13/05/2026
1,300 miles. 17 riders. 4 days. 3 nights. And without question… our best tour yet. 🇫🇷🏍️💨☀️⛰️
This weekend’s RMRC trip to Colmar and the Vosges Mountains had absolutely everything. Fast flowing mountain roads, endless switchbacks, incredible scenery, ridiculous weather changes, brilliant food… and a little bit of alcohol 🍺🫣 plus plenty of laughs from start to finish.
Over the 4 days we covered around 1,300 miles, with 2 full days spent deep in the mountains riding some of the best roads Europe has to offer.
And when we pulled into Eurotunnel we spotted this great looking Kove 450 Rally 👌
Already loaded up after riding sections of the TET through France on its own adventure before heading home.
We took both the Kove 800X Pro and the 800X Touring with us, and this trip was the hardest proper road test we’ve given them so far. Long motorway slogs, loaded luggage, fast mountain riding, brutal hairpins, baking hot sunshine, freezing rain, standing water… we really put them through their paces.
And both bikes were faultless.
The harder we pushed them, the more they just seemed to dig in and deliver. The chassis stability, the way they hold a line in corners, the way they drive out of corners, the braking performance, the comfort over huge mileage… honestly, you cannot believe how hard you can push these bikes on the road.
Joe rode the Pro all weekend fitted with the Cool Cover, and it turned out to be the perfect combination of comfort and practicality. Extra airflow on the hot days, comfortable over the massive mileage, and on the final day it became less of a seat cover and more of a water evacuation system 😂
Because the rain on the last day was biblical.
At one point a jet ski would genuinely have made more sense.
Meanwhile James spent the entire weekend on the Touring focusing on one critical feature…
The heated seat 🤣
Now we need to talk about something we’ve never really spoken about before…
Pirelli tyres.
Specifically the Pirelli Scorpion Rally STRs.
If we’re honest, we’ve never promoted Pirelli at all.
Not because we’ve ever had problems with them, but simply because they’re a much harder company to deal with than many of the others in the industry.
But with the 800X Pro arriving on Scorpion Rally STRs as standard, we’ve suddenly found ourselves riding on them properly… and a LOT.
Both bikes are now properly bedded in, with the Pro having passed 3,000 miles and the Touring over 2,000 miles, and the more time we spend on the Pirelli Scorpion Rally STRs, the more impressed we become with them.
And after this weekend?
We’re seriously impressed.
On the motorway, on fast flowing sweepers, on hard-ridden mountain hairpins, in hot dry conditions, cold temperatures, and most importantly in absolutely treacherous standing-water rain conditions… they were phenomenal.
Not once did they do anything unpredictable.
The grip levels were incredible, the feedback was superb, and they inspired confidence no matter what the conditions threw at them. You always knew exactly what the tyre was doing underneath you, which on roads like these matters massively.
It’s very easy to look at a more adventure-focused tyre and assume you’re compromising road performance.
These absolutely do not feel like a compromise.
What a weekend. What a group. What a trip.
And we’ve got plenty more planned for the rest of the year 🇫🇷🏍️💨☀️⛰️
