The BMW R1200 GS Adventure has always been synonymous with the romantic notion of travelling around the world and exploring strange new lands as you ride unshaven and stinky into the sunset. This was entrenched in our inner man brain when a Jedi Knight and his friend, who no one knows, rode these bikes a long way around and down and I think up as well, making us common folk believe that we too could be that adventurous. And now BMW has a brand spanking new water-cooled, electro riddled, sci-fi gizmo smattered version to temp you off the couch and into Africa and maybe the universe. But is it as good as the legacy its predecessors have created?

‘Look at the size of that!’, ‘Wow, that’s massive!’, ‘What a huge thing!’ all good things to hear, perhaps from the bedroom, but not necessarily a good thing to hear regarding motorcycles, right?

The problem with anything that does something practical is that it will eventually need to be improved, right? To prove my point, let’s flick back the years and revisit Hitler and his ‘toys’ for example. As he carved through Europe, dispelling all in his path, he did so with and because of vastly superior machinery – for a while anyway. The Battle of Britain was a prime example when his ME-109s were the fighter planes to have, until the British unleashed their Spitfire and totally pissed off the Luftwaffe, and his twitching ‘tash became, well, less twitchy. Hurrah, hurrah, and all that. But my point here, if there is one, is that machine development has to come from the people who are involved around them and use them, and this is most certainly the case with the new Yamaha 2014 XT1200ZE Super Ténéré, which is not necessarily for military use but would eagerly accept the appointment I’m sure.