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England, Wednesday, day of departure What I get, after a whole year of preparation, is a hollow feeling, cold, sure my two-cousin plan to buy property in Catalunya and turn it into an eco- adventure tourist business is no more than a juvenile pipe dream. With hours to spare, my younger cuz' Grzech says his flight out of Poland to meet me, once I’ve ridden all the way from the UK to Spain, has been called off and now being June, he doesn’t know if he will get another in time. I consider delaying my departure, but July is coming and with it all hotel and food prices in France go up by 30%. I’ll never get a refund for my ferry booking either. I consider forgetting Spain, catching the ferry and heading East, for Poland, surprising people back home, but I don’t feel like it. This will be my first long-distance bike blast, my first real adventure abroad. Quitting for the familiar this early on just seems like bad form. The previous Sunday, riding down to Brighton for a beach bbq, the Speed Triple’s indicators stopped working. The dash lights went out weeks ago, but this was a really bad omen. Once I got back to London, I checked the electrics, found nothing. Plus, the gear change still sounds and feels like a box of broken spanners every time I shift up. Two thousand miles without indicators or changing gear? Monday, I phone round, find no repair shop will touch the bike, all far too busy this sunshine season. I spend the rest of the day going through the wiring, but electrics are the dark art of the mechanics' world and I'm not even apprentice level yet. Tuesday morning is devoted to riding back and forth to bike shops with spare parts and other bits for the trip, counting down hours before I have to pack my bags and get to bed, ready for a 5am start. Can’t get the indicators working, but manage to find a place that will change the chain and sprockets. Sets me back a couple of hundred quid I can ill-afford, but it’s the first bit of good luck I’ve had in a week. I ride home to pack, send emails to all property dealers and locals I’m due to meet in Spain, stash my gear into two rucksacks and get to bed around eleven. The weather reports predict rain for the morning. Good. Better the devil you know with a thousand miles to cover in two days flat. London, sunrise Wednesday, the trip starts with the same motorway route I take to work every day, but it’s sunny and the bike feels good with a new chain on it. Hard to write about first impressions of long-distance motorbike riding. Physically, the stillness is testing. Holding on to the bars at ninety mph hour after hour is hard work, though no movement is involved. Mentally, it’s tiring too. Just about anything could have you off the bike – the vicious side-wind blast each time you overtake a lorry, a rock thrown up by the wheels of a car ahead (ever see what they do to windscreens?), a patch of diesel or other debris on the tarmac. You keep your eyes off the scenery, your mind off the thousand things you want to mull over as hours fly by, watching the speed, the mirrors, listening to the engine for any sounds of trouble, counting the miles and minutes to the next petrol station and five minute smoke. English Channel On the Dover-Calais ferry, the route through France I decided on two weeks ago is changed. I’ve only done two hours of English motorways so far, but if the boredom is anything to go by, I’ll need to avoid the flatlands of Bordeaux and head for the mountainous bends of the Central Massif to keep me awake. France What I do to Paris is ugly – just bypass it altogether. The Peripherique is the maddest road I’ve ridden yet. 40 Celsius on my keyfob thermometer, cars packed tight in three or four lanes of traffic and French bikers cutting through them at insane speeds. Any car changes lane or chucks a lit fag out their window, wipeout, but they don’t seem to care. Little scooters, full-dress BMW tourers, they just stick their hazards on and shoot off through gaps barely inches more than their machines. My indicators are not working, but my sense of self- preservation more than compensates. I crawl on, the Eiffel Tower just visible for a second in the distance, promise myself I will try to see it close-up on the way back. Paris is the last major marker on the map before Barcelona. Now I’ve just got to slide down France, cross the Pyrenees, stop my momentum a few hundred miles into Spain. I aim for Bourges, my first scheduled overnight stop. The blur of afternoon miles is literally that, a blur. Endless road signs, endless straights, endless overtakes. The light is memorable. As the day wears on and my body begins to suffer, sunlight goes from the characterless glare of noon to the rich, rewarding hues of early evening. Shadows lengthen, colours deepen, the last stages of the day’s ride both a physical pain and a sensual feast. By the time I limp off the motorway, around seven, my eyes are sore from the windblast, my ears from the plugs I wear under the helmet (the wind noise is otherwise crippling), my shoulders from holding on, my knees from being bent at the same angle since dawn broke. Yet when I find a little road-side motel just outside Bourges, I unpeel myself from the bike without complaint. This is the first time I’ve ever stayed in a motel. I’ve stayed in B&B’s, in mountain lodges, in rented apartments, in holiday huts, in tents, in any kind of holiday accommodation you can think of, except motels. But I’ve read about them. Read lots. Seen them in endless films, on album covers, heard people talk about them in documentaries, on the radio, everyone trying to get at the heart of the motel experience. And now it’s my turn. To see if I’ll fit. If I’ll feel lonely like all the rest. Or if I’ll feel just a little bit at home. The place is expensive and anonymous. No bar, no character, but at least the staff speak English. Just about everyone in France speaks English, even though whenever I ask “Parlez vous Ingles?”, they always sheepishly admit “A little…” as if ashamed. The room is small and everything in it has the stiffness of unused or over-starched things. The bed, the curtains, the towels. There is a tv, some flowery furnishings, a tiny hairdryer and kettle meant to complement my stay. Part of me wants to get a cheap bottle of wine and get smashed in this sterile cell as antidote to the road, but I haven’t got a bottle with me and the town is just two minutes away. The bike feels different without the tons of luggage strapped to the back. Not in terms of handling, but in spirit. Now no longer workhorse, it is taking me to see places instead of past them, our journey all about quality for a change. (Historic) Bourges is cute. And wickedly quiet. No shops are open, nowhere to buy wine, but I’m happy. Happy to find places where late night shopping is an unknown concept. The streets are narrow, some cobbled, and there is a warmth to the place I like. It’s in the pale coloured town-houses, the flowers sprouting from window boxes and hanging from baskets, in the friendly nature of sunlight here. The streets are charming and the cathedral at the top of the town magnificent, but somehow I don’t have the energy for admiring architecture. When you only have half an evening, one cathedral is much like another. I find a bar with a Union Jack hanging up inside. Strange, considering Euro 2004 is still on, but this is the kind of place nobody gives a fuck about football. A wreck of an elderly lady drinking rum, smoking, giving the barmaid grief. Dark, handsome guys sitting round the bar, something lost in their eyes. And women who somehow know, just by looking at me, that I’m only passing through, no use to them at all. The Union Jack is a con. Nobody in the bar speaks English, but I manage to get a beer out of them anyway. Sitting outside, watching a little roundabout go about its business, feels good. On my right, there’s a cemetery, some kids old enough for fags but not yet for alcohol, having quiet conversations. On my left, a theatre, parents with their offspring leaving a music practice, instrument cases of various shapes and sizes hanging from young shoulders. Even though it’s ten, they don’t seem to be in a rush, home probably just minutes away. Lots of motorbikes and scooters buzzing past. Big and small, new and old, a fat policeman on the smallest and slowest of them all. Beer glass half full, I feel happy. The intensity of the setting blue sky, collapsing this first day on the road, washes through my wasted spirits and keeps me smiling to myself, language nothing to do with why no one around understands this moment, no one can do anything but add to its stillness. Then I ride home. Back to the motel. No wine, but no mood for sleep either. The body’s tired, but the mind restless. All day it’s been busy, looking out for hazards, making sure I’m on the right road, not too far from the next petrol station, but it’s all very narrow waveband stuff, very mechanical. I shower, drop onto the stiff, cool sheets, turn on the tv to find Scorsese’s “Gangs of New York” premiering on Canal+. Though I know I should be sleeping, readying myself for another day of fear out on the road, of steeling for the violence you hope never comes, it feels good to have it finally explode on screen. Makes for peaceful dreams. go to Travelogue 2 |
| Travelogue 1 |
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