Spring is sprung, and four of us decide on a revisit to the 'fire engine' road a little to the north of Sedan; so called because we met a fire engine there the last time - it was on call, and we weren't sure whether to overtake it or follow respectfully. Luckily it turned off and presumably rescued someone's cat.

The road, or rather the circuit of roads, offer lots of good bends, few junctions and very little habitation, so is good for a challenging blast, albeit the bends are mostly unsighted so it's also a good test of bottle.

On this trip we had a bit of a change from the usual Japanese fours, apart from a vintage Gixer, as we had a new Ducati 1098 S and an Aprilia Factory to sample.

The first problem was luggage - both of the twins have plastic fuel tanks, so the usual magnetic tank bags were not going to work. For the Ducati John elected to try a tankbag with five little sucker feet to stick to the tank plus a lanyard round the headstock for those less sticky moments. On the Aprilia I decided to experiment with velcro fixing using an old tankbag, taping one part to the tank and fixing the other to the bag, having removed the magnets to save weight (and credit cards!). Rear luggage was strapped to the pillion seats in the usual way, although this required a lot of protective gaffa tape for the Ducati.

The trip down towards Luxembourg from le Tunnel wasn't too bad, but the V-twins seemed a bit more knackering to ride than your typical four. Both the Ducati and the Aprilia have more extreme riding positions which don't work so well at road speeds, particularly with luggage added into the mix. And it was hot and sunny. Not bad in itself but it played havoc with the gaffa tape/velcro fixing for the Aprilia's tankbag and the whole lot degenerated into a sticky mess. Luckily John had some spare bungees so the tankbag was fixed to the rear luggage; not an elegant solution but it would do. Plastic tank covers are a bit of a pain when it comes to dreaming up new ways to fix a tank bag or map holder.

Arriving at the hotel we unloaded the luggage and next day could ride free of it, apart from John's sucker bag - he'd decided it would be handy for waterproofs and a map. Off to Wellin to meet up with Tet on his Blade; he was going to show us some good local roads.

With the Fireblade in the lead the pace picked up noticeably and I was having to thrash the nuts off the poor old Aprilia to stay in touch. If the revs dropped below 9000 the bike was just not able to keep up, so there had to be much changing of gear. This didn't seem to me to be like the V-twin riding I'd read about. I imagined a lazy torquey motor easily staying with peaky Jap fours with just a roll of the throttle. Praps it was just the Factory ...

One particular section was a fast winding road where we met a bunch of Belgian bikers. Well more of a sausage string of Belgian bikers really, as they were spread out over a fair distance and going a reasonable pace, so we had to work a bit to get past them. Of course, the further towards the front we got the more competitive the rider, until we reached Hyabusa man in the lead, who was going for it. I was at the back of our little group and it was getting harder and harder on the Aprilia to jump each successive rider between bends, redlining the Factory and hitting the limiter on the odd occasion to get past some overweight Jap tourer seemed a bit excessive.

After an hour or two's scamping about we stopped for map reading and John was voluble in his criticism of the Ducati. "Riding this bloody Duke's hard work, you have to change gear a lot more". So it wasn't just me then, John's V-twin was the same and it was the S version, supposed to be quick, but unable to keep with the fours unless ridden like a two stroke.

Makes sense really - they develop less power than the fours and so it's logical that they have to be thrashed to stay with a well ridden Blade. The annoying thing was that Tet wasn't pushing his Blade that hard. And Wayne's ancient GSXR, albeit much modified, was having no problems at all. Well, apart from smoking us out .. worn rings it seems. To add even more insult to injury, John's sucker tankbag kept coming unstuck and was generally being useless.

"Why am I bothering with this when I've got a K6 at home?" he wailed. "This Ducati's going back!"

And go back it did. John is again riding his Gixer K6 and the Aprilia was chopped in for a new 'Blade. So the V-twin experiment wasn't a great success. Perhaps they fill a different role to the ubiquitous Japanese four cylinder do-anything sportsbike. The idiosyncrasies may add a degree of character to the riding experience but can get in the way when you just want to cover distance and enjoy roads with the bike being almost incidental to this purpose. This is where the CBR1000RR or GSXR shines, keeping the bends ahead in main focus and letting itself become part of the background.

So it's back to Japanese fours for us. Well, until someone succumbs to an RC8 ....