Riding a 1,100cc motorbike in the rain in traffic at motorway speeds or weaving it through rush-hour London gridlock - no problem. Scaring myself witless at 4mph on a 650cc machine up and down the slippery, rock, mud and gravel-scattered tracks of the Welsh countryside is quite a different challenge.

Only when you are riding along a rutted farm track at a speed that barely qualifies as walking pace do you truly appreciate dry tyres on reassuring Tarmac. But as a way of honing your two-wheeled skills, off-road riding takes some beating. Some bikers go to race tracks to sharpen their skills. Others join police ride-outs with set-ups such as BikeSafe to unlearn bad habits.

To refocus my two-wheel skills I am in Wales, joined by Simon Pavey, who is making a good job of hiding his dismay at my inept riding. Pavey has not only survived the gruelling Paris-Dakar Rally many times, but coached Ewan McGregor, the actor, and Charley Boorman, his sidekick, for their TV motorcycle adventure programmes. Pavey and his team run the BMW off-road school in South Wales.

My goal is not to learn how to ride round the world via goat tracks, but simply to improve my bike handling skills. The day begins by donning the body armour: gigantic boots, knee and hip protectors, chest and back guards, shoulder pads and kidney belt, as well as the helmet and goggles. If you are going to fall off, you may as well be prepared.

Then on to the bikes, a selection that includes two new bikes from BMW, its F800GS and the Xchallenge, and we head off to the nearby Walters Arena Enduro Park.

The £5,995 Xchallenge is a lightweight machine, a 650cc single-cylinder, with enough power (53bhp) to get you to 100mph on the road if your arms are strong enough, because there is no fairing. The £6,695 F800GS is an 800cc parallel twin, with 85bhp, good for 125mph on the road.

So the first lesson is to push the bike over and drop it on its side, then learn to pick it up without doing yourself damage, a valuable lesson since the only certain thing about riding off-road is that at some point you will fall off.

Then brake practice and the hooligan joy of standing up on the pegs, getting to about 30mph and locking the back brake on the shale surface for a long, satisfying rear-wheel skid. Scarier is the drill that requires you to ride at about 15mph standing up and gently squeeze the front brake lever until the front wheel locks up.

Wherever possible you are encouraged to ride standing up. This allows you to see farther ahead, lessens the impact of jolts on the body (the knees, hips and elbows work as extra shock absorbers) and gives greater stability as your weight is now passed to the bike lower down at the pegs rather than through the saddle. What is amazing, once you have been shown how to do it, is what a modern motorcycle is capable of. Hills you would think twice about scrambling up are dispatched without a problem.

Descents you would rather slide down on your bottom are managed simply by putting the bike in first gear - second gear if you are braver than I am - then gently rolling over the lip of the hill and, again standing on the pegs, letting the bike make its own way down without touching the brakes or clutch.

Back on the road, to ride my own motorcycle from South Wales to Suffolk, the first lesson is how easy it is to ride on Tarmac. Your feel for the road is enhanced and you are a lot more confident, having been shown what a modern motorcycle is capable of on even the most challenging surfaces.