Based in the middle of Surrey, we are fortunate to be within an easy ride for many motorcyclists. If you live in Surrey, Hampshire, West Sussex, Berkshire or the western half of Kent you can probably be here inside 90 minutes at the very most. Of course, we're not far from the great metropolis either, although it's going to be an easier hike from west or south London than it is from north or east.

Long have I been convinced of the benefits of a stretchy, woven belt for anchoring a pair of motorcycle jeans at the correct height. Most motorcycle belts are thick and heavy leather affairs. They're consistent with the 'tough guy' aesthetic that many of us bikers, somewhat delusionally, still cling to.

The new-for-2024 Belstaff Brooklands heralds a long overdue update to what many people would consider to be the coolest and easiest to wear jacket in the entire Belstaff waxed cotton collection. It was in the range even before the Italian Malenotti family acquired the ailing British brand back in 2004.

The Crosby jacket has been in the Belstaff motorcycle range for quite a while, although it was not around in the olden days before the brand was rescued by the Italian Melanotti family, whereas styles like the Trialmaster and Brooklands were. But that does not alter the fact that the Crosby has long been the most wearable and practical jacket in the company's waxed cotton collection.

The Belstaff Trialmaster goes back a long way. Some say it was first introduced in 1948; and certainly that's not implausible. In fact, it was Barbour that first created the long, four-pocket, waist-belted, waxed-cotton jacket. That jacket came about in response to a request from submariner Captain Phillips, who, during the war, asked Barbour to create a cut-down version of their one-piece, Ursula suit that had been created specifically for crews of U-class submarines.

Shoei P.F.S. which stands for Shoei Personal Fitting System is a computer-based model that, for the first time ever, allows a totally bespoke fit to be achieved, albeit only on a Shoei helmet, of course; it is now available in the UK and you can book an appointment at the bottom of this page.

The Kemi jacket, and its matching pant, are new for 2024. Let's talk first about the jacket because, as ever, the jacket will usually be the deciding factor when it comes to buying a suit. Not always, but often. We'll then talk about the pant, and conclude with a view about the Kemi as a suit, and how it stacks up against other Rukka suits, and perhaps against similarly priced suits from other manufacturers.

In 2019, when Arai introduced the 'Rapide', they changed the way we thought about retro helmets. It was the first truly modern, retro-styled, full-face helmet. In 2023, the Rapide was relaunched as an ECE 22-06 helmet, and its name was changed to Concept-XE. For a number of years prior to the Rapide's launch we had petitioned the major helmet manufacturers to produce a high-quality, retro helmet. And that was because, whilst there were lots of retro helmets out there, most were little more than over-priced, novelty pieces. Some of them looked great, some had fabulous graphics, but most simply didn’t work on the bike in the way one expected a modern helmet to.

Maybe, at times, we here at Motolegends can be a bit black and white about things; a bit purist. Perhaps it's our desire to cut through all the nonsense, to cut out all the noise, and to help people understand what kind of gear they do really need, and the gear they don't really need. And so we do sometimes get aerated when people bang on about adventure suits, as though it's a type of suit in its own right.

This is the first in a new series about motorcycle clothing. Today, we are going to talk about jackets. In future reviews, we will cover helmets, boots, gloves and riding trousers. Now the idea here is to help those who are perhaps more recent converts to motorcycling. There's a lot of gear out there. And if you're new to all this, the choice can be a touch bewildering. Browsing the shelves of your local motorcycle megastore won't necessarily help, as rarely are the sales assistants going to care enough to want to help you find what's best for you. Surfing the internet will bring you into contact with lots of people who want to sell you stuff, and with lots of people who want want to air their ‘honest’, but often totally subjective, opinions. But nobody is going to go to great lengths to explain how anything works; and in truth you can waste many hours watching videos, and end up none the wiser.

Okay, let me remove the suspense from a subject that is going to be hotly debated, I suspect, for many a year to come. I don't want anyone to think that I have gone all soft, or politically correct, but I can reveal the result of our deliberations now. And it's that the best helmet here is going to be the one that fits you best. That may sound like a bit of a cop out, and that's not normally the way we do things here at Motolegends. We are not afraid of taking sides, but hear us out.

Gore has created a brand based around its waterproof membranes, in the way that no other manufacturer has done. You will invariably pay more for a product that comes equipped with a Gore-Tex membrane, although we cannot promise that it will always be worth paying this premium. After all, if you don't go out in the rain a lot, a Gore-Tex product might be a waste of money!

Not long ago we did a video about EN 17092, and in particular about the role that armour plays in protecting a rider. The starting point, we have to admit, was our desire to set the record straight; to correct the erroneous assumption that EN 17092 was ever meant to be considered an all-encompassing, safety standard. The fact is that EN 17092 is little more than an elaborate abrasion test; a test of the strength of the outer fabric from which a garment is fashioned.

We have titled this editorial ‘Top 10 laminated…’, but retailers like us are obliged to come up with grandiose headings like this in order to get noticed by Google’s robots. The truth, however, is that we’re merely highlighting 10 of our favourite laminated jackets. And that means jackets that do different kinds of jobs for different kinds of riders; and jackets that hit different kinds of price points to suit different kinds of pockets.

Here at Motolegends we are not big on carbon helmets. Now that is, in part, down to the fact that we don’t really get involved with sportsbikes and racing; but it’s also because we just don’t see that there are many benefits to carbon helmets. Of course, they are lighter, but you will usually pay a huge premium to save maybe a hundred or so grams. On the road, we don’t tend to generate much by way of g-forces, so we don’t see that carbon helmets really add much.

The Tour-X4 was a famous helmet. It pretty much owned what one might call the 'adventure' space. Interestingly, it owned the category even before the term 'adventure riding' was invented. Without doubt the Arai Tour-X5 will now claim the crown. An adventure helmet is different to an off-road helmet. And this is what Arai recognised when it first introduced the Tour-X concept. What they realised was that a lot of people simply like riding on the road on a bike that looks like it was designed for riding off it. Arguably, the bike that kicked it all off was the original BMW R80 GS back in the eighties. This was the bike that won the Paris Dakar; and more than once. Here was a bike you could tour the world on. But equally this was a bike you could just as easily commute into work on.

We are quite new to the Fuel brand. Not everything they offer is, I have to say, for us. Now there’s always an element of ‘dressing up’ when it comes to biking. Some bikers will try and deny it, but biking is still somewhat tribal, and there are modes of dress, to which many of us conform, when we ride a particular style of bike. Sportsbike riders like to emulate Moto GP riders by wearing one-piece leathers. Those who ride Harleys often go for more of an Easy Rider look, with leather waistcoats. The adventure bike rider will want a helmet with a peak, boots with buckles, and a jacket with lots of pockets.

Truth be told, even though we sell a lot of helmets here at Motolegends, we don’t offer a huge variety of models; and indeed we don’t even stock many brands. For us, Shoei and Arai stand head and shoulders above every other helmet when it comes both to protection and quality of construction. If we felt we could get away with it, these are the only two brands we would sell, but not everybody’s head will fit into a Shoei or an Arai. And not everybody is in a position to afford one. Which is why we also offer a couple of styles from Schuberth, and a couple from Shark.

In this review we are going to look at all the Rukka Gore-Tex suits that are available from the Finnish brand in 2023. At the time of writing, 2024 is just around the corner. But what we can tell you is that we have seen the new Rukka collection for next year; and there are no new Gore-Tex outfits coming through, although there is one without Gore-Tex. And so what that means is that the range we are going to be discussing today probably won’t change until a least the spring/summer of 2025.

Nobody is really ever going to take issue with the assertion that Shoei’s Neotec is the best flip-lid helmet on the market. Well the same can be said of their full-face, sports-touring helmet, the GT-Air. It is, in essence, little more than a full face version of the Neotec. The two helmets compete with one another in the marketplace. The differences between the two are minor; but inevitably some will prefer one style over the other.