The latest issue of Bike magazine features a nice looking article on well known adventure bikers Dan Walsh, Nick Sanders and Charley Boorman in a bar- in Barnes – talking about, not surprisingly, biking off around the world. If you read it, however, you have the strange sense that the three are not actually in the same room. Either this is the way it is edited or the three just did not get on with eachother. Boorman is articulate, for example, I learnt for the first time that he describes himself as a failed actor who was doing painting and decorating work to pay the mortgage before the popularity of the Long Way Round series gave him a new career and, presumably, a significant boost in income. But the others are perhaps better at gritty determination than at chatting to journalists in a pub in leafy Barnes. Nick Sanders is particularly uninteresting! From watching one of his free videos I wasn’t entirely surprised. On that vid you can see him totally un-understanding about the life of a solitary barman that he comes across in a lonely bar in some desert country and apparently completely uncurious about him. It seems that its the physical and personal challenge of covering vast distances on a bike that is the centre of his activity – which is one version of travel I suppose. I wonder if he drove around Staines a huge number of times whether it would have the same effect.
(Disclaimer: I’ve barely taken my beloved motorcycle off the end of a tarmac road so I take my hat off to this trio in the courage and energy department).
An taster of the interview is on the Bike website at http://www.motorcyclenews.com/Bike/latest-issue/