There has been much talk over the last couple of years regarding peoples wellness with respect to their mental health and subsequent quality of life, particularly as local and national lockdowns have affected where we can go, who we can see and where we can stay. For myself and many other fans of two wheels, rather than four, there has been an interesting debate taking place recently over the legitimacy of motorcycling as therapy, particularly as Motor Cycle News have been promoting CALM, a U.K. organisation dedicated to suicide prevention and bettering mental health.
And as someone who has struggled with their own mental health issues, I was interested to see if an evening ride to my favourite parts of this green and pleasant land of ours would provide me with my own anecdotal evidence of motorcycling’s benefits.
Honda’s CB500X is an adventure styled machine that manages the seemingly impossible, offering up more than enough for new riders with it’s A2 licence compatibility whilst still providing enough for more experienced riders to enjoy. And all in an ‘on trend’ design that gives the rider the benefits of Honda’s larger Africa Twin but in a slightly smaller, far more more manageable package.
Out on the road and heading up the A1 towards Thirsk with the first signs of dusk beginning to stretch out lazily across the landscape, the CB500X and I comfortably held 70mph, it’s diminutive 471cc parallel twin holding plenty in reserve if needed. The Honda delivers 46.9bhp @ 8600rpm which, for the cynics amongst you, would seem rather lacking but I can confirm that these horses deliver far, far more than they have any real right to. Never before has such power felt so full and rewarding. Twist the throttle and the benefits of that parallel twin motor become immediately apparent as you’re engulfed by low down thrust that builds and builds right up to the shift light flickering wildly in your peripheral vision as the revs spin around to 10,000rpm. It’s very addictive but unlike on larger Adventure bikes, the Honda gives you all the fun at a far more licence friendly level whilst taking nothing away from the ride itself.
And what a ride it was turning out to be. With more and more of the sun’s light dipping below the horizon and the tedium of dual carriageways becoming a distant memory, the Honda was beginning to reveal a different side to it’s character from that already sampled. Relatively chunky 41mm, conventional front forks and 19” front wheel work symbiotically with the Pro-Link® mono rear end to smooth out the bumps and ripples offered up by the A170 before arriving in Pickering, the gateway to the addictively twisting A169 and Whitby. With a comfortable seat, room to breath and a decent amount of space between pegs and seat, the CB500X is a comfortable place to cover distances on dispatching dual carriageway and motorways with ease and yet it’s when riding past the ever impressive Fylingdale Radar Installation admiring the wide open vistas of the North York Moors when the penny finally drops.
We humans are mostly social creatures, needing the interactions between family and friends to invigorate and inform our day to day lives and we miss those moments of closeness to one another when they are, for whatever reason, unavailable. But the CB500X allows for interactions of a different, but no less rewarding kind. Whilst riding, you are forming a relationship with the bike, the road, the landscape itself. You are drawn into the beauty of an area and interact with it in such a way that everything other than the road and hedgerows soon disappear for as long as you want or need it to, allowing for moments of intensity to course through you and reinvigorate the brain and body.
And for around £6K, the CB500X is worth every penny.
For anyone struggling at the moment, I cannot recommend highly enough that you arrange some counselling and talk to someone. Don’t think that it’s not for you.