Today, on an unusually warm sunny day in September, I took the train up to Cambridge with the intention of exploring on my motorcycle some off road route near to the city. Its part of the Icknield Way an ancient walking route from Buckinghamshire to Norfolk that passes near Cambridge on its way to Suffolk and Norfolk. The part that I rode turned out to be quite a safe and easy gravel route, occasionally sloping up hill and very occasionally wet with muddy puddles. I can imagine that it would be not so easy to ride after wet weather. But it was a confidence booster. The last time I took my highly off road capable bike off the tarmac was in Portugal to try part of the ACT heading south from Braganza and that was a more tricky ride, with lots of turnoffs to avoid and all done in 35 degree heat. This reminded me of the Bardenas Reales in Spain which is a much easier and entertaining route. I need to do this more often.
1975 was a formative year for me. It was, partly, the year between leaving school and starting university. I was 18 and 19 during it. For a few months, I can’t remember exactly how many, I worked as an assistant warden in a youth hostel in Dorset. I was attracted to the area by having read a number of Thomas Hardy novels and wrote to the YHA, for some reason, asking if they had jobs in that part of the country. These posts were unpaid but you got full board and lodging. In my case this meant sharing a room with the warden, and sleeping on a sofa. It was, how shall I put it, an eye-opening few months. The warden was, I would guess, in his 40s. Everybody looked old to a 19 year old. One of his ‘hobbies’ was riding a motorcycle and a number of his men friends would visit and they all also rode motorcycles. The most interesting visitor was Ted. Not Ted Simon but Ted (Edward) Goring. Ted lived in Bath, worked as a journalist there and rode a very snazzy new motorbike. It had electric start which the warden and his friends, who role British bikes that sometimes started after a frenzy of kicking, used to make fun of. It was a BMW and I am pretty sure it was a R90/s. Now that I am developing an interest in restoring a classic BMW, am am taking more notice of these old models. I even ran a search on the DVLA website to see if I could locate this bike. I knew the registration number because the photos taken at the time – of me sitting or standing next to it – clearly show it. It looks like it hasn’t been used for about 25 years.
I think Ted must have been its first owner and he must have visited us down in Dorset soon after buying it, to try it out and show it off perhaps. I remember, through a rather golden mist of nostalgia, the Sunday evening when he gave me a ride from Dorset to Bath for me to stay with him on my day off. It was that ride, stored in my memory, that influenced my decision to take the bike test and buy a motorcycle back in 2008.
I also remember that not many months afterwards, Ted had a bad accident. I believe that a mobile crane or some other large vehicle backed into him when he was stationery and he broke a leg. I have a memory that he discharged himself from an NHS hospital because he thought that they were not treating it properly and checked in at some private place. I also have a memory of visiting him in his Royal Crescent flat while he was struggling around, and very grumpy, on crutches. I don’t know what happened to the bike in that accident. Clearly it lived on for another 24 years at least. And perhaps it remains, gathering dust and mice, in some real or metaphorical barn waiting for me to track it down and restore and ride it.
The text mentions his love of motorcycles which is nice. ‘He continued riding high-powered machines into his 70s’. In Bath he introduced me, fleetingly, to Jan Morris through the sunroof of her BMW.
While I was away in Wales I got ‘the phone-call’ from London Camera Exchange that my Fujifilm x100VI that I had ordered months ago had arrived and was ready to pick up. Here it is making a coy entry into the household.
Its the kind of camera that you wonder whether there are more pictures of it than taken with it.
An interesting time, at a kind of crossroads or fork in the path. I’m not sure which it is, or a liminal period.
I got back on Tuesday from a short motorcycle camping trip to north Wales, via Ludlow where I stopped in to visit Jane Robinson my old PhD supervisor – which I mentioned earlier. The choice to investigate north Wales came after Jane made contact and invited me to see her and have lunch. Before that I was planning to revisit the Yorkshire dales and then head further north to Scotland and a particular forested area where there are meant to be some good gravel path routes. So I was quite curious to visit a new part of the UK for me but compared to trips to Europe, UK motorcycle trips lack a certain excitement that is guaranteed without any special effort – just by choosing and planning to go to a far flung place. And at the back of my mind has been a question that I was trying not to allow to develop too much – how much longer do I want to keep making these annual and heavily anticipated and planned for motorcycle trips? Is the original excitement and even intrepidation wearing off? And that thought remerged riding in Wales. Some of the routes were beautiful and fun to ride, but some, particularly where there was a stream of cars, really not that much fun even though they were included in the Bikers Britain Best Routes. As ever I was toying with the idea of coming home a day early. Then I arrived at the last campsite, set in a farmer’s field, surrounded by loudly mooing cows, with some basic facilities but absolutely no shade – and the sun was now unexpectedly hot – hitting 30 degrees. Part of me feels that this style of ‘almost like wild camping’ campsite is a little cynical and is an excuse for not investing much in the site – but this was not expensive so it is fair maybe. And perhaps in a different mood I would enjoy it more. Another thing to mention is that at both campsites I stayed, I chatted to people who were walking. At the first site two young guys – one of whom was sweet and articulate who was wearing what I thought was a really stylish top but turned out that he was wearing it back to front. These walkers obviously have a very different pace to motorcycling and the man at the second site told me that he had also experience of motorcycling and cycling trips which I found a little confusing as I had thought of the people that do these different activities as fundamentally different groups, not the same people doing different things. This is all a preamble to the main event which was a tumble off the bike on a steep country lane trying to squeeze slowly past a car and landing heavily on my side in a lot of pain. I mentioned it in the last post. The miracle of then getting the bike upright and moving again (walking trying to slip the clutch but also hold the bike from rolling backwards) on this steep lane is another story, then dropping it again once I got to the campsite. It was 2 parts bad pain but 3 parts, at least, anxiety about how would I pack up and get home. Before I lay down to sleep, I was considering staying another night in the tent and having an ‘easy’ day walking and hopefully would be in less pain a day later. But a painful difficult night on the ground made it pretty clear that I needed to get going. The ergonomics of the campsite – sinks that were far too low with a crazy pain etc. were just not working. But waking up at 6am in pain and crawling around to get my clothes and boots on made me think that I would not be able to pack let alone climb on the bike and ride the couple of hundred or so miles home. I got up to make some coffee but as I waited for the water to boil, I began to feel so panicked that I almost fainted and had to lie down on the bench. Somehow though, with the help of Brufen and taking things very, very slowly I got everything packed up. I had the feeling that the action of climbing on the bike would not be agonizing as some other twisting movements were – and still are as I write this – so I climbed on and rode carefully out of the site. I rode past the turning to the steep road that was the scene of my undoing and carried on until I joined the A5 and then it was major roads all the way home which started at least as a kind of relief. After a couple of hours, I could definitely feel the pain killers wearing off but on the M6 had to keep going for much longer than I wanted to before a service station, so even moving the indicator and shifting my weight was becoming painful. But after a dose of brufen at the service station, waiting half an hour, followed by a dose of paracetamol I set off on the rest of the journey eastwards to Cambridge. The M6 turns into the A14 and that goes all the way to the outskirts of Cambridge.
It was hot (I just noticed from my video that it was 34 degrees when I arrived in Cambridge) and there was heavy traffic so it was not enjoyable riding. I just wanted to get back. Eventually I arrived in Cambridge through the very familiar Girton Road toward the city centre then got to Davy Road where someone had lined up wheelie bins across the entrance to the garage, giving me anxiety as I squeezed through. I managed to get changed, unpack the bike, lock it up and throw what I needed to bring home into a bag and walk slowly to the station and sat on an air-conditioned train to Blackfriars.
That’s the narrative. Now the reflection is partly prompted by H voicing her anxieties about my habit of riding a motorcycle. In my mind now, adding up the questioning and fear of a waning of enthusiasm about biking that I mentioned earlier, my asking how long do I really want to keep doing this, my sense of being quite different to much of motorcycling culture, it feels like I am entering a period of deciding about this. One of my instincts is to just throw more money at it – I was checking out body armour: it can be both extensive and expensive, then I’d need a different style jacket to go over the top. Then there is the lure of trading in for a lighter bike… as I originally dreamed about along with the building of a workshop in Suffolk. Maybe a KTM 690 or a Honda…
But I have forgotten to mention the details of the tumble. I fell on my right side and when I hit the ground I had the feeling of something inside my abdomen bumping into the inside of my ribcage – whatever that actually means in terms of injury. (I think my boots stood me in good stead. One was stuck under the bike but eventually I lifted it enough to move). But the effect is that I have intense pain in my side when I make certain slight twisting movements: even burping sends some muscles into painful spasm. The next day at home I went to the doctor who thought it might be an inflamed nerve judging by the pattern of pain as she palpated and I have had an xray, but no result yet. I’ve since read quite a few m/c riders talking about the pain of cracked/broken ribs and their experiences of strong pain killing meds – constipation and hallucinations. I have the feeling that though, very painful, I have not broken any bones. I am finding just now that regular Co-codamol does protect me from the worst of the pain. Nights are the most painful time, getting into and out of bed, or any movement from my back to my side while lying down. And I am in a mood of anxiety and suspended routine, but with my routine, habitual thinking, just starting to re-emerge.
I awoke at 7.30 and left the campsite by 10.15. I set the GPS to Bala, arrived there and rode through the quite pretty High Street, took a left past the lake and rode a lovely shady road around the far side of the lake, back into Bala in an elongated circle. I found a cafe there and ordered eggs Benedict and a tea. I sat outside to eat. When the eggs came they were swimming in mayonnaise which looked disgusting but I managed to avoid most of it. (I have just looked up the recipe and mayonnaise is a standard ingredient.) Then I took one more lap and parked briefly at a spot behind the lake where some people were sitting around it on the ground. It reminded me of Ruislip Lido in the 1970s but this place had its own little narrow gauge railway station. The weather was getting warm. Then I pursued a mixture of small and major roads towards this site, Offa’s Dyke Farm Campsite.
About a mile before you get here you have to ride up a very steep and very narrow road then more lanes before turning right, through the sheep on the road, into a field. On entry I was struck by the cows mooing loudly and the complete lack of shade against the now fierce sun beating down. The view, through, is beautiful. The facilities are I suppose very basic, masquerading (I wrote) as ‘wild camping’. And cos on three sides – one calf ‘escaped’ into the site and a second seems to be calling for its mother. At that point I began to wonder about this site and whether I’d go home after one night here but resolved to see what the evening would be like.
I put up the tent with not a lot of enthusiasm and went off to find Tesco Superstore in a nearby town. Of course a key road to get there was closed so my journey was hugely roundabout with many false turns all in the heat. Finally there, I parked next to a couple in a 1970s VW camper van and I complimented them on it. I enjoyed a slow shop in the air-conditioning and bought more ice (useful later in an unanticipated way).
On the return I decided to film (to follow – it just needs editing) my ride up the steep lane commenting that I wouldn’t know what to do if I met a car coming the other way and…. I did. To cut a long story short I tried to squeeze past but at the last moment stalled and dropped the bike and fell and felt immediately a lot of right sided pain when I hit the ground. Somehow with the help the the late middle aged female driver and her older passenger and large doses of shock and adrenaline, I managed to get the bike upright, still on a steep incline. I tried to move it in first gear with the engine but it was tricky and I stalled a few times and very nearly dropped it again. (I was trying to remember advice from a Plumb video about what to do if you stall uphill. Let go of all the controls and the bike will not go anywhere – if you are in gear which you would be.) A couple of cars came down but backed away pretty quickly. Once I managed to inch up to a not so steep part of the lane I managed to lean over enough to put down the side stand without the bike rolling back. I could climb on and then ride on up to the campsite. Once here, though, I must have been so shaken and distracted that I dropped it again on the grass (even though the film shows that the bike thought that the side stand was down). This time I hurt too much to pick it up and decided to wait for one of the other campers to come to help. But a – I have to say quite beefy woman appeared from nowhere (I must have been lost in anxiety) and offered to help. She was the owner of a chopper type motorcycle parked over in a corner by a tent. She was very helpful in the best possible way, asking if I wanted to wait or to pick it up now. She could see I was frazzled and in a bit of shock. Together we lifted it up though unfortunately my GoPro ran out of battery just before recording us getting it upright. It turned out she was from Nunhead.
I texted H, took some Brufen and held my bag of ice against my painful side and back for a while. This pain is very different to the muscular pain of my bizarre gardening accident injury. [I have just learned, six weeks later, that I did fracture rib number 10 on my right side – a displacement fracture. Its still painful though not nearly as much as in the first week after the fall.]
I’ve now had a couple of gin and orange drinks sans ice and will cook my chicken noodles and pad thai sauce. I wonder what my night will be like with this pain.
The farmer has just come by. There are three of us on the site, a solitary man in a car and large tent, the woman with the Honda who was on her way home from a women’s motorcycle event in Wales and me. Now there is a forth – a young guy walking the Offa’s Dyke way with a predictably very small tent. All of us are in solitude in our own worlds sitting looking out over this beautiful and peaceful vista. The walker told me he had motorcycled and cycled but now is walking. I thought – would it be ‘resilient’ to give up biking after one small off and start a new path of walking?
Its a beautiful sunny Sunday morning and the sun is quickly drying the dew that is covering my tent and the grass. I so enjoy my ground coffee made in my travelling drip cone and am eating rather disgusting chocolate hazelnut filled brioche type croissants. Feeling frazzled (I wrote that but can’t remember why) and then rode off on part of one of the Bikers’ Britain routes. But first to visit Portmeirion, which I know as the film set for The Prisoner which I watched on TV in the late 1960s and then later bought on DVD. It was such a clever series. The place was heaving with tourists from far and wide but it hassuch a good mechanism to deal with large numbers of visitors that it feels pleasant and uncrowded. I took very many photos. The place is highly photogenic.
Then after a couple of hours I carried onward in a westerly direction on the BB route, but it was disappointing. There were lots of cars and the going was slow. It was a Sunday afternoon, afterall. I reached Abersoch and, in a busy seaside resort, found a parking place just for me and sat watching the sea and people sailing boats for a while. The estuary is so shallow that I saw one boat being towed out by a tractor.
I returned toward Portmadog on the same route and dropped into a Lidl – or was it Aldi? – and bought more ice and some other provisions. Its a simple but effective routine. What I mean is once my tent and other stuff is unpacked at a site I can use the waterproof roll-bag as a kind of portable fridge.
Back here in the campsite, I see that the noisy group have left – and feel more relief than I expected. When I left this morning their tents were surrounded by rubbish and two large incongruous wheelie suitcases. It must have been getting to me. And the grass has been mown, leaving a lovely smell and a strange sense of pleasure and satisfaction. Two nice lads who are walking the 100 mile Snowdonia and I chatted to one (the other didn’t seem communicative). They are very different to the young guys that were keeping us all awake last night. I complimented one of the walkers on a green top he was wearing… more on that in a later post.
I have a route for tomorrow via Bala to the second campsite near Oswestry, fresh ice, tonic water and a lime. My meat has thawed out from the freezer. But I learnt that mushrooms definately don’t freeze and that noodles probably don’t either. The Garmin unit is mostly working well though sometimes loses power as it started to do in Norway last year but seems to regain it so its ok. Using it again is so much less stress than the DMD unit. Which is another story, one I’ve already set down in detail.
