Our middle daughter, Becca, is starting afresh in a new home next month. With her soon-to-be ex claiming his share of their furniture, this felt like the ideal moment to help furnish her new place with a Welsh dresser and a selection of surplus gear. It was also all the excuse I needed for one of my favourite pastimes: playing at being a ‘trucker’, as Judith puts it. I required very little encouragement to buy a copy of The Sun, grab a Yorkie bar, and point the wheels north with a payload of chairs, tables, mattresses, a telly, and the myriad bits and pieces that turn a house into a home.

A few weeks ago, for a different job, I hired a battered old workhorse from an outfit in Ashbourne we’ve used before. That particular van had clearly been round the globe several times, possessed an alarming tendency to pull hard to the left, and was so filthy inside you had to wipe your feet on the way out. It wasn’t even especially cheap. A non-stop dash to Glasgow and back merited a touch more civility, so this time I secured one of Mr Enterprise’s finest: a nearly new Iveco Daily in pristine Amazon-delivery white, complete with cruise control and a radio capable of tuning into Five Live.

Heading up the M6 and M74 on a Friday afternoon before a Bank Holiday meant crawling through plenty of stationary traffic—ideal conditions for reflecting on the eclectic fleet of vans and lorries that have rattled through my life. Sadly, not all of them were immortalised in photos, so you’ll have to take my word for them.

My maternal grandmother emigrated to America in the early 1960s, leaving behind my mother, a six-year-old me, and my two younger sisters. She sailed from Liverpool, and I distinctly recall bouncing around unrestrained in the back of a Bedford HA as we trundled to the docks to wave her off. It would be years before I saw her again, by which time the bruises from the ride had long since healed.

By December 1977, I had finished my A-levels and Oxbridge entrance exams, leaving me with nearly a year to fill before going up to university. Through Mr Walker, my German teacher, I wangled a post as a classroom assistant at the Landschulheim Dr Greite in Feldafing, Bavaria. There remained the minor logistical problem of getting there in an era well before cheap flights.

Fortunately, my American grandmother’s sister, Auntie Bee (christened Bertha, a name she despised), had a useful contact at Beresford’s, a prominent Stoke-on-Trent haulage firm. The instructions were simple: turn up at the yard on Monday morning, ask for Tony, and climb aboard. He was hauling a load of local pottery to Austria, and my role was to navigate the customs carnets and interpret during inevitable roadside encounters with police, border guards, and customs officials.

I slung my knapsack into the cab, and my gap-year adventure began. As we drove south through Europe, the weather deteriorated rapidly, eventually trapping us in a ferocious Black Forest blizzard. To keep the diesel from freezing solid, Tony casually lit a fire directly beneath the fuel tank, promptly appointing me night fire-warden with strict orders to wake him only if the cab caught alight. It took four sleepless days to reach Munich, where we parted company. The entire journey cost me two cups of tea and a Mars bar, but an enduring fascination with commercial driving was born.

Back from university during the holidays, I supplemented my student grant with casual driving jobs. Each morning I reported to the agency in Hanley, where they’d hand over an assignment card and send me off across town. I’d pedal furiously on my pushbike to whatever depot was listed, relishing the prospect of a day as my own boss on the open road—balancing an A-Z street atlas on my thigh while wrestling heavy clutches and crunching through the battered gearboxes typical of the era.

I accumulated a peculiar portfolio: hauling crates of ‘pop’ for Schweppes to Alton Towers, distributing Michelin tyres across Midlands depots, delivering trays of plucked chickens to Black Country butchers, and ferrying pressurised liquid nitrogen canisters to Keele University.

As my driving credentials grew, I landed regular shifts with the North Staffordshire hospital transport service. My ride was a skittery Commer Walk-Thru that handled like a drunken dog on an ice rink; it would steer anywhere except where pointed, and selecting a gear was an act of pure faith. My daily manifest ranged from operating-theatre ephemera and amputated limbs destined for the incinerator, to fragile racks of pathology bloods.

My least favourite cargo was a tray of clinical swabs from the local special (i.e. VD) clinic, which sat precariously on the passenger seat within sliding distance of my lap. That particular run to the pathology lab was negotiated with extraordinary care and attention.

Between shifts, the only challenge was keeping up with my academic reading list. Waiting in a Birmingham factory yard during one drop-off, I was deep into Goethe’s Faust when the security guard wandered over with a mug of tea. Spotting the dense volume, he asked, ‘Is it any good, that thriller?’

‘Dunno yet,’ I replied, ‘but I don’t think it ends well for him.’

When the hooter blew, I was summoned inside to deliver a consignment of bare plastic buckets destined to become ‘Dusty Bins’—the iconic booby prize from ITV’s 3-2-1. Dozens of machinists were busy stitching fabric eyes, noses, and ears onto earlier batches. Every head in the room shot up when I walked through the door and cheerfully inquired, ‘Right, where shall I drop them?’

The roar of laughter followed me all the way back to the loading bay.

After graduating, my professional haulage days gave way to corporate life, though the appetite for commercial vehicles never quite faded. During an early stint as Brand Manager for Shredded Wheat, I devised a national promotion tied to our new campaign: collect six box-tops to receive a die-cast model delivery van. I still keep one on my desk today—and no, the grandchildren are not allowed to play with it.

To support the campaign, we commissioned a full-sized replica van to tour agricultural shows and country fairs alongside an actor playing the inventor of the pillow-shaped biscuit, Mr Henry D. Perky.

And naturally, whenever it needed moving, there was only ever going to be one man behind the wheel.

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Although in Words and Wheels I focus mainly on my motorcycling exploits, for me—as for many of you, no doubt—vehicles have played an important part in my life. From my earliest freedom as a teenager, when my mum let me borrow Katy, her prized red Mini, in which I had my debut clumsy fumbles in the back seat; to my first and long-awaited company car, a blue Ford Escort 1.3L, which broke down even before it left the showroom. Cars and motorbikes have long been a passion. In retrospect, I wish I’d kept a note of all of them, as it would read like a historic list of the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of the last half-century. I ferreted in my pile of photos that await the proper sorting and cataloguing that I know I’ll never get round to doing, and came up with a few snapshots that brought back memories.

As a two-year-old I was already showing signs of interest in roadcraft, as this photograph of me riding a trike in Rhyl demonstrates. Clearly the girl whizzing past me must have taken the roundabout pole the wrong way. The rather earnest look on my face remains to this day when I’m concentrating on driving or riding, but the hand gestures occasionally differ, especially when faced with the appalling standards of driving they seem to teach nowadays.

These days cars are as much computers on wheels as mechanical beasts, and I wouldn’t dare do anything more complex than top up the battery, oil, and water on anything modern. I sometimes look under the bonnet of mine to see if there’s anything that resembles the kind of engine I enjoyed working on in my late teens and early twenties. Apart from the odd pipe and wire, they are as different as an iPhone is from a tin can and string. My first ever car, aged three, was Thunderbolt, my vintage Tri-ang pedal car, in which I would race round the path that circled our semi-detached house. Since my grandmother and uncle lived next door and no fence separated us, my sisters and I had a ready-made test track. These days a decent Thunderbolt is worth nearly £1,000, so it was a pity that I wrote mine off by crashing it into a pile of bricks on the pavement down a nearby hill, attempting a land-speed record.

My enthusiasm for thrills was not diminished, however, and on holiday in Falmouth as a hirsute and slender-looking teenager I used to race my sisters on go-karts round the rugby club track with my half-crown pocket money.

That all went swimmingly until Alison, the middle one of the three of us, crashed into an advertising hoarding and further racing was banned. It was all the more surprising that my father let me loose in his new Ford Cortina 1.3L (as a family it was a while until we migrated up the engine hierarchy) shortly after I’d passed my test. Those were the days when it didn’t cost a fortune to add a newly qualified, callow youth onto the family car insurance.

I loved driving that big car, even though it was always Mum’s Mini I borrowed for longer trips, such as seeing Judith in Burnley. The journey there from Newcastle-under-Lyme, staying off the motorways for fear of breaking down, took hours. But I slid back the window, adjusted the choke knob, waggled both the gearstick and the steering wheel with their mile-worn looseness, and pointed north in anticipation. The joy of arrival was dampened slightly by her father’s annoyance at having the Mini let loose a torrent of oil on his newly laid drive.

The courting mission having been a success despite the Mini’s Torrey Canyon episode, I fixed the oil filter and headed home, only to find the clutch slipping and an acrid, burning smell choking me half to death the entire way. Mum was disappointed at having to take the bus to work for the next few weeks until my mate Tim and I could fix the clutch ourselves, as funds didn’t stretch to using the local garage. We propped up the Mini on blocks, separated the gearbox from the engine block, and managed somehow to remove and replace the clutch with the motor still in situ. I carry the scars on my knuckles to this day, and it’s a miracle that the blocks didn’t slip; otherwise, I’d be typing (and doing everything else) one-handed.

Some people think of cars as mere tin boxes—a utilitarian tool to travel from A to B, devoid of emotion and meaning. Judith is one such. As long as it goes and stops reliably, she’s not bothered. I take the counter-view. Naturally, I want it to have those essential features, but I also want my car or motorbike to have some soul, a character. I like it to reflect who I think I am, what I use it for, and to be something I look back at when I leave it parked up somewhere, not just to check if it’s locked.

In 2004 I must undoubtedly have been having a mid-life crisis when I bought a brand-new Lotus Elise. I happened to pass the Lotus dealership in Northwich, Cheshire, on my way back from visiting some pubs on business. Like a siren’s call, I was drawn inside, squeezed myself through the letterbox-sized opening jokingly called the driver’s door, and was immediately entranced. I had driven one on a corporate track day some months prior, so I was more than familiar with the pocket rocket’s performance. In a trice my hand had reached into my pocket to hand over a credit card as a deposit, and the deal was done.

The news of its impending delivery came as something of a surprise at home. Judith posted herself into it once, denounced it as wholly impractical (which was never its intended purpose anyway), and refused to travel in it again, joining the list of motorcycles and aircraft that remained solitary pursuits of mine. The Elise lasted a couple of years before I sold it to a dentist, who would at least be able to fill his own teeth after the rock-hard suspension shook them loose.

These days, I drive a Volvo XC60. I like its Scandinavian design, its unfussiness, and its practicality. It says solid, dependable, not flashy. At 68, I think I finally know who I am, and I’m content with it.

Yet, for all the sensible comfort of the Volvo and the fleeting adrenaline of the Lotus, my heart still belongs to simpler machinery. When our daughter Nicola arrived in 1985, we needed a decent second car to replace Judith’s Renault 5, which had joined a long list of Renaults that managed to go from perfectly serviceable to scrap in a matter of days. Fond memories of our hired Citroën 2CV in Corsica convinced us that a change of French brand was the answer.

I headed off to the dealership in Stevenage with a briefcase full of cash (about £3,000, I recall) to buy our first brand-new car: a 2CV Dolly edition in bleu nuit and jaune rialto—or ‘plum and custard’, as we called it. We soon moved to Scotland in it, where the plucky little car proved to be more than a match for the winter weather, its skinny tyres cutting through deep snow with ease, even if the heater left much to be desired.

Its registration still shows up on the DVLA database today without an MOT or road tax, which means it hasn’t been officially scrapped; it’s quietly slumbering in a barn or garage somewhere. Of all the cars I’ve ever owned, that little Dolly is the one I’d give anything to have back. So, consider this an open appeal to the Words and Wheels readership: a handsome reward awaits anyone who can help me track down my old tin snail.

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I should add that we were spectacularly impoverished back then. These were the days BC—Before Children—but even without dependants, we had barely two copper coins to rub together. We survived on a meagre diet of crusty bread, local cheese, and the odd bottle of cheap supermarket plonk as we trundled around that lovely island, exploring its jagged mountains and quiet coves, utterly revelled in being young, carefree, and newly wed.

A couple of days into the trip, however, arithmetic reared its ugly head. I realised that if we carried on exploring at our current pace, I would incur what was, to my modest pocket, an exorbitant mileage charge from the hire firm. There was no such thing as an ‘unlimited mileage’ deal in those days.

By sheer good fortune, I chanced upon a fellow Brit on the campsite—an engineer and mechanic—who quietly showed me how to disconnect the 2CV’s speedometer cable. Naturally, this meant I had no precise idea how fast we were going, though as it was a 2CV, that was largely academic. More importantly, it meant the odometer froze in time. When I returned the vehicle at the end of the fortnight, the counter recorded that we had driven a grand total of thirty kilometres. The car hire clerk stared at me in absolute amazement, clearly baffled by our sedentary holiday. In truth, we’d covered at least ten times that.

Since those frugal beginnings, the Mediterranean islands have become something of a personal playground. We have our place here in Mallorca, but I’ve also ridden my motorcycle across Menorca—a much smaller, quieter island with a completely different temperament from its Balearic siblings. I’ve ridden through Ibiza, too, caught in an epic rainstorm so severe that the streets flooded and manhole covers popped off, creating invisible submarine plunge pools for the unwary. A few years ago Judith and I took our e-bikes on an early-season tour of Sardinia, even hopping back over to Corsica on the ferry for a nostalgic look around.

Yet it is always back to Mallorca that I return for genuine adventure. Though not the largest landmass in the Med, it is still substantial enough that riding from one tip to the other requires proper intent. We live down in the far south-west, close to Port d’Andratx and Sant Elm, where the island abruptly ends facing the protected nature reserve of Sa Dragonera. Up in the far north-east lies Pollença and its port, leading to the dramatic, narrow isthmus of Formentor which terminates at its famous lighthouse.

That lighthouse was my objective the other morning.

I woke at half-past five and set off in the pitch dark, steering the Honda GB350S along the relatively quiet main cross-island road towards the north-east, aiming to reach the cape for sunrise. The local authorities, well aware of how magnetic the spot is, now restrict motorized traffic during peak hours. Unless you are on a bicycle, a public bus, or in a local taxi, you must enter and leave before 10:00 AM, or wait until after 10:00 PM.

I arrived just around half-past six. The sun was already clearing the horizon, casting an orange glow across the water and illuminating the faint outline of Menorca in the far distance. Early risers were already making their way back. It was a glorious leg of the ride; as the isthmus narrows, the views open up dramatically on both sides, with sheer limestone cliffs plunging down into a glistening sea, and wild goats stepping nonchalantly across the tarmac. I had a marvellous time carving the bike through the tight switchbacks that lead down to the far, stopping to take a few evocative photographs in the crisp morning air.

I couldn’t linger, though. Having reached the easternmost tip, I wanted to execute a plan I’ve only ever managed once before—back in 2017 on my old Honda NC750X—which was to ride the entire length of the island back home, tracing the spine of the Tramuntana mountains rather than taking the fast, dull motorway across the central plain.

Heading back through Port de Pollença, past the shaded, pine-lined promenade of the Pine Walk, I turned up towards the high peaks. The surrounding fields were parched summer yellow, dotted with bales of hay, gnarled almond trees, ancient olives, and the occasional scrawny sheep. On my left rose the great massif of Massanella, one of the twenty four high (>1,000m) summits of Mallorca, most of which I’ve scrambled up at one time or another. I wondered briefly if I’d ever tackle one on foot again following my knee replacement two years ago; most of my adventuring these days takes place on two wheels. Still, picked out in the low golden light, the rocky bluffs were breathtaking, bringing back happy memories.

The road climbed steadily on immaculate tarmac—an enviable contrast to the potholed ribbons of home. I passed the famous turn-off for Sa Calobra and the Torrent de Pareis. It’s one of the island’s most spectacular geological features, accessible via a dizzying descent of hairpins that was famously tackled by the late Dave Myers and Si King for their Hairy Bikers television series. I met Dave some years ago at the Buxton Opera House and we spent a good while talking about that very stretch of tarmac; I thought of him fondly as I swept past the junction, had second thoughts, turned round and headed down the bends to the azure sea. The siren call of Sa Calobra was too great to resist.

Further west, I skirted the island’s two primary reservoirs, Gorg Blau and Cúber. Though only a few kilometres apart, Gorg Blau looked reasonably healthy while Cúber was worryingly depleted—visual evidence of the ongoing drought affecting the island. Just above them, sitting atop Mallorca’s highest point, Puig Major, the great white radar dome of the military listening station glistened in the sun like a giant golf ball perched on a crag.

Soon I was sweeping through the familiar mountain settlements—Deià, Valldemossa, Banyalbufar, and Estellencs—names that read like a poem and from where Robert Graves drew inspiration. The right side of the road offered constant, tantalising glimpses of the northern Mallorcan sea far below, occasionally dotted with the white wake of a passing boat.

By now, the mountain lorries carrying tanked water to isolated fincas were out in force, frustrating my progress. The early start, heat, and five hours in the saddle were beginning to take their toll. After one tight bend where I misjudged my line slightly and came perilously close to the stone barrier, I took it as a sharp wake-up call. I pulled over, drank deeply from my water bottle, rested in the shade, and let the view settle my concentration before embarking on the final stretch.

I finally rolled into Sant Elm around late morning, the engine thumping its soft, familiar cadence against the stone harbour wall. I pulled up right at the water’s edge, just as a group of sea kayakers were paddling back in from their excursion across the narrow channel to the jagged, sleeping-reptile shape of Sa Dragonera.

I’d completed the full crossing of Mallorca’s spine and made it back well before lunch. Quite an achievement for a morning’s work.

Sitting there by the sea, taking off my helmet in the quiet, my mind drifted back to that Corsican campsite nearly fifty years ago. We were rich in youth back then, if completely broke in every other respect—living on cheap wine, stolen miles, and sheer enthusiasm. Decades have rolled past since, filled with children, work, and the inevitable wear and tear of getting older, but the basic joy of the road hasn’t changed a bit, even if the traffic has.

I kicked up the side-stand and headed home. This time, there was no need to watch the pennies or disconnect the speedometer cable. This time, I took Judith out for a proper meal marking the sheer good fortune of still being out here enjoying life’s ride together.

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The street-cleaner was a Zoomer, too. One of the lads, his top drenched in sweat, idly kicked a beer can in her direction. He did not look at her or taunt her in any way. It was, I think, just what you do when, pissed, a can presents itself to your foot in the pre-dawn hour after a night’s revelry. It skittered across the hatched lines of the walkway and—without breaking stride—she drew it towards the kerbstone. She did not look at the crowd: the girls with flimsy, diaphanous tops and skirts; the boys with tight shorts, flip-flops, and T-shirts that flaunted a range of logos and inscriptions, some more provocative than others.

As the lights changed and I decided I could wait no longer for the human stream to abate, I let the clutch out slowly and eased forward, threading a careful line across the humped tarmac to the other side, where the little cleaning lorry, a barredora de calles, was scooping up the night’s detritus with brushes that whirred manically. The man with the portable jet-wash would follow the wagon, and in an hour or so, all would be fresh and clean, ready for the diurnal visitors that throng this part of the Mallorcan coast in the summer.

What did the unsung street-cleaning team make of the mainly British youngsters and their epically energetic nights on the town, I wondered? Did they think of them at all, or just accept it as the job, repeated nightly until the late autumn draws in and the clubs paint whitewash over their doors until Easter comes around again? Did they envy them their carefreeness or think of them as feckless youth, hedonistic to a fault?

Or maybe these were just my own questions, prompted by a rare contact with the closing time of nightlife in Mallorca. As is my wont here in these hot and humid days, I head out very early on my Honda GB350S to enjoy some relative coolness and traffic-free roads before the day turns mad again. You’ll know this if you’ve followed some of my recent essays. Until this day, I’d headed straight out into the countryside, but since I usually set off with no firm plan other than to steer the bike wherever it (she?—I have not decided) wishes to go, it came as a surprise that we found ourselves mired in urbanity. In the town’s wide streets, a hundred metres or so from the golden and well-groomed platja, one set of visitors were heading to sleep it all off, just as another set were beginning to yawn, stretch, and toddle to the bathroom as a precursor to another day on holiday.

I carried on, past the blue-lit phalanx of police cars (it must be said, there are far more police visible in the towns and cities of Spain than ever seem evident in the UK). None spared a glance at a late-sixties biker on a UK-registered bike as he pootled past, riding particularly attentively. They were keeping a beady eye on proceedings, which—it must be said—were peaceful and good-natured, if slightly untidy, sweat-stained, and lacking a degree of decorum in the dress department.

It was no different in Palma. I took the scenic route along the Passeig Marítim, past the enormous cruise ships that throng the city with their disembarked hordes—and whose purses remain tightly shut bar some taxi rides, to the rising disenchantment of the island’s hospitality businesses. All of the crowds, none of the cash. The recently upgraded boulevard, which borders the leisure harbour with its multi-million-euro yachts, is lined with upmarket hotels and nightclubs. Out spilled more olive-skinned and elegantly dressed youngsters, a vintage more mature than Santa Ponça’s, but still distant from my generation by light-years. These are the gilded Spanish youth, and it did not escape my notice that the police, though present, maintained a distinctly more discreet presence.

But whatever their backgrounds, certain instincts remain universal. It is easy to find a doctor or medical practice in these parts. They cater not only for different specialisms but languages, too—Deutsche Ärzte are ten a pfennig—and it struck me as unusual that there were some that seemed to cater for young women only. Outside two high-street surgeries, I saw short queues of half a dozen young women and no men. I pondered this briefly until the penny dropped. They were waiting for opening time to bring closure, perhaps. Or maybe they just had a bad headache from the booze and the music.

In the city of Palma itself, normally a crazy and rather trying place to drive or ride around in the daytime, peace still reigned. I took the GB on a tour of some of the sights: the honey-gold marès sandstone walls, the hidden patios Majorquins, and the wrought-iron balconies that over-arch the calletas, the narrow alleyways which I could point my bike through with ease. It is a stunningly beautiful city, all the more so when it is devoid of people and traffic in the clear light and air of dawn. I tripped the emerging light fantastic, past the majestic Ajuntament, parking up outside the St. Cristo bakery propping up the Royal Dental Clinic’s Baroque façade before making my way to the pièce de résistance: La Seu, the cathedral with its Gothic Gaudí altar-canopy.

I parked the bike by the small lake that fronts it and keeps it peaceful from the hustle and bustle of the main coastal road. I sat on a stone block and watched in awe as the rising sun gently bathed its walls and the famous rose window (one of the largest in the world) in a red-orange glow.

A new day in Mallorca was here. I was content to linger a while in that lacuna of time between night and day, where I could be alone with my thoughts of what the day would bring, rather than heading home to sleep off the night.

Stop tittering at the back.

At first, I thought it was the air-conditioning playing up, but the moment I got some sort of fix on its whereabouts, it stopped, and I slumped back to sleep. For about fifteen minutes, after which it started up again.

This pantomime—buzz, sudden halt, half-kip, buzz again, curse, out of bed, stub toe, curse louder, buzzing stops—continued several times until I tracked down the bathroom culprit: Judith’s electric toothbrush, which had decided to go rogue. Sound travels on our tiled floors, and I finally shut the thing up (tempted as I was to hurl it out of the window) by hiding it under pillows in the spare bedroom, as it steadfastly refused to switch off at my command.

Which got me thinking about sounds, welcome and unwelcome.

Many years ago, I was working in Alsace as a teaching assistant in a lycée. One of my colleagues, Pierre Boulay—avuncular, prematurely bald, and a committed audiophile—persuaded me to invest some of my meagre wages in a decent hi-fi system. His reasoning was that since my Dad was going deaf, I probably would too, so I might as well make the most of decent hearing when I was younger. Pierre was very wise.

During lockdown, I decided that it was time to have my lugholes properly tested. I was confident that I had (almost) perfect hearing and that it was Judith and others who mumbled. Hubris struck, and it turned out that I was rather deficient in the upper registers. My audiologist’s explanation—that left to my own devices, I would be prone to a higher likelihood of Alzheimer’s in future—was all the incentive I needed to invest in two of her devices, one for each ear. Since then, I have not looked back, to mix a body part metaphor.

Last week, I wrote about the various bumps and bangs on our local car park facing the apartment. These have continued this week, of course, as we’re now firmly in Balearic high season and the frenetic search for parking places has only intensified. The wail of police sirens was added to the mix at one point, as a squadron of cop cars descended on the piece of land we overlook. A car thief was arrested, his apprehended BMW—pinched from Lisbon, apparently—rooted immovably outside our gate while the Guardia Civil did their stuff. We were out having lunch, so we missed the excitement, as is the way of these things. Instead, we had the afternoon B-movie of a showroom’s worth of cars being ticketed for illegal parking.

Our youngest daughter, Jessica, is with us at the moment. While we supped on a glass of wine on our front terrace, she remarked how loud the cicadas were. They’re everywhere, but they are hard to spot. As I had forgotten to wear my hearing aids, I was blissfully unaware of the incessant rasping sounds made by their tymbals, a specialised organ. Unlike crickets, they don’t rub their legs together; they have an in-built drum kit designed specifically to make that racket.

I am keeping up my habit of getting up in the dark, irrespective of rogue toothbrushes, to take the Honda GB350S for a ride and to enjoy seeing the sun rise on another Mediterranean summer’s day.

I decided to head up to Sóller one morning, in the north of the island on the other side of the Tramuntana. There is a wonderful winding road (Ma-11A), the old route, which features around fifty switchbacks in its 12.5 km mountain stretch. The southern ascent is relatively straightforward, though you have to keep an eagle eye open for the lunatic cyclists descending at breakneck speed. Even through my helmet, I could hear the swish of derailleur gears and the odd warning shout to their fellow riders.

Once over the 497-metre-high col, heading down towards the lovely town of Sóller itself, those turns become complex, tight, and very steep in places. It is a true test of handling to guide the nimble GB safely down. As elsewhere on the island, there are very low stone walls to punish severely any mistake. It was one of those iconic roads I have wanted to do on the bike for some time, and it didn’t disappoint.

Coming back, after a welcome coffee in Port de Sóller further down the road, I took the tunnel instead of the col. It’s a fraction over 3 km long—the longest in Mallorca. In 2017 it went toll-free, thus losing its title as the most expensive of all toll roads per kilometre in Spain. Traffic immediately started using it instead of the much more attractive but slower mountain road, to the benefit of those on two wheels who prefer to go round bends rather than in straight lines in the gloom beneath millions of tonnes of rock.

So, why return that way at all, you ask? Well, I did want to get back home for breakfast and before the sun was fully up I had planned another fabulous route in the Tramuntana (Esporles to Es Capdellà) which would take some time. Moreover, I wanted to experience the unique exhaust note of the GB in a properly enclosed acoustic space. A big hole in the ground would suit nicely, thank you—hence the tunnel.

The engineers at Honda designed the exhaust around low-to-mid frequencies, between 50 and 150 Hz. These harmonics give it a deep, resonant chug, which you can feel as much as hear.

There is, of course, a fundamental difference between genuinely crafted acoustics such as with the GB and pure, aggressive volume. We have suffered the occasional weekend exhibitionists—the ones who race their souped-up, baffle-free sports bikes up a steep nearby hill, wringing out twelve-thousand revs in second gear just to ensure every siesta within a kilometre radius is brought to an abrupt halt. It’s an anti-social, high-pitched clamour that screams ‘look at me’ while doing nothing for the image of motorcyclists.

My little Honda, by contrast, offers a far more civilised, subtle pleasure. It has a famously long-stroke single-cylinder engine, and the sound is unlike anything modern. It’s a soft, lazy, slow-cadenced thump at idle, but under load, those notes mellow to a rich tone like a timpanum or tuba. It’s the bike’s mechanical heartbeat, and in the dark, enclosed walls of the Túnel de Sóller, it echoed sonorously, gloriously, off the limestone.

As I had the 3 km of tunnel to myself, I flipped up the visor to get the full sound effect. Of blipping the throttle. The cicadas might have evolved their built-in drum kits to dominate the Mallorcan trees, but Honda’s acoustic team had engineered something far more melodious for the subterranean world. It brought the same sense of illicit pleasure as emitting a real rip-roarer of a fart—best kept to oneself, and still inexplicably, childishly delightful.

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It’s quite entertaining watching the standard of driving, which varies from occasionally competent to downright idiotic. The drivers, mainly Spanish visitors with a sprinkling of Germans, French, and the odd Brit, use their bumpers as sensors, irrespective of whether they actually have them fitted. Sometimes a passenger will exit the car to help position the driver parking in some non-existent gap, only to watch the wrong end of the vehicle as it scrapes down the side of some unsuspecting car. I’ve never yet seen a note left, and we’ve been here for over 22 years.

Funnier still is when, in frustration, a driver decides that it would be a great idea to mount the kerb to squeeze into one of the lesser-used gaps under the trees. They either drag off part of the front or underside of the car or—even better—strand themselves in mid-air, front wheels whizzing round like Road Runner, sans grip.

On one occasion I saw a burly bloke, whose van was blocked in, physically bounce a small car sideways into a Mercedes saloon. Some time later I watched with wry amusement as the Mercedes driver returned, apoplectic at finding a white Kia occupying the space where his rear offside door used to be. He hung around waiting for its owner—the putative miscreant—to return. She did, about ten minutes later, to a verbal lashing from an unimpressed Bavarian, swearing her innocence. It’s as well that I’d videoed the whole thing on my phone, and I popped down to the car park to show them the evidence, much to their astonishment. It did cost me several hours at the local cop shop later, making a statement and handing over the footage—which felt like a good turn, but one which I wished not to repeat. These days I just watch the fun unfold and attempt to stay out of it.

Nobody is likely to get killed in the car park—only a few dents and perhaps some injured pride. Out on the roads of Mallorca, however, the standard of driving is a genuine issue, particularly as I’m spending quite a lot of time on two wheels on my Honda GB350S, which I’ve brought over from Derbyshire for the summer. Despite the fact that most of the riders here go around in flip-flops or trainers at best, shorts, a t-shirt, and occasionally gloves, I always wear my full, proper protective gear. It’s horrendously hot in the humid conditions, even though it’s the best-ventilated gear on the market, but I wouldn’t wear less. All the gear, all the time, as they say.

It’s not uncommon to see a car with every panel dented, bits hanging off it, and a thick layer of dust covering the rear window, rendering useless any rear-view mirror—which in any event is probably angled towards the driver for a regular preen-check. That’s relatively new cars. Older ones (in Spain the ITV or MOT is only every two years up to ten years old) puff out prodigious amounts of smoke too and regularly lack wing mirrors. Indicators are entirely optional, and essentially the rules of the road here are ‘go where you want to go and let the others watch out’. It’s basically the Wild West, and I’m very glad that we have our very own off-street parking space into which I can tuck our car and my bike, behind a locked gate.

This morning I was out early again for a bimble round Port d'Andratx (pronounced ‘Andratch’). Early is good, as I would only be lying awake in bed anyway, it’s slightly cooler, and there’s little or no traffic around. Even so, the traffic that did appear this morning around six o’clock clearly didn’t expect a highly visible chap on a motorcycle to be occupying the same stretches of tarmac as them. Twice I had a ‘near miss’, by which I mean that avoiding action in the form of full-on braking was needed to stay upright and in one piece. And all that’s despite my highly developed instinct for trouble, which bikers tend to acquire quickly. Or else.

Andratx is a curious corner of the island. The coastline is exceptionally rugged, with towering cliffs and pretty coves accessible only on foot or by boat, where the UNESCO-protected Serra de Tramuntana plunges headfirst into the Mediterranean azure. Plugged into this raw landscape—sometimes jarringly, sometimes in harmony with it—stand multi-million-euro glass-fronted, infinity-pooled villas that make the area an enclave of extraordinary wealth. It’s the most expensive municipality in Mallorca and one of the dearest in Spain. It has a huge natural harbour where superyachts dally alongside traditional wooden llaüts that have anchored in these same waters for generations.

Despite its wealth, the roads around the town are shockingly bad, even worse than the potholed nightmare that is the typical UK road. Heaven knows where the ajuntament spends its vast tax income. As I rode round in the post-dawn glimmer, I dodged mantrap after mantrap. Fortunately, the GB350 is blessed with decent suspension and the flickability to skirt nimbly round hazards, although the one I spectacularly missed nearly rattled my fillings out.

I flirted with the lighthouse at Far de Sa Mola, with its views of Cala Llamp and the jagged, crocodile-shaped island of Sa Dragonera. I pulled up near the driving range at Golf de Andratx, one of the most challenging courses in the west of the island, where during one memorable round I lost eight balls. I picked up ensaïmadas for breakfast at La Consigna, already buzzing with customers keen to bag their parking spot outside this cramped harbour-side café.

I could have ridden home the quick way along the coast through Camp de Mar, with its hotels and condos, but it was the draw of the other Andratx—the pueblo, five kilometres inland, built centuries ago to evade Barbary pirates—that I succumbed to. I wandered thumperingly through its cobbled streets, past narrow stone townhouses and miniature citrus groves, before being released into the mountains and the famed Ma-1031: my ‘go to’ road, the one that makes me feel alive (and away from traffic), where I could twist and dance my way round the sinuous curves of the Tramuntana’s foothills back home.

As I drew up and pressed the remote to open our gate, I turned to see a black Renault reverse ever so gently into one of the pine trees, leaving a trunk-shaped dent in its boot.

It’s been a ‘scorcher’, as The Sun would say. Heatwave temperatures are breaking all records, bringing wildfires and—sadly—fatalities from the dehydration and exhaustion that comes with excessive heat, as well as unwise dips in fast-flowing rivers. For once, the differential between the UK and here in Mallorca is narrower than usual for the time of year. Hot is hot wherever you are, but by the Balearic coast we have air-conditioning, a pool, and the warm waters of the Mediterranean. The Spanish learned many moons ago to take it easy in the middle of the day; the siesta is still alive and well—a guilty but necessary pleasure. Especially if, like me, age has granted you a dicky ticker (paroxysmal atrial fibrillation) which gets sparked up by the effects of too much exertion in the sun.

Having brought my ‘thumper’-engined Honda GB350S across the Bay of Biscay and down through the Pyrenees to Barcelona—a meandering journey of discovery and adventure which I shall be featuring in future blogs—I fully intend to make the most of its delightful characteristics in Mallorca over the summer. Those who know the bike will appreciate that it’s usually associated with quiet Sunday afternoon pipe-and-slippers bimbles through English country back lanes. I set out to prove that its competencies lay well beyond that, demonstrating that this single-cylinder, lightweight, air-cooled Japanese masterpiece of simple, unadorned engineering can make a proper cross-continental tourer. And so it has proven.

On this small island, with its narrow, twisting lanes, steep mountain passes, and hairpin bends, the GB is in its natural habitat. As it’s not a taxi, it has no need to travel at warp speed. Its very lightness and low centre of gravity mean it is ridiculously flickable around the corners, and I can squeeze it into places denied to me on my bigger NT1100 (now heading to Norway for my late summer epic to the Russian border).

With apologies to George Sand, who famously spent a winter in Valldemossa, the title of this blog is inspired by the sensuous experience of riding a motorcycle at sparrowfart. I’ve saved you the trouble of hauling yourself out of bed before the alarm goes off.

I can hear the gentle susurration of the air-conditioning in our bedroom. It blends in with Judith’s snuffly breathing as I creep out of bed and tiptoe in the dark into the stifling lounge to put on the bike gear I’d laid out the night before. I have a practised routine, and I’m wearing the minimum I can get away with safely: a Klim Marrakesh jacket and trousers. Not for me the T-shirt, shorts, and flip-flops that typify summer riders here. Too dangerous by far.

Outside in the car park, I unfurl the bike from its cover, feeling for the slot where the ignition will soon spark life and light. The air is heavy with the scent of pine needles, a scattering of which have fallen all around the bike overnight. Warily, I tread on them. Innocuous they seem, but they are like long brown ball bearings, easy to slip on.

I roll the bike down the easy slope, not wishing to wake the neighbours with the GB’s guttural thump. Only by the gate do I spark it up, reaching for the button that slides open the exit into the hill, which leads up from the bay and into the mountains behind our apartment. Nobody is around; not even the stray cats stir at this hour. I head upwards, working my way through the gears—each new ride a re-accustomisation with balance, weight, and power.

I still feel sleepy, but the rush of air past my face slaps torpor away. The sky is just beginning to turn that eerie, translucent pre-dawn blue—the true hallmark of sparrowfart—where the night is ending but the sun has yet to claim the horizon. The cool morning air—still 24°C and 60% humidity, mind you—is intensely refreshing at speed. The first glimmer of the dawn light crescents over the outlines of the hills ahead, the crest barely visible against the night sky.

I have thought about this part of the ride. It will be twenty minutes or so before the light, quick-rising here, allows me to tackle the steep hairpin bends I have in mind. Seeing round the corners is crucial in order to judge the turn safely and with style. My single headlight will not point where I want to go; only my eyes can do that. And at this precise moment, they would see nothing of the void beyond a bend. So I stay on the straight roads—narrow, quiet, and unchallenging—until the crepuscular gloom becomes brighter and details emerge from the scenery.

High now in the Tramuntana, I pass through Valldemossa, with its steep, blonde-stone streets and sun-baked terracotta roofs. A phalanx of resident-only access signs and ominous CCTV cameras stops me dead in my tracks. I would have loved to navigate through its ancient alleyways to the Real Cartuja, the royal palace and monastery where George Sand and Chopin spent their winter. But I am taking no chances. I recently had a bureaucratic nightmare of a brush with a rogue CCTV camera in a Manchester car park, and it took weeks of administrative warfare and endless worry to sort out. I have absolutely no intention of spoiling my Mediterranean escape with a Spanish traffic fine. I dare not venture further into the heart of the village, so I stop briefly on the perimeter to snap a photo or two. The light is magical. I love photography in the dawn hours; it has an ethereal quality that belies the harshness of the daytime sun in this sunniest of Balearic Islands.

A short ride away, with still no cars or traffic of any sort, I begin the precipitous descent to its port offshoot, though the Port de Valldemossa is little more than a fishing and leisure harbour. It is still only half-light as I steer the little Honda down the Ma-1131, a road with twelve sharp turns, nine of which are severely stacked, complex, and highly technical switchbacks crammed into just 400 metres of vertical descent over less than five kilometres. The stone walls that line this exceptionally narrow strip of tarmac reach no higher than my knees, so a fall over the edge is unthinkable.

I feel the constant, deliberate squeeze of the front brake lever, modulating the weight as the front forks compress into each tight, blind corner. Not for the first time, I am taken back to the infamous Trollstigen in Norway, though today I have no fellow travellers on this daredevil route. Surely this is the best time of day to take it on. The bike hums beneath me almost as though it’s enjoying the ride as much as I am. Its brakes, not its engine, are doing the heavy lifting here.

My much bigger Honda NT, heading now to Norway, would have been an entirely different, muscle-straining proposition down these tight drops. I think the GB is rapidly becoming my favourite, for which I feel insanely guilty. They are but metal and plastic manufactured objects after all, but the little 350 has character aplenty. It wins because it is entirely unintimidating. It is lighter, simpler, and infinitely more manageable. On these precipitous ledges, I am simply not afraid of dropping it. That absence of low-speed anxiety changes everything; it turns what could be a stressful exercise in survival into something deeply, beautifully relaxing.

I reach the port, where nothing stirs. I mooch around by the water’s edge and stare out to sea, half expecting the local fishermen to be bringing home their catch of John Dory and Cap-Roig. The seas are still, however, and devoid of boats. Later in the day, this place will be thronged with catches loaded into vans for the restaurants of the capital, Palma, and the tourists on the coast.

Only a few kilometres west along from Port de Valldemossa is Port d’es Canonge. I feel like a test of man and beast, so I head back up to the main mountain road, the single-cylinder engine properly working for its living on the climb this time. A short hop, and then I plunge back down 320 metres to another, even tinier port, with its collection of green-shuttered terracotta houses and a bow-shaped stony harbour with a motley, ramshackle scatter of skiffs, kayaks, and paddleboards. I can’t manoeuvre the bike into a photogenic position, so instead I sit, drink water, and take in the absolute calm of the day. A dog on a long lead edges up to me, an old woman gripping the leash tightly. We mutter “Bon dia!” to each other. She’s the first human I’ve seen in over an hour and a half.

As the day begins to warm up and the sun has risen almost imperceptibly above the horizon, the gathering heat begins to foment the scents of pine, carob, wild rosemary, and lentisc. My open-face helmet concentrates the aroma into a heady mix; I breathe deeply and smile, trying to capture the experience in my memory bank. This blend is the signature scent of Mallorca: damp morning salt air and dry, resinous mountain herbs. It’s the smell of home for the summer.

I recently made the mistake of commenting on one of the motorcycling groups to which I subscribe. Someone had posted a video of themselves fleeing from an attempted bike-jacking by hooded youths. It was a frightening experience, no doubt—having faced similar intimidation myself, I empathise—but they continued to film and post as they ran red lights, narrowly avoided a collision on a roundabout, and ploughed through a group of pedestrians on a zebra crossing, missing them by inches. I suggested that such reckless riding was inexcusable, no matter the provocation, asking how they would justify causing serious injury or worse. The subsequent "pile-on" took me by surprise. Though a few brave souls agreed with my view (which was entirely backed up by law), the majority seemed to think I had a keen interest in campanology, judging from the sheer number of bell emojis that appeared.

All of which proves that no matter how reasonably argued one's view may be, there is an inchoate audience of angry, frustrated people who see only one side of an issue and refuse to consider an alternative reality. It mirrors the present state of our politics, though I shall refrain from developing that line of thought here.

On the other hand, the positive side of social media was brought home to me in a heart-warming way when, after 50 years, I met up with an old schoolfriend who found himself on Mallorca at the same time as me. Jock Shepherd and I were at school together in North Staffordshire in the 1960s. I was at junior school in the small urban village of Wolstanton when, one day, this well-dressed lad speaking a broad Scots brogue appeared in the classroom. His parents had moved down from Forfar, and for the next decade we were classmates until A-levels sent us on our separate ways. Jock was someone I always looked up to; he had charisma, good looks, and sporting talent. Had we not been at an all-boys grammar school, no doubt the girls would have hung around him like moths to a flame.

He went his way into a highly successful business career that took him to the US for many years. Our paths never crossed until I noticed from a Facebook post that he was on holiday in Mallorca. We had loosely followed each other for a number of years, and he knew I lived here. And so it was that I rose in the pre-dawn dark to ride my little Honda GB350S through the cool air of the Tramuntana mountains over to Porto Cristo and the secluded inland finca where he and his wife, Cath, were staying. She unfortunately had to be elsewhere while we talked over coffee and a late breakfast.

Several hours passed unnoticed, save for the sun chasing us deeper into the shade. I realised with a start that, with the sole exception of my sisters, Jock is the person I have known the longest—nearly sixty years in total. I found it strangely affecting to have our lives unfold before us like this. Jock was an anchor to an era which belongs now in history books and grainy black-and-white television clips. Yet, here we were; we had survived into our late 60s, were blessed with good health (with the odd creak, mainly from me), and had the good fortune of loving families and material comfort sufficient to see us through our future years. It struck me that when we ran around the playground at St Margaret’s all those decades ago, we had no idea how rich our life experiences would be, or that one day we would be sitting by a bougainvillea bush in rural Mallorca sharing those riches. We parted with a hug—something unheard of as nine-year-old schoolboys. I had a lump in my throat.

And all thanks to social media.

Today is Father’s Day. For once, I actually get to spend it at home with the family, whereas I am usually somewhere out on the road at this time of year. Tomorrow morning, however, normal service resumes. I am setting off on my ‘little’ bike, a Honda GB350S, to ride across the Pyrenees to our summer home in Mallorca. It’s a journey I’ve undertaken multiple times since my first run in 2017, and every single iteration has been an adventure.

To complicate logistical matters, my other bike—the big Honda NT1100 tourer—is currently being shipped directly to Oslo. That is where I’ll be picking it up in August to reunite with my mate Ralph, co-star of North to Norway. Together, we are continuing our grand quest to ride to all four extreme points of mainland Europe. Having already ticked off three, we are heading in search of the final, easternmost frontier: the Finnish border with Russia at Virmajärvi.

The last few weeks have been a whirlwind of planning and packing. I have never had to prepare for two entirely separate, simultaneous motorcycle expeditions before, to the point where I genuinely resorted to a Venn diagram just to sort out the overlapping packing lists. Thankfully, the NT1100 is now securely en route, allowing me to focus entirely on prepping the GB.

The bikers among you will know that the GB350S is a modern-retro, single-cylinder, air-cooled ‘thumper’. It is delightfully simple, and Honda launched it in the UK last year to considerable acclaim. However, it has rapidly acquired a reputation as a gentle, unassuming ‘bimbler’—the sort of motorcycle you take out for a lazy pootle through country lanes on a sunny Sunday afternoon. It is, for all intents and purposes, the sherry-drinking auntie of the biking world.

I am out to prove that this particular aunt is a secret cross-dresser, and that it has the mettle to make a brilliant touring machine. Its limitations are only those of one’s imagination.

The route plan takes us from Santander to Barcelona the hard way: straight across the high passes of the Pyrenees. Right off the ferry, Day One drops us into the dramatic limestone canyons of Orbaneja del Castillo—where a spectacular waterfall bisects the village—followed by the 7,000-year-old wooden salt terraces of Añana, before a well-deserved “pincho-crawl” down Logroño’s famous Calle Laurel.

The itinerary only gets wilder from there. We (the ‘we’ is Kevin of Wild Atlantic Way and LeJog tours) will be dropping the bikes (hopefully not literally) into the Bardenas Reales (the largest desert in Europe) for some hard-packed dirt trailing, before climbing up to sleep at the Canfranc Royal Hideaway—a 5-star palace built inside a 1920s railway station. We will be carving through the towering red monoliths of the Mallos de Riglos, exploring the haunting Civil War ghost town ruins of Belchite, and tackling the legendary, cliff-hanging tarmac of the “Silent Route” (A-1702). On our final push to the Barcelona docks, we will even climb the north-face road of Montserrat to ride straight into the clouds.

There is going to be an awful lot of gear-changing on those mountain switchbacks, and that 21HP engine will be working absolute overtime with me and my carefully curated luggage strapped to the back. I’ve pared down the gear list as ruthlessly as possible. Still, with a long Spanish summer ahead followed by an early autumn return route yet to be decided, I have to cover all bases: a scorching 40°C heatwave currently baking the continent, the inevitability of mountain rain, and the casual kit needed for the summer holidays.

The ferry beckons, the Venn diagram is folded away, and the little thumper is ready. Whether we’re scaling the sun-baked Pyrenees on the 350 or heading into the remote north on the big NT later this summer, it promises to be quite a ride. Stick with me over the coming weeks for regular updates from the road—I’d love to have you along for the journey.

Last week I interviewed the legendary climber, Gordon Stainforth. As we chatted, I realised we had several things in common—not least, a mutual love for the hills. He’s written about the Cuillins in Scotland, which I’ve climbed, along with all the other 282 Munros. While he’s more of a technical ‘dangler’ and I classify myself as a hillwalker, we share a similar hurdle: his spectacular climbing career has been cut short by a macular pucker, an eye condition causing vision distortion. I too have the same problem, and it makes judging steps on uneven ground difficult. That, combined with my new knee—which just celebrated its first anniversary—means I’ve spent less time on the craggy peaks of North Wales and the peaty slopes of the Peak District than usual.

We both find a profound pleasure in writing, and as the years go by (increasingly rapidly, it seems), the opportunity to reflect on our past, come to terms with it, and record it in some meaningful way becomes more compelling. Writing about my travels is also an incentive to live proactively, seizing every opportunity for a new experience. I’ve been lucky in 2025 to have recovered well enough to ride my motorbikes and to cycle with no issues. In May and June, Ralph and I teamed up again for the first time since our epic Nordkapp trip, heading off to Spain and Portugal to ride to Cabo da Roca, the westernmost point of Europe. It’s the first part of a two-year plan to ride the west-east axis, which will complete the collection of all four extreme cardinal points. My book North to Norway, which recounted the adventures travelling from Tarifa to Nordkapp, was published in March, and it’s been a pleasure to see how well it’s been received. Writing can be a lonely occupation, so the many great reviews helped make the effort worthwhile. I’ve spent time with riders and writers whose own stories are inspirational, giving me the impetus to begin planning the second book, as well as to produce this blog.

On that note, I’m proud to say that fewer than 6% of writers on Substack have published for more consecutive weeks (42) than I have this year. It’s not about the quantity, of course—it’s the quality that I worry about and spend time trying to improve, hence my recent non-fiction writing course.

In 2026, I’m going to blog less frequently for a while, giving me the space to begin work on the new book and plan our second Scandinavian bike trip in more detail. Ralph and I will be shipping our bikes to Oslo in late June, ready to fly out to Norway to saddle up on August 7th. We’ve lined up a couple of weeks to tour through southern Norway, Sweden, the Åland islands, and then through Finland to an islet in Lake Virmajärvi, a remote location on the border with Russia. I’m currently in discussions with the Finnish Border Guard service regarding this politically sensitive area. It would be a blow to ride all that way to be turned around, though since I couldn’t actually set foot on the southernmost rock at Tarifa, it wouldn’t be the first time my plans have been thwarted! Whatever happens, it’ll be an adventure, with a wealth of culture, architecture, and history to explore, not to mention those saunas and wild swimming. As ever, the real stories will be in the people we meet and the unplanned things that happen.

Before the big trip, in June I’ll be taking my little Honda GB350S on its first continental excursion, taking the ferry to Santander and then over the Pyrenees to Barcelona and across to Mallorca for the summer. It will be a very different experience riding this 20HP modern classic single-cylinder ‘thumper’—a refreshing contrast to the big 1100cc Honda NT, with its luxuries like cruise control and Apple CarPlay, that’s my mount up north. I’m looking forward to riding this outward trip with Kevin, who accompanied me on the Wild Atlantic Way and John O’Groats to Lands End trips. I’ll bring the bike back sometime in September and I’ve a couple of articles lined up for the motorcycling press, which I’ll be penning in the autumn.

On a personal note, and to reassure any readers who think I only venture out alone or with my motorcycling pals, I must share that Judith and I did have a big holiday this year in September. Yes, together. We enjoyed a dream trip to Alaska and Canada, seeing the Rockies on the Rocky Mountaineer train and exploring the Inner Passage in some luxury aboard the Silver Moon. Lake Louise was fabulous, and we had three great weeks—a much-needed break from some ongoing family challenges we continue to navigate. Separately, our youngest daughter is leaving the UK next summer to take up a teaching job in Dubai, so no doubt we’ll be popping over to see her. Now…can I rent a bike there? No, stop it.

So, as 2025 finishes, it’s been a curate’s egg of a year, with some great highs and some lows, too. I shall be looking forward to what next year brings, as are we all, no doubt. Whatever 2026 holds in store for you, I wish you a very Happy New Year and thank you again for being a reader and for encouraging me to keep writing.

Yours,

North to Norway on Amazon

I interviewed him recently for my blog series, ‘Why We Write’. His Derbyshire home was littered with the emotional project of sorting through his late identical twin brother John’s memorabilia, even as he juggles an autobiography and a commissioned book on Kubrick.

The Unexpected Return to the Pen

I had been intrigued to find Gordon on our non-fiction writing course at Arvon, given his already impressive bibliography. I asked him what prompted him to go there, suggesting he was already a prolific author. He was quick to point out the enduring need for learning and the social aspect of the course.

“I’ve been writing books now for what, 30 years, and you never stop learning, and it’s always worth going. Since it’s non-fiction, I go out of interest, and also it’s nice to meet other interesting writers. The quality of conversation you have is so much higher.”

His own foray into authorship was spurred by a shift from the film industry to photography. His first major book, Eyes to the Hills, was a spectacular success, capturing the British mountains with a compelling intensity. When I was looking at his work displayed over every inch of wall, I asked him to explain the immense effort required for his large-format photography, which he had been able to invest in using money earned during his time in the film industry.

Gordon explained. “I got really expensive, good Hasselblad, medium format and large format cameras, huge five by four plates. I had to carry it up the hills.”

He noted the stark difference between then and now: “It is so easy to take good pictures now, on my iPhone, I’m taking pictures the whole time... but back then, it was very expensive... changing the plate took about three quarters of a minute... it was really complicated taking a shot of the landscape. But the quality was superb.”

Climbing to New Heights: The Power of Shared Experience

While many of his most famous books, like Eyes to the Hills and The Cuillin, are celebrated for their photographic excellence, his book Fiva: An Adventure that Went Wrong is different.

“Fiva is completely different because it’s not about the photography,” he said, explaining that it was his fifth book and the story of “this epic Norwegian climb.”

In fact Gordon and John endured a harrowing, multi-day ordeal when the weather turned disastrously, pinning the climbers to the mountain face in a dramatic fight for survival.

The genesis of his climbing life, which he shared deeply with his twin brother John, was traced back to a profoundly emotional family event. I asked him how his passion for climbing began.

The story, he revealed, starts with family tragedy. Following his mother’s death from cancer, his father took him and his brother John to Zermatt in the summer of 1966, honouring a trip planned for his mother’s recovery.

“My father had it planned all along... We went to Zermatt, and it was absolutely fantastic. We had perfect weather, and I was so spellbound by the Matterhorn and I just couldn’t believe it when I saw the actual thing. It’s so much more impressive than you could imagine it.”

That initial view of the mountain was so impactful that they returned the following year and climbed the Zinalrothorn with one of the most experienced guides, realizing they needed to master the technical aspects of rock climbing. They began practicing on the sandstone near their school at Harrison’s Rocks in Kent. This led to a breakthrough summer where he and his brother rapidly accelerated through the grades.

“In 1968 we had a month of perfect weather in North Wales, my brother and I just leading. We went from the lowest grade right up to hard, very severe, in one month. And that was absolutely fantastic. And so we were completely hooked.”

The climbs continued throughout his university years and the 70s. This shared history with his brother John forms the core of his current, highly personal book project—a childhood autobiography that is intertwined with their adventures together.

The Philosophical Interlude

Before his film career, Gordon took an unusual educational path. I asked him about his time at university and how he got into the film industry.

“I wanted to go to film school, and my father said, ‘No way you’re going to film school.’ He’s quite old fashioned. He said, ‘You’ve got to get a proper degree.’ So I went to Cardiff and did philosophy for three years, which went really well. Different, obviously, from making movies!”

This period of intellectual discipline, though initially forced upon him, provided a strong foundation. He believes it was good preparation for his later creative life, after which he was finally able to attend the Royal College of Art film school. His fascination with cinema had begun earlier, sparked by the grand scale of David Lean’s epics, and profoundly influenced by the visual spectacle of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, which he saw days after its opening in 1968.

“We just absolutely couldn’t believe our eyes,” he remembers of the film. “When it first came out, no one had heard Also Sprach Zarathustra by Richard Strauss... and then this fantastic, curved light that goes across the enormous screen... you thought, what’s that? And then you realize it’s the sun rising behind the planet.”

Inside Kubrick’s Cutting Room

Gordon’s time as an editor on Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining remains one of his most compelling stories. I asked him what his forthcoming book on Stanley Kubrick would uncover about the famously reclusive director.

“Basically, there’s tons written about Kubrick; a lot of it secondhand... But they get him wrong. He’s painted as this terrifying character, and he wasn’t really. I got on with him fantastically well. He was multi-faceted.”

He stresses that the film itself is complex: “The main story, really, is Jack (Nicholson) going mad. How much that’s triggered by the actual supernatural events in the hotel is anybody’s guess.”

Gordon’s path to the main editor’s chair was purely down to a twist of fate: the original editor fell ill. Gordon was an assistant at the time. Suddenly, he was summoned. “Over the tannoy system... another assistant said, ‘Is Gordon still there? Because Stanley would like him to come and cut some film,’” he recounts.

The first session with Kubrick was the most memorable. The director, who operated on his own late-night schedule, entered the cutting room and, without a word of greeting, began working. “He hardly said, ‘Hello’... He sat down at the Steenbeck (editing suite) and he just talked to me as if we’d worked together for years,” Gordon said.

That single weekend session, cutting the now-famous axe-in-the-door sequence, proved his ability to handle the creative pressure. When Ray Lovejoy returned to work, but with an injured editing hand, Gordon was given the news that set his career on a new, higher trajectory.

“Ray said, ‘I’ve had a long talk with Stanley, and Gordon, you’ll be cutting the rest of the picture.’ That was the biggest moment in my life.”

Gordon’s current book projects—that ‘insider story’ commission on Kubrick and a moving autobiography about his childhood with his recently deceased twin brother, John—are powerful examples of why he, and perhaps many of us, write: to capture the stories that define our lives, whether they take place on a mountain peak, behind a camera, or in the silent company of a creative genius.

Gordon’s books are available through World of Books.

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Here at Arvon, in deepest Shropshire, surrounded by the quiet intensity of writers at work, the most fascinating stories aren’t just in the books we’re reading, but in the people sitting next to us at the dinner table. This is the third post in my series, “Why We Write,” where I’ve been talking to my fellow aspiring authors on this narrative non-fiction course about the impulse that drives them to put pen to paper.

Today, I’m talking to Sarah Danes. Over a cup of tea, Sarah casually mentioned her former career, and I knew I had to learn more. It turns out, Sarah has a truly extraordinary history. She was one of the very first women to work on the floor of the London Stock Exchange, starting in 1979.

As we all grapple with structure, voice, and the ethics of telling our stories, Sarah’s “why” is rooted in a desire to document a pivotal moment in financial and social history from a perspective that has been almost entirely overlooked: her own.

The 19-Year-Old Pioneer

When Sarah, at 19, first walked into the City, she was already a trailblazer, having been the first woman to work in the office she’d been in for a year prior. From there, she moved to the Stock Exchange floor. This was 1979, pre-”Big Bang,” pre-automation, and pre-women, almost entirely.

“Women had been allowed to become members in 1973,” she told me, “basically because the country exchanges, like Manchester and Glasgow, had allowed women on there, and the London one had to sort of keep up.”

When she started, there were perhaps only seven or eight other women in a sea of men. The environment was one of “stiff collars” and “bowler hats”. Her first role was as a “Blue Button,” a title that meant she could check prices with the “jobbers” (the stock wholesalers) for the “brokers” (the agents for clients).

As the world changed, Sarah climbed. She progressed from a “Blue Button” to a “Yellow Button,” which meant she could actively deal, buying and selling shares. From there, she earned her “silver badge,” becoming a Member of the London Stock Exchange—the highest you could get. She was, she estimates, one of only two or three women to have achieved it at that time.

I asked her what that environment was like, expecting tales of rampant chauvinism. Her answer surprised me. “The men were very charming,” she said. “They really didn’t know what to do with women... The only women they knew were either their wives or their mothers or their daughters”. The result? “We were treated like princesses”. She recalls queues of men waiting to get a price, who would part and say, “Oh, Sarah, what would you like?”.

But it wasn’t all gentle deference. “There was banter, obviously,” she admitted. “And if you couldn’t take as good as you got or give out what you got, then you did fold... you had to have a sort of thick skin.”. This wasn’t, she clarified, initially physical or overtly “sexist”. It was a world of its own, which she likens to a “cocktail party”. “It was very social,” she explained. “If you weren’t the type that got on with people, you weren’t actually going to survive there.”

The “Big Bang” and the Silver Badge

Sarah’s career didn’t just span time; it spanned a revolution. She was right at the epicentre of the 1986 “Big Bang,” the moment the LSE floor closed, trading went automated, and everyone moved upstairs to huge dealing rooms.

The very structure of the market changed. The “single capacity” rule, which kept brokers and jobbers separate, was abolished. New “market makers” could be both, separated only by a “Chinese wall” to prevent insider knowledge from leaking. Commissions, once fixed, plummeted to “virtually nothing,” making it intensely difficult to make money as a traditional broker.

Her career path eventually led her away from the floor, first to Lloyds Bank, where she created Lloyds Bank Stockbrokers and became head of their dealing department, and then to an investment bank, where she focused on the automation that had first disrupted her world.

It was a world, she confirms, very much like the one described in books like Gary Stevenson’s The Trading Game. “The type of people that... trade, are gamblers, they’re liars, cheat,” she said bluntly. It’s a skill set she sees as “very male orientated”.

This aggressive, focused environment earned her a nickname she still seems amused by: the “Russian tank commander”. Why? “When I had something to do, I would be focused... I would be slamming through the crowds”.

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Why Write Now?

Sarah left that world full-time about a decade ago. After working “long, long hours” (desk at 7:30 am, market close at 4:30 pm, followed by management duties), she “slept for a while”. She has since built a new life dedicated to public service, becoming a school governor, an adult and family magistrate, and volunteering for a city charity that—in a twist that shows the boom-and-bust reality—helps stockbrokers who have fallen on hard times.

So, why write the book now?

The impulse, she says, has been building for years. It’s often sparked by a specific photograph she showed me—a famous shot from the 1984 British Telecom privatisation. In the middle of a frantic, packed trading floor, there’s Sarah, the only woman visible, hand to her head. “When I tell people, well, that’s me there,” she says, “it just kicks off such a conversation.”

But the book isn’t just a collection of anecdotes and “Wolf of Wall Street... prank type stuff”. It’s driven by a central, urgent question: Why hasn’t it changed more?

“It really hasn’t changed very much,” she told me, a note of frustration in her voice. “You walk into a trading room today, and if there’s 70 people in the room, there might only be seven women. It’s probably only 10%.”

This is the core of her project. Her book will be a “past, present and future” look at the industry. “We pushed through the glass ceiling,” she said, but that momentum stalled. She believes the very male-dominated nature of the work creates a feedback loop, making it “more male and more difficult for women to get into it and be accepted.” The few women who do succeed are often “the strongest, aggressive women you ever come across,” women who “scare me rigid.”

There are structural barriers, too. She notes that even post-COVID, you can’t be a trader part-time or from home. “You have to trade five days a week when the markets open... The markets can’t stop.”

This is why Sarah is here at Arvon. She has, as she puts it, “lumps of words that have subject matters,” but no “shortcut” to finishing. She’s here to find a structure, to use the mind-mapping techniques we’ve been taught, and to plan the interviews she needs to do with her old bosses and colleagues.

“There is a story to tell here,” she says, her quiet determination palpable. “It is an untold story.”

And that, right there, is the answer to “Why we write.” We write because, like Sarah, we have a unique angle on a world everyone thinks they know. We write because a story, an “untold story,” has taken root in us, and it simply won’t let us go.

I, for one, cannot wait to read The Russian Tank Commander.

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Tom Parfitt doesn’t just write about the world; he embeds himself within it. A celebrated journalist for outlets like The Times and The Guardian and a long-time expert on Russia, Tom is the author of the critically acclaimed book, High Caucasus: A Mountain Quest in Russia’s Haunted Hinterland. This remarkable travelogue, which was shortlisted for both the Pushkin House Book Prize and the Edward Stanford Travel Book of the Year, established him as one of the most resonant voices in modern narrative non-fiction.

Now, Tom is bringing his expertise to the classroom, co-tutoring the Arvon narrative non-fiction course—his first time instructing at the leading writer’s retreat. As a participant in his inaugural week, I had the privilege of sitting down with Tom to discuss his philosophy on writing, the challenge of condensing profound experience into narrative, and the difficult beginnings of an important work at this time when Russia is engaged in hybrid war.

The Humbling Privilege of Tutoring

When I asked Tom about his first Arvon experience, his answer was immediate and heartfelt.

“It’s been immensely rewarding, and kind of humbling,” he began. “People have such incredible stories, interesting backgrounds. Some people have been through a lot, and they’re thinking about putting that into words. I hesitate to use the word inspiring—it feels like such a cliché, doesn’t it—but it probably really has been that, I think.”

He described his joy in the collaborative craft of writing here: “I’m a writer, so I enjoy thinking about writing, thinking about books, thinking about how you put the words in the right order, and it’s been a joy to do that with other people.”

This shared purpose—the collective love of putting words to paper—is what makes the Arvon experience so unique. Tom, however, quickly elevated this observation to a broader theme for literature itself.

“If you think about literature as a whole, both fiction and non-fiction, it is in many ways a project in empathy about people telling their stories and about us reaching out to each other and saying, ‘you’re not alone in the world.’ Writing is a way for us to share that. Trying to help people put their experiences into words is a privilege.”

This neatly encapsulates the core theme of my blog series: Why We Write.

Catharsis, Therapy, and the Outward Gaze

We discussed the idea of writing as a therapeutic act—a process of catharsis that many believe is the primary reason for writing a memoir or personal narrative.

“I think it can be,” Tom conceded. “My personal feeling is that that’s important, but that writing shouldn’t be therapy alone. It should be both introspective and outward looking.”

His advice to new writers is to look beyond the self: “If we’re going to write our own experiences, we should maybe do that in a way which, as I was saying, reaches out to other people... writing may reflect other lives and not just looking within our own.” He reminded me that this outward gaze is ultimately what appeals to a reader, as they seek to associate what they read with elements of their own life.

The Challenge of the ‘Red Thread’

One of the most challenging aspects of the tutoring week, Tom noted, was the brief 20-minute tutorial slot. This limited time made the task of helping the sixteen students find their core narrative theme a specific challenge.

“I’ve talked with the students about the idea of trying to identify what the French call the ‘red thread’ (le fil rouge),” he explained. “To find the essential motif, or the dominant narrative theme of what they’re writing, and try to thrash that out.”

He then applied this concept to his own acclaimed work, High Caucasus. His journey, a 2008 walk between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, was not a simple travelogue; it was profoundly linked to his earlier experiences in the region.

The core motivation for his walk was twofold:

1. Personal Healing: “A way for me, personally, to come to terms with what I’ve seen.”

2. Societal Root-Finding: “To try and dig down into the soil, if you like, and find out from what that violence had sprung, sprouted.”

This violence stemmed from the devastating Beslan school siege in 2004, where Tom had reported on the tragedy where over 300 people, including more than half children, died after a hostage-taking by Islamist militants.

The book, therefore, became a powerful exploration of the lingering trauma and historical roots of conflict in the region, using his physical journey as the framework for his search.

Creating a Story Arc: From Linear Journey to Boreal Forest

Tom is currently working on his next book, a project that presents an entirely different set of narrative challenges.

The new book, focused on the boreal forest—the vast, sub-Arctic, mostly coniferous northern forests of the world—is about the people who live in them across Russia, Canada, and Alaska. Having had to leave Russia in 2022 due to the political situation, Tom has been making research trips to Northern Quebec and Alaska.

Unlike High Caucasus, which was built on a single, linear journey, the boreal forest book is far more disparate.

“I have to find my own way of ensuring there’s a red thread,” he noted, acknowledging the very challenge he’s been discussing with his Arvon students. “It feels like a bit more of a challenge in the writing, because I have to find my own way of creating a story arc.” He is currently immersed in the process of shaping this sprawling material into a coherent narrative.

Tom’s “Show and Tell” Advice to Aspiring Writers

Finally, I asked for Tom’s advice for the non-writers reading this blog—those who dream of writing a book but haven’t taken the first step.

His advice was grounded in the importance of intention and having a solid concept.

“You really need to know why you’re doing it and have a concept of the idea or the thesis that you have,” he said. “What are you trying to tell people through your story? It’s probably not just enough to move through the scenery of the story.”

He then offered a subtle refinement on the classic creative writing mantra:

“People often talk about show, don’t tell... But I believe in show and tell. I think both of them are important.”

Tom explained that you need to show the actions, scenes, and characters—the beautiful craft—but you also need to tell the reader the importance and the meaning of what you are discussing.

“You need to have an idea trajectory through your book about what you’re trying to say to the world with these things that you’re telling. It’s not enough just to have a glorified diary. It’s got to be interesting to the reader. It has to have a point.”

On that note, Tom Parfitt encapsulated a core purpose for all of us at Arvon: our writing must reach out, have a point, and ultimately, it must connect our experience with the reader’s humanity. It’s a privilege to learn from a writer who so clearly demystifies the process, reminding us that finding that ‘point’ is the key to turning a personal experience into a compelling story for others.

Tom’s book is available in all good bookshops, on Amazon, Bookshop.org and of course through: Headline Publishing.

*For readers who don’t know, Arvon is a charitable organisation that runs residential creative writing courses and retreats in the UK, offering people time and space to write.

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This is the next post in our “Why We Write” series, exploring the motivations of the fascinating writers I’m privileged to be spending this week with at Arvon.* We all arrived here with a project, a story that demands to be told. But for many of us, the biggest hurdle isn’t the desire to write, but the daunting task of wrestling our experiences into a coherent structure.

This challenge is perfectly embodied by my fellow writer, Margaret Sills. To look at Margaret, at 75, you would think she would be more at home in a WI meeting. But you would be profoundly mistaken. Margaret is a diminutive powerhouse. And like many of us, she’s sitting on a mountain of words. “I’ve written 55,000 words,” she told me, describing it as a “brain dump”.

Now, she faces the hard part. “I’m struggling a little bit with how to structure it,” she admitted, a feeling familiar to everyone in our group. “It’s a bit daunting”. She’s trying to avoid a simple, linear “I did this, I did that” chronology, but is slowly realising that chronology might be the “important” thread she needs to weave her themes together.

This struggle to find a structure is, in itself, a kind of endurance event. And if anyone knows about endurance, it’s Margaret.

An Untold Story

So, what is this 55,000-word story that Margaret feels compelled to tell?

Her “why” is twofold. First, it’s a story people have been asking her to write. Second, and more importantly, it’s a story that hasn’t been properly documented. “I wanted to try and reflect on my experiences of being a woman in this new sport,” she explained.

Her book will have two parallel threads: the development of the sport of triathlon itself, which she was “in at the beginning” of, and the simultaneous, often unrecognised, development of women in sport. She points out that the first women’s Olympic marathon wasn’t until 1984. “There are obviously training manuals... there are articles about women in sport,” she says, “but there’s nothing that, as far as I can see, that actually brings the two together from... one person’s experience”. That is her “why.” To fill that gap. To tell the story that only she can.

In at the Beginning

To understand Margaret’s book, you have to appreciate her athletic career. It turns out that this unassuming academic—with a background in health promotion and public health at King’s College—was one of the first people to ever compete in a triathlon in the UK.

“There were three in the UK in 1983,” she told me, “and mine was in May. So as far as I can see, it was the first event that was called triathlon in the United Kingdom”.

That first event in Northampton was a world away from the slick, corporate-sponsored races of today. The entire field consisted of 33 people. Of those, Margaret was one of only three women.

Her entry into the sport was a matter of pure practicality. A former swimmer, she had two small children, and running was the only exercise she could easily fit in. “A neighbour and myself used to look after four children while the other one ran,” she recalled. “And then we swapped over”. This simple routine led her to the 1982 London Marathon.

When she saw the advert for the triathlon, there was a problem: she had to prove she could run a marathon in under 3.5 hours. Her London time was 3:50. So, in a move that defines her character, she found a fast course in Wolverhampton, ran it in 3:38, and sent in her time. “I said, ‘Look, 3:38, I’m close enough.’ And so they said, ‘Yes, you’re in’”.

That first race was a feat of ingenuity. The swim was a “very tedious” two and a half miles, or 128 lengths, in a town pool. “I didn’t much care for front crawl,” she said, “so I decided I’d do two lengths front crawl, one length backstroke, one length breaststroke”. The genius? “It meant I only had to count in fours... so 32 fours, rather than 128 lengths. I thought I might lose count”. As for the bike? “I’d cycled to school, so I thought, ‘well, I can ride a bike’”. She bought a simple touring bike and fitted her training in between school drop-offs.

A 40-Year Career

That makeshift race in 1983 kicked off a competitive career that spanned four decades. Margaret has competed in around 130 triathlons, including 11 full long-distance “Ironman” events and 18 half-distance ones, all over the world.

In 1995, she was selected to race in the British age group team. She describes her first international race in Hungary: “The team won. So in my first international race... with the Union Jack, national anthem playing, the three of us had won the gold... and I got a bronze in the individual”. Later that year, she was in Cancun, Mexico, for the World Championships.

She finally decided to retire from competitive racing in 2023, on her own terms. She chose the Minehead triathlon as her last. “It was blue sky and sun, lovely swim in the sea... I took my time. I was really enjoying it,” she said. “I crossed the line, and almost immediately I thought, ‘yes, that’s my last competitive triathlon.’... It felt right”.

The New Finish Line

Today, Margaret coaches other athletes, including one competing at the World Championships. But her personal focus has shifted. That 55,000-word “brain dump” is waiting. She even plans to use the poetry she used to write on her daily commute to illustrate the book.

I asked her, as we finished our talk and walk in the Shropshire countryside, what she thinks will give her the biggest satisfaction: crossing that final finish line in Minehead, or handing over her completed draft to a publisher?

She smiled. “Right now, I think handing it over to a publisher”.

For an athlete who has already achieved so much, the finish line has simply moved. It’s no longer on a track; it’s on the page. And that, for all of us here at Arvon, is the very essence of why we write.

*For readers who don’t know, Arvon is a charitable organisation that runs residential creative writing.

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For this post in my Arvon series, I had the pleasure of interviewing our course tutor, Lois Pryce. Lois is a celebrated author whose three travel books sell worldwide in different languages. She is also a broadcaster and journalist. And, of course, she is a fellow long-distance motorcycle adventurer.

Here’s this successful author who is happy sharing her wisdom, yet, as she openly admits, she has no formal writing training whatsoever. Her story, it turns out, is an inspiring “Why We Write” case study. It’s a tale of ‘following your instinct’ and ‘having a go’.

“It’s Always Worth Having a Go”

Before we dug into her specific journey, Lois offered what seems to be her core philosophy, and one of the themes for our week in the Shropshire countryside. “It’s a funny kind of story, I suppose,” she began, “of taking a punt on something and then something else coming out of it... and I suppose, just sort of believing that you can have a go at something”.

This message—’it’s always worth having a go’—is the thread that runs through her entire career. It’s not about grand plans or formal qualifications, but about trusting an impulse.

Her own impulse, to my surprise, was triggered by a children’s TV character.

The Bob the Builder Tipping Point

Lois’s journey didn’t start in a university lecture hall. She left school at 16 and, being “crazy music mad”, worked in various jobs in the music industry. She eventually landed at the BBC record label, producing CDs based on BBC programmes.

“It could be fun,” she told me, “but sometimes they involved Bob the Builder and the Tweenies”.

It was, in fact, a Bob the Builder single that became the unlikely catalyst for a life-changing decision. She laughed, “It was a Bob the Builder single that pushed me over the edge and made me think, I’ve got to get out here and do something exciting”.

That “something exciting” was a 20,000-mile motorcycle trip from Alaska to Argentina, chronicled later in Lois on the Loose. This was 2003, and she’d only just passed her motorcycle test.

From Viral Emails to a Vocation

In the pre-social media, pre-blog era, Lois did what we all did: she sent emails home to friends and family. Her brother, who was keen to learn HTML, offered to build a website and post her dispatches.

Then, something unexpected happened. The emails, intended only for her inner circle, started to find an audience. “That, I suppose, would be called going viral in this day and age,” she said. “I would suddenly be receiving weird emails... my brother checked the stats and said, ‘You’re getting 2000 hits a day’”.

But the audience figures weren’t the real discovery. The profound, life-changing moment was a personal one. “What’s more significant, maybe, is that I loved it,” she explained emphatically. “I really loved the writing”.

This is the absolute core of her “why.” The adventure was incredible, of course—”meet people and see fantastic things and ride all those great roads”—but the act of writing became an equal passion. “I actually looked forward to the writing as much every day as I did the riding,” she recalled. The physical journey and the creative journey had become one and the same.

The “Sheer Fluke” of Publication

The journey from viral emailer to published author came about, in her words, “purely by sheer fluke”. A friend of a friend in California, who was an author, read her posts. She passed them to her agent in New York, who loved them.

The agent’s instructions were simple: “Go do the rest of the trip, go home, write a book proposal”.

“Long story short, that all worked out,” Lois said. “I mean, it was, of course, quite a few rejections along the way... but she did get me a book deal in America”.

As we are all learning this week, writing the book is only the first part of a very long process. Lois described the “slow process” that follows: “the enormous amount of time actually writing it, then the huge edit, then you have kind of proofs that are sent to you... it’s almost like it’s a sort of drip feed, kind of tease, until you get the actual book in your hand”.

And the magic moment? “I think the real thrill is seeing them in a bookshop,” she said. “My dream has always been to catch a stranger reading one on the train... but that’s never happened to me yet”.

The Next Chapter

Lois’s first three books chronicled her solo motorcycle travels, but she feels she may have “got that out of my system... from point of view of doing the trips”. So what does an adventurer do next?

She’s now been working for many years on a novel. It’s a challenge that has given her new perspective. “I plunged into it with optimism,” she admitted, “thinking ‘I’ve written three books, I can do that,’ but it’s a very different beast”.

And, naturally, new adventures are always “bubbling away”. She has a “yearning to do something watery,” like a long-distance kayak trip, and wants to walk the Lebanon trail, a country she loves. The boots, she assured me, are not hung up. She still rides, focusing more on off-road. (For the riders reading, she currently has a Honda CRF 250 and a Montesa light trail bike).

On Teaching and Loving the Process

This is Lois’s tenth year teaching at Arvon, having taught every year since 2015. I asked her what she gets out of it, coming back to guide new writers like us.

“Oh, I absolutely love it,” she said, without hesitation. “Writing is a solitary act... I’m very happy sitting in front of my laptop in my pyjamas, tapping away, but I don’t want to live that way all the time”.

Arvon, she explained, is the antidote to that solitude. It’s a chance “to meet in a beautiful house like this in a gorgeous part of the world, and to be surrounded by fascinating people for a week and eat great food”. “I always learn so much,” she added. “I learned so much from the writers on the course, from my co-tutor... it’s just a very, very welcoming, open organisation”.

Finally, I asked her for the one message she’d want us to take away.

Her advice was something drummed into us all week. First, “think about how you want to end your story, and that will help focus your mind”. Second, understand that the first draft “is not the end, that’s only the start... it’s all in the edit”.

But most importantly, “you’ve got to love the process”. She connected this back to her own work on her challenging novel: “Even if nothing happened, it would be... I’ve had such a great time writing it”.

“Don’t fixate on the goal,” she concluded. “It’s lovely to see your book in a bookshop... but you have to love the act of putting words on paper. And I think everyone here this week does love that”.

She’s right. And having a tutor who so clearly still loves it too makes all the difference.

Lois’s three travel books are Lois on the Loose (2007), Red Tape & White Knuckles (2013), and Revolutionary Ride (2017).

They are available in all good bookshops, on Amazon, Bookshop.org and of course through: Lois' website (click on link).

*For readers who don’t know, Arvon is a charitable organisation that runs residential creative writing courses and retreats in the UK, offering people time and space to write.

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At 63, Walt Rothon is a man defined by a wandering existence. An Australian by birth and a Londoner by choice for the last 30 years, he’s now retired and contemplating his next move—perhaps releasing the equity from his house to fund a life that still prioritizes family in Brisbane and a deep, abiding love of travel.

But to understand Walt’s relentless need to explore the world, you first have to understand the one he was born into. His mother walked out on their father with him and his older sister, who had helped bring him up prior to the ‘exit’. “That’s why I rebonded with my sister many years later.” Walt’s life began with a foundational sense of rootlessness. It’s a context that haunts the edges of our conversation, emerging when he discusses his motivations.

“When I was a kid, I was quite shy, introverted, didn’t have much confidence,” he admits.

The man sitting across from me, however, is one who has camped his way from Cape Town to Nairobi, explored Iran in 2018, and recently toured Syria and Lebanon. The shy kid and the adventurous man are the same person, and it’s the 40-year journey between those two points that holds the story.

The 18-Month Cure

Walt’s first taste of overseas travel was a “P&O booze cruise” at 20. But it was at 21 that he truly left. In the mid-1980s, he and two mates flew to Europe and embarked on an 18-month hitchhiking odyssey through the UK, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia.

He’s quick to point out this was a different era. “There was no mobile phones, there was no internet”.

“You booked a ticket, you got off somewhere... you had to find your way to a tourist information and said, ‘Oh, do you have maps? And by the way, is there a hostel?’ You had to ask, you had to trust a lot more, and you had to trust your own instinct”.

For the shy kid from Brisbane, this was a deliberate form of therapy. “I wanted to be better,” he says, “and I wanted to break away from who I was and not feel constricted, and it scared the shit out of me, but I did it anyway”.

He describes his first time sticking out his thumb on the A3 in Putney, London, to visit a distant relative in Sussex. “Staying in hostels and learning how to talk to people... it was hard, but it got easier, and I’m a better person for having at least tried it and done it”.

“Governments Suck”

That 18-month trip sowed a seed. Walt’s core travel philosophy became “pushing boundaries, going to places that sometimes scared the crap out of me”. But more specifically, it was about “going to places that people bad mouth”.

What he found there, time and again, was a stark disconnect. “I’ve counted nothing but hospitality, warmth, intelligence, lovely people,” he says. “Just governments that suck”.

He visited Iran in 2018. “Such a wonderful country to explore,” he recalls. “The people, their hospitality, very well educated people, so much rich culture”. And the people who spoke to him as a foreigner? “It was all negative” about their own government.

He tells a similar story about Syria, a trip he took with an “edge of the world” travel company. He found “wonderfully warm, hospitable people traumatized by... over 10 years of civil war, wonderful food, amazing history and culture”. His official guide was “very pro-government”, but Walt remains skeptical. “It’s hard to know, does he actually believe that, or is he just saying that because the walls have ears?”.

This entire worldview was forged on that first hitchhiking trip at 21. While backpacking in the Middle East, he found himself in Jordan.

“I think it was Jordan where I really discovered the hospitality of the Islamic world,” he says, “where people who have near nothing, very poor, working-class people were inviting me into their homes for tea or giving me food. It just changed my view of Islam... What you often hear in the media is sometimes just extreme views... and it was like, ‘No, that’s not right’”.

The “Web of Lies”

That first trip wasn’t just formative; it was also nearly disastrous. Walt learned quickly, but not without making mistakes. One, in particular, still makes him sweat.

“I wanted to get back to Israel, across the West Bank from Jordan, and that was proving hard to do,” he explains. “And someone said, ‘Well, if you lose passport and you get a new passport, it’s clean’”.

“I thought, ‘Oh, that’s a great idea,’” he laughs. He went to the Australian Embassy, pretended he’d lost his passport, and paid a “huge amount of money” for a new one. But when he went to get his exit visa, the officials asked a simple question: “Where’s your entry stamp?”.

“I just created this web of lies that I was getting caught up in with these officials”. “I’m sweating thinking, ‘Oh, I’m gonna end up in prison’”. “They proved a lot more diligent than I thought... they were trying to ring Aqaba where the ferry port was... and I was thinking, ‘Oh, thank God for that, the phones weren’t great’”.

He finally managed to get a flight out. “I was sweating all the way onto that plane until we left the airspace at Jordan,” he says. “I thought, ‘Don’t ever do that again, Walt. That’s just you lied yourself into a really bad situation’”.

“What Have I Got to Add?”

Decades later, Walt is on a writing course, trying to make sense of this “wandering existence.” And yet, the shy kid he tried to banish on the A3 is still with him. He’s battling a fierce case of imposter syndrome.

“I think, like many people, [I] suffer from imposter syndrome,” he confesses. “I’ve read so many good stories by people who’ve done far more adventurous things than I have. What have I got to add? You know, who’s going to read my story?”.

He compares his 18-month hitchhiking trip to “other people who’ve... hitchhiked from London to Sydney via Afghanistan”.

But as he talks, he finds his own answer. “I think a little bit of me wants to believe that it’s not the act, but the way the story is told”.

He’s right. The story isn’t just the trip. It’s the why. It’s the shy, introverted kid, shaped by a “tough relationship with my mother”, who “had this realization of, ‘I’ve got to change things’”. It’s the story of “pushing yourself to believe you can be better... and then discovering, ‘Oh, yeah, okay, that was tough, but I survived. So what else can I do?’”.

I asked Walt what advice his 63-year-old self would give to that shy, vulnerable youngster. He paused, thought for a long time, and gave an answer that serves as a perfect motto for the life he has lived.

“Trust... trust that you’ll work it out. Just be a bit bolder. Be a bit more adventurous, and it’ll work out better than you think”.

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The Man Behind the Name

When you first meet Xani Byrne, you’re struck by his warmth and the unusual name. “My full name is Alexander,” he explains. “My first friend had a speech impediment and called me something like ‘Zani.’ My parents had lived in Greece and thought it sounded Greek, so it stuck.”

He’s a man of varied talents: an educational and child psychologist just finishing his clinical psychology training, a keen potter, and a lifelong cyclist. But in January 2022, his life was fractured by a “devastating turning point.”

His beloved sister, Alice, who was living in a different city, disappeared on New Year’s Day.

“Through COVID and the stresses of being a carer, she’d developed an alcohol problem that she’d hidden from the family,” Xani shares. “She was on a detox, and New Year’s is a day when many people feel different... it’s especially hard to maintain that abstinence in that context.”

What followed was a harrowing three-month police search. The family was thrown into a disorienting world of media attention, but not all of it was supportive.

“We got a taste of online conspiracy theories, people standing outside the door taking photos, online psychics giving dodgy interpretations... It’s hard to appreciate how prevalent that stuff is until you’re living inside it, and how that affects your family.”

The search ended with the news the family had come to dread: Alice had died by suicide, going into the sea.

A New, Heavier “Normal”

In the fog of grief, Xani found himself confronting a new reality. “You lose a version of yourself,” he reflects, “maybe a lighter, more happy-go-lucky, carefree, innocent self. But in that kind of loss, you gain things too. Maybe it’s compassion, a bit more curiosity, a reprioritization of what’s important... and how to ask some of the difficult questions.”

One of those “what ifs” centred on a shared, unfulfilled plan.

“I’d been a rickshaw driver in Edinburgh for five years,” he says, “peddling punters up and down cobbled hills... come away with a fat wallet and thick calves.” He’d used that fitness to fund adventure cycling, including a trip from Edinburgh to Istanbul at 20.

“I got a tandem bike... a Dawes Galaxy twin. The brakes were terrible, it was heavy, but I loved it,” he laughs. “My sister had never been a cyclist. I said, ‘Get on the back of the tandem, it’s the way to build your confidence.’ We never made time for it. And then she died.”

That unfulfilled promise “hung over me for about a year.”

The true catalyst for change, however, came from a place of shared grief. Xani began attending a local Survivors of Bereavement by Suicide (SOBS)group.

“I got terrific support there from people who actually know what it’s like. Tremendous wisdom. But I saw one guy, a father who’d lost his daughter, who had driven for two hours after work to get to the group, would stay for two hours, and then drive two hours back. That’s just... it’s not good enough. I felt quite angry about that.”

That anger, combined with the memory of the tandem, crystallized into a plan. “I thought, what would be imaginative enough and bold enough to get attention? A tandem ride with a different person bereaved by suicide, all around the coast... It’s far, it’s a challenge, it’s actually quite hard.”

The “James Bond” of Bicycles

He set about creating a massive spreadsheet, but there was one problem: his old tandem wasn’t up to the task. “Can I really ask people I don’t know to get on the back of this thing with brakes that don’t really work?”

He took it to East Side Bikes in Edinburgh, run by Andy Armour. “He looked at me and was like, ‘You’re not riding that. Take mine.’”

Andy, a terrific bike builder, lent Xani his personal, custom-built tandem.

“My cheesy line is, if James Bond had a tandem, this would be it. It was bright, luminous green. It had double front hydraulic disc brakes—plenty of stopping power. It split in two, so I could get it on a train. And it was a ‘stretch’ tandem, extra long, so the person on the back could actually see around me. It was indestructible. I now had the right tool for the job.”

88 Days, 75 Riders, Hundreds of Conversations

On May 29, 2023 Xani set off from the house Alice went missing from. His first co-rider was his mum.

For the next 88 days, he circumnavigated the 3,500-mile coast of Great Britain. He didn’t even keep a record of the distance, so it’s probably more! Each day, a new person—or almost every day—joined him on the back.

“I wanted people who aren’t cyclists, but who have been touched by suicide,” he says. The list of co-riders was a “real cross-section”: doctors, lawyers, teachers, artists, musicians, a prisoner, a hostage negotiator, and a druid.

“I had about 75 different people ride with me, but the number of conversations was in the hundreds. You ride a bright green bike with four red panniers... people know you’re onto something. They’ll approach you.”

Not every day had a scheduled rider. “There were three days I cycled by myself. I used my rickshawing skills to drum up business,” he laughs. “I’d just say, ‘Hey, do you want a lift? Hop on!’”

This led to one of the most poignant moments of the trip. After dropping off “Chelsea, a fantastic druid” in Portsmouth, he found himself alone and stuck at a blocked-up bridge.

“I found a guy who was high, most likely homeless, living in a tent. He was like, ‘What are you doing?’ I told him, and he hopped on the back. We cycled together, he helped me carry this massive bike over the railway bridge, and we recycled again. We had a really interesting and unexpected conversation about addiction, about suicide, about mental health.”

He used “Warm Showers,” a couch-surfing app for cyclists, and found himself booking event spaces in town halls as he went, trying to raise funds for SOBS and Papyrus (Prevention of Young Suicide).

“I’d Used All My Words”

The journey was as gruelling as it was healing. I asked him how he stayed fresh.

“I guess I don’t think I did,” he answers honestly. “The final leg, coming down the coast of Scotland... physically, my legs were very strong. But I was losing my voice. As I got closer and closer to home, I could speak less and less. I was hoarse.”

On the first part of his final day, he was riding with someone he desperately wanted to speak to. “But I couldn’t. I’d used all my words. My words had been spent. They’d been spoken.”

It was a grueling, “fucking exhausting” ordeal, supported by his partner, Mary, on the phone and a relative who appeared in a camper van for the brutal North Coast 500 leg.

“But I come back to that Victor Frankl idea,” he says. “When you’ve got a ‘why,’ you can cope with almost any ‘how.’ And I saw that in lots of other people that joined, too. They all knew. They just gave it all. And we did.”

The Story Continues

The ride showed Xani that for the right cause, he could be things he never associated with himself: “Organized, brave, show leadership... a clarity of purpose comes about. You give yourself permission to do things you might feel uncomfortable with.”

That clarity of purpose continues. Xani has just received publishing offers for a book about the journey.

“I thought it was going to be an audio project,” he says, “but I was crap at recording things... It’s quite hard when you’re cycling.” Now, he’s focused on getting the book out, filled with the stories and the wisdom he gathered. He’s aiming for a release date that holds a special meaning: “September 2027, on World Suicide Prevention Day.”

Xani Byrne couldn’t share that final tandem ride with his sister. But by offering her seat to 75 other people, each carrying their own story of loss, he transformed an object of regret into a vehicle for a national conversation—a 3,500-mile journey that proved, in the end, that no one has to carry their grief alone.

To learn more about Xani’s journey and the charities he supports, visit Tandem Against Suicide. If you or someone you know is struggling, please reach out for help.

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I concluded the story of my trip to Italy last year. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. At about 25,000 words it was shorter than North to Norway, but then that trip was much longer.

Each week’s story is typically 1000-1300 words, with photographs to illustrate the places I’m writing about. My writing is disciplined and I aim to draft a piece in one sitting, which can take half a day. I use Scrivener, which allows me to move sections of text around with ease. I leave it for a few days, revisit it to see if it can be improved (clue – it always can be), and then prepare it in Substack, devising headlines, uploading photographs, and embedding links.

Preferably I have a few blogs scheduled, particularly if I’m travelling, as I have been recently (I was in Alaska and Canada for three weeks). It’s important to maintain regularity, and I’ve now published 33 weeks in a row—longer than 94% of writers on this platform. The hard part is maintaining consistency and quality, which is why next week I’m heading to Clun in Shropshire for a writers’ retreat.

The course, run by Arvon, is a week-long residential focus on Narrative Non-Fiction. I’m looking forward to a fascinating week which will challenge my craft. The tutors are exceptional:

• Lois Pryce: Author of best-selling books including ‘Lois on the Loose’, who rode solo from Alaska to the southernmost tip of South America.

• Tom Parfitt: Times writer and author of the much-lauded ‘High Caucasus’.

• Noo Saro-Wiwa: Author of ‘Black Ghosts’, winner of this year’s Edward Stanford Travel Writing Prize.

Incidentally, the house we’re staying in used to be owned by the acclaimed playwright John Osborne (‘Look Back in Anger’).

Can I just say a big thank you to all of my readers who’ve stayed with me as my Substack has gone from strength to strength. I have 175 Subscribers and the number is growing steadily. I value your feedback and comments; nothing gives me greater satisfaction than knowing that my words have resonated with one or more of you.

Looking ahead, Ralph (‘North to Norway’) and I are planning our big adventure for next year: Finland and the furthest point east in the EU. That will complete our epic journey to all four cardinal points of Europe, a feat for which I can find no evidence of having been done before. (Last year we rode to Spain and Portugal and visited the westernmost point, Cabo da Roca).

This brings me to a scheduling note. I plan to begin writing about that trip in 2026 and until then, I will publish shorter and less frequent pieces on this blog. So, I haven’t disappeared entirely; I’m simply taking some time out to work on future projects.

Thank you again for your support, and best wishes to you.

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In last week’s episode Truffles, Tiny States, and Tax-Free Shades I tasted truffles in the medieval town of Gubbio, encountered latter-day Robin Hoods in San Marino and rode to the Adriatic Coast as my road trip neared its end.

Venice

I pootled north along the coast road from Rimini smelling as though I’d been in a perfume shop, sampling all the testers. The scent of jasmine clung to me – a novel experience at this stage in a road trip, where the scents are usually far more malodorous. Gradually the whiff of seaweed and the salty tang of the waves lapping against the nearby beaches filled my nostrils. Italians at play, elegant in their shades, jaunty hats and beachwear wandered idly across the road and I kept stopping at crossings every few minutes. The sun was hot, no cloud cover: that sea was far too tempting. I pulled over, strapped my riding gear to the bike and trudged through the soft sand, stripping down to my Y-fronts. My swimmies were tucked away somewhere in a pannier, but who cared. The water was delicious, lukewarm yet invigorating. I kept a beady eye open on my clothes, which were tucked inside my helmet. It was then I realised I’d no towel. That, too, was in the pannier. How easy is it to look cool, walking across a beach through crowds of impossibly attractive young Italians, wearing a pair of M&S underpants, arms full of clothes and with a crash helmet stuck on your head? I think we know the answer. I pulled down the visor to hide my blushes.

The last time I’d been in Venice, which was the next obvious overnight stop on my way back to Ljubljana, was when I was 20. My mate Kevin and I had been working in a school in Bavaria and we’d saved up our pocket-money wages to make a train trip to Venice. Impoverished, we stayed in a youth hostel, where – bizarrely – someone had nicked my toothbrush and comb (I had hair back then). We existed on cheap pizzas and beer. One day we took a boat to the Lido di Venezia. I’d been studying Thomas Mann’s novel ‘Der Tod in Venedig’ and wanted to see the hotel where Dirk Bogarde in Visconti’s film version eventually succumbed to cholera. We hired a ciclocarrozzella, one of those four wheel pedal contraptions, and set off along the lido. Kevin and I were fit in those days and we pedalled harder and harder to see how fast it would go. Very, as it turns out. But only in a straight line. A sharp bend approached and we realised the brake levers were for show only. As the thing lifted off onto two wheels there was an ominous thump-thump and the machine began hopping like a demented rabbit. Back on terra firma and rapidly halted, we looked at each other with that expression that can only mean ‘Oh shit!’

Both wheels were buckled. We tugged and pulled and got them roughly straight again, but the bike now seemed to have got a bad case of the hiccups with every revolution and certainly wouldn’t stand our combined rugby-playing mass. We walked it back to the place we’d hired it from, saving our re-mount until the last possible moment. The chap who’d served us seemed surprised we’d returned early but clearly had played this game before as he ran a practiced eye over the rims and announced an eye-watering price in lira as recompense. The rest of the holiday even the beer and pizzas were out. Tap water and bread can be very wholesome.

So, with shiver-inducing memories of Venice in mind I decided to give it a swerve, as it were. Besides, riding through there would be impossible and nowadays it was crammed with cruise-passengers. I’d heard from one of the hotel staff in Gubbio of a place that was like its famous near-neighbour at the end of the lagoon, but where there were no tourists, just locals and Italians on their hols. Chioggia looked promising the moment I arrived. It had old houses right on the waterfront, with lovely buildings and canals, elegant low bridges that crossed over them, with just enough room beneath for small boats, of which there were thousands, to pass beneath. Churches, a tall Romanesque clock tower, restaurants and dinky little alleyways with dingy bars, from which excited rapid Italian chatter and singing emerged. I liked it immediately. I found a hotel on the beachfront, tucked the bike away safely and walked in to enjoy a pizza – for old times sake, you understand. And several beers. Ditto. Kevin’s lived in Hong Kong for years and I rarely see him now, but I toasted those crazy days of nearly half a century ago. I felt old, just thinking about all the water that had flowed under my particular bridge.

The following day I got up early to take the bike into the heart of Chioggia, to take some Venice look-alike photos before the streets filled with fishermen, setting up their stalls for the day. Don’t bother with the Big Man, go there instead. Just don’t say I told you to.

Ljubljana

Venice flashed past as I stayed on the toll autostrada, enjoying the relative sanity of northern Italian drivers. My reverie was shattered by a sudden downpour and the arrival of a Mercedes that insisted on hanging inches off my number plate, despite my best efforts to shake him (or her - couldn’t see) off. Eventually he/she got bored, overtook and disappeared into the grey spray. The rain didn’t let up until I reached the transport depot on the outskirts of Ljubljana, where I was greeted again by Tony (South to Sicily, 1st June 2025). I noted that all the pot plants had been removed from the staircase. Presumably so that I couldn’t destroy the rest of them. I waved goodbye to my trusty Honda and left it in their care. It would be a few weeks until I’d be reunited with it. The bike hadn’t missed a beat and seemed to hold no lasting grudges for having been dropped twice in quick succession. It sported some souvenir scratches, though. All part of the experience, I thought.

The city itself was charming. A castle, river, friendly folk, an excellent brewery tap and a trip to jail.

Ralph and I had booked accommodation in the Hostel Celica when Plan A was on the cards. A prison for over 100 years it is now a rather hip, arty boutique hotel. When Plan B (I.e. Italy, not Croatia) crept out of the woodwork, I’d cancelled the booking, not knowing how B would be. It was now fully booked, so I was lodged in some faceless corporate place downtown, but I wanted to see, like on TV’s Bullseye, what I could have had. The main gate seemed to have been left open. Careless, I thought, already getting into the jail vibe. The second heavy metal door was ajar, too. I prised it wider with a grunt and squeezed through. Yup, it’s a prison. Brick corridors, arched cell doors with those little shutter windows. I liked the look of the jailers, though. Mia wore a nose ring and had purple-yellow hair over one ear, matched by a buzz cut on the other side. A 70’s hippy tie-die hemp dress and sandals completed the ‘I’m in for possession..’ look.

‘Yes?’, she asked. I explained. ‘Follow me – I’ll show you some rooms.’ She grabbed a big loop of jangly keys and off we trotted to see some cells. Think psychedelia meets Scandi-minimalist meets Anthony Gormley, literally in the case of Cell 119, because he designed it. I was particularly captivated by #111, featuring a hole made by a wrecking ball, with a vulva-shaped window, symbolising rebirth. The one I had been booked into, ‘Oliver - you’re in Cell 116’, majored on the theme of ‘eye’, the bed bottom representing an iris and pupil. Keeping an eye on the inmates took on a whole new slant.

On my way up to see the castle I had to cross the Dragon Bridge, flanked by fearsome dragon statues (well, they wouldn’t be lions, would they?). Legend has it that when a virgin crosses the bridge, the dragons wag their tails. They seemed very still that day. I had a sad mission to carry out. I’d forgotten to pack in the bike panniers my beloved Swiss Army penknife, the chunky one with all the accoutrements. I knew that the scanners would pick it up in my cabin bag at the airport and a lengthy interview with security was something I was keen to avoid. I leaned over the parapet of the bridge and dropped it into the Ljubljana River. ‘Bye old pal,’ I muttered as it plopped into the green-grey waters.

Reflection

As my trip drew to a close, only a flight to Gatwick and a train home still to go, the bike being shipped separately, I reflected on my weeks on the road. It had turned out very differently from how Ralph and I had imagined it. Perhaps that is the nature of adventure travel, never quite knowing what’s going to happen. I’d discovered a whole chunk of Italy, got a feeling for the place and its people, its history and culture, good and bad. It hadn’t captivated me like Spain but then again maybe knowing the language is the key to unlocking that deeper appreciation. I’d got used to being on my own, travelling solo once more. For all its plusses of freedom and lack of compromises it opened up my weaknesses of indecisiveness and of not knowing when to stop riding; I missed also the companionship of a good friend.

Most of all, though, this journey had been one where I had battled with my conscience, of wondering whether I’d been selfish in going abroad at all when my mother was so evidently fading away. In the long hours in the saddle I kept asking myself the questions to which I couldn’t find the answer: there’s often a reason not to do something, so how do I live my own life and yet do the right thing? I resolved to go to see her as soon as I arrived back in the Midlands, as I had done as soon as I’d returned from Norway the year before.

I gently pushed open the door of her care home room. She lay in bed, looking frail and as old as her years. She was in her nineties and those decades lay heavy on her. Less than a year ago she’d greeted me jauntily while doing a crossword. She’d listened raptly as I told about our Nordic exploits. Now? Now, she lifted her head a little, a small smile on her lips. She said she loved me and I told her so back.

As I started to speak of where I’d been her eyes gently closed and she drifted into a sleep, still holding my hand, her grip growing fainter.

Sometimes the hardest journeys are those where we don’t move at all.

Epilogue

My mother passed away five days later. I was in Guernsey.

© 2025 Stephen Oliver

You can find my book North to Norway in paperback and Kindle format on Amazon.

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In last week’s episode From War Graves to Wild Roads: Finding Italy’s Green Heart I was moved to tears by the tragedy of Monte Cassino before a glorious ride took me through Abruzzo to the medieval town of Gubbio.

Gubbio

Truffles. Ever had one? You’ll need deep pockets. Along with Kobe beef, saffron, and Beluga caviar, the white Alba truffles of Gubbio are among the most expensive foodstuffs in the world. A kilo can cost up to €2,800.

The cavatore, or truffle hunter, is armed with a sniffer dog, foraging amongst the undergrowth by the oaks, willows, and poplars that cover the steep countryside around the town. Visually, they look like lumps of browny-white dog turds—the kind you used to find in the middle of a play park, usually right after you’d gone in for a sliding tackle over them. Cost and visual appeal are clearly not correlated. I was intrigued, then, to know whether their taste and smell could possibly justify spending a mini-fortune.

Fresh from celebrating its famous Corsa dei Ceri (a race with three huge ‘candles’ up the steep streets to the basilica), the town was still decked with flags that fluttered from every window. It must be a mad event: the 30,000 inhabitants are swelled by an influx of 100,000 visitors. Most, fortunately, had gone as I puffed my way up the steep cobbles to the Ducal Palace.

It’s a beautiful place, solidly stone-built with a commanding view of the town’s roofs. Many of the old houses along what might be called a terraced row featured curious second doors, narrow arched and situated a few feet above the level of the cobbles. Nobody is absolutely certain why they exist, but they’re famously called ‘porta della morte’—death’s door. The theory is that it was simply easier to lob the corpse down into the cart than to hoist it upwards. I didn’t know this at the time, of course. Perhaps that was for the best, as I was still trying to put thoughts of my ailing mother to the back of my mind.

A short walk downhill from the Basilica, I found the Taverna del Lupo—a reminder that this part of Italy has more wolves than anywhere else in Europe. I rarely treat myself on a solo trip; a lavish dinner somehow feels excessive with nobody to share the experience. Tonight, though, I made an exception. This was a fine restaurant, at least judging by the decor and the wine list. I gulped as I spotted a bottle of Montalcino Il Greppo Reserva 1982 vintage, a snip at €4,200. The house red was fortunately more reasonable, as was the Menu Degustazione del Territorio at €45. The tasting menu followed: capon breast with truffles, gnocchi with truffles, and guinea-fowl. Yes, also with truffles.

There were a couple of extra, non-truffle courses, too, but I can say that by the end of dinner, I was over them. The flavour? Earthy, slightly sulphury, garlicky... like sex, is how they smell and taste. If you’ve never had them, go ahead and enjoy. Or maybe not. Just don’t think ‘mushroom’.

San Marino

I could not resist the opportunity to ‘bag’ another country during my travels. I’ve ridden in 14 European countries so far, and less than a couple of hours away, still heading north towards the Adriatic coast near Rimini, was one of the continent’s smallest—San Marino. Its population is about the same as Gubbio’s.

It’s the small differences that often attract attention. As soon as I entered the country, a bright blue pedestrian crossingstopped me in my tracks—partly because a young mother was pushing her baby buggy over it. The roads department must have bought a bulk load of blue paint. It’s one of the ways the country sets itself apart from its much bigger neighbour, where crossings, if they exist at all, are usually hidden beneath road grime and years of neglect. This was cheerful, and I found myself stopping at several just for the fun of admiring a road that reminded me of Messi and Maradona.

Eventually, I found a parking spot where the bike was unlikely to tip over. It’s a very hilly place, perched on top of Monte Titano, on the northeast slopes of the Apennines. Lugging most of my heavy and hot riding kit, I walked ever upwards, past sunglasses shops, handbag shops, sunglasses shops, opticians (with sunglasses), and finally a gun shop. Retail variety is clearly not a thing here. Needless to say, I bought a pair of shades. After all, they’d made a real effort. And they were tax-free.

I was trying on a pair of Polaroids when I spotted, in the mirror, a couple of blokes walking past carrying bows and arrows. Since they were wearing ceremonial shirts and smocks with a leather pouch, I imagined they were either part of a re-enactment group or the country’s army is less sophisticated than one might expect for a place with the 12th highest per capita GDP in the world. The views from the panoramic terrace over the rest of San Marino, which lay below and was indistinguishable from the Italy that surrounds it, were breathtaking. The price of my coffee and croissant was not—a bargain, considering.

Lingering longer than a few hours would stretch the attractions of one of Europe’s tiniest capital cities, and I wanted to reach Venice or nearby by nightfall. I plodded downhill to the bike. A policeman was lingering next to it. Uh-oh, trouble?I thought. But no. He smiled and asked me how I’d found riding in San Marino. “I like your pedestrian crossings,” I said. Having only ridden a couple of kilometres, it was hard to think of anything else. “Oh, and the police seem friendly.”

‘Thank you,’ he replied. ‘I won’t give you a ticket then for parking illegally.’

He waved as I rode off downhill. A sigh of relief passed my lips. Next waypoint: Rimini, the birthplace of Federico Fellini.

Back in Italy, the zebra crossings had reverted to the usual dull and scruffy variety. Not that it mattered: people would simply wander nonchalantly straight out in front of traffic wherever they wanted. It was like being back in Sicily. Jacaranda trees were in full violet, fragrant blossom, a heady smell that filled my helmet. The Rimini seafront looked enticing, but I still had a long way to travel, and so my particular ship would sail on.

[Editor’s Note: This is a particularly gratuitous reference to his 1983 film ‘And The Ship Sails On’.]

© 2025 Stephen Oliver

You can find my book North to Norway in paperback and Kindle format on Amazon.

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