Day 1 Setting off. Fast Ferry. Holland.

Day Two Into Germany

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Day 1 Setting off. Fast Ferry. Holland.

I don’t think it was expected of me to feel bad about abandoning my family and going off on my bike for a few weeks, but on the eve of my trip, I was feeling guilty and so, when I went shopping for my solo last supper and a bottle of really fine, dry, German Riesling, a chunk of steak and some fancy mushrooms just fell into my bag, the needle of the guiltometer hardly quivered at all, resting as it was hard against the stop well beyond the point marked “Good Family Man.”

Later, at home with supper cooking, I took so long to pack that I perfectly overcooked the onions, garlic, courgettes and mushrooms as they slowly sweated it out in butter, creating a superb send-off syrupy sauce to go with the beef. As I ate and drank I realised that I hadn’t consumed an entire bottle of wine on my own since I had passed my driving test.  I don’t wish to infer that I had drunk a bottle of wine in order to pass my test, but that shortly after I returned home a successful 17 year old testee my Mother gave me the dog and the keys to the V.W. camper and told me to go and learn to drive, which I did at the same time as picking up experience in shopping for a lump of steak and a bottle of Lutomer Riesling (I use the term “wine” loosely).  With occasional driving tips barked in from Muffin who liked bowling along with his head out of the window and his ears streaming out behind his head as if he was in a cartoon, (it was before the days of compulsory seatbelts for dogs), I obeyed the call of the wild, headed for Thetford Forest and parked up behind a “No Camping” sign – possibly my last, and greatest, act of rebellion.  For family observers the weekend was notable both for my bringing the van home in one piece and for returning Muffin with a dreadful infestation of tics, poor dog.  For me it was almost entirely successful; I had, indeed, learned to drive, (something you only really begin to do when alone in a vehicle), I had established an adventurous streak with the popular press, and I had briefly owned a whole bottle of wine.  The only disappointment, I recall, was that neither Raquel Welch nor Sophia Loren showed up, (younger readers may wish to substitute Michelle Pffeifefferfffer, or even, for all I know,  Underage Spice or La La), but I’m afraid I wouldn’t have known what to do with them even if they hadn’t had a prior engagement. And I would have had to share the wine.

I digress again, but think it might be best if I just get on with all the digressions without announcing them because, let’s face it, so little is actually likely to happen to me in the course of my Great Adventure that, without digression, this would be a very short narrative.  With a little wandering about there is, at least, some hope of boring dogged readers more comprehensively.

After my meal, I seem to remember that I was broadly capable of going to bed, but instead I had to put all the gear on the bike.  

Some weeks before I had tried packing all the things I was planning to take with me, and it had gone very well, but that night I found that it no longer fitted on the bike.  To quote Michael Flanders; “… it was the only example of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.”

I had to leave some space for food bought on the way, and decided to remove some items. I chose “Moby Dick,” a loo roll, and the spare gas cylinder, but the pack was still rock-hard to the touch. I checked through it again and decided that to leave with no loo roll was madness indeed. I was tempted to promote Moby Dick to a sort of double-role, but the problem with this idea was that if I had a long day on the bike and no time to read I might have to commit several pages to their dreadful fate before I had read them. But, there again, a long day on the bike could somehow… stifle my natural regularity… and I might not need to read at all for some days on end – a frightening thought that had me reaching for some fruit even as I wrestled with these difficult Explorer-type concerns. Then I had the reckless thought that if I bought food and couldn’t squeeze it on board I could always eat it; the new, carefree Me - where was it going to end?

I went outside to the bike and started with the tool-roll I had made up which contained enough tools to ensure that I could comfortably exceed my engineering capabilities, putting this in first so that if  I was stuck on the hard shoulder in the pouring rain at three-o-clock in the morning I would have to unpack everything in order to get to the screwdrivers.  A perfect plan, I thought.

I had also pre-empted the need for a new battery by cleverly buying a new battery, (a strategy which I might have as usefully applied to the whole bike), and this was all charged up and installed to anticipate the colder Autumn mornings.

It was quite deliberate to leave the trip until September, avoiding both the heat and the busiest tourist season, so that I might spoil some of the nice places I was hoping to visit all by myself.  And I always particularly like the cool of Autumn, the long shadows at each end of the day, the dew in the mornings, the uncertainty of the weather.

A phone call to Kay and the Boys, who had avoided any difficult goodbyes by going off to Kay’s family in Devon some days before, and an early bed followed by the predictable no sleep and heavy rain during the night.  This close to my departure my mind was turning over all the permutations of what I could take, what I should take, and what I could leave behind, whether I had checked this or that, and so on.  I dimly remember getting up and tottering about outside in my bare feet, enjoying the deliberately provoked unpredictable Autumn weather to see how much of the rain was getting into my luggage.  This may have scored me a perfect six for my Gabriel Oak impression, but didn’t achieve anything useful beyond getting me used to the sensation of going to bed all wet a day early.

I gave up trying to sleep and turned off the alarm so that it wouldn’t be too raucous when it went off, and promptly fell into the deepest sleep I had enjoyed all night, but luckily the faint click of the impotent strike woke me up again.  I didn’t know how fast or how difficult the travelling was going to be and got up way too early, really, at about five o clock.

Breakfast wasn’t easy.  A big mug of tea and some ashen Weetabix lurking in a bowl somehow managed to find their way in.  I sat there, a blank face mirroring my thoughts, wondering why Sooty the hamster was so up and at ‘em.  I was the one who had to be up, and yet it was Sooty who was full of it.  He reminded me of people at work who breeze in on a Monday morning as we’re unloading a couple of artics, when I’ve been in all Friday night and Saturday, done a get out into the early morning of Sunday, worked all Sunday for a concert or something, and they ask “Did you have a nice weekend?”

Some people would find that annoying.

Outside it was cold, grey and wet, and not as inviting as not going.

I was glad I’d packed the bike to a fault last night as, this morning, I was certainly quite capable of leaving more or less anything, including the bike, behind.

Putting on all the long-distance gear I turned myself, once more, into Velcro Man.  My audio diary contains the phrase; “I must remember to put my trousers on.”  Strange, but true, and actually quite lucky that I did because when I stepped outside, having rather soppily said goodbye to the three dents in the mattresses  upstairs, I was wearing them.

“That’s it.  All I’ve got to do is go.  Bye House…  Bye…” my MiniDisc says I said, and I softly closed the front door which responded with a poignant click of the lock.  Sadly I had to destroy the moment by going in and out again to turn off the outside light, which I did with altogether much less fuss because I had, by then, grown up a bit. It was getting slightly less dark as I climbed on to the wet saddle, the rain now down to just the cats.

Ignition at 5.45.  Not bad.

The bike seemed to be up for it, and started after its customary two or three worryingly slow turns. It was surprisingly simple; after years of dreaming, a few months of planning, days of preparations, a restless night and all the worry about what to take and what I could afford to leave behind.  The insurances, the multicoloured cash, the cards.  The maps, the MiniDisc, the diaries, the pens, the pastels and the paper.  The inner tubes, the tyre levers, the spare bulbs.  The clothes, the food, the stove and tea and coffee.  It was all done, on the bike behind me; if I leant back I could rest against it.

I trod the bike into gear and swept out of the drive in a flamboyant style totally wasted on all but the earliest birds, but nearly of great interest to those still asleep in the hedge opposite our gate as my extravagant exit almost terminally took their minds off the early worms.  Getting used to the weight of the bike in tour-trim might take a while.

And…  That was it.  Once on the go all the anxieties of leaving evaporated.  If I said I was carefree about the whole enterprise and open to all the adventures I could possibly engineer I would have been lying, but now that I was off; beyond that critical point in all journeys after which you know that turning back to pick up that coat, to empty the washing machine or water the children, whatever it may be; it was no longer possible to change anything about the consequences of my planning of the trip.  Now that I was on the move I really did relax completely knowing that I could do no more and alter nothing until situations demanded it of me. And then fifty yards down the road I stopped, repacking the rucksack that sat on the pillion behind me, wrapping everything up in a more realistic fashion and generally waking up.  I also sorted some small change into a more accessible region of my person to avoid arriving at Dartford Tunnel and having to undress in the fast lane – something I’ve never felt comfortable doing.

The mileage on the Guzzi; 10,391.

Heading North up the A23 the plan was as grand a plan as any middle aged father of two has a right to aspire to whilst at the same time fostering any hope of matrimonial respect. Or, indeed, matrimony.  In the broadest terms I intended to guide my bike and I on a grand sweep across the plains of Northern Europe, up an only moderately perilous ascent of the North face of The Eiger, where I thought I might check the oil.  I would then descend, slalom-style with no hands, into the wooded and sweet-smelling glades of Northern Italy, coming to a rest with one of those stylish swoopy ski-turns in the shadow-speckled courtyard of a hidden restaurant run by an assortment of Antonio Carluccio’s non-profit-making relatives.  I would stay there for no more than a couple of years, losing weight, then meander back through remote French eateries where I would be waited upon by the benign and soothing spirit of Kathleen Ferrier who would entice me with her renditions of those lovely menus in The Songs Of The Auberges.   Having been round the one-way system in Rouen only three times I would arrive at Dieppe, hail Captain Hornblower and we would plane North with a following wind and no swell to one of The Cinque Ports and I would return to a ticker-tape welcome in Twineham.  A fine plan, I thought as I battled up towards the M25.

My euphoria was auto-infectious, peaking as I cruised past the point on the A23 where I would have turned off had I been going to work.  But I was so most definitely and absolutely NOT going to work that I momentarily metamorphosed into both of them good ol’ Duke boys from Hazzard County and released a “Yee-HAAA!” that both Uncle Jesse and Daisy would have heard even without their ears on.   It was still early and I like to think that my triumphal cry rang round the dormitory towns of the Home Counties, disturbing those lie-abeds who were acting their ages, and that the bloke in the Fiesta next to me didn’t hear it.

The rain began to fall much more seriously as I left Crawley behind me; so much so that I was forced to stop once more to take my recording gear off and put it inside my jacket.  I had struggled to come up with a method of recording myself on the move, a feat which one would have thought was not too difficult.  But my requirements were none too straightforward.  The recording apparatus had to be small, shock-resistant and use a medium that was resistant to damp.  It had to be able to accept a signal at microphone level and to make quality recordings and the ideal was that it would be able to switch from “off” (not “standby” which is, as far as batteries are concerned an “on” by another name) to “record” from a remote switch that I could operate on the move with my big fat gloves on.  Suddenly the cry of “Easy!” from the technophiles evaporated.

I had tried to interest the B.B.C. in my trip, hoping that there would be some kind of fight between the various commissioning editors, and that the winner would be the one who rustled up a nifty little gadget to my specification.

No.

I wrote directly to the engineers at the BBC appealing to their sense of pride and adventure, presenting my trip as a challenge both for me on my bike and for them on their workbenches.

No.

I wrote to the local radio station, with the same enthusiasm (actually the same letter) as I had their shinier National colleagues, endowing them with far more than their fair share of glamour.  I invited them to be part of the B.B.C. in a way that often escapes them as they chase up a milk-tanker spillage or fight the paparazzi for an audio close-up of a double-claim pension-scandal ready to rock Haywards Heath (and Haywards Heath is always ready to rock).

No.

I wrote to Sony appealing to their sense of corporate pride, offering my grand motorcycle trip in response to the acutely adventurous style of advertising they had chosen for their MiniDisc system.  After several weeks they eventually wrote back indicating in twelve words that they couldn’t help and that no-one who had the remotest chance of understanding what I was on about had actually read my letter.

So that was a “no” too.

In the end I adopted an approach that more often than not yields the best results, and that was to sort it out myself.  I bought a MiniDisc recorder with a one-touch from “off” to “record” facility and my friend Barry made me a mildly waterproof pouch which I wore on a halter round my neck.   I found with practice that I could just about press the buttons without falling off, and it did me jolly well.  Kay sewed a clip into my crash helmet that I put a microphone in that I borrowed off John at work. But at Gatwick I had to stop and take it all off anyway because the MiniDisc pouch was filling up with water.

Once recording every thought, a novelty still, was no longer a distraction, I was able to concentrate on the other great novelty of my motorcycle trip around Europe which was riding my motorcycle!  I was not, in any but the most literal terms, a Biker, and so some explanation of my Moto Guzzi may be in order.

I think that the ideal way to do this trip, or any trip come to that, is probably on a push bike. Or, given even the slightest optimism and sound cartlidges, a “pedal bike.”  Pedalling along you travel fast enough to not get bored by the same field taking forever to go by, yet slowly enough to look through the gateway as you pass by, and to stop in it for a meaningful moment if the fancy takes you.  Even I could pedal forty or fifty miles in a day, all the time completely exposed to the landscape I was travelling through.  But I needed to cover more like two hundred miles in a day, and so pedalling was out. In a car, of course, it is very difficult to absorb much of the landscape at all, though you do stand a better chance of not absorbing any water.  But I wanted to experience as much as I could; I might never do this again, and so a car was out. I lit upon a motorbike as a compromise vehicle; fast enough to go places in a reasonable time and yet open enough to see the ground pass under the foot pegs, to feel the wind and to be under the sky all day.  An image of solo bike riding is one of freedom, of independence of spirit, of leaving situations behind and taking off for new experiences.  The reality stood every chance of not being any of these; it was, after all, James Simon and not James Dean who was going, but I had hopes.

So I started to research motorbikes.  A lengthy task, at least in my hands.  I am quite tall, with disproportionally long legs and soon found that I didn’t fit on more or less all Japanese bikes. This doesn’t leave much, but I tried BMW's;

These just didn't seem right; I liked the boxer engines, but the GS wasn't comfy and didn't handle well, the 850R was just a bit too small but a nicely balanced bike I thought, and the K series bike seemed to rev far too high, buzzing away like a banshee. I also tried some custom style bikes, but settled on a much neglected, difficult to find but thoroughly capable touring “trail” bike, the Moto Guzzi “Quota”.  A huge bike, but even fully loaded it handles well, has shaft drive, pulls from almost no revs and is very economical notwithstanding its 950cc engine.  Being so high and with an upright riding position it provided a really superb view of both the World and the traffic ahead, had more torque than a tractor, and had the street cred. and a gearbox from one.  I’m not a street cred. person having discovered through years of non-conforming that sooner or later the street catches up with my own particular cred.  For instance I was first with Tank Tops, beating the fashion gurus by some years to that particular blend of practicality and cutting-edge design.  Bobble-hats; hiking socks with my trousers tucked inside them; the worn out look -  I got there first and as far I’m concerned it’s up to the others to catch up.  My tip for the next decade?  Faded Chino’s going through at the knee, old tee-shirts with “I was free with something” logos in subtle shades of lilac and bright green, Clarkes Naturetreks, a little bit of scalp shining through.  See if I’m wrong.

So, apart from the gearbox which I came to regard as a quaint and endearing pain in the arse, I was happy.

Having sorted out the “how” I was into the “why.”  I think I may have developed what could be described as “My bravado speech,” which contained phrases like “I wanted to get wet if it rains, feel hot if it’s hot, feel cold at altitude” and “I want to see the road rolling past under my feet and not just to arrive at the next stop with no appreciation of how I got there,” etc.  The truth was, however, that I was lamentably short of biking experience, and didn’t know what to expect at all.  I didn’t know whether I would be scared, exhilarated, tired, lonely, excited or just plain bored.

Principally, though, the motivation came from wanting to have a go at something, and I also just fancied the biking thing.  Lurking deep, (very deep, Ed.) was an Adventure Animal and since base-jumping and/or sailing the Southern Ocean were both a little tricky in the Haywards Heath area, I found myself revelling in my humdrum little trip, all my preconceptions happily vindicated with the discovery that even the M25 was transformed by my being on a motor bike.  Turning East on the M25 where others less fortunate than myself were travelling straight on to Croydon, I really was not just going round the dreaded Orbital; I was on a journey through a landscape that appeared new to me even though I had been this way many times in a car.  The weather; grey and grisly as it was, helped in that only small pieces of the scenery were at all recognisable.

“It works!  Being high and out in the landscape,” I wrote in my diary later.  “Coming up around the Downs surrounded by low cloud, the slow but persistent rain and the higher slopes lost in the fog and gloom – this could have been The Vosges - and was certainly nothing like the same journey in the car.”

My foresight with the tunnel money paid off, and I took only two or three minutes longer than was expected by the enthusiastic and supportive queue behind me to find the very loose change somewhere deep and unmentionable, and then I was off again, over territory familiar enough through the windows of a car, but which now looked as unlike this part of Essex as I had any right to expect.

In spite of the rain I was still dry, and not at all stiff or sore.  The village of Danbury even contrived to fleetingly borrow a shaft of melodramatic sunshine to spend on it’s church spire, picking it out against the dark grey skies.  I exuberantly abandoned the trip, albeit temporarily, by quitting while everything was going so well, and turned off the A12 straight into a Little Chef. “’Ere!  Mind me Crep Suzettes,” said the diminutive cook, gesticulating wildly, ladle in hand.  I apologised to the little guy, and hopefully cheered him up by suggesting that he might have been underrating his Suzettes.

For those who don’t know me, and I have to believe that you don’t, I never do this.  Roadside halts accompanied by petty expenditure are right out.  Whole days have been ruined by my sulking after a newspaper or packet of crisps finds its way into the car after a stop for petrol.  It’s a good job I’m so right about this kind of thing or Kay could find it rather dispiriting.  Anyway, I was going to have to stop now and then for supplies, and so I thought I had better approach the learning curve head on and I walked in with my head held high.

“Now in a Little Chef, for a coffee,” says my diary, “but someone carried a fry-up past me and I weakened at the first test.  I’m eating mine now.

“I could have had the “New, Bigger Breakfast” but that implied that the Little Chef Think Tank may have once only conceived this offering as small, and it might still be growing up, so I went for “The Olympic Breakfast,” which has an appropriately epic (if not Epicurean) ring to it.  Odysseus no doubt had one of these before he left, but he might have risked all and insisted on the other half of his tomato.  What have they done with my other half?  I bet they nicked it to help that New Bigger Breakfast in its bid for full recognition by the F.F.S.B. (Federation for Full Scale Breakfasts).”

Honestly, this didn’t augur well; I bothered to write all this stuff in my little book!

“No one here is reading a newspaper, but there is an empty rack headed “Courtesy Newspapers.”  Have they simply failed to arrive?  Or is it more sinister than that?  Do they never actually buy any papers and expect us to think better about Little Chef’s on the cheap?  A useful P.R. tool; “Do feel free to use the Little Chef Lear Jet, Sir, when it returns…

I mustn’t mock; the lady who flits around is very nice and she’s noticeably concerned about all the customers.  And my breakfast was very… Olympic, though I’m withdrawing from the high jump and now just putting my name down for the shot put.”

Unlike the newspapers, the Lear Jet and the massage parlour, the toilet was available so I unpacked myself for the first time in order to go to the loo.  Bike gear and confined spaces don’t mix easily, and the absence of hooks in the tiny cubicle didn’t help.  In the midst of the ripping noises and the grunting and groaning emanating from my cubicle, I spookily heard just the one, tiny, scrape of a shoe on the floor in the main body of the loo.  Just one.  Someone must have come in during one of my noisy moments, regretted it and noiselessly withdrawn, wondering who the pervert behind the Melamine was and what they were up to. Wow; this was this life on the edge – the expected lot of the Lone Rider. Once dressed I slunk out into the car park to avoid any embarrassing stares from the more respectable customers.

Outside the day had brightened up and I saw that my nice, clean and lovingly prepared bike was covered with grime from the motorway spray.  The warmth from the Sun was noticeable even through my layers, andI had just a tee shirt and a pair of track suit trousers on underneath my waterproofs. This was rather ominous, in retrospect; I hadn’t felt at all cold in the rain and wind.  I wasn’t at all wet and I set off, fortified by fatty food, a broad grin on my face, towards Harwich and the ferry.

I believe that the contractors responsible for building the A12 between Chelmsford and Colchester gained the record for the speediest bit of road building at the time of its construction.  Having been along it numerous times in my earlier life as an East Anglian I sometimes wondered whether they actually built it faster than it is possible to now go along it. Maybe they should also have  spent some time planing down the joins between the sections of concrete a bit as now it’s just old and bumpy with two narrow, and, at times, really busy lanes.  Today, though, I quickly accelerated up into fifth, settled back against my pack à la Route 66 and actually enjoyed the sights either side of the commuter mayhem.  Just immediately alongside the road was a slice of old Essex that you just don’t see from a car.  I once worked for a while as a gardener/handyman/adolescent layabout near Great Dunmow, and the terrain here right nest to the busy road was really just as bucolic and Orlando The Marmalade Cat-ish as you could wish for.  Trim fields, small red brick farms with rounded corrugated iron Dutch barns, neat hedges, all with the added security of a huge Tesco’s on the horizon where, presumably, Orlando went to buy his Kit-e-Kat when the mice ran out.

There are, probably, any number of things which are best not done whilst wearing a crash helmet, but sneezing must be fairly near the top of the list.  Somehow, however, I spotted the turn off the A12 to Harwich and all points East, the traffic thinned, and I realised, with a leap of the heart, that for the first time I was riding along an unfamiliar road.

I had been to this area a few times, but from the sea.  When I was twelve or thirteen my Mother married John who was Master of a Thames Sailing Barge based in Maldon.  Before they were married we lived in a cosy part of Hampshire in a perfect little wooden house with a lovely garden surrounded by woods and hills.  Idyllic for me; I used to wander around in the hills, my mind in neutral no doubt, as usual; but no doubt less idyllic for my Mother.  I’m sure she was aware that we were happy, but it must have been difficult for her spending her life totally on us children.  So when she married John, who I knew - but not very well - my Mother and us three children up-anchored one Summer and I found myself in a strange new World smelling of tar.

One might think that to a young boy this would be Swallows and Amazons come true, and although I have certainly never wished that we hadn’t moved, I do feel somewhat sad when I think of those times.  It’s not because of the upheaval of the move or of the sudden introduction of another member of the family, but because I know that I didn’t make the most of the water-life.  Imagine the river.  Little boats to go pootling about on; sailing around Northey Island, or, on the highest tides, over it.  Out to sea on the barge, lying in the net under the bowsprit, often inches from the waves before they were pushed aside by the bow.  Nights at anchor, paraffin lights, tea in big mugs up on deck in the wind and weather… all great stuff, but, with the innocence I undoubtedly possessed in abundance, I really didn’t think it at all remarkable and therefore didn’t make any effort to get the most from the opportunities.  I did become almost useful once, but only ever really shone at feeling seasick.  The barge is now long sold and John and Annabel have moved miles from the sea (a pre-requisite when they went house hunting), but it could explain why the euphoria of riding over this golden road into the early Sun towards Harwich was tinged with a bit of middle-aged regret.

I had loosely inhabited this area for a while living with my Sister in a small village on the River Colne.  The idea was that I took a couple more A-Levels to make up for the opportunity I had dutifully squandered whilst at school, and, following my interests, I decided upon Biology and Geology, revelling in the amount of progress made possible by covering the syllabi in one year.  Looking back now, from the position of a forty year old parent, it does seem that education could be tackled either in a shorter time, or, more practically, could allow particular interests to be more fully explored before a young person has to leave full-time education for economic reasons.  My two children are quite capable of deep thoughts, but I really don’t think the school system as it is has the time and, I’m afraid, the ability, to allow their minds and hands to progress at a rate which would inspire them with the whole school thing and which, I’m sure, all children are capable of sustaining.  Parents, obviously, have a responsibility here, but so do the schools, and it’s sad when years go by during which time your children are not presented with the opportunities that reflect their developing interests.  Whilst I’m at it I might as well get another bee out of my bonnet and lament the decline in the teaching of … doing things.  There is a curriculum interest in design, basic science and the learning of “why,” but almost none to do with the “how.”  Woodwork, cooking, hitting a nail in, how screws differ from nails, making a spoon out metal or joining some pipes together…  Skills which are either covered at home or not at all.  Teachers, of course, differ in the skills they themselves possess, but I can see that when the current generation leave school and enter adulthood they will know all about how they want their car, their house, their kitchen to look, but won’t have a clue about how to make any bits and pieces for themselves. The unfashionable, sweaty hard work will be done by…Who? 

I stopped to wipe the inside of my visor (why was I sneezing so much?) and saw a signpost to Walton on the Naze, a name which prompted the recollection of two slightly questionable memories, linked by a common element of lavatorial humour. To get the, arguably, more unkind one out of the way first, I remembered being told of a piece of graffiti nestling comfortably under a departure board on Liverpool Street Station.  A list of stations culminating in “Harwich for the Continent,” and under it, in chalk lettering of some vintage; “And Walton for the Incontinent.”   Now, in my defence, I deliberated for over three seconds about writing that because it must be so awful to actually be incontinent that to mock this affliction is obviously out of order.  I include it because I like puns and for no other reason, and even presume to hope that an incontinent Pun-meister would be glad that I had. Anyone who is both incontinent and hates wordplay – well, I’ve no defence against you, and I do feel sorry for you.

The other episode I recall was a Geology field trip I had been on from Colchester Tech. during my A-Level year.  Walton on the Naze has an unfortunate habit of falling off it, and it is this cruelty of Nature that appeals so much to blood-thirsty geologists.  Each time there’s a bit of Naze action the Hardhats move in under the cliff face to pick over the rubble and encourage the next bit to fall down from under someone else’s house.  Which is what we did. The geological material there is notable for containing, as well as the expected fossilised Coke cans and the epidermis of the Chesseburgersaurus; fossilised pooh.  These "coprolites" were, how shall I put it… relatively recent deposits… just a few million years old, and so I don’t think it would have been possible to extract the DNA and clone a really frightening stool of T. Rex. shit, but some were impressive enough; hard, sandy-coloured lengths of fossilised excrement.  Needless to say I half covered up a fresh dog turd under the cliff, called over the class swat, and pointed out the latest find, wondering if he wanted to take it back to the lab. “That’s a dog turd,” he said, “I wouldn’t pick that up if I were you.” Suitably chastened I sat down and began to eat my way through all the hard boiled eggs I’d accumulated in the minibus...

Back to my journey; I was following all signs to Harwich, which neatly led me away from anything to do with the ferry, but being almost three hours early helped to avoid any undue sense of panic.  After a lap or two of Harwich I eventually rolled onto the ferry forecourt, admired openly by the more conventional trippers for the cut of my jib and general dash, only to notice, too late, that I had missed my last opportunity to buy petrol in English over on the other side of the road.  Caught in two minds I tried to turn round just as I stopped, and began a slow and terrible slide from the perpendicular in front of an appreciative audience.  A hasty foot and a heave later I managed to put the bike onto its side stand, got off and stole a look around.  It was a relief to see that everyone was being polite and was now pretending that I wasn’t even there.  I decided to regain a little self-respect by establishing a grain of rebellious, bikerish behaviour in the relative comfort of my own country by going back to the petrol station against the arrows. Feeling ever so naughty I could only mutter my thanks to the cashier, hoping that he hadn’t pressed the panic alarm under the counter in view of my desperate contra-arrow behaviour.  I re-crossed the road, with a tank full of best British petrol, and sheepishly rejoined the pack.

Most of my important belongings were all rather importantly stowed away; too deep; and so in having to dredge through my pack to find them I had to stop for a while to satisfy each demand of the ferry system.  Deep as I was in my own affairs I couldn’t help but become aware of the general excess of motorbikiness there was going on around me, and each time I stopped to sort through my bits I heard another of these insensitive sports bikes roar past in what I regarded as a pointedly rude overtaking manoeuvre.  I began to realise that in executing the trip of my dreams I was not to be alone.  I suppose I hadn’t ruled out that there might be another biker or two on the ferry, but as I joined the queue to show off my ticket it became clear that all was not as it should be. There was a posse of sporty machines whining away as they edged forward, and the worst thing about it all was how at home and easy they all made it look.  For a start; where was the luggage?  Hardly anything piled up on the bikes, no panniers or top box, and they were all travelling with two people on board.  And the bikes themselves were ever so small; half the size of my machine. Their attitude also rather depressed me in that they seemed to be entirely at ease with the whole travelling thing, whereas I was more than a little apprehensive about all the uncertainties of my enterprise.

Nevertheless a modicum of pride was restored to the camp of the over-burdened over-forties after check-in when, with a regal side-step of the lane arrangements, I surprised everyone at the meeting, including myself, by suddenly qualifying fifth on the grid.

Having made good time I was an hour or two early and the ferry was not even in sight on its way over from Holland.  Not unhappily resigned to a wait, I resorted to my maps and an apple in the most remote area of the compound I could find only to be disturbed a few moments later by a much-leathered figure spangling over (from his humble position on the twelfth row).

“I don’t think it could be you,” he said hesitantly, “but there’s a couple over at the check-in place asking after someone with a red Italian motorbike.  You’re not expecting anyone, are you?” he reasoned further, taking in my unconventional blend of practicality and dress-sense.

I have an, I like to think, endearing habit, of being rather stupid, as I went on to prove.

“No.”

In my defence I was not expecting anyone; the opposite really, having spent the last five years or so working towards this profligate display of independence, and being in the midst of so many Italian sports bikes and people demonstrably more gregarious than I, whatever was going on it was obviously nothing to do with me.  And so it was that I missed my Brother and Sister-in-law who had got up early, fed their cattle and pushed their business to one side just to drive over to Harwich and wish me well on my journey.  When I heard of this on my return I felt I had been particularly thick, which was, I think, entirely appropriate.

I buried myself in a fan of maps, and, with my head full of Skaggeracks and German Bights, I must have missed the ferry coming in because all of a sudden a flurry of activity spread across the waiting area; gloves were being pulled on, car doors were closing and lots of guts were being stuffed back into whale-bone leathers.  By the time I made it back to my bike the others had started off on the warm-up lap without me.  All the hard work of qualifying had obviously been for nothing as I was destined to start from the back of the grid.  I put it down to bad manners and, with just the moral high-ground between me and the back of the queue, I bumbled onward, round a most intricate circuit of no-man’s land, until we all piled into each other again on the jetty.

I took off my helmet and, looking up, realised that I was to travel on no ordinary ferry.  Looking like an accident in a triangle factory it was obviously the latest in a line of Stealth Ferries designed to deploy married middle-aged fathers of two on the continent under conditions of utmost secrecy.  After that, it was up to them. As I watched, a narrow slit appeared in the grey armour, and bright lights shone from inside revealing diffuse shadow-figures moving within.  Brains wobbled his spec.’s in front of the big dials; Virgil moved his hand quite close to a big lever, and the ramp sank silently to rest.  A pause, and then suddenly three coach-loads of burgeoning hormones giggled onto terra firma, hungry faces pressed to the glass; female creatures primed to wreak havoc amongst their unsuspecting (but eager) victims and to learn English, in that order. A handful of sensible middle-aged cars followed as their more mature drivers, in single file, cautiously negotiated the lanes of plastic cones that were, after all, only wide enough for three or four lorries side by side, and then a bloke on a bicycle, who had overtaken all the cars by the time they made it to the customs shed.  The foreign language students were already long gone of course, their minds racing ahead to their various Missions Entirely Probable.

Looking around I saw that all the other riders seemed to be … getting along.  This must have involved talking to each other and, in the interests of The Great Adventure, I tried it. Not, obviously, by actually going up to someone and saying something, but by just looking open to the concept of communication.

“Going to the race?”

“Mmm?”  The nice chap who took the bait was much the same sort of vintage as I, but I hadn’t the first idea what he was going on about.

“I assume you’re going to the race,” he persevered kindly.

“What race?”

“The (something or other European this or that Cup I can’t remember what) race, in (somewhere or other  – Aachen maybe).”

“Oh.” 

Perhaps something more was required.  I tried;

“No I’m not.”

A pause.

“Why’ve you got a Guzzi?”  He could have been asking me why I had a bidet on my head.

I went through “solid,” “sensible,” “high riding position,” good visibility,” “comfortable,” “easy to maintain,” “economical” and so on, but I could see that I was losing him, and by the time I got to “safe” the process was complete.  Basically it wasn’t fast enough, and so what was the point?  My companion’s eyes had taken on a glazed look, almost as if he wished he hadn’t bothered.

“You’re not,” and his expression hardened, “a Born Again Biker, are you?”

“Oh no,” I chuckled, confident in the knowledge that I wasn’t one of those, “I’ve never really ridden a bike much at all before; I’ve already been further today than I ever have before.”

“I see.”   And he wandered, or possibly even strode, off.

So that was it; a race in Holland.  The bad news was, obviously, that my individualistic statement about radical travel was completely undermined by the presence of so many bikes; in fact there could even be a four-wheeled backlash during the crossing, but the good news was that I had obviously just been unlucky hitting the same trip as so many bikers, and that once disembarked I could probably re-establish my independence fairly quickly.

After a couple of false starts we were finally allowed into the belly of the whale, and I sensibly manoeuvred my machine into a space with a good clear area around it, and from which I thought I stood some chance of extricating myself once the crossing was over.  I also positioned myself over some fastening points in the deck, thinking that the crew would be along to fix my bike up so that it wouldn’t fall over or wander about during the crossing.

Now that my eyes were accustomed to the relative gloom I noticed that none of the other bikes had found a spot anything like as sensible as the one I had chosen.  Looking around I saw that they had hidden their, admittedly smaller, machines down a narrow gap between some hand-rails, at the bottom of a slope under a stairway.  Rather them than me, I thought; they weren’t going to find it  very easy getting their bikes out of there.

“OY!”

Nothing to do with me, naturally.

“OY, YOU!”

A flustered member of the loading crew was running over towards me, gesticulating towards the other bikes.

“You’ve got to…” His peeved expression turned into one of pity as he noticed that I was a bit simple compared to all the other bikers.

“You can’t go here; this is cars.”  He pointed down the hill to the other bikes, all crammed together like they were in a toybox;

“That’s bikes.”

“But my bike weighs twice as much as all these others, and the surface slopes, and it’s wet so that I shall slip as I try to push it back, and if the ground isn’t level it won’t stand up properly with all this luggage on, and how does it get secured…”  But I had been on my own since the start of my outburst, and was left to get on with the business of coping as best I could.

I allowed myself a full Dickensian No. 1 Downtrodden and Misunderstood Look behind my visor as I sheepishly heaved my bike away down to one of the last remaining “spaces.”  It wasn’t too bad going in forwards, but I knew that getting it out again would be a problem; I would be trying to push it backwards off its stand up the slope, the metal deck was wet and slippery, and, in case the point has yet to be grasped, my bike (and I’ve just looked this up in my well-thumbed copy of “What Bike Not To Park At The Bottom Of A Narrow Tunnel Especially If It’s Made Of Wet Metal”) weighed about 60Kg more than an average 750cc sporty bike, not including the luggage.

An encouraging sign was that my two-wheeled contemporaries appeared to be almost as worried as I was.  We were left entirely to our own devices, and the more enterprising of us scoured the well under a companion way for odd lengths of rope.  When I saw what they were doing I grabbed a bit of oily twine and managed to tie the bike to a handrail on one side, a deck-point on the other, and even got a fore-and-aft tie on too, in case the whole thing migrated on the slippery floor.  Our obvious mismatch temporarily forgotten in the heat of battle my companions and I stood back to admire the cat’s cradle we had just  created, and while they happily went upstairs to the bar, I untied my bike and did it all again to take the slack out.  My bike is tippy compared to… every other bike on the planet... and I was really quite worried about it falling over during the crossing and taking out several other machines in the process.

I chose the items that I didn’t want to leave unattended, and, leaving more or less just the bike itself behind, struggled up the companion way to the accommodation deck.

I couldn’t wait to get over and be on my own so that I could legitimately feel adventurous; everyone else seemed to be so at home in what was, to me, an alien environment.  This was supposed to be part of my challenge but to everyone else it was obviously routine and this reduced my sense of achievement. 

“On The Ferry." (Diary and MiniDisc.)

"Very dodgy loading.”  (Why didn’t I just say that above?) “Bikes stacked up like in a showroom.  All tied up, (by us), with no method at all.  I have a feeling insurance doesn’t cover ferries!  Still – I’m here, it’s 11:10 and we’re off.   I’d much rather be somewhere by myself, but I’m being left alone and have a seat.  I’ll get a coffee in a moment.

Obviously I’m not alone in being dispirited in ferries; I’ve just bought a cup of coffee in absolute, complete, silence – the bloke behind the bar utterly fed up with his lot. I was all prepared to be interested in the HSS” (the space-age catamaran ferry) “(very rocky so far) but now can’t wait to be away from this enforced crowding. The ship rocks from side to side; from one hull to the other, much quicker than on a normal ship; about 1½ seconds each way.  So far I don’t feel ill…much. We’re going North along the coast, must look at the map when I get the chance.  Oh; we’re still in a channel – 2 buoys going by now. It’s picking up speed now – the whole thing seems to have lifted out of the water.  Does it plane?

(Overheard to my left);

“Do they have lager over there?”

I’ve just realised that the World Superbike Series accounts for just  part of the clientele.  There’s one or two businessy types – a few tourists of the more mature kind, and a good half of the passengers are on their way to Amsterdam for all it has to offer.  Tanking up is well under way."

I had a short walk around the ship, which was an education.  The ferry company seemed to have analysed the commercial opportunities of the crossing very well.  The journey took four hours, and some of this would be taken up with a bustle at each end as passengers sorted themselves out and during which time they’d have their wallets firmly locked away.  This would leave only about three and a bit hours for getting money off them.  There was a McDonalds, a shop seemingly dealing in duty-free reflective surfaces, a battery of game machines (“whizz, Bam, Whoosh, Whirr-rr-rr-rr Ka-BOOM!”), three bars, a café, a restaurant and almost nowhere to just sit quietly and while the time away.  I’m happy to report that the price of a surly cup of coffee was all they made from me, thank you very much.  Everyone else seemed to be more than happy to support this commendable enterprise, with the exception of one enigmatic figure who was in place when I arrived, and was still there when I left; he didn’t move at all.  I can still picture him, sitting very still, gazing out to sea through the changing crowd.  He didn’t read, buy a coffee, smoke or alter his completely benign expression.  He looked a bit like Nick Faldo, I remember.  He was either a philosopher, a terrorist, a smuggler, an out-take from a spaghetti western or just plain daft in the head.  At least I know how to have a good time, I thought, as I sipped my cold coffee and tried my best not to smell the McDonald’s.

People, and groups of people, in transit make interesting viewing; the more crowded a space, the more anonymous everyone feels.  On this ferry families behaved as if they were still isolated in their cars.  Arguments, feeding, cuddling; all continued as if people had the place to themselves.  Couples practically coupled.  Elderly pairs maintained their functional silence; a balance established long ago allowing him to pick his nose and let his ear-hairs grow if she was allowed to wear that fluorescent cardigan in public.

There was also a group of energetic language students to look at, lit up by the excitement of going away/home; each member innocently exhibiting his or her pre-occupations.  There was Loner – outwardly content, but just now and then his eyes gave away his secret yearnings to, at first, be merely accepted by, and then, ultimately, to hold hands with, Girl.  And Girl herself, precociously endowed with every adolescent’s dream-figure, who has her usual entourage completely bewitched; the principals being Spottyfatgirl (no point in mincing words), (they’re my words; I can do what I like with them), (bumbollocksfart!), (see?), and, here’s the interesting bit, Boyfriend, who is deliberately and pointedly not Hunk.  She has chosen to annoy the whole ship by choosing Mr. Everydayadolescent, not outwardly dissimilar to Loner, as her benefactee.  But I’m afraid, Loner, Boyfriend has something you will never have; he has a capacity to ignore the pangs of jealousy that would mortify you as Girl bounces and wiggles round the campus, seemingly oblivious to the attention she arouses, but, in truth, counting every eye-contact and turn of the head as she moves through her company.  Boyfriend, alone, is unmoved by the parade, apparently indifferent to Girl’s excesses, or even, presence.  He is his own man, with his own woman.  But we suspect Boyfriend is kidding himself, the price of his glorious relationship being that he has to pretend he doesn’t care what Girl’s getting up to…  Pundits believe Hunk to be really rather more involved than Girl would have Boyfriend believe.  Spottyfatgirl, of course, knows all about it, and, indeed, her main function is to liase with her counterpart; Spottyfatboy, to arrange Intimate Moments.  All this intrigue is on show as the flushed faces perform little set-pieces all over the ship; on and around the recliners, in the corridors, the café, by the slot-machines, and, sometimes, more mysteriously, in the loos.  This, the last act in our entertainment as we near the Dutch coast, may even serve to get Supervisor interested; a marginally more mature person in charge of a small round table in the café area, who has his back to all thoroughfares and who is deaf and blind.

I left Nick to look after the language students, and muscled (as far as I am able) my way to the front of the ship where there was a viewing area; a big sweep of Le Corbusier glass beyond which there didn’t appear to be even a bonnet.  We were right at the front.

Holland looked very Dutch, I thought, as I took in the emerging scene that could only have evolved where shipping, both river and sea-going, mattered; cranes and warehouses clearly seen above low-lying land beyond the flashing light at the end of the breakwater we were passing.  As we lined up on the leading lights I noticed a definite line in the water across the mouth of the river; a disturbance, then a smoothing.  I supposed it was a manifestation of the Rhine waters meeting those of the North Sea.  As we passed over it I waited for the ship to move differently, to buck as it entered the influence of Mainland Europe, but I noticed nothing at all.  I supposed it did it every day.

Having peeled themselves for the crossing, my biking friends were now engaged in the curious dance of trying to get their gear back on again; swoopy side-turns, windmill-arms and ground-hugging dives.  I congratulated my hot and sweaty self on having neatly avoided this embarrassment by never taking my gear off.  Apart from my helmet, that is. Grudgingly awarding the bloke in an all-in-one set of yellow and red fluorescent leathers a 5.8, I joined the merry, and, it has to be said, smelly, throng on the airless companion-way down into the hold. I was genuinely worried, not only about the condition of my bike after the test of my knot work, but also about all the other bikes near mine.  Most people had simply shown a rope to their machines and then rushed up to the bar.  A line of dominoes sprang to mind.

With genuinevrelief I saw that all was well, and began trying to restore the still unfamiliar pack to the back of my bike.  This proved such an engrossing task that by the time I looked up and had extricated my machine from its slippery uphill cul-de-sac, everyone else was gone.  I never saw the Jolly Speedsters again, and, glowing  with the thought that they would all be back home and coping with reality while I was still just starting my trip, I pootled towards the wrong end of the ship, turned round, went down the ramp, and rode triumphantly out onto land that stretched East to The Bering Straits and smelt of sewage.

It had obviously rained heavily, and not long ago.  The sky was tremendously dark to the North East, emphasised by a bright rip in the clouds to the South.

Now; I refuse to be a cheeky chappie on my bike, and if there’s a queue ahead, I’ll join it rather than risk being thought a cad.  So it was that getting through customs took me forever; I had taken so long strapping all my bits together and generally wrestling with gravity that I was last off and remained the last vehicle for the duration.  I suspect that I earned the right to not be thought a cad at the cost of being thought a complete twat; certainly the customs bloke who dealt with the imbecile on the big red bike looked as if he didn’t understand.

Once through this scrutiny I needed to find somewhere to regroup; all my innards were out because I needed my paperwork to get off the boat and out of the docks.  A lay-by laid by and I parked there, got off and began stuffing myself with my passport, tickets, money, diary and so on.  My poor MiniDisc recorder refused to go into my pocket, and I was pushing so hard at it that, when it actually pinged out of my pocket I, in effect, hurled it down onto the ground, where it bounced several times and skidded to a stop on the other side of the road.  With trepidation I went to retrieve it; here was the thing I’d spent longest sorting out, at not inconsiderable expense, and there it was; smashed on the first day…  But it was tough and survived; a positive and auspicious result, I thought.

I pushed what I thought might be the most relevant map up inside my jacket, and made ready to leave.  A uniform came out of the customs line and walked straight over towards me.  Fearing the worst I hurriedly got on my bike as she approached – my innate sense of guilt and general inadequacy rising to the surface as she approached.  What Had I done wrong now?  I knew that I hadn’t nipped through traffic and blasted off to a Grand Prix somewhere, but was that a capital offence in modern Europe?

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“Away,” I said, intending to convey that I wouldn’t cause any more trouble and would stop blocking up their port as soon as I could get my gloves on.

The face beneath the black and gold cap broke into a smile.  Still a pitying smile, of course, but she was actually just being nice, which was most welcome as I was feeling a bit exposed.

“No,” she laughed, looking at my disarranged bike, and me all fingers and thumbs, “I mean where are you going on your journey?”

“Oh, sorry.  Well; I’m going to Italy.”

Because she was nice her look was more of pity than open disbelief. She spared us both further embarassment by just turning around and walking away.

As there was, by then, no other traffic to follow, I found my own way out of the docks.  Passing soul-less warehouses, the wharves no longer awash with global debris, I realised that my expectations of commerce being a largely untidy activity were as out of date as I was. This was a sterile and functional workplace, with only the shine on the wheels of the huge cranes indicating that the area was ever busy.  No one was about at all, and rather by chance I found myself out of the docks and on a jobbing Euro road.

Being a careful chap I did my best to ride within the Dutch speed limit. But I didn’t know what that was, and since my bike had no kilometres per hour markings on it anyway I opted for just going really slowly, unless everyone else was going fast, in which case I went slightly less slowly.  I noticed that the road signs in Holland appeared to be in Dutch so I gave up with them almost immediately and concentrated instead on driving on the wrong side of the road.  The bike was rather good in this respect compared to a car as I didn’t suffer from not being able to see across from a steering wheel on the right.

The elements had obviously put their heads together and decided it was worth starting on me with a clean slate.  The recent rain must have been intense, but all was clean now; the road freshly sluiced with bucket-loads of water; the air, too, so clear that as I looked down the sunlight exposed individual grains of tarmac as it rolled along.  Much the same intention must have been behind the initiative of a girl at my school, who, I remember, collected rainwater in order to wash her face and thus improve her complexion.  In the absence of a control it was difficult to be certain, as I remember, about the outcome of her experiment, but I have to say that, rather oddly as as schoolgirl of 16, she did enter a beauty contest in Portsmouth, rainwater or no rainwater, and won it! But it was in Portsmouth.

Greenhouses, working windmills, inexplicable spellings, underpasses, unnecessary and unavoidable slip roads and lots of other people who seemed to know their way around Europe much better than I. 

Rain.

In an effort to stay as close as possible to the romance of the docks I turned right once too often and found myself on a bridge going over the Rhine.  I say “bridge,” but to call what I was crossing - the main artery of Europe - just a “bridge” was selling it very short.  I was interested in how wide the river was down here by the mouth, having been over The Loire in recent years on my way down to see my Mum in middle France.   The Loire had been big, I thought, and eager to make the comparison about what the rivers looked like and how wide they were I looked down at my milometer as I left the North bank.  Unfortunately, when I looked up to take in the view, I found that I was in a tunnel.  Later deductions indicated this took me under The Maas, but I wasn’t to be disappointed – for after getting lost only a few more times I did, indeed, embark across The Rhine which quite took my breath away as I took in the enormity of what appeared to be an inland sea.  With unnatural presence of mind I again noted the miles showing on the speedometer as I ran onto the bridge, and, with equally unnatural mathematics on the run, worked out that the river was, even this far inland, about one and a half miles across!  Then the road took off on another bridge and I realised that all I had done so far was to cross over to an island in the middle of the river, and there was yet another long bridge that took me over some ship-sized locks, amongst a whole swish of wind-powered generators, and over another mile and a half of water.  I became lost in the massive world of water I was crossing, and thought of the distant Alps where some of the water I was skimming over first began its slide down to the sea.

To my left, upstream, lurked the geography lessons of my youth, including the one when I fiddled with the blade from my pencil sharpener to such good effect that I had to leave the room, dripping blood.  I still have a misshapen index finger on my left hand to remind me of the Rühr valley, sustained by coal, and allowed to significantly trade by the magnitude of the rivers draining off the continent of Europe.  All those little symbols I drew on maps were, somewhere to the East, a reality.

Somewhat to my dismay I came out of my reverie to see that I was on a broad, gleaming-new dual carriageway and that I was the only person on it.  At first I thought I must have missed a vital sign and was about to soar off the end of an unfinished bridge, but, when a car did eventually overtake me I realised with enormous satisfaction that this could well be the density of traffic I might get away with most of the time.

Then, to  further confuse me, this blistering highway suddenly stopped, coming up against another, much smaller, single-track road, to which it inexplicably deferred.  Faced with a choice of two directions I chose the wrong one and began an unfailingly frustrating and, I suppose, inevitable zigzag back towards Rotterdam.  I didn’t know where I was going, but was rather afraid that when I got there I would find out.  I was determined, however, not to be steered back North of the Rhine, and so turned off into Dutch canal-suburbia where I emulated on two wheels a childhood storybook acquaintance of mine, name of Hendrika. 

Those with deprived childhoods will not be aware of the glory that was, and still is in enlightened minds, Hendrika.  She was, in a gentle (and familiar) way, an empty-minded rebel who wasn’t at all sure about why she wanted to go and explore the world beyond her home, but she just did that’s all.  She had a jolly good look round, took in the Wide World during her brief excursion, and returned home quite happy to resume her rural idyll where she’d left off.  I was sure that she had never bothered with all that rushing about stuff again, and that round the next bend I would see her, resting in a water meadow, chewing on a hat with a contented but nonetheless knowing look in her big round eyes.  Ahh…  Hendrika the cow…

The glow of reminiscence withered away as I became increasingly lost.  Two or three hours passed during which time it dawned on me that I was having problems with the way that several towns shared not only they’re appearance, but also their name with other towns some distance away.  I was aiming at one of the two or more Meurdjyk’s; one of which was, I hoped, home to a camping site tucked up against the South bank of the Rhine, and where I might at last be allowed to stop nambying around and get some rest.  But, having inadvertently taken part in a bicycle race in Findjart and been traffic-calmed into oblivion I eventually parked up in a featureless car park in an industrial complex.

In the end it was simply good fortune that came to the rescue.  I went North and came up against the Rhine, and, having to turn one way or the other, I inadvertently chose the right way .  This turned into a very nice route along the strand; no cars, nobody and often no road either; it wasn't much more than an access road for maintenance crews trying to keep the water in.  Travelling East, bobbing up and down as the track negotiated transverse embankments, I would occasionally see the Rhine and could still, in spite of being some distance inland, hardly make out the opposite bank.  It was whilst gazing across the water that I passed the campsite I had been searching for all day. I carried on, stopped, turned round, stopped again.  In the end, however, I went back far enough to see the outer wire of Camp Jolly.  Whilst the barbed wire and the barrier across Checkpoint Charlie unnerved me, I boldly poked the bike at the entrance and informed my MiniDisc recorder that I might be gone for some time, parked up, took my helmet off, and went to face the Camp Commandant.

“Hello,” I begin, in my best Dutch, addressing an unreasonably normal-looking middle-aged lady.

“Hello” she replied, pleasantly.

“Do you speak English?” I asked in English.

“Well, I’m not very good at speaking English, but I hope that you will understand me.  Do you want to stay the night?”

Her English was much better than my Dutch, and, predictably, was a little better than my English.

Negotiations were simple, and the relief in my voice on my next recording shows how stupidly nervous I had been about a simple transaction like arranging to camp on a camping site.  The lady had shown no disappointment about having a wet and grubby biker on her site, and had even given me a pointer about a good place for me to camp; round the back of an old shed, near the bins and the toilets. How lucky!

The ground was very wet from all the rain (that’s what I told myself as the sound of a flushing toilet came from frighteningly close by), and soon all my stuff was dripping.  But I was ecstatic at having actually begun my trip.  I went over to the camp shop to buy some milk, but it looked shut.  There was, however, a sign which said;

“KaffeeMilkchscwishenshwosh mdkalaiuer aofjdf adslkjg aasdfghjkl qwerty thequickbrownfoxjumpedoverthelazydog.” 

After doing that I  wandered over to a shed with a light showing from inside.  This proved to be the bar, and, decadence setting in dangerously early, I took the almost unprecedented step of buying something before knowing how much it cost.  My extremely small beer and I moved over to a table from where I had an unrestricted view of the outer wall.  The compound appeared to be set up as a holiday camp for people who, when they went on holiday, didn’t particularly want to enjoy themselves.  I was sad to note from the blackboard that I had missed Band Night - by some five and a half years.  A few fellow revellers seemed to be struggling almost as much as I was and so after buying some matches in order not to disappoint any Brit-spotters by boiling some water for tea later on, I wandered over the road outside the camp and climbed a small embankment up to the river’s edge to have a look around.

I sat down, and after the rigours of my first day I suddenly felt relaxed and very pleased with myself.  By nature I am not very adventurous at all, although at home I am proud to sit in what must be one of the most travelled armchairs in The World.  Now, with a sudden surge of emotion, verging almost on self-belief, I surprised myself by not being worried about what I had taken on; as much a symptom, no doubt, of not having taken on very much at all as of any hidden mettle; but comforting and satisfying nonetheless.  I would be able to swap anecdotes with my armchair upon my return.  Producing some paper I succeeded in destroying this feel-good moment by rendering a pastel sketch of almost total worthlessness.  In front of me the Rhine was still huge; the far bank just a silhouette of low trees above which the darkening sky still showed signs of rain. 

A light wind was enough to produce waves which gently washed the silty beach at my feet.  Occasional grey shipping moved amongst the grey waters which, I noticed were, in common with my sketch-pad, getting greyer and greyer.  It was time to try and remember how to put up the tent.

It had been a while since I had done this; the last time had been when, encouraged by Kay’s more natural bravery, we had gone on a cycling holiday.  I loosely recalled that the tent wasn’t very big, and I was disappointed to find that I was right.  I also remembered how we had laughed at other campers when they stuck blunt vegetables on their tent-poles to fend off the lightning.  Chuckling in a superior way (we both have science degrees) (well; Environmental Science) we retired to bed, our naked Benjamin Franklin tent-poles defying the elements.  During that night the most cataclysmic storm raged around the countryside with us calmly dozing through it secure in the knowledge that all the trees around us would most likely to attract any malicious forces.  The next day we read about the death of a camper further up the coast whose tent had been struck by lightning.  Without a second thought we joined in the slaughter of helpless vegetables, impaling them on our spikey bits like anything until we ran out of potatoes.  And the spooky thing is that they worked…

Back in this life, the tent, once it was up, proved perfectly serviceable apart from when I tried to get in it.  To make matters worse one innovation I was particularly keen to experiment with was my Brother In Law’s self inflating mattress.  It sounds like a joke, but I had (easily) been dissuaded from pretending I was going to be comfortable on the ground, and, as I can’t even blow up a balloon without falling over, this novel “no blow” solution appealed to me no end.  Whilst it seemed too good to be true I have to report that it isn’t. It really works, and the only effort required, I later found, is when putting the thing away again; it clings to its brief of being self-inflating to a fault.  What you do is this; make sure that there is enough space for it to be in once inflated, then, and only then, pull out the stopper (there to keep the air out!) and let the beast suck in its fill.  It actually doesn’t get hugely thick, but it does get comfortable. I felt sure that the khaki colour scheme, together with some, frankly disturbing, dark stains that I told myself were camouflage, ( I must remember never to ask my Brother In Law about them), hinted at a development in the military. I could picture a crack anti-terrorist unit pulling the pins out of a handful of these mattresses, lobbing them in through the open window of a roomful of n’er-do-wells, going away for a bully beef sandwich and a cup of tea and returning half an hour later to find the miscreants pinned helplessly to the ceiling. Something of the same effect had manifested itself on all my belongings in the tent and there was no longer any room for me. I put most of my gear back on the bike, wrapping it up with an old piece of tarpaulin I’d brought with me which did keep most of the water in. Looking around I decided against exploring the dank and furtive darkness surrounding the showers, nibbled a battered scone and a couple of Dutch tomatoes I’d bought in Tesco’s last week, and went to bed. 

The tomatoes had been further than I had, I mused, as I drifted off amongst the sounds of everyone else sorting out their evening meals; it was late for me – getting on for nine-o-clock.

Day Two Into Germany (with new, harder to read, spacing)

To say I had a peaceful night might be overstating the success of my first night on the loose.  To begin with all went according to plan; I was horizontal, it was dark outside, I was tired.  But had I not been tired I doubt if I would have made it to midnight before being woken up by the sound of rain falling into (not “on to” it may be noted) my tent, but in my stupor I felt more cosseted by the cool blanket of sound than worried by the sensation that my sleeping bag was getting heavy around the edges.  The removal of all sounds bar the noise of the rain isolated this small patch of  ground I was on from everything.  No camp site.  No trip.  No Holland. No thing.  Nothing, even.  Sleep threatened once more.

Then I heard the vanguard Mosquito.  Just a little squeak. Quite sweet, it seemed at first – a missionary from the banks of the Rhine. But it was not alone and soon my new playful friends and I re-enacted a miniature Blitz inside my tent. If a raider was unlucky enough to be caught in the beam of my searchlight I was up in a flash, getting progressively more and more wetterer as I sacrificed the cut of my tent in the heat of battle.  Once or twice (twice, actually) it was worth the effort as I wreaked a horrible, tent-staining, revenge on the odd mosquito I managed to destroy, but the final score – the full time whistle going as it began to get light in the morning – was as pitiful as many an English performance in Europe has been before and since.

As dawn slowly brought the World back to my tent I suddenly felt really sleepy for the first time in hours, and, as the mosquitoes finished their lap of honour and whined off down the players’ tunnel to the dressing room blood-bath, I dozed through several sets of chimes from an exemplary range of churches, chapels and Town Halls in Meurdjyk, laying in for far too long and jeopardising the rest of the day.

It was well after ten o clock when I finally hatched from my slimy chrysalis.  Blinking at the glare of the surprisingly bright sky through my tired eyes I dragged out the afterbirth of my sleeping bag and clothes and draped them over a nearby table and me respectively. The rain had gone and soon me and all the other wet things began to steam in the bright sun.  I peered into the saggy tent and noticed a small pool of standing water; perfect hatching ground for mosquitoes. 

Feeling that there’s no point in being British if one doesn’t act the part, I treated the neighbours to the spectacle of me making myself a saucepan of tea in my skimpies, and this cheered me up enormously. Not the tea, welcome though it was; just making a spectacle of myself.

Then I did the first really stupid thing of the day.  Deciding, upon inspiration, to strike whilst the iron was hot I went to worship in the ablution zone leaving all my money, cards, tickets, passport, MiniDisc machine and anything else of any value to the vagaries of the prevailing Entente Cordial.  I realised what I had done at precisely the most inconvenient moment, and ruined what chance I had of securing a trouble-free day’s ride.  And, whilst this area of discussion is to the fore, why are campsite toilets always wet?  They can’t be wet because it’s sluiced out every five minutes, because they’re not. And, if it really is a case of looking at the phenomenon as a worst case scenario, surely not all the bladders in the campsite decide to empty themselves exclusively on the floor of the toilet block, especially when there are actually toilets there as well?  This is not just a continental thing – it’s universal.  Personally I endeavour to pee in the bowl itself, and to keep my flares dry.

Top Tip   If you have them, wear boots to the swillier kind of toilet; then you can tuck your trousers into the tops of your boots. This stops all the clammy stuff that lives there getting a hold. 

I only thought of this later…

On hobbling back to the rising column of water vapour that marked my encampment, I was extremely pleased, though not entirely surprised, to note that my valuables were unmolested, and I set about cleaning and drying everything as much as possible before packing them up, and then … packing them up.

I was also pleased to find that the bike hadn’t plugged too much overnight, and moved it quite easily.  It was however quite comfortably gone eleven o’clock before, fortified by two day old bread and slimy cheese, I swung out of Camp Jolly, anarchically using my comparative slimness to sideslip the barrier across the road, and, turning right along the dyke service-road that ran East beside the Rhine began my second day of Adventurin’. 

The road spent most of its length running along below the dyke, but would rise every now and then to meet the rivers’ edge.  A few ships were about, but that was it, and I felt, for the first time, the genuine euphoria that came with setting out at the start of a day, and I have it on MiniDisc that I laughed and shouted like a mad thing with the fun of it all.

The lane became more substantial, as did my hunger, and as I motored through a small cobble-stoned village I stopped at a small but perfectly formed bakers to buy some light and freshly made exotic pastries; the kind with a central reservation for real almond paste, or a preserved apricot, only to find, after a bout of prolonged biker’s parking, that the shop was shut.  I stared without comprehension at the implacable exterior.  It wasn’t lunchtime or anything, and the more I stared at it, even from close range, the more it actually looked open; with fresh goodies in the windows and everything. I tried the door several times such was my conviction that I had been mistaken in some way about its shutness.  As I pulled away I fully expected a whole floury family of Master Bakers to pour onto the street, like a trayfull of Pillsbury Doughmen, laughing at my discomfort and at their shabby trick.  I didn’t give them any gratification, and refused to even check my mirrors.

I decided to give up feeling hungry, and to concentrate on getting lost.  I found that by using a combination of dead-reckoning and continental drift this was really quite easy to do.  I went for a town called Made, (an anagram of Edam I was pleased to note!), and temporarily spoiled my record by actually ending up there, although it did take me ages to actually pin the centre down.  When I got there I found there was no point in being there anyway, so I left, hoping to also visit Meda, Dema, Adme, Dame Edma, and Hisdan Coban.

I was getting nowhere very quickly, and looking at the map I realised I was still frighteningly close to Camp Jolly; the only thing that was whizzing by was the time.  What was needed was a road of some consequence, one that would take me beyond the immediate horizon, and I vowed to go for the bigger picture; find a road with signposts, and signposts, what’s more, that dealt in double figures.  I stopped once again, dug the map out of my belly bits, searched for and found such a road.  Big, red and juicy and going … over the fold.  I determined that it was to the South East of my present position, did my homework memorising a few key points along the way, and set off.  Feeling sure I was about to come across the road in question, I was rather surprised when I did, for as I rounded a corner I saw fast moving traffic in front of me.  I slowed down so that I didn’t slip up slipping up a slip road, only to find that slippage was not an option for there was no slip road, and with my little lane rather pointedly ignoring anything quite so vulgar as a dual-carriageway, it dipped me down underneath the road of my dreams, took me under a bridge, and sauntered off with me into The Forgotten Land Of The Lost Bikers.

The next part of the day is a blur of endless stops during which I attempted to work out just how lost I was, mixed with the comforting realisation that it really didn’t matter.  The one time I found myself on quite a serious road, I decided to celebrate by turning off it in case there was food about. I needed sustenance and Sud-Hertogenbosch offered me the chance of some food, much needed by now; it was already three o clock-ish.  I turned into a parking area reserved, I felt sure, for Party Officials, and self-consciously walked across a square and into a café.  It was quite easy to be self conscious because everyone else was conscious of me too.  I was quite an apparition -  all dark clothes, dirt, bumbag and baggage, so I did my best to smile at the lady cleaning up around the bar area.  She seemed eager to please, and did her best to smile at me in a friendly way.

“Hello”  I was becoming fluent in Dutch.

“       .”  Lots of look, but no words.

“I’m sorry, I don’t speak Dutch.  Do you speak English?”

“       .”

“       .”

Pause.

“       .”

“       .”

Our conversation was becoming repetitive.  I realised that her Eastern exterior might actually be due to the fact that she was from the East – she looked Mongolian,  Russian, maybe.

In the end I was saved by a good old point.  The lady was cooking something on a griddle, maybe for herself or her husband, who had also, by now, come over to join in the repartee.  So I looked at this bundle of meaty stuff and pointed at it.  Luckily it looked quite good, otherwise who knows what I might have ended up with.  And, even luckier, considering I was using pointy language and she looked handy with a meat cleaver, I stopped myself asking for two of them.

My gesticulations provoked a response at last;

“Esjkhfgyhd skdkfjaijw pskngna qwerty hownowbrowncow.”

Assuming this wasn’t Dutch for “No, you desperately filthy unshaven layabout, that’s for me and Vlad The Impailer here.  If you want to eat you have to learn how to ask for it properly,” I went on to try verbalising another request;

“Oh, und Kafé?”

“Ahfgyuksfvb!”

Marvellous!  I was off.

I found myself a table with a vantage point so I could both check to see who was nicking my bike and whether Vlad was spitting in my coffee cup.  No one was doing either.  In fact Vlad seemed to have mellowed in appearance now that I was sat, and he even took his eyes off me twice during my stay.  In due course the nice lady brought me a cup of coffee and a clone of the meaty thing I had seen her cooking earlier, and I relaxed now that I had a reason for being somewhere.  I spread out my current map and then spread the mayonnaise out onto it that my first munch produced.  At least I hoped it was mayonnaise and that Vlad wasn’t suffering with a cold.

The morning had gone almost before I had really started on the bike, and now it was gone three-o-clock.  I needed to get going a lot earlier tomorrow.

I paid for the meal in guilders of unknown value, and gathered up my belongings to leave.  Mrs. Vlad looked neither sorry nor pleased that I was off, even though in the half hour or so that I had been in the café I had been the only customer and felt due a loyalty bonus; instead she allowed herself a tired, rather wan, smile; perhaps she was worried about what Vlad might be going to impale next.

Sud-Hertogenbosch seemed to have come alive during my repast; there was now a distinct bustle and queues of traffic.  Before, the streets had been like a background in a Tintin book or an old Maigret film; tall, brown, faceless buildings of homogenous character rising above deserted grey streets, empty pavements on either side.  Maybe it was school-picking-up time, or everyone left work at 3.30; whatever it was I was soon bogged down.  Concentrating on staying upright in a sequence of stop-go lights, I was somewhat dismayed to find the road wobbling about.  Then as a truck came past the other way the road moved again and looking around I saw that I was stopped on a bridge; no ordinary bridge; it was a proper Hendrika bridge, worked with cantilevers, massive beams and everything.  If I had seen one of Hendrika’s unlikely pyramids of stacked red balls of cheese I might have gone home there and then, safe in the knowledge that Europe was all as it should be and had emerged unscathed from the four decades that had passed since most of my impressions had been formed. I make no apologies for mentioning Hendrika in this way; assuming that all who read this know who I mean; if you don’t know you should do. Try typing Hendrika into an internet search-engine and see what you come up with. Perhaps you should also type "cow” at the same time or who knows what exotic creatures you might unearth. Or, perhaps that, too, would be a bit risky in these strange times and I should just tell you that Hendrika is a storybook cow, who belonged, I believe, to a certain portly farmer called Mr. Hofstra, who lived in a windmill in Holland. Hendrika was young and rebellious, and she set off to see the world and found that much of it tasted quite good, but that having had a look she was happy to get home again and confine herself to bit of armchair travel for a while. There were a few of those swingy bridges in the book, that’s all.

The rest of the afternoon was a bit of a blur – a whole series of really bad navigational decisions, all taken in good faith but with no understanding of how little I should trust my instincts.  Helmond.  Eindhoven.  Veghel.  Venray.  Geldrop.  All towns that I noted down during the next couple of hours; some of which I visited, none of which I meant to.

I didn’t, though, forget to enjoy myself; at times laughing out loud with the fun of it all.  I wasn’t speeding along; 55mph or so; but it was just so good to be there; hardly any traffic now I was on the go again, perched up high on my bike and flying along a few feet above the ground.  The engine had settled on a long-legged, loping, pace that I felt it could maintain until I got to Prague.  And I was moved by a sense of scale; this wasn’t just Europe, this was the same bit of land as Asia all the way to Kamchatka, the Himalayas, India, Singapore.

Much of the road I travelled on ran alongside a reedy canal – with both the canal and road hemmed in by an avenue of tall willowy trees.  Around this the bright, open countryside was topped with a high, deep blue sky. Rather against the flow I decided to stop and take a photo.  By the time I had un-plumbed my microphone, removed my helmet and gloves, taken the rucksack off the bike in order to allow the top-box to open, opened the top-box to take the camera out, I wished I hadn’t bothered.  Rather annoyingly, when I came to look at the scene through the camera, the landscape didn’t make much of a picture anyway – and I ended up taking a picture of the bike which I could have done anywhere...   A waste of time though the photo-opportunity had been, time was what I had and the afternoon was so pleasant it would take more than this to spoil things.  Besides, I now had yet another picture of the bike in an exotic location.  Judge for yourselves.

Pretty impressive.

Once back on board, and on my way to Petropavlovsk Kamchatskiy (as I write this I’m fondly imagining you might care enough to go and look that up), I realised that the best views were from the bike, where the blurring foreground formed less of a visual barrier to the landscape beyond.  Flat arable land, lines of trees, ditches; not much more than fields and sky, but it was all rolling along; planar features moving at different speeds like in a cartoon.

I surprised myself with A Profound Thought; there aren’t many journeys one takes where one doesn’t come back.  Obviously I hoped to end up back at home again, but on most journeys like the trip to work or going away for the weekend, one ends up passing the same way in the opposite direction, and this journey was not like that.  If I got to Veghel I would go through it, (after getting lost in it, obviously), and never go there again.  I admit that as profundity goes I may lag behind Nietzsche, Sartre and Mickey Mouse, but I was impressed at the time, and told my MiniDisc so, but now it’s out I’m not so sure.

I was shaken from this mood of reflection when a fellow biker whizzed past in the opposite direction, (as opposed to the bikers who whizzed past me going in the same direction – as they all did), and I noticed him/her pointing across at my bike, with the emphasis on my wheels.  At some trouble both to myself and to those behind me on the road I meandered to a rather sudden halt beside the road, and got off to inspect the damage.  First of all I counted the wheels, but with even my level of mechanical expertise was not entirely surprised to find no shortage in the wheel department.  But I did give them a good kick to see if they were soft, and to check around under the engine for oil leaks, signs of bits missing or of any luggage on the road behind me.  I was not aware of much else that could have been visibly wrong to a passer by that I hadn’t noticed myself, and so, somewhat bemused and not a little disturbed, I got back on and gingerly headed once more to infinity and beyond.

Nothing untoward happened and I had just begun to relax a bit about this whole bike falling apart thing when another biker passed by, and he/she also pointed across at my bike.  I got off again, stopping first, naturally, and had an even better look round - worried as I was that if this problem was so obvious from the other side of the road it must be really serious.  I even crossed over to the other side of the road to inspect the bike from the viewpoint of a vehicle passing by in the opposite direction but still could not make out what seemed to be so obvious to all the seasoned Euro Bikers who saw me.  Once again I had to admit to myself that I couldn’t see what was wrong, and with even more trepidation resumed my journey, a bit wobbly with worry.

I was saved from further disquiet by a more demonstrative fellow biker who initially appeared to be going to point at my bike falling to bits, but who then appeared to change his/her mind and gave me a wave instead.  It suddenly dawned on me that all the pointing meant was;

“Hello! – And your wheels look like they’re on good and solid, man!”

Anxious to test my new theory I pointed across at the next bike I saw coming, and sure enough received a friendly point in return.  I checked my mirrors to see if the pointee stopped to count his/her wheels, and when they didn’t I realised, not for the first time (nor the last, I’m afraid), that I had been a bit dense about the whole pointy thing.  However I now realised that in this, The Land Of The Pointy Bikers, I was not alone, and there was some comfort in that, even if all the other bikers were rather more generally with it than I was.  I began pointing like a mad thing, and was soon wailing with delight into my microphone as point after point produced more points than I could point a pointy stick at.  It did, however, become clear that it was possible to be really rather too pointy and that this was seriously uncool.  Learning from my peers I developed an extremely laid back and almost undetectable raised index finger on my left hand; a connoisseurs point, I felt, that indicated I was happy to acknowledge my fellow bikers but that they were lucky I had noticed them.  It occurred to me that it would be good to adopt this pointy signal at home, until I imagined myself riding on English roads and tried it, using, of course, my other hand because of the different side of the road thing.  As I saved the bike from lurching to a standstill I realised that taking ones hand off the throttle as you’re going along is a friendly gesture too far; it only works with a continental clutch-hand because it’s largely free to gesture with as one sees fit.  Silly me.

There was also, I noticed, a distinct hierarchy in this business, and you had to assess the pointy value of passing machines in the split second before you pointed. Rather to my astonishment it became clear that I had inadvertently entered the pointy fray somewhere near the top of the pecking order, a fact that was no less surprising to me than it would have been to the bikers I had met on the ferry the day before.  Several factors combined in allocating me a spot in the top half of the table;

1. My bike was big.

2. My bike was RED.

3. My bike was loaded with serious ammounts of luggage - I was going places and had shown a commitment to biking above and beyond the call of duty.

4. My point was so refined it was almost painful.

To my chagrin I was rebuffed by a Honda Goldwing, and from that moment on never pointed at one again.  But I was welcomed by all other machines – even posh BMW’s and sports bikes who should have known better.  I soon settled down to occasional points, though, as the novelty wore off, and even stopped pointing altogether for an hour or so when I tried it on the rider of a nifty fifty who, assuming I was taking the piss, chose to ignore my obviously shallow gestures and to sail on with the following wind, head held high.

My road, all this time, was unrolling under my feet as I approached Veghel.  Still proceeding in an Easterly direction, Officer, with the canal on my right, occasional barges ballooned up from the reed beds, surprisingly high; their black sides towering over the road.  At one point a quayful of barges were being loaded from tall grey silos on the left of the road via an array of chutes which leant right over the road. As I passed I could hear the swish of grain overhead, which, once loaded, might be in Europort in the morning. And then beyond this little basin in the middle of the countryside I passed a complex junction in the canal, the inland waterway equivalent of spaghetti junction, complete with lanes and feathers of signs pointing in all directions, (well, ok, not down).  (Or up; I know.)  Witnessing these waterways in commercial use made me nostalgic for a time that, actually, I never could have known; when I could have seen the canals in Britain in their prime, though, as with much industrial heritage, it is difficult to ignore the hardship that still pokes out through the gloss of twee-ness we are presented with today. 

Do semantics permit one a nostalgia for a period one has not personally experienced?  I find myself interested more and more in the time of my grandparents and parents before I was born. I’ve particularly developed an interest in the music of early to mid twentieth century composers, particularly English notables like Vaughan Williams, Bax, Gurney, Elgar, Ireland and so on, leading to Britten.  I have not Deliused much, for no good reason, but I’ll have a go now I’ve reminded myself about him. It really isn’t just the music though, not at all; listening to it evokes in me, no doubt inaccurately, a sense of the period during which the composer was working.  Artists such as Bawden, Ravilious and Nash all do the trick as well. Early films, too, give similar, albeit more obvious, insights into the thirties, forties and beyond, and in watching them, plot aside, I find my attention drawn to manifestations of a different time; un-crowded pavements, empty roads, rural buses, butcher’s vans, big lumps of coal, balances in shops, time for people to be polite, dry bacon sliced from a hunk, selflessness, urban space.   Small-scale insights into a past which I don’t share but feel that part of me belongs to.  I watched Brief Encounter for the first time only recently, and the ladies in the station café refer to having just baked their scones.  Unremarkable to the casual viewer, but with centralised baking now the norm any pride found in commercial baked goods has more to do with how cheap they can be made rather than in how they taste.  There is certainly zero interest in, well…much at all really, emanating from the average present day baked goods vendor, who, after all, can feel no pride in what he or she is selling as they have had nothing whatsoever to do with its production; it’s just a scone.  I think it could be just that; pride is what I think has been lost, and it is what I miss in this era of competitive tendering and price-matching across the nation, where any time spent doing a good job is regarded as a waste of time.  Less time, effort  and money can still produce a perfectly serviceable invoice – just get on with it!

I found my rather sad thoughts about how things aren’t as they used to be reinforced by someone who could simply not have been a product of the thirties or forties; a graduate of the Daft Git School of Motoring, who, up until then I hoped might be confined to Post Thatcherite Britain, but who appeared to be alive and well and living in Holland as well.  This is the type of person who risks their life and the lives of others by overtaking one car in a long line of traffic, with a similar long line going the other way, in order to make up two seconds on the rest of the World.  Why do they do it?  Are they under the impression that they are more important than the rest of us, or are they just stupid people; products of 0-60 comparisons in the motoring press?  This is seriously unpleasant behaviour that in my pet Golden Age, Terry Thomas may have undertaken for comic effect; comic because it was an unthinkable thing to do; “Oh – I say…;” but which is now endemic.  Selfish and self-centred behaviour abounds, and one can see it all the time.  Its emergence coincided with the politics of Margaret Thatcher, and I find it difficult to disassociate it from the influence of the thinking of her and her government, though it may be that after a given period of peace sacrifice and altruism are forgotten by a whole generation, this selfishness finds a new strength regardless of government and “leadership.”  Over here, though, in spite of the passage of time, I noticed that all was well with those funny orange lights on the corners of cars that no longer seem to work in the UK. Not even policemen in Britain indicate these days…

But – as my Mother had reminded me on the phone shortly before I left – I was supposed to enjoy myself, and inwardly moaning about the sad state of National integrity was not a very positive activity.  As if to shake me from my gloomy thoughts I received, in spite of my clean lines, an incongruously but nonetheless genuine cheery point from a farty Harley coming the other way with one of the greasiest and most gloriously unkempt riders I have ever seen on board. Everything was just fine again.

Mainland Europe was alright, and, as if in reaction to my sad reflections I became euphoric, and, as I cruised East in the bright sunshine I began to shout into my microphone, musing on the joys of motorbiking, or, at least, my interpretation of it.  I was reminded of one of the more pleasant dreams I used to enjoy when I was young, (no, not that one), about how I could simply fall forward from a standing position and the air would buoyantly accept my weight. I could then think myself forward through the air, operating a few feet above the ground.  It must be admitted that my adolescent preoccupation might then come to the fore, and I would use my extraordinary powers to great effect in the girls changing room, but, apart from Holland being devoid of my school’s netball  team the sensation was broadly similar; I was coasting along, the ground skimming past beneath my feet – I could put my foot down and scrub it along the blurred tarmac – the huge sky all around me, air, sunshine, the sensation of cooler air when going through shadows… it was just great.  I was grinning like a mad-thing as I pulled over into a petrol station to test the attendant’s English, which was quite good enough to tell me about an accident to Lady Di. in Paris, and that, along with some others, she was dead. This was sobering; not because I rated her person above that of anyone else, but because I was aware that she was a Mum, and I was a Dad, and I was away from home too, and I couldn’t help but wonder how her children and family must feel, and about how mine would feel if I was killed in an accident whilst away on my trip.  It was hugely lucky for me not to be in England at this time; missing as I did, the whole media event from the announcement of her accident right through to her funeral.  I can’t bear the media-induced hype that I suspect would have surrounded what would have been a terrible private time for the families involved.  I feel certain that the media would not have been able to resist provoking hysterical scenes, zooming in on moments of private grief; they never fail to intrude if there’s sadness to exploit.   I resent, and can never understand how the news-gatherers and commentators get away with prodding and poking at terrible grief, in our name; it might be a parent describing their last moments with a child lost to them. I was pleased to not even have to turn the telly off in protest, or write to the BBC, because I simply wasn’t involved.  Thank goodness the vast majority of equally upsetting moments in most people’s lives are allowed to be dealt with by those whose concern it is.

Whilst I’m on about the lows of life, I once saw a book in Tesco’s, next to the fruit and Veg., called “The 100 Best Murders,” and, did you know that if you flattened out the Radio Times current at the time Jill Dando was killed, so that you could see both the back and the front at the same time, there was a picture of her next to an advert placed by a book club dealing exclusively in books about murder, and using it as a selling point.  What’s going on?

Anyway – back to the garage - during my exchange with the cashier I congratulated him on his English, feeling rather awkward at not being able to do him the honour of saying anything in Dutch.  He tried to make me feel better by saying, “After all, English is the language of the international World,” but I felt, not for the first or last time, that it would have been nice not to have had to rely upon a foreigner speaking English in their own country. I consoled myself with the recollection that, at work, I had, on three occasions, helped to redress this language imbalance.  My celebrated mastery of French, which I had allowed to get about as I felt in little danger of exposure and it gave me a kind of cosmopolitan kudos, had, nonetheless, on occasions allowed me to dig progressively deeper holes for myself.  The first time was relatively benign, resulting in only a small hole; I overheard a family trying to uncover the mystery surrounding their seat number in the auditorium; the result of our indecipherable signage; and I heard them talking about not knowing where they were supposed to go, in French.  Ever helpful I strode in with something like “Bonjour.  Puis’je vous aidez?” at which they looked suitably blank for a long moment, after which the youngest child, about seven years old, said “No, thank you; I think we know where we’re supposed to go.”

The second occasion was when I was head-hunted by the box-office and asked to phone a lady in France about 200 tickets for The Blackdyke Mills Brass Band, who were appearing at our theatre in a few weeks time.  In a horribly crowded office I duly summoned my reserves of CSE French, and phoned away.

“Ahh!  Vous parlez Francais! Merci!” said the grateful lady in France, who then proceeded to speak French at degree level; “Wibblewigkfkskjf;adfhg;dfgaofkjg  lfjg s  sdjsd f  dflgskjdfgakd;jfg h;adkfggowog dnvxcbk;jg agfga theraininspainfallsmainlyontheplain.” 

I couldn’t understand a word, but, of course, pretended all was well and, having put the phone down, told the box-office that the lady in France wanted 200 tickets for the Blackdyke Mills Brass Band concert.

“Oh, really,” replied the Front of House Manager, “I thought she wanted 200 tickets to the Blackdyke Mills Band concert…”

The third occasion, (and, let’s face it, there’s little enough likely to happen to me over the rest of my trip, so I might as well spoil you by dwelling on past glories), was infinitely more worthwhile.  We were in the middle of a performance given by a bus-load of French-speaking lady African dancers, who had, until now, left the lighting of their show entirely to me.  There I was, up in the lighting box at the back of the auditorium, with our stage manager for the day on the side of the stage, wearing a headset/microphone unit for communication purposes.

Suddenly a yelp, and “…I told her you…” came over the headset, followed by a few fleshy clunks, a stifled and slightly remote “Jim..” and then this rather perturbed and breathy female voice comes over the headset;

“You French spik!”

“Oui.” Naturellement.

“Gjhkdjh jadflkdf df g fglkd;fgoieujga dfb fg;’jaso[pqureyj   02846t blkdfj ;f ajer[‘otu3[qa’elfdkjg downathteoldbullandbush?”

“mmm…  Pardon?” I hadn’t understood a word, undoubtedly simple though it all was.

“Gjhkdjh jadflkdf df g fglkd;fgoieujga dfb fg;’jaso[pqureyj   02846t blkdfj ;f ajer[‘otu3[qa’elfdkjg myoldmansadustman?”

I hadn’t a clue what she was on about, but I remember she went on for some time, breathlessly panting the words out, clacking at the microphone which was still attached to our man’s headset, which was still on his head.

Eventually there was a perfectly understandable African-tinged sigh of disgust at my ineptitude, and the young lady disappeared from my hearing as she was due on stage.

“What was all that about?” I asked.

There was little response from an obviously overcome colleague, as all the lady dancers suddenly appeared on stage, magnificently attired in grass skirts and nothing else.

“I don’t know,” came the reply, “but can we do it again!”  It seemed that during my international exchange this young lady had been leaning into the face of our stage manger, and pressing all her bits hard up against my poor unfortunate colleague’s head as she tried to share his headset, and my much vaunted linguistic skills had done nothing but prolong the experience.  He still owes me.  Later I found out that the poor girl was actually asking me to produce a dim lighting state so that their nakedness might be less obvious, and they could avoid being too embarrassed.  Luckily, as I hadn’t understood a word of her request, the entire piece was done in a full-up.

Back in the present I settled back into the isolation of my bike and revelled once again in the loping ride East; all at about 55mph; not very fast for a biker, but it was, and I quote from my MiniDisc, “Just perfect.”  I realise that real bikers live for bends, but for me they just get in the way.  Give me a straight road, a big open sky, a variety of rolling fields and woodland, and I’m happy.  That’s what I had now, and I was.  I continued to make new pointy friends, on one occasion introducing myself to about 20 riders with just one point as the Eindhoven Chapter blatted past, but eventually gave up even this pursuit; I settled back, a full tank of petrol on board with no reason to stop apart from securing somewhere to spend the night.  It was only about four o clock, and I resolved to just keep going until I got to wherever it was when I got there.

What a lot of bicycles there were in Holland – a national stereotype, I know, but nonetheless borne out in fact.  Even out here, with ten or fifteen miles to the nearest town, family groups covering four generations were pottering about on their bikes.  Considering the use they were being put to it surprised me how low-tech. the bikes were; no gears, heavy, black frames, and largely all the same; no doubt issued at birth like handwriting is in France. Even so these dogged cyclists were gliding along at some speed, helped in this by glass-smooth purpose built bicycle freeways that contrasted predictably with our own lovely UK excuses for cycle paths. I once made the mistake of trying to bike to work, and thought I’d use the much-publicised (at the time) Crawley to Brighton Cycle Path. Even when new it was so lumpy as to be almost unusable at anything over 10 mph and I arrived at work with my thoughts so muddled that I ended up doing a good day’s work.

Almost imperceptibly the landscape began to change as my user-friendly rolling-road steadily took me further East.  On closer examination, for the change had not been sudden, I was aware I had been going up-hill. There was more arable land; maize and corn stubble on either side, more woodland, and there was a sandy tinge to the soil which had hitherto been deliciously black. I passed a grassy bank, which, back nearer the coast behind me, would have been up against a canal, but was now there to take account of a sustained gradient. There was no free water about now and the huge flood plain of the Rhine was being left behind.  

I passed through Roermond, completely unaware of how close I was to the German border until my eye was caught by a sign the writing on which looked like I could have even had a stab at its pronunciation – something that made me suspect it wasn’t in Dutch.  Looking around I noticed a German number plate on a car, and then saw a German bank, prices at a petrol station in Deutschmarks, and realised that I had been cheated of a strip-search. This new façade of European bonhomie had obviously come in since my childhood when I had been to Germany with my Mum and my Brother and Sister. I can still remember the border guards, stiff in their militaristic uniforms (guns, and everything), peering into the camper van in order to catch us out. I feared, at the time, for our cash-and-carry wholesale box of Topic chocolate bars which was wedged up in the roof; I knew our eligibility to buy wholesale had always been rather tenuous. This time, though, I had nothing to hide, and was disappointed by the lack of any attention I was receiving; after all - this was my big trip across the Continent. Where was the stamp in my passport? I shouted out “Hello! I’m here!” and slowed down to a virtual standstill. I sung God Save The Queen until my helmet hurt, but no one showed the least bit of interest, so I gave up and accelerated away again, trying out a bit of sub-C.S.E. swearing in a number of languages, including German. Well, ok, just French and German. Well, actually, I wouldn’t have sworn any of it was swearing, as such, but a lot of German sounds belligerent without really trying and it all seemed to work ok anyway but I continued to find myself immune to arrest.