Wheels & Waves 2025: My Honda GB350S Adventure in Biarritz 🇫🇷

In this vlog, I take on one of the coolest motorcycle festivals in the world—riding the charming Honda GB350S through the stunning French coastline, soaking in the art, surf, custom culture, and all the good vibes that make Wheels & Waves so iconic.

From the ride-outs to the beach races and custom bikes on display, this was one unforgettable trip. Huge thanks to Honda for the invite and the chance to cruise on the GB350S—classic looks, modern charm, and the perfect match for the laid-back French surf coast.

👇 Hit like, subscribe, and drop a comment if you’ve ever wanted to attend Wheels & Waves!

CHAPTERS:

00:00 – Intro from Biarritz
00:55 – What is Wheels & Waves and why am I there?
03:15 Riding the GB350S through town and the twisties
14:25 – Festival Honda Stand highlights
14:51 Custom GB350S Entrants!
18:51 An interview with the FTR 350 Builder, Jim.
26:22 Outro & how to vote!

Thanks team!

Usernamekate 🏁

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#USERNAMEKATE #wheelsandwaves #gb350s

this is Beerit home of wheels and waves and I am here with Honda for something pretty special not only will I be riding their hugely popular GB 350S I’ll also be diving into the realms of custom creativity where builders from Europe have transformed the GB 350 into one-of-a-kind machines from fereral flat trackers to a Barbie’s dream these bikes are all competing for your vote i’m username Kate enough yapping let’s get on the GB 350S and ride [Music] so yesterday I arrived at the beautiful wonderful Basque French town that is Spirits that hosts an annual event called Wheels and Waves so why am I here well every year Honda give a bike model a specific bike model to European entrance and builders to basically take a bone stock production bike and completely customize it and just try and push the boundaries of creation and what you can actually do with certain models now this year the plan is to take the GB 350S use that as the base model and at Wheels and Waves there is a big Honda display with all of the 11 entries all on display for people to have a look at and to vote for their favorites now if you want to vote it’s a bit of fun it literally takes a second or two it’s so quick doesn’t ask you for any details or anything i’ll pop the link in the description just so that you can support the builder that you think has the best build so we arrived yesterday we stayed at a hotel here called the Eduardo 7 i think it’s Eduardo i might have got that very very wrong but I’ve tried and it was a beautiful hotel very quirky a beautiful scent when you go in i really really like that about hotels when you go in and it’s got like a signature smell ah it’s lovely and yeah it’s been really really nice to stay there overnight but today noisy van today the plan is to hop on the GB 350 a bone stalker you know just uh as they come have a 90 km ride out on them go have some fun whip around you know have some stops look at the scenery get some coffee and just ride the bike that this whole customization concept from Honda is based on this year so that’s the plan and then hopefully we’re going to kind of by afternoon maybe end up at Wheels and Waves and I can show you the competition entrance we can have a look at them and I can just show you more of the event so if you’re interested in that then keep watching i’m going to jump on the bike and we’re going to get moving and grooving so Wheels and Waves I’d honestly never heard of it before not until getting the invite from Honda i didn’t even know of its existence to be honest yeah it’s just so lovely to be back on the GB 350S it’s just proper easy riding oh would you look at this got some nice flowy bends for the really stable GB 350 to tackle i love how planted this bike feels i definitely remember that yeah I told a bit of a lie this morning when I did my little piece to camera i said we’re on bone stalkers and they are in the sense that they’re production bikes but they are fitted with varying degrees of Honda genuine accessories so still what we’re riding you know is everything that you can get from a Honda dealership so for example the one I’m on is there’s not kind of anything done to it but I’ve seen some of the ones that the girls are riding some of them have the headlight howl some of them have crash bars some of them have full glance which look pretty cool to be honest some of them have a seat cover um that just goes over the pillion seat so it gives it more of a cowl look dropped to second clutch super light one of the highlights of this bike for me i know it sounds silly but a really heavy clutch gets so fatiguing especially after a long day in the saddle especially if you’re doing a lot of riding if you get caught in rush hour and you’ve got a commute so you got to slip that clutch you know it’s just so so light on the GB 350 and I love it so yeah it’s proper nice to be back on a GB 350 it feels like it’s been a while feels like it’s been a while and it just reminds me of all the things that I really really like about it i love the lightness of it i love how agile it is i love how nimble it is i love the throttle it’s nice and free revving i love love love the lightness of the clutch absolutely love it it’s great oh look at the look at this road and look at the views it’s a shame it’s a bit overcast but at least it’s majorly dry which we love you know because we are working with 20 brake horsepower you know it’s not the fastest thing on the earth but I kind of like like it i like working a slow bike it’s really satisfying like because then it it comes down to to balls or lady balls you know it doesn’t come down to oh I’ve got like so much CC I can just pump pump squirt gone you’ve actually got to ring its neck you’ve got to work it you’ve got to earn your crust and I like that a lot oh all right guys so we’ve just had a little coffee stop and a bit of a wardrobe change because it started to rain this was not forecasted can it not [Music] thankfully I’ve got my sexy blue waterproof panoons on so kindly provided by Honda because they’re ready for everything and had the offer of a waterproof jacket like Darcy is wearing in front but I’ve got my own waterproof outer layer that will ding-dong do for me oh it’s that fine rain that gets you soak through if you know you know but know interestingly enough Honda are celebrating their 500th million motorbikes sold globally 500 million sound like Dr evil 500 million [Music] oh we can play catchup now we can spread our wings a little bit get the ponies galloping all 20 of them oh these are some lovely flowy roads aren’t they oo she finds the limiter quite aggressively it’s like hitting a brick wall there’s no gentle letting you know here [Music] [Music] yeah this is uh like a scene at a final destination and I am not being speared like a kebab today [Music] let’s go the mighty 20 brake horsepower beast handled that beautifully i’m on her i’m on her i’m on her come on come on it’s so accurate she’s a mad woman we got to get her we stop cuz you don’t want to scare this rider but we got it we got to get the Monte she is a woman on a mission who oh oh [Music] [Applause] you got to have some fun got to be done just didn’t realize Dante was so ballsy yes girl you don’t give a royal damn see I’m not going to be an i’ll wait till it’s super clear i’ve got to get her i’ve got to get her i’ll get her here i’ll get her light work light work let’s make a sweat oh easy come on i say that i’ve got to do it no I didn’t have it in me i reckon I can do it yes no yes yes i’ve done it change gear okay full tuck got to be done oh that was hilarious oh she cracks me up what a girl what a last Monty is what a laugh we got to extract the ponies we’ve got to We got to coax them out the stable well they they’re coaxable they’re so coaxable yes divonte what a queen she looks so freaking cool doesn’t she she looks so cool oh it’s so cheesy see she cracks me up right i’d have just been happy chilling chilling on the little GB 350 you know it was doing um it was doing a trot it was doing a trot and then the Monte came past with the Caner and I was like “What?” So it got my ass into gear and uh Yeah we had some fun we had some fun oh yeah so we are back in from riding the GB 350 and we have arrived at Wheels and Waves of course we’re on the Honda stand and the entrance are all around me all the custom builds they look absolutely phenomenal and I want to show you guys in a bit more detail so let’s run some fancy B-roll some music so you guys can take a proper in-depth look at them all [Music] baby [Applause] [Music] hey [Music] Hey [Music] hey hey heat heat [Music] hey heat hey heat heat n [Music] heat hey Heat [Music] [Applause] [Music] heat heat heat heat [Music] right guys well I am sat on my personal favorite which is the FTR 350 now I am lucky enough to actually get the builder for an interview so I’ll take you to that right now right right well I am here with the mastermind behind the FTR 350 don’t look at me like that own it it’s It’s amazing tell the audience who you are and who you’re representing as a dealership so my name is Jim i’m from Virtue on Bikes in Grantham in Lincolnshshire in England um and we were approached by Honda UK to build a bike for for this awesome show at Barrett amazing good stuff well I’ve got a few questions for you Jim if you don’t mind me asking the first question is what was the inspiration behind turning the GB 350S into a flat tracker was it a specific era race series or something a bit more personal so in all fairness it’s probably all of those so as soon as the bike was launched um we had one in at work straight away out of the crate and I race flat track and so does my son in the UK so we’re big fans of the sport we’ve got like four flat track bikes in the garage at home and the minute we rolled one out of the crate I was like we somebody needs to build a flat track bike out of that it is just absolutely prime for it it just the stance is there it just looks great the single cylinder engine air cooled it arch back to kind of the vintage vintage Evo classes in the UK it’s Yeah it’s prime for it amazing makes sense doesn’t it cool well the second question I have for you what were the biggest challenges in transforming such a relaxed road bike into something with flat track DNA um well sort of competition wise the time scale was really tough um Honda don’t give you a lot of time to do this i think we turned this bike around in about 3 months which sounds like a long time but it isn’t when you’re building stuff um nearly everything on this bike as well is kind of oneoff people don’t make things for this bike yet you can’t buy them off the shelf really apart from a Yoshi Mirror silencer that you can just bolt on there’s not a lot out there so I had to call in a lot of favors off a lot of good people that I’ve um I’m very pleased I’ve got in my phone book yeah do you care to mention any of them and what they do well there’s a couple of obvious ones obviously um Racefit UK John a good friend of mine um did me a massive solid favor and built this one-off titanium exhaust system for me sounds amazing and I’ll overlay that footage of you you revving it cuz my ears were like ah [Music] i mean that on its own is half the cost of the bike so it’s probably not feasible to go and buy one and put it on your own but it’s there and it’s cool um a really good mate of mine Tom Buzzfield owns a design company called Defcad in the UK in Lincolnshire they make uh oneoff uh 3D printed CNC machine billet parts so he was straight on the phone make me some triple clamps i need some rear sets um they’re all complete one-offs um the rear sets turned out that well actually he’s going to put them into production and sell them amazing so you’ll be able to buy those in a few months post probably cool there’s a lot of 3D printing on the bike as well like the great big KN&N filter that you can see around here um all that tunnel to the uh to the throttle body is all 3D printed by Tom so cool just Yeah amazing stuff a local guy painted it for us a local paint guy that we use oh it’s beautiful everything that we’ve bolted to this bike is UK made UK built um and like by a circle of mates so that’s what makes it kind of really special for me yeah no it wasn’t it’s got a parts catalog let’s order one of them let’s order one of them no it’s phone calls and favors and and there it is like the wheels they’re prototype hubs from Rally Rage you can’t buy the hubs yet that was the first set i had to beg him to send me them please yeah and then post them off to be built into 19in wheels it’s just Yeah everything was tricky yeah and in 3 months that’s insane yeah yeah 12 weeks insane crazy right the third question we have you’ve kept the GB 350 single cylinder character how did that influence your design and performance decisions you said that it kind of is primed ready you know like being a single could you elaborate more on that well all I say all somebody will probably prove me wrong on the internet cuz they always do yeah keyboard warrior yeah 99.9% of vintage and vintage Evo flat track bikes are going to be air cooled worldwide so you know it goes back to what I said when we rolled it out the crate immediately I was like that somebody needs to make a really cool little sort of cafe flat track bike out of it so that was immediately kind of where we went with it the engine just lends itself to it nice torquy motor it’s great we We’ve ridden this up and down the road outside the shop and I I wouldn’t hesitate to put a number plate on it and go to the pub on a Sunday man I know i I would love to ride this cuz it looks absolutely gorgeous come down and see us at the dealership and you can stop stop don’t tempt me i’ll be there in a heartbeat it’s road registered me up stick that wedge red on i’ll be there right Jim so the fourth question are there any custom touches or hidden details on the bike that people might not spot at first glance i mean I’ve just spotted one that I didn’t notice before there says virtue on the CL yeah so again this is Tom he’s absolute wizard he’s an absolute wizard he like 3D prints all these things and and then machines them he came to the dealership with a handheld scanner wow and started 3D scanning all the bits on the bike and then he plugged it into his laptop and he’s like this on his laptop and then he’s on CAD like flipping this thing it’s just mental it’s witchcraft it is isn’t it i don’t understand it i don’t really want to i just I’m just in awe of these guys that can do it um and then he just starts throwing ideas around like you’ll probably cut to a picture of this but it’s got Virtue engraved in there and Honda on the other side and if you look at the heel plates it’s got 83 engraved on that side and it’s got our Virtue Honda logo on the other side and the significance of 83 Um that’s actually my race number and my son’s race number as well we both ride number 83 um and we couldn’t decide what number to have on it so Paul um yeah Paul at the paint shop just rang me up and says “Right I’m putting 83 on it cuz it needs to have 83 on it.” Fair play looks good fair enough yeah it looks good and the final question Jim if you don’t mind what does it mean to you to showcase this build at wheels and weights oh it’s amazing it’s brilliant um and it’s brilliant because I’ve kind of followed the scene and kind of been a part of it to an extent in the UK for a long time with the bike shed and things like that and the DT flat tracking and and all that kind of thing so I’ve been aware of wheels and waves for a long time never been here um but me and my wife who stood over there were planning to come here anyway and about 2 weeks after we decided to come Ian rang me and said “Will you build a bike to take Wheels and Waves?” I said “I’ll take it there myself if you want.” Tied in yeah cuz I’m going so yeah it was just it all just fell in really nicely amazing well I’m not going to lie it’s the bike that I voted for and I’m just really grateful that you’ve took the time to answer my questions so thank you very much Jim congrats on an amazing build and I wish you all the luck in the voting and it’s not just me obviously it’s everyone who’s kind of helped i’ve just kind of assembled it really yeah you are the figure head of the situation something head yeah on that note goodbye well guys and girls I hope you enjoyed this whole vlog about wheels and waves and of course Honda as well and all these bike builds definitely don’t forget to vote for your favorite all of the builders would really appreciate it they don’t ask for any personal details it’s literally just a click and you’ve entered so definitely consider doing it you can do that with my link which is in the comments below i’ll pin it definitely do that it’s just a bit of fun but no it’s been absolutely fantastic wheels and Waves is definitely it’s like the bike shed outdoors if you’re from the UK you’ll know that reference but it is a cracking place there’s more than I’ve just showed you on this vlog you know there’s dirt races there’s sprints there’s surf competitions there’s skate competitions there’s loads of things here and there’s always something to do so yeah on that note I love you guys and leave you i hope you’ve enjoyed it and I’ll catch you all on the next one bye next time