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.
Breakfast in the Bridge Inn was in front of a huge HD television screen showing us the Olympics opening ceremony from Paris – eventually I saw they had left the remote around so I turned it down. Two other couples came down for breakfast, one an older man in a bright orange Hawaiian shirt with a younger female partner. The food had the same slightly unhealthy feel to it.
I got up to Ludlow by a surprising and pleasant back route to pay my visit to J who lives in what I think used to be called a warden-controlled flat in a block. The street is steep but I could pull in and park the bike next to the big metal gates into the carpark of her block. Jane came out but wasn’t able to open the gates with her fob so I had to manoeuvre the bike to one side, grateful that it is relatively light. I wondered if there was a fault or whether she had the wrong item. In the end someone else let me in and gain I needed to park the bike in a narrow space.
J told me that she is very happy where she is living. She asked me about my family, then again a few minutes later and then a third time. I had a gradual realisation of her mental state. We went for lunch in a cafe next door, a lovely place but we arrived an hour earlier than she had booked. Because of the noise for much of the time we each read separate sections of the newspaper which she went out to buy. With flashes of some of her earlier character, she asked me some sharp questions about a book that I had written. I shouldn’t accept passively that the publisher is rubbish at publicity, she said. After lunch we went back and chatted for a while in her flat. I asked her what her plans were for her memoire which she had sent me a few years back in order to discuss publication. She seemed utterly surprised that she had written such a thing and asked me to send her a copy. Age and chronology became a little disturbing for me. First, she informed me that she would be 84 at her next birthday, not 90 as I had thought she had told me. Then she told me that she had moved into this accommodation 16 years ago. I was shocked to do the sums that revealed that she moved there when she was the same age that I am now.
When I prepared to leave, it was clear that J couldn’t open the gate so again another resident came and opened it as she beckoned me to get through before it closed. And after a quick goodbye I was off, turning right up the hill toward the town centre.
Then the real holiday, perhaps, started with being on the bike, leaving Ludlow and heading north west towards the campsite I had booked in Trawnsfynydd. I found the time with J quite upsetting, partly to see her own mental decline from her days as a sharp-minded academic and secondly how her age and faculties might map onto my own. So the cool air and sunshine of my ride was good to clear my head a little.
My camp was Camp Stesion. It is in the Snowdonia national park and has beautiful vistas that it took me quite a while to really notice and appreciate. Once I unpacked I headed off 20 minutes to a supermarket at Portmadog for provisions. The campsite has simple facilities with a nice style – shower rooms with corrugated steel walls, for example. It was quiet apart from a group – two young couples – that started playing heavy beats at 10pm, leading me to get out of my sleeping bag and go over to ask them to stop. They did but talked and laughed for most of the night. They had two large suitcases on wheels as their luggage.
From my notes: To start the trip I needed to carry up a bag full of travel items on the train from home in London to the garage in Cambridge where I keep my motorcycle and where I’ve been keeping most of my camping equipment. So, on the first day of the trip, I rode from Cambridge to Tenbury Wells in Worcestershire. The ride itself isn’t much fun, starting on the super busy A14 out of Cambridge before becoming the M6 east of Birmingham and other motorways to the west. There were roadworks and many 50 mile an hour speed limits but I wasn’t overly concerned to be riding a little slowly. The total distance is a little under 150 miles. I forgot to mention that I had bought and fitted a Puig adjustable screen extender as I thought that it might make these long motorway miles more peaceful. I have to say that I didn’t notice any difference, in fact, if anything there was a little more turbulence. It looks odd on top of a rally style screen so I may remove it.
Cambridge Garage to the Bridge Inn Tenbury Wells 148 miles
Tenbury is a small old market town and every address seems to be in Teme Street, the Teme being the name of the river that runs by the town, because there is just one street. I stayed in the Bridge Inn which is just by the river. There is a small beer garden just by it. The High Street, Teme Street, is very pretty with a few hostelries (the locals clearly don’t use the Bridge Inn much) and took about 5 or 6 minutes to walk to the end of and back. The Bridge Inn itself is pleasant, with a newly refurbished feel to the bar and the rooms. Staying in pubs could be noisy especially on a Friday night as this was, but on this occasion the place was extremely quiet. It was being run by two young and enthusiastic people, one of whom told me that he had only worked there for a week. I chose to eat dinner there and the pub’s speciality was burgers of various varieties. I chose one with pastrami – tasty but with a lack of vegetables or healthy ingredients. Not my usual diet but something in me, perhaps a kind of laziness, draws me toward highly processed food when travelling.
Having now taken the DMD tablet on two or three trips, I’ve made some progress with it but I find there are still some serious problems with using it that amount to deal breakers for me.
First the positives: I’ve worked out how to turn up the volume and assign a button to that so I have been able to hear the turn by turn instructions from Google Maps and DMD – when riding at slow speed at least.
I’ve worked out how to tether my iPhone to the DMD so now have a live connection that allows Google maps and Myrouteapp to work properly.
With stick on fingertips on my gloves the touchscreen works pretty well most of the time.
These are all major problems solved. But there are still some unsolved issues that make me consider deinstalling this outfit and putting it up for sale:
1 The screen is not very bright – nothing like the Garmin Zumo XT and I can’t understand why people say that it is. See the picture. DMD is set to 100% brightness. It is pretty much unusable when the light shines directly on it, in even dull sunlight.
2. The link to the iPhone keeps dropping out and is long-winded to reestablish involving two separate set up screens – certainly too involved to do safely while riding. And when there is a poor mobile signal, there is no GPS mapping – at least on the Google maps app.
3. The DMD app map seems to have centred itself in a large blue ocean somewhere and does not seem to auto centre on where I am. Again, this would take time to sort out – involving stopping.
4. When using it, the map does not seem to keep where you are updated.
The pros still are: I can just take one device on journeys that I can use as a Kindle, for internet browsing and blog updates
Motorcycle shows – what can I say? For me, after the first few when I had just discovered riding and a whole new world of bikes and kit, the experience has tended to not live up to the expectation. Not quite. Unless you have something particular you are gong for, like having moulds taken of your ears for earplugs or trying on a particular helmet for size, in which case you have a mission. So I have to ask myself, what do I expect? I will return to that later.
The main attraction of course is the bikes, all those bikes that whizz past on YouTube videos of adventurers are there for you to climb on, get a sense of their height, their bulk, maybe, or lack of it. The main distraction is the crowds of other people. Take four fifths of them away and I think I would be in heaven.
Here are some of my favourites
Husky NordenNorden 901Collection of Honda dirt bikesMosko Moto kitWhat my 790 would look like with panniersHmm a 1290KTM dirt bikeNorden 701 i think
The bike that attracted the biggest crowds was the new large GS from BMW, the 1300. BMW seem to have done the impossible – or difficult – of updating an adventure bike and not coming up with something heavier. Is it good looking? I’m not sure.
It seemed that the old favourites, like the GS, attracted the crowds while stalls offering new concepts like electric bikes or even a folding motorcycle (like my Brompton) were often empty. I wish I had spent more effort talking with the people on those stands. Most markets, I presume, are conservative, offering what they know that people already have an appetite for and will buy, so new ideas and the people that back them are more risky, more innovative and ought to be more interesting. Next year maybe.
STOP the presses! I have just (september 9th) learnt that Holland Norway Line has been declared bankrupt and I believe that some travellers with return tickets are having to make their own way home. This is such a shame as it was a startup in only 2022. When travelling with them it was obvious that ferries are such a complex business to operate. I feel so sorry for them, for those who had the vision for the company and for all of their employees who seemed a very sweet and professional bunch of people. There seem to be fewer and fewer ferries in Europe, forcing travellers to use carbon-crunching air flight. See here for some more details.
28th June: This is 28th June and this is the news from cabin 8814 of the Romantika. Its my second cabin on this voyage so far, the ferry sailing from Kristiansand down to Emden in Germany. In my first cabin, I thought I had vaguely heard some music in it and thought ‘this is going to be slightly annoying’, had a shower, had a short sleep and then I heard loud singing and guitar playing. It turned out that the cabin was right under the sundeck with the Entertainer who was, I presume, entertaining a whole bunch of people a few feet above me. I was really pleased with myself that instead of just putting up with it I felt no hesitation in going up to the information desk and asked if there was another cabin. As a result they have given me a new cabin on the same deck but right at the other end of the ship. I am so pleased. Its completely quiet here.
How did the day go? I didn’t sleep well last night (again). I was awake at 3.30 and slept fitfully until shortly after 7am. I got up and made some lovely coffee with my filter dripper which has been great. I washed up, washed out the little hut (which would have cost Krhundreds if I had asked the staff to do it). I headed out over the sand dunes to walk briefly on the beautiful beach. There was not a soul in sight – just footprints. On the way back to my hut I chatted to the couple of cyclists I mentioned before, who are Italian and certainly well into their forties. They had cycled here from Italy(!) and are cycling to Nordkap planning to arrive there by August. The timetable of people on pushbikes is so different to mine. I certainly take my hat off to them.
I headed off with the bike packed up (that is so satisfying) taking it easy on the road, unlike yesterday when I hurried around. Eventually the last 14k was motorway and lots of tunnels (and higher speed limits) and made it to the ferry. I was greeted by the sight of loads of motorcyclists who were mostly Dutch and German.
There were a couple of guys from England who told me what they had achieved (which immediately made me feel that I did not do enough, was not adventurous enough): they did some off-road riding, they wild camped, they rode the famous Trollstigen Pass, none of which I had done. They went up to the arctic circle too. They were nice guys. It was the sort of conversation you have where very quickly you realise that somebody is a talker and not a listener, so you just settle into listening and they talk – which is fine (and they had had an interesting time). There was lots of luggage. Lots of people have lots of luggage on these large touring and ‘adventure’ bikes – metal panniers PLUS rolltop bags. Much more luggage than I have been carrying. In fact much more than I used to take when I had a large bike and metal panniers (I still have them and must sell them). There were a couple of KTM 1090 Adventures looking very nice. One had nice black metal panniers. (I was tempted to think about getting metal panniers for my bike for a future tour on road (not offroad where they would be a liability.)
After a couple of instalments we got onto the boat – and I have already described the rest.
I’m now going to head off to the buffet early before things run out (you can see my German heritage at work here) and afterwards read more of Ubik by Philip K Dick (Wikipedia says: The story is set in a future 1992 where psychic powers are utilized in corporate espionage, while cryonic technology allows recently deceased people to be maintained in a lengthy state of hibernation.).
Tomorrow morning at 10.15 we get into Emden. I was looking at my map of the Netherlands thinking that I will ride straight down south on a German autobahn by the border and then turn right into the Netherlands because the motorways are much faster in Germany. I know I will get to the Hook of Holland early but its not too bad a building. You can sit inside and get a coffee from a machine. I would sooner do that than what I did on the way over which was such a drawn out and laborious ride. I will be happy to sit and read until it is time to board….
Its now 7 minutes past 7 in the evening on 28th June, on the ship and in my new cabin 8814 as opposed to 8141. A couple of observations: I have just enjoyed a pleasant hour or just less, sitting in the buffet eating salad, then fish, then more salad then some deserts and maybe three glasses of anonymous white wine. I was sitting there people watching – as usual. I was watching all the people that chose salad mainly and have come to the obvious conclusion that during the life-course people change their shape. That’s observation number 1. Observation number 2: after eating I strolled out on to the sundeck where the singer had been singing earlier when I got into my first cabin. It was two minutes past 7 when I arrived there and it was completely deserted. There was no singer, no audience and nobody making any noise at all. That whole event goes into the category of – well two things – possibly being hasty (in asking to move cabin) but the real category that my request to move goes into is into the mental category of ‘regretting choices’ which is an entirely useless category. It was the right thing to do – to move. The music could have gone on for hours – and I remember the employee on the information desk mentioning to me that the entertainment lasts until 11pm.
There is no network here in the cabins which is nice, in some ways. Its very early, only 7pm but I will get to bed in a couple of hours. As I wrote before, we dock at 10.15, I ride down through Germany and the Netherlands and repeat this experience on the ferry to Harwich. The ride from Harwich into London will be the bleakest part (the A12 is no fun) but arriving home will be great.
