I've got a Honda Hornet 250.  It was the first in the UK.

Way back in 1996, a colleague of mine pointed to an excellent article in Ride magazine – there was this new tecro called the Honda Hornet.  I read the article and fell in love.  A 250cc, 4 cylinder 4-stroke bike, revving to 16 grand, that went like the clappers, looked drop-dead gorgeous, and sounded like a formula-1.  I had to have one.

The best web page for Honda Hornets I've found so far can be found at http://azzurro-web.com/hornet_fs.html check it out, it's where I nicked my picture (above) from.

I called the importers and they directed to a nice chap called Nick who had the only one in the country at that time – the one that had been in the article.  I arranged for him to take me out on it and I was more than happy.  It performed fine two-up and looked every bit as good close-up as it did in the mag.  I rushed home, called the insurance brokers.  I got just under four grand in folding stuff out of the bank and rushed back to pay the man.  I wanted that bike, and I wanted it now.  I was banging on Nick’s door with my helmet in one hand (pun intended) and my gloves in the other.  Bearing in mind that I hadn’t ridden anything, man (I mean woman!), beast or mechanical for two years, I was a little rusty – downright incompetent, actually.  I leapt on the Hornet, and damned near killed myself!  That little critter is nothing like a CB250, or GP125 (ha ha).  I can’t describe how different it was – a wild horse?  I don’t know.  Anyway, poor old Nick must have thought that I’d end up being another statistic that day as he saw me lurching up the road.  I survived the journey home, grinning from ear to ear and was totally hooked.  The bike was fantastic and I looked forward to giving it a damned good thrashing as often as possible.

It took me some time to grips with the Hornet, but I enjoyed every minute of it.  It’s a truly wonderful bike, I had it serviced regularly by PDQ in Slough (V-Max specialists) who always did a thoroughly professional job, and the bike clocked up somewhere in the region of 20,000 miles in two and a half years, in good and bad weather and stormed down the motorway regularly at high speed and it never broke down, coughed, or even stalled.  Not bad eh?

Of course I understand that big bikes have their place, carrying lardy, overpaid, computer contractors from 0 to 60mph in 2.5 seconds along their local high street.  But, with 9stones of me on it, the Hornet will keep up with anything through the lanes, cruise along the motorway at speeds too high for an unfaired bike (although excellent for improving neck muscularity), and slice its way through London traffic as fast as any mad-assed courier can that I’ve ever found.  And it’s worth a million pounds to see the jaws of other riders drop when you innocently tell them “It’s only a 250”.  I don’t think they believe it.