in the garage a week or so until on the 277th day since the accident I got back on a bike and headed out.

Check out the pictures sets

You can see pictures of delivery day of the CMX and ‘farewell day’ for F900 in Set One below.

Picture Set Two has pictures from a short 27 mile ride I made 277 days after the accident. For me this felt like some sort of achievement.

The third and final picture set has a series of images from the following day when I rode about 80 miles or so

So what next?

Well, the knee is still far from right, but I’m much closer to feeling much better. Getting back on a bike has helped me manage some of the returning to riding anxieties I had.

The CMX uses a DCT gearbox, allowing fully automatic riding or manual shifting with handlebar levers.

Crucially for me, it lets my left knee stay in a comfortable, open position on the footrest. The mid‑mounted footrests suit my limited range of motion, unlike the F900, which forced an impossible bend.

In the coming months, I’ll write about the CMX, its features, and how I get on with it. I’ll also write about my treasured Moto Guzzi V7 Cafe Classic and what my accident means for that.