Desert Orchid 

WITH ONE EYE ON THE 'UNSUITABLE FOR CARAVANS' SIGN, I stole another sideways glance at the Tenere. The bike rocked gently in the breeze as its side-stand bored deeper into the grass verge. I took a swig of tepid coffee, slung the dregs over the wall and clambered down to the road. Straddling the machine, I kicked the motor over and mounted the verge to negotiate a tight hundred and eighty degree turn. 'Here we go again', I grinned, as I rode past the sign.

The traversal of Hardknott Pass in the south western quarter of the lake District was the culmination of a week or so's leisurely backroads thumping. Taking in London to the Borders via mid Wales, this was an orgy of automotive mountaineering on the smallest, forgottenest strips of tarmac I could find. It also helped consolidate my impressions – good and bad – of that original plastic dromedary, the XT600 Tenere.

Although there is scope for small and forgotten roads between London and Wales, I was keen to get on with the bumpy bits and opted for a reasonably direct crossing. Keeping off the motorway was a good idea in principle, and I picked a combination of A-roads to hit the border at Hergest Ridge, north of Hay-on-Wye.

In practice, much of the going was fast A-roads and the route wasn't quite as idyllic as it looked on paper. The Tenere really isn't a fast machine. Although road testers will tell you it cruises happily at 'illegal speeds', this needs qualification. In favourable conditions (no wind), it will indeed charge along at 70+, but this pace isn't exactly relaxing. Given even a slight headwind, top gear often isn't enough to keep the brick-like aerodynamics ploughing through the atmosphere at anything more than about 65.

Attempts to throttle a few more knots out of the engine are warned off by irritable pinking noises. The throttle itself becomes tiresome to hold open at higher speeds, as the secondary carb brings its spring into play higher up the rev range. This acts as a sort of human rev limiter, helping to avoid prolonged abuse - who knows, maybe they even designed it that way. The later Teneres have a screen of sorts, so may offer better high speed performance.

After the tedious Westward slog, the solitude of the Welsh borders offered welcome relief. With the average speed dropping to somewhere around forty, I wandered down towards the Brecon Beacons before turning north to Builth Wells and finally to Rhayader, where I camped. Despite the best spring weather in ages, I was dismayed to find myself awake and freezing to death at about four in the morning. With the temperature around freezing point, there was ice on the bike seat and the tent had become completely uninhabitable. Choosing the lesser of two evils, I decided to make an early start.

Cold starting a big single can make even the more mechanically insensitive people cringe. With all the oil lying in the bottom of the crankcase, a piston the size of a tub of margarine and a up to a tenth of a millimetere between it and the cylinder wall, there's a lot of scope for mechanical mayhem in the early stages. Strict warming-up is necessary if you want to keep the bits shiny in all the right places. There is no getting away from the fact that when the piston is cold, it just doesn't fill up the hole, and the sound of it rattling around in there can be disturbing.

Fingers frozen together from packing the tent up on the dew-sodden grass, I rode out of the campsite and headed north just as the sun was hitting the snooze button on its clock radio for the last time, cursing the decision that had me wearing an open-face helmet. Then the sun came up and I was glad it had been so.

The bike was quickly into its stride, and I was soon hammering up the steep climb above Llyn Clywedog. The Ordnance Survey maps show a vantage point overlooking this spectacular reservoir, and I stopped here to make coffee. A few miles further on, seduced by the 'scenic route' sign, I spent an hour or so riding around the lake, taking in the enormous dam and startling a few early-morning fishermen.

After trundling around the narrow, gravelly roads of the Cambrian Mountains for another day I emerged at the top right and began the harrowing dash up the north-south divide to Cumbria. The machine's unsuitability for the job in hand was again uppermost in my mind as I paddled up the country in the shallows of the M6. It was also uppermost in my legs which were constantly tensed, fighting the unstable combination of feet-forward riding position and wind pressure. In time, the north west coastal plain arrived.

The next couple of days saw me attacking as many of the navigable passes of the Lake District as I could find. Braving the tourist masses of Keswick I tackled a Z-shaped set of three passes starting with the impressive Honister, which rises from the southern tip of Derwent Water. Ullswater to Ambleside over Kirkstone Pass offered a pleasantly twisty route, although getting stuck behind a bus on the way up shattered that 'pioneering' ambience. The final assault brought me to Fell Foot in Little Langdale, and the wildest stretch of tarmac the Lake District has to offer.

Taking the most direct route from the interior to the coast, the twin passes of Wrynose and Hardknott are about as tricky as it gets this side of the grass verge. My one-inch map shows a deceptively straight looking road, punctuated by little clusters of double chevrons (enormously steep), but I was unprepared for the reality. The chevrons hid some fearsome bends at the steepest points, and I had to resort to a foot-down first-gear technique for the most severe.

Wrynose was fun, but there was more to come. Winding down the early stages of the river Duddon, the panorama of Wrynose Bottom offered respite and a false sense of security. A few miles of dawdling happily down the valley ended at a small bridge where the river broke abruptly left and the road spiralled off upwards into the shadow of Hard Knott.

Once on the top, the view was spectacular. Hardknott Pass follows the old Roman road at this point, and the intact remains of a Roman fort are within short walking distance of the road. Getting down involved negotiating some very un-Roman hairpin bends, this time in a more precarious direction. The bends were so steep that insensitive use of the front brake carried the real danger of a nosedive. Careful use of the back brake and lower gears did the trick, but going up was definitely more fun.

This sort of thing is what the bike does best. Thumping around the tarmac roller-coasters of the lake District the bike is agile and delivers plenty of stomp. Moreover, the delivery is enormously tactile. Point it uphill, let it off the leash and you don't just accelerate upwards. The thumps get bigger, the noise gets louder and you can feel all that machinery doing its job. And you accelerate upwards.

Of course, zooming up and down mountains on poorly surfaced roads is apt to speed up wear on the consumables, but the figures are generally good. The front brake pads are still going strong at 12,000 miles and rears have done about 10,000. However, owners with rear discs may need to replace the pads after as little as 4,000 miles. The chain is shot after 12,000 miles, but that's mostly due to poor maintenance. Having just found out how much a new chain and sprocket set costs (£60+), I won't buy one until I can afford a Scottoiler too! Original tyres lasted 7,000 (rear) and 9,000 (front). The front tyre, a Dunlop K850A, would have gone on longer, but the blocks were wearing faster at the leading edge and looked a bit dangerous. The bike now wears Avon Gripsters, which although stickier look like they will last as long as the original. Miscellaneous replacements included a clutch cable (£12), tacho cable (£12) and new fork gaiters. A word of warning here - I paid £30 for a pair of generic after-market gaiters from a dealer, and they completely perished in three months!

In 1988, the Tenere lamentably fell victim to disastrous styling changes, introduced no doubt to counter the hordes of copycat desert raiders jostling for Yamaha's market share. A windscreen was added, bolted onto a new, blocky tank. Though the tank graphics were slightly improved, the traditional trail bike side panels were replaced by bland plastic rectangles. The addition of twin headlights was entirely unnecessary and a disc brake at the rear brought increased maintenance with no benefits. Whilst the windscreen and a conventional front mudguard undoubtedly increased the bike's road going potential, the other gimmicks were accompanied by cost cutting elsewhere. Conventional chrome-plated wheels replaced the gold aluminium of earlier machines, and the kickstart disappeared. Regrettably it isn't possible to bolt the new front mudguard to an earlier machine, as it attaches to brackets on a redesigned fork leg casting. The old mudguard looks better anyway, even if it does cause the bike to behave like a hang glider at speed!

They say that everyone's own bike is their favourite. Well, I had a vanilla XT600 from new, sold it for a bigger machine and within a matter of weeks had sold that to get the XT back! I couldn't get it back (the dealer had sold it), so I opted for the Tenere. Now people lean out of cars and tell me how nice it is! The 600 Tenere is a classic, and its mid-eighties form is unquestionably the better looking of the ersatz desert raiders. A complete all-rounder it may not be, but as a back-roads barnstormer it's hard to beat.