A Day in London by Motorcycle. Riding around the City, a Coffee Stop and Filtering Through Traffic

Welcome back to the channel it's another beautiful day in London so Monica and I are going to go right into the heart of London to a new coffee shop that we've never been to and I was chatting someone on Instagram who's a fellow biker and he was just asking me about my thoughts on the Triumph Street Triple and I think also the BMW R9T so I was just chatting about that and he kindly sent me over a free voucher to use and enjoy at his family coffee shop I think it was originally from New York now they've got two sites in London and it's freshly ground and freshly roasted on site basically they are massively into coffee it looks like a really cool place so I'll take you with me and I've got let's see if I can do this okay here we go I've got the Hepburn Becker panniers along with because my knowledge of London is useless along with the quad lock there with wireless charger but these panniers here brilliant especially in London because one of them I use to put the lock in and the other one I just chuck a few extra things in and I've managed to after the last time I used these panniers I've actually got a couple of straps so it's much easier take them off strap over your shoulder this is the other reason I love these Hepburn Becker heritage panniers because they've got a tiny profile so they don't add any extra width really to the bike so filtering through traffic in a city a dream with these things I don't know if I've ever actually showed these in depth because these panniers are from a German company called Hepburn Becker and they are game-changing bit of kit for me I've actually got two different panniers one's a big black solid one that's more for touring and the others are these and they they come with the lock so you just slip them on lock them on they've got that so these pull off in one second and then you just put the other size panniers on if you want them so one second to take on one second to take off but just the quality so this is I think it shows up on the camera this is green canvas with this brown leather strap brass buckles and just heavy duty zips and the most beautiful quality panniers that I've ever seen and I love the classic styling of them it's it's brilliant stuff from Hepburn Becker I'll do the gear for the day at the beginning of the video this time it's hot proper summer now so this DMD helmet is incredible for summer rides because it's got really thin padding and this vent here is so nice and you can take this off and just wear goggles or something but this helmet is one of the very best if not the best helmet for summer rides it's amazing and in my eyes look at that profile it looks incredible Monica's pinched this off me this is actually one of my favorites as well but she's kind of taken this so I'll just show you how this looks this is a Spanish company called Garibaldi and I wear this a lot although I never have on YouTube yet really comfortable open face helmet cool retro styling very very nice helmet it's only about 110 pounds at and this Broga Moto Polish company I wear this stuff a lot it's incredibly good value I think this is about 150 pounds but for one it's cool really nice and stylish that's the back view very thin so perfect for summer rides someone actually said to me can you do a YouTube video on your best summer jackets and shirts and I will do that very soon but this is ridiculously thin it's got all the padding you need all the pockets back shoulder elbow and it's Kevlar lined this is the good thing it's got a zip heavy duty zip as normal but when you do it up these are just magnetic buttons that hold on into place so you don't need to worry about any poppers and the same there just a magnetic button there just folds down into place perfectly and these again heavy duty zips it's just a very easy jacket to live with and if you can tell a biker's designed it basically it's really well designed jeans rocker I've completely forgotten but I'll just write in the description rocker jeans very close to the ultimate they're beautiful quality single layer so perfect in the summer they're really nice and cool TCX boots I wear them a lot very close these to the best boots on the market in my eyes they are superb and throttlesnake gloves I wear a lot and Monica's got she does actually have some female riding gear this is a pair of racer French company racer gloves really nice I like those and of course hep come back the panniers quad lock ready to go this is one of the most unique coffee shops I've ever been to so I've had basically no coffee I think Monica filmed it but this is what happens the green beans there are the raw beans they go up through the tubes into that roasting thing there they spend seven minutes being roasted and then go back from there into these tubes with the brown beans and that's fully roasted brown beans and then they go for those tubes at the end to be served and the point is that usually coffee shops the beans will be roasted offsides and then distributed around the country for example but here every bean is roasted on the site for all of them all of their coffee shops I think they've got a few in the US and this is the second one in the UK and they opened 10 days before lockdown last year so this is the first time they've really been properly open for an extended period of time I think so it's amazing I think I've got the we've both got South American single large versions absolutely delicious food amazing now we'll come back 100% it's incredibly sweet and they've also given us a little bag of coffee freshly roasted coffee everything there is freshly roasted literally I think within about half an hour of you actually drinking the coffee it was roasted 20 minutes half an hour maybe even five minutes before it's literally roasted to order just realized we're about five minutes from the Tate Modern and I haven't been in about 18 20 years and Monica hasn't been in a year so we're going to go pop in there lock the bike up somewhere and it's about 26 degrees so having thin biking gear like this it's really the first day riding where you can make the most of this and it makes such a difference when you're riding long you can actually feel the air coming through your jacket as opposed to a leather jacket or winter jacket that gets really hot so so glad I wore summer biking gear so from my last video living with the big Indian motorcycle vintage dark horse and I said that parking in London was hard this is pretty much what I'm talking about because the width of a standard bay that you can squeeze your bike into in London is so tight that a bike like a big cruiser makes it so hard like the motorcycle the Indian motorcycle it wouldn't fit in here but the Bonneville perfect just getting some ideas completely spur of the moment but we've just ordered our tickets for there is the Tate Modern you can just order it online for the day so we had to wait I think about an hour so we're just chilling out back over there but this is a great part of London I mean it's free to get in you can give a donation of whatever you like they suggest five pounds give a donation but it's great value really and it's been so long since I've been here I'm just panning around because some of the buildings around here are brilliant and then a few I think you can see there a few old warehouse type apartments there as well it's a great part of London and also if you ride into London just a little fact for any bikers in London who aren't sure about parking you can park in Westminster you just type go into the Ringo app type six seven eight nine and then it's just a pound for all day parking in any parking bay in Westminster so super easy well it was nice to be back it's been so long but completely honestly 80% of the artwork there I don't understand but it's cool to go back there about to head off in absolute heart of the rush hour traffic now but on a motorbike riding through London rush hour traffic incredibly fun and satisfying because it's gridlocked with cars almost all day in London now but on a bike amazing oh and one other thing actually if you're on a bike you don't pay congestion charge you don't pay any kind of pollution charge but my parents drove through by accident in their five-year-old BMW and it cost them £30 in congestion charge for about £12.50 and about £15 because they're driving a diesel massive difference so biking in London perfect transport and of course we get to park within a one-minute walk of the Tate Modern one pound a day right in the heart of London park all day it's just so convenient and when the weather's like this the Google map says one hour three minutes to get back but with filtering in London I hope we can get that down to maybe 40 minutes coincidentally on the way home my neighbour just pulled up next to me he was commuting back from London so I was chatting to him but we did it in about 40 minutes which is well it says 20 minutes quicker than Google but I know I know that taking one and a half to two hours in a car because it was crazy I think Monica managed to capture it so you can see what London traffic's like but it's now got to a point in London where it's completely undriveable London so bad but on a bike it's still a dream and that's it thanks so much for watching I will see you in the next one and maybe I may try and do actually a riding shirt and summer riding jacket episode so I'll see you then