Perspective is everything. Having toured Wales last year (ok, that's not a huge brag but I did enjoy every minute!) albeit on my Tiger 1200 and my mate on his KTM SMT, we stopped every hour for a leg stretch and coffee. After a few stops it became leg stretch, pee (because we'd had a coffee) and then another coffee (meaning another pee stop within an hour). I'm sure that there's a new law waiting to be discovered which goes something like this:
Gordy's Law says: the number of pee stops per day is proportional to the number of coffee stops per day multiplied by your age divided by your tank size in litres.
Being of middle aged persuasion, the primary reason to stop at least once an hour has more to do with age, arthritis and everything aching than it does for anything else....oh...as long as I haven't yet had a coffee!
That makes tank range, at least in the UK and mainland Europe, the least of my concerns. I think that "Gordy's Law" means that I should sell my GSA immediately and rush out and buy an MT10 which I much prefer riding anyway...
In fact, a majority of GSA riders who really need/use their tank range must have very large bladders or be under 50 years young. I'd be willing to bet they're not though! Joking apart, I bought mine not because I needed 320 miles range or whatever it works out at but because I preferred the longer suspension, longer wheelbase (makes it feel a little more stable and planted compared with the GS's that I test rode) and the one I bought already had all the farkles and ali panniers it was a no-brainer.
As to riding hard in Wales? In North wales, the police gestapo are very active on speed trapping and for a majority of roads we rode on from mid Wales up, the roads were not the sort you would ride hard on unless you were a bit of a prat...loads of tight corners, loads of hazards to watch for, roads that to me were unfamiliar, and such wonderful countryside that it would have ruined the experience which was more about the journey and the scenery. We spent more time stopping for photo opportunities than anything else. Granted, if you live close by and have knowledge of the roads you might have routes where you could push on but even so...regularly riding hard enough to empty a tank in half the range you should have might point to either luck at not being pinged, or riding on larger A-roads minus the hazard count. We were ocassionally passed by groups of two to three riders riding like idiots, but they never got that far ahead and on one ocassion, we glided past them more than once as they seemed to stop every 20 or 30 miles along the route we were doing for a fag or to wait for slower riders to catch up. Each to their own and (genuinely, no sarcasm intended) if riding like that rocked their boat, fair enough. Live and let live.
I found on the Tiger that the lovely big fat torque delivery meant gear was not important so I'd have had to try really hard to drop mpg. I think I averaged 55mpg over 750 miles of riding around Wales. You could wind that thing on from 30mph in top and it wouldn't hesitate or cough. I do miss that big triple....just not it's mass. It felt that heavy that you needed to be Geoff Capes to wrestle it off the side-stand when loaded and it had it's own gravitational field. It was actually lighter than a loaded GSA but boy it didn't feel it!
