SV-Wolf's Bike Blog

[sv-wolf]

The snow's back again and the nights are freezing. My two bikes are standing quietly in the back yard. I'm beginning to twitch and pace up and down: the winter motorcycle withdrawal symptoms are here again.

So, I thought I'd divert myself by posting a few pics to remind me of summer. Here are some photos I took of some long-distance bikes and bikers at last year's Horizons Unlimited meet at Ripley, UK. I've blogged about Horizons before. It's a fantastically enjoyable five-day event where adventure bikers and would-be adventure bikers can get together, camp out, eat extraordinary food, and exchange extraordinary stories. Some of the friendliest people I've ever met turn up here every year. Adventure riding seems to knock the rough edges off anyone who does it.


This is Norman Magowan's beaky beemer. Last year he wrote up the story of his trip round the Americas on this bike in two books. Norman is Irish and slightly diminutive, so naturally the books are entitled Leprechauns in Alaska and Leprechauns in Latin America. (That's leprechauns, plural, because his wife Maggie rode with him on an identical - and identically yellow - bike.) The books are a real delight - just like the author. They come highly recommended for anyone who wants a good winter read.



This is an ex-Australian post-office bike. It was ridden home from Oz to the UK after Nathan Millward lost, in quick succession, his job, his visa and then his girlfriend - and couldn't figure out what to do next! Riding the bike home just seemed like a good idea at the time. Great story.



This is Sjaak Lucassen keeping an eye on his R1. Sjaak intends this year to become the first man to ride a bike to the north pole. He will probably do it. You don't get more hardcore among adventure riders than this guy. He plans to do it on (wait for it) his sportsbike. The bike will pull a specially made sledge to carry his 'tent' and the generator which will provide the heat needed to keep his engine turning over in Arctic conditions. He's already ridden to Nordcap and Prudhoe Bay in midwinter. Sjaak has produced a DVD called "Sjaak the world". Amazing!



This is a blurry photo of seventy-something-year-old Simon Gandolfi, the funniest man on a bike you will ever meet. His chosen ride is a pizza bike and he's riding around the world on it. The only luggage he says he needs is "something big enough to carry my heart pills". He's written about some of his travels on "Old Man on a Bike", "Old Men can't wait" and "Old Man in India".



Another advocate of low power adventure riding - this one is a contestant in the Budapest to Bamako rally.



Fancy a tutorial on good posture for riders who do long hours in the saddle? Apart from listening to some of the best motorcycle yarners in the business, at Horizons you can learn how to change a tyre in the Sudan without a tyre lever, treat Delhi Belly in Bangalore without Immodium or keep your back supple with motorcycle yoga. You can get tips on funding your trip, surviving border crossings, shipping your precious bike abroad, stopping zealous officials impounding it, using a camera with frozen fingers, setting up a website, deciding what and how to pack, surviving with just a few kilos of luggage, and choosing your machine. Or you can just slob out around the camp fire and eat roasted squirrel.



There's always a roadkill cafe at the Horizons meet. The sign speaks for itself. (I didn't fancy the snail stew myself.)



Evening entertainment at the Horizon meet. Great time!

[sv-wolf]

OK I seem to have caught the bug for posting pics. Here's some more I didn't get round to posting earlier in the year.

I took a ride down to Lyme Regis on the south coast on the Daytona this summer. Lyme is probably my favourite British town. And it's located in my favourite region - the South-West. I try to get a ride down there as often as I can. I had a fabulous, sunshiney ride on the outward trip, but got soaked to the skin coming home.

There are lots of great and unique things about Lyme. Its most important attribute is that it is home to the best fish and chip stall in the known universe. It also has a fantastically eccentric bookshop.

It is, incidentally, the place where King William III and his 'invading' Dutch army landed on the British coast. Fed up with James II's autocratic behaviour, parliament invited his Dutch cousin, William to invade Britain and take the crown for himself. This was the beginning of the UK's constitutional monarchy - Royal government by permission of parliament. It is also the beginning of modernity. William's 'invading' army was generally welcomed and didn't need to fight any war except a propaganda one - it carried a portable printing press with it on its march on London, and leafletted towns and villages on the way.



The end of Lyme Cob (the town's artificial harbour wall). Lyme is the only fishing town on the South Coast that doesn't have a natural harbour. Undeterred by this small detail, the townsfolk went ahead and constructed one. Obvious really. The cob still looks pretty sturdy today, but when it was first built it was regarded as an engineering wonder of the first magnitude.



The harbour - inside the protecting wall of The Cob.



It was at Lyme and nearby Charmouth that many of the first dinosaur fossils were found by local girl, Mary Annan. If anyone can be said to have started off the whole dinosaur mania, it was her. Lyme is very proud of its dinosaur connections. Even the streetlights are designed like ammonite shells. Today, you can still pick up fossils off the beaches at Lyme in the way you can pick up stones elsewhere, and once in a while a monster skeleton is washed out of the cliffs.



All round Lyme there are acres of Horsetail ferns. OK, I keep going on about these things, but I think they are fantastic. Horsetails are one of the most ancient species still growing on earth (so old that their chemistry is based on silicon, not carbon). They were flourishing at the time of the dinosaurs. Fossil specimens from the Jurassic and Triassic periods have been found growing up to 30 feet tall. These are some of the largest I've ever seen in the UK.



Between Lyme and Seaton is the seven mile long 'Undercliff', a scientifically unique region of crumbling cliffs and shifting rocks. There are constant landslips here. The whole area is under intense scientific scrutiny as it's the only place in the world where environments are changing so rapidly that the effects on the plant and animal life can be observed as it struggles to adapt. You can walk the entire Undercliffe in a couple of hours. It's extraordinarily varied and beautiful...


...but then so much of Lyme and the surrounding countryside is beautiful.



Every year Lyme hosts a fossil festival in a huge marquee on the beach. The event also attracts artists and entertainers of various sorts including this amazing guy who 'balances stones'. OK, balancing stones! When I first read about him, I thought it was all a bit ho hum - but then I saw him doing it. It's mesmerising to watch - it takes him up to ten minutes to get it right making the minutest of adjustments. He says it took him fifteen years to learn the skill. He attracts huge crowds.

[sv-wolf]

On the first weekend in January after the New Year, I join a group of friends, old and new, and take a trip to Snowdonia. We stay in a cottage at the foot of Snowdon, the tallest mountain in Wales. The cottage has electicity and a wood-burning stove, but no piped water supply. The water drains off a large rock into a cistern. There is no river nearby and no-one is entirely sure where the water comes from.

We usually spend one or two days walking or rock scrambling in the area. This year the weather was good enough to have a go at climbing Snowdon itself.

Here are a few pics from the trip.



On the way up to the summit.




Almost up in the clouds. You can spend a whole lifetime climbing Snowdon and never get a clear view from the top.




Almost there.




The summit (almost).




A view from the long ridge on the way back down.



Entertainment by Dan after lunch in the cottage. Most of the people who go on this trip are musicians.




Harlech Castle. On the last day we were knackered, so took a trip into Harlech, a nearby coastal town.




Sunset on the shore. Harlech.

[High_Side]

Great pictures and story. Keep 'em coming.

[sunshine229]

Wow, absolutely amazing photography, right down to the last one (and I'd argue it's the best one!). There are so many great places to visit in the UK. Unfortunately we haven't seen them all but most places we have made it to have been worth any effort of going there.

BTW - how's it going these days?

[sv-wolf]

Hi all

This is an unashamed bit of salesmanship. A couple of posts back I was raving about a talk by Nathan Millward the guy who rode an ex-postal bike home to the UK from Australia with a couple of days notice of the trip. Needless to say he learned a great deal very quickly. I'm glad to see he has just published a book of his journey. I've ordered it from his website (below) and am looking forward to reading it. If it is anything like his talk at the Horizons event at Ripley last year, it will be a truly cracking read. Anyone who likes motorcycle travel literature should certainly think about this one.

http://www.thepostman.org.uk/

In the UK the book is called "The Long Ride Home", but I think his American publisher is calling it "Going Postal". Check it out. [Edit: Ooops, no. "Going Postal" is the title of the Australian version, which the author seems be saying was less under his own control than this new edition: "The Long Ride Home".

[sv-wolf]

Wow, absolutely amazing photography, right down to the last one (and I'd argue it's the best one!). There are so many great places to visit in the UK. Unfortunately we haven't seen them all but most places we have made it to have been worth any effort of going there.

BTW - how's it going these days?

Hi Andrea

In this last week, I've had a bit of an epiphany. There are far more important things in life than obsessing about the 'important' things - which often turn out to be not very important at all. I think I used to know that, but somehow forgot. So! I have given notice on all those 'serious issues' that have been convincing me that they need attending to. Listen here, guys: you don't. I need a break.

I've saved up enough Annual Leave at work to take two weeks holiday at the end of March. And I've saved up enough spare cash to fund a motorcycle trip through Europe. Destination The Alps and Slovenia. I've never been to the Balkans, but they are calling to me. They've been on my (long) hit list of places to visit for years. They're also South, and South feels attractively warm at present. If I have time, I'll wander into Northern Greece as well. I've always loved the Greek people, and right now they are loudly articulating what many ordinary Europeans are feeling about being made to pay for the recession. I'd like to find out for myself what they are thinking.

.........................................................................................................................................................

Of course, deep down in those secret places I'd love to just tell everyone to "stuff your issues, I'm off" and then disappear into the wild blue yonder for oooh... maybe a year or so. But I've nailed myself down to too much workaday "stuff" for that to happen suddenly or easily. But... I'm still working on it.

[blues2cruise]

In this last week, I've had a bit of an epiphany. There are far more important things in life than obsessing about the 'important' things - which often turn out to be not very important at all.

Yessir...it's called having a life.

Kudos to you for taking stock and going for a ride. Take care....we want a trip report...and pics...

[blues2cruise]

http://www.youtube.com/embed/iKqpvriKZuA



I think you might enjoy this.

[sv-wolf]

http://www.youtube.com/embed/iKqpvriKZuA

I think you might enjoy this.

LOL. Yep, but I think I prefer the Daytona - It's got plenty of personality but it doesn't argue or have a mind of its own - essential qualities in a motorcycle, I'm thinking.

And now for a report on the weather. It's lurching every few days from freezing cold temperatures to unseasonable warmth. So, getting out on the bike has been a bit of a hit and miss affair this month. It's great when you can do it; frustrating when you can't. I've not managed a long ride so far - mostly just daily commutes or rides out to Cambridge or Ely - but I'm trying to get in as much time in the saddle as I can to prepare for a long trip down to Southern Europe in a couple of weeks. Well, I hope that's where I'm going. I may have a problem with that, since I've just discovered that my passport went out of date a couple of months ago and I don't know how quickly I can get a new one now that it has to have some sort of chip put in it. And it costs about £80.00. At least they're not thinking about putting chips in people yet - but I suspect that's only because of the recession and they can't afford it. Am I just getting old? Or is the world getting nastier. Not sure.

Just for fun I decided a few minutes ago to take the online British Citizenship test - and failed miserably: I got 46% of the questions right. (The minimum requirement for those applying for British Citizenship is 75%.) According to the government, that appears to make me some sort of national reject. The truth is, though, my score probably makes me culturally very British indeed, as few people actually born here get scores much higher than this. I mean, for god's sake, how does knowing what year the NHS was introduced make you British? A liking for warm ale, for spending your Saturdays going to football matches and for watching too much 'Coronation Street' and 'East Enders' on the telly was once a more reliable indicator that you were born somewhere on this chunk of rock. Why would anyone want to identify with a myth anyway?



PS I've now got hold of Nathan Millward's book. It's fantastic. I read a lot of motorcycle travel books and this is right up there among the best: fresh, honest, fast-paced; with a narrator who is open to all kinds of new experience - a great true-life adventure story, brilliantly told.