Starting out

Day 1: 20/03/2016

As the harbour lights gleam across the water, I sit on the ferry and reflect on the classic start to this journey. It was a homely beginning with a good friend and my nephew initially accompanying us through the quintessentially English country lanes. My eldest son would be my riding companion to Spain before turning west to Portugal as I continued south, to Africa. After hectic and draining weeks of preparation, I wasn’t sure I would even be able to stay awake until the ferry, but, fortunately (and courtesy of my daughter’s long, steaming bath), I managed to refresh myself with an ice-cold shower, just before clambering on my steely mount. (No doubt she meant to use all the hot water only to alert me to the foreseeably limited washing facilities that lay on the journey ahead.)

Concerned about the ever-shortening timeframe to catch the ferry, we were frantically finalising the last details on the motorcycles, when my middle son sauntered into the frenetic haze of activity, still wearing his pyjamas and dressing gown. He remained in that cosy little bubble of his own untroubled life. My mind morphed my son into Terrenci, the main character of my current series, Planet Beneath; if he were to be my companion on this journey, I have no doubt I could have expected little help from him in the preparation, and appearing last-minute still in his dressing gown and pyjamas would absolutely be in character. My son finally spoke up, “er, Dad? So, I was gonna take some pictures of you, but I forgot to charge my battery. Shall I use your camera?”

There was my family attentively seeing us off, my patient ever-supportive wife, with a wave from the driveway. We went down our small gravel lane and turned into the High Street where my other two sons stood ready with their cameras poised to record the moment we roared past with a cheerio wave.  And we were off! Our village lay behind, the open road ahead and a nagging feeling in the back of my mind… an image irritating that part of my brain, like a rooted splinter.  If that was my son’s camera on the kitchen table as I passed it on the way out, whose camera had he been holding for that parting shot? Accompanying the squeal of my brakes, I realised it was my camera, the one instrument that would record the whole journey. There followed the necessary frantic gesticulations of me trying to relay this epiphany to my son over the din of our motorcycles as he shot by at 50 miles an hour. With the confusion of an abrupt U-turn, my laden motorcycle seemed keen to carry on with my son, neither appearing obliged to assist my return home.      

So, there I was half parked on the road, half on the verge, my helmet blinkering me to the furore of angry motorists avoiding the tail end of my motorcycle, as they went about their sane ordinary lives. Through the mayhem, I heard those immortal words, “Dad, Dad!” Straining my stiff arthritic neck, I turned to see my son, waving my camera at the end of a pyjamas-sleeved arm, out the window of his Peugeot, an easy match for the steely cart horse that was my ride. Reunited with my camera and the balance of my universe restored, I pulled back onto the main road, only to be overtaken by our people carrier with my wife and youngest son, chasing me down with another forgotten piece of equipment. This is certainly a standard departure ritual for world travellers, I thought. Before long, it was my friend and nephew’s turn to give us a cheery wave as they turned back, leaving us to continue our quest without their immense moral support. 

Left alone with our machines, my frugal mount that makes ninety miles to a gallon but has an irritating habit of burning a pint of oil in the same distance, but no matter I shall pretend it is a two stroke machine and fill it accordingly.  We are free now to plot an uninterrupted journey to the ferry, interrupted only by regular stops to refill my son’s TS185 petrol tank designed to carry him a wholesome sixty miles on its tank, and to empty my tank designed in these stressful moments only to carry me the same distance before requiring a discharge. Our first pit stop only being partially successful as Tesco’s filling station replenished my son’s needs but early Sunday closing thwarted my own emptying requirements. Shyness, and the fact I had packed the hand wiping wet ones at the very bottom of my panniers, dissuaded me from seeking some modesty bushes. Unrelieved we entered the mayhem of the M25 on a Sunday evening with its regular speed restrictions down to sixty, fifty then forty miles an hour coincidently matching our top speed, denied other fleeter footed motorists their amusement of passing our two heavily laden motorcycles struggling to acquire the pace of normal motorway traffic. Not that we didn’t engage in throwing the same rye smiles as we weaved through their stationary vehicles, until further down the road until the signs changed again to that unobtainable open speed limit.

It was a glorious first evening of spring and though mostly overcast it was a clear focused twilight with the sun casting a delightful warm rose red edge to the skies of fading light. And so it was, as we pressed on with the evening descending into night that it became apparent that my cosy sidelight glimmer decided it would not flare into a piercing floodlight of main beam to iluminate the way ahead but instead stay as a more relaxing sidelight regardless of how frantically I toggled the switch. Fortunately it was about the same point that I realised my sons rear tail light had fused into that incandescent red glow which can only be achieved when a brake light has become stuck permanently in the on position. So there you have it, we continued with my son forging the path ahead and me holding on to the blinding glare of his taillight to act as my unfaltering guide. That was until he did needed a stomp on the break then his rear light would go out plunging me into the inky black of the A3 and an unseen stationary motorcycle dead ahead, or when he put on his indicators, which had the effect of turning a taillight into a pulsating epileptic catalyst. 

Now as the ripples catch the last glitter of the disappearing dock lights, I can close my eyes to rest, leaving me with that image of the day, an incandescent red glow which has burned a temporary blind spot onto my eyeballs.