The Triumph Adventure Academy is located at the foot of Brecon Beacons in South Wales and offers off-road training across all skills levels. No matter if you’ve never been off-road or have travelled halfway across the globe on your motorcycle. The multi-terrain arena and Matt’s dedicated team will make sure that you can improve your techniques, confidence and riding skills! Fiona and I were absolutely thrilled to be invited for a one day off-road training !
MATT REEDS who runs the Triumph Training Academy is a former British & World Enduro, British Rally & Cross Country Champion!
Triumph Adventure Centre
The day started early with an 8am meet up at the Triumph Adventure Centre. Outside the entrance Triumph’s latest generation of Triumph Tiger, Bonneville Street Scrambler and Scrambler 1200 motorcycles were ready to greet us. Inside, Matt and his great team of instructors met us, sorted us out with refreshment and kindly asked us to sign our life away 😉 Nothing to worry about, just a standard piece of paper reminding you of the risks when riding off-road!
We then walked towards the changing rooms where each participant had a locker set up for themselves with off-road body armour which we could request in advance. Everything was ready. Knee braces, body armour, jackets, trousers, gloves and even rain gear. Not that we’d need it. The heat wave across England meant the trails were bone dry. It was going to be a scorching hot day!
Everyone arrived and geared up within the next half an hour. The refreshment area was a nice space to socialise and introduce each other. Meanwhile, a pretty cool video was projected in the background giving us a taste of what the day had in store for us. Steep hills, deep gravel, river crossings and dusty power slides. Everyone was buzzing to get out on the bikes!
The Triumph Experience Day helped me improve my riding confidence, bike handling and maneuvering skills. The terrain was really varied and quality of training top notch!
Sandra (ADV TRavelbug)
Picking our Triumph weapons for the day
We all had a preferred motorcycle. To my surprise, most people wanted to jump on the Scrambler. I know the Tiger 900 Rally Pro handles beautifully off-road and is very easy to handle. Why make life harder for yourself? In other words, the Scrambler didn’t tempt me! I had taken it on a test ride just a few weeks ago and wondered why anyone would ride it off-road, when the Tiger was clearly a much easier and more comfortable choice for off-road riding. Granted, doing power slides on a scrambler looks about 10 times cooler than doing it on the Tiger! But other than that I assumed everyone would be fighting over the Tiger 900 Rally Pro. I was wrong!
In any case, we needn’t have worried. The day is designed for everyone to try the Tiger and Scrambler! Though you don’t have to switch if you don’t want to!
I will add here that by the end of the day everyone who tried both the Tiger and the Scrambler agreed that the Tiger 900 Rally Pro was definitely easier to handle for off-road riding. See … told you all 😉
Quick briefing before we hit the road
Some of us were quite familiar with the Scrambler and Tiger and others hadn’t ridden one before. So we had a quick briefing to make sure everyone knew how to adjust the settings and switch into off-road mode. And so no one would start searching for the key on their keyless ride. So after a brief intro of the bikes and what to expect from the day we hit the road!
What you will learn during the
– Correct Body position
TRIUMPH ADVENTURE EXPERIENCE
– Low Speed control
– Motorcycle recovery
– Braking
– Hill descent / Ascent
– Momentum techniques
– Rut management
– Trail riding
Slow speed maneuvers
We had just enough time on the road to get a feel for the bike, especially for those that hadn’t ridden it before of course! Then we hit the gravel and once we were inside the Triumph Training arena ,we stopped to split into groups and go over the basics. Everyone wanting to hit the trails hard went into one group. There were some seriously good riders on the day and I knew better than to fool myself that tagging along with them would be a good idea. That thought was confirmed when I saw them power sliding literally into each corner they took shortly after!
I stayed in a group of four riders that all had some off-road experience but never had any training. Except Karen. She is a very confident on-street rider who hadn’t been off-road before. To my surprise you couldn’t tell. Her tight turns on gravel were solid! But Phoenix impressed me most! At only 5ft she handled the tall Scrambler like a boss! I have always had huge respect for off-road riders that can’t reach the ground properly with their feet and not letting it hold them back.
The exercises on the day were all aimed to drum the correct body position for off-road riding into you, enable you to shift your body weight to initiate turns and counter steer for tighter turns. We also spend some time focused on braking and getting a feel for what exactly the front brake and rear brake do by themselves. So no one would be scared of a drifting rear tyre and learn how to apply brakes properly. We also covered hill climbs. But throughout the day we would always return to turns which got tighter and tighter with each exercise!
Trail riding
Trail riding can be pretty exhausting! So the day was split between doing an exercise, followed by some trail riding, another exercise, a little break, some more trail riding and so on. It was the perfect mix to get a lot of riding in, but also enough brakes to hydrate and practice slow speed maneuvers.
The trails were mostly gravel, with ruts, potholes and loose stones with some single trail sections. I was particularly impressed with one particular loop of the training ground covered in all sorts of ruts. Some pretty deep, and a couple really muddy despite the otherwise dry conditions. The loop is pretty small so you can do it over and over again and really nail riding through ruts!
Meanwhile the other group was riding up steeper hills, focused more on single trail riding, jumps and power sliding. The terrain also has some awesome water crossing, although sadly we didn’t get a chance to ride it on our one day training. There were a few muddy paddles which are usually much more challenging but we just so happened to visit after the heat wave so there wasn’t much water or slick mud.
Back to the Triumph Adventure Centre
Throughout the day Triumph provided us with refreshments, plenty of water, various energy bars and of course a much needed lunch! It was also a nice way to catch up with the other group and hide in the shade for a bit.
Around 3.30 pm the day had finished and both groups got together for the final ride back which would leave the Triumph training arena and take on some byways open to the general public. Everyone was pretty exhausted! But we had an awesome day and were up for one last ride. So we blasted down some more gravel roads and Matt delivered on the water crossing he’d promised me to finish the day on a high!
I cannot tell you how grateful I felt for the clean showers and fresh towels once we got back to the Triumph Adventure Centre. We were all dripping with sweat and desperate to clean the dust of our faces!
Overall impressions of the Triumph Adventure Experience
The training was really top-notch and focused on improving our techniques! My Triumph Adventure Experience Day was equivalent to a Level 1 training. Despite that I definitely feel I learnt how to improve my body position and turn tighter. I would have loved to stay another day to practice hill starts, ride more single track and take on water crossings but that simply means I will be back for more soon 🙂
The instructors were all brilliant, the terrain was very impressive and the facilities were top-notch! Can I recommend it? 100%. Will I be back? You bet!
Sandra (ADV Travelbug)
