Nick – Wednesday morning didn’t dawn as much as dribble in. We both slept fitfully. I remembered in the middle of the night that the Europe road atlas was in the boot of the car and indeed was too big to fit in the box on the back of the scooter or in the rucksack. Anyway, they were both full.
Nancy – I realised that the shoes we had been wearing would have to be left behind, for the same reason. We had to wear our ankle-covering boots so no room for other shoes.
Nick – In the darkness of 6.15am, on the morning of September 29th, we turned ourselves out onto the gravel drive of my sister’s apartment. Mercifully, the rain had stopped but all around us were pools of standing water and the bushes were dripping. We uncovered the scooter which, like us poor thing, was still fast asleep. We had made a trial run of packing the bike the evening before, but we forgot that we had to fit in the bike cover as well. So, we found ourselves in one of those ridiculous moments – you know, all of a sudden it’s like you see yourself from above and realise how absolutely absurd life is. It was the first of many on the trip. In the murky grey of the London morning, there we both were, hanging on the back of the box, trying to squeeze in the cover at the same time as getting it to click shut. No click no trip. Finally, sighs all round, click.
Nancy – So much for being fully prepared! But I think I am good at organising and had collected together all the important papers, down to the last detail. It made me feel calm, checking and double-checking the documents for each leg of the journey. So, I had all the tickets, the first hotel booking, passports, bankcards, money and maps in my shoulder bag which we managed to bundle into the small compartment under the seat.
Nick – I went to the car, found the road atlas and tore out the relevant pages for our route across Europe so that Nancy could include them in her ‘important’ bag. Lacking a sat-nav, I had made detailed, drawn maps of how, for example, to get out of Dunkirk, how to find the hotel on the first night and where the station was in Dusseldorf, and they were in her bag too.
What neither us is owning up to is, there is a little lockup box on the side of the scooter and in there we had stuffed tea bags, not only for the journey but to last us at home. We laughed at expats who insisted on watching Coronation Street on the internet or had cornflakes flown in, but here we were carrying our own supply of tea bags. How pathetic is that!
I had a last look at the map to Dover – M25, M20, A20. We togged up, I pressed the starter, and it started. Then we pulled to the edge of Castlenau, in Barnes, a main artery road into London. We had hoped we might miss the London traffic but already it was gearing up for a busy day and was kicking out spray. I heard Nancy behind me mutter to herself, ‘OK. You can do this. You have to.’
Nancy – I knew I would be nervous about being on the scooter. However, this is what we had decided to do, so I set my mind to it. I just have to get on with it, I thought. And that was that. A little prayer did no harm either.
Nick – We lowered our visors, pulled out into the traffic and were on our way.
As we headed out, I thought, What the hell am I doing here? I’m an old man. We have a long and arduous journey ahead of us. Seven days of tussling with the unknown. Why aren’t I in bed slowly waking up to a nice cup of tea before making our way to Heathrow and a comfortable flight to Rhodes?
My sister waved us off, poor thing. She would also have preferred to be in her nice, warm bed. I had said to her the day before, ‘Why do I do this to myself? Why don’t I just give in and sit on a sofa with my feet up?’
She was great. She replied, ‘Do it while you can. It’s an adventure! Anyway, sitting on a sofa wouldn’t be you, would it.’
I wished I had bought the sticker I had seen and stuck it on the back of bike – “Adventure Before Dementia.”
We crossed Barnes Common, the rain dripping from the horse-chestnut trees, and made our first stop at some traffic lights. We wobbled but pretended we were seasoned bikers. Pulling away from the lights I grabbed the middle of the road so the car behind me couldn’t squeeze us into the gutter. My old dad used to say to me, when you are on a motor cycle boy, he always called me boy even when I was 40, pretend you are a car. Imagine you are sitting in the centre of a car-size space so that the cars behind you can see you, respect your space and don’t try to push you off the road. Well it worked, except for a few idiots who just couldn’t bear being stuck behind us and thought their place was in front of us, no matter what it cost. Nancy held me tight around the waist and I must say it was an unexpected bonus. We were togged up to the nines in our gear but immediately, with Nancy’s arms around me, it was like I was leaning back into a warm armchair. Except for my knees, they were freezing. The list of essentials said nothing about leg warmers.
Nancy – I’m not sure I like being compared to a warm armchair, thank you, Nick. I see myself more as a nubile young woman!
I hadn’t realised how cold it would be either. Luckily, I was being sheltered by Nick’s bulk.
Nick – And I don’t see myself as bulky, thank you.
The drive from Barnes, in South West London, to Dover was just under 100 miles and, according to the net, would take just under 2 hours.
Well that is in a car. How long on a wobbly, slow scooter? We held long discussions about whether we should buy a flexi-ticket for the channel ferry, thereby allowing us as much time as we needed, or whether we should buy a fixed time ticket which cost much less but put a deadline on us. In the end, we decided on the fixed ticket for the midday ferry. If we left London at 6am that would leave us 6 hours to make the journey, surely enough time.
Our first big challenge was the M25. Now I am sure that, for seasoned bikers, it is much the same as any other motorway but for me, even as a car driver, it has always been a mad, lorry laden, racetrack. A filthy, noisy artery that changes in size from 3 to 4, to 5, even 6 lanes, then down to 3 again. Here we were on our little red and white scooter, stuck defiantly in the middle of the inside lane, with dirty, grey juggernauts bearing down on us like modern dinosaurs, filling the rear-view mirrors before swerving at the last minute to overtake. As they pulled alongside, the air they displaced pushed the bike sideways towards the hard shoulder and then, when it passed, the vacuum sucked us back in behind them. The worst were the double trailers, one lorry pulling another, many of them from Eastern Europe. They were like trains. Just as you thought the worst was over along came a second. I was pulling right as they burst alongside then left so as not to swerve in after them.
I couldn’t ask Nancy if she was coping okay because of the din – the scooter engine, the traffic, the road noise. If I turned my face slightly the wind tugged at my helmet, jerking my head sideways and my visor upwards, and the surface muck from the night’s rain was spraying into our faces, reducing visibility. It was teeth gritting time.
Man or mouse, squeak up boy!
I decided to turn into the first service station I saw. Time to take a break. Time to rub our frozen knees, shake the pins and needles out of my throttle hand and assess our journey so far, a whole hour.
Nancy – I managed to keep my eyes open most of the time, even on the corners. I just held on to Nick and leant with him. But I didn’t like the lorries and my legs were beginning to ache from being in one position all the time. There was only a slim portion of the footplate that was allocated for my feet.
Nick – It was as we pulled into the service station that we had our first accident.
We steered around the tight bend into the car park just as the light was turning from dark grey to light grey. We had coffee on our minds. Underfoot the tarmac was greasy – a slick of oil, rain and road residue. I pulled up in front of the cafeteria doors and turned off the engine with a sigh of relief.
At this point, however, my left foot lost purchase on the grease and began to slide away under the weight of Nancy and the scooter. Accordingly, the scooter began a slow fall leftwards. I held on, struggling to keep it upright, my left foot slid further away until I was doing the splits. Despite all this, Nancy simply sat on the back of the scooter with her feet still on the running board like the queen herself. Finally, finding myself thrown across the muck on the tarmac, I looked back to see her still sitting happily on the saddle, her feet neatly tucked onto the running board, as the bike fell over, in slow motion. When it came to rest on its side, she was still astride the scooter, her feet still on the running board and still in a sitting position, except now she was horizontal, on the ground.
That was it. I got the giggles. Then she got the giggles. Another one of those absurd moments. Two grown-ups, who should know better, lying on the slimy ground in a service station, somewhere on the M25, at 7.15 on a dirty September morning. It was just so ridiculous!
Nancy – I don’t know what it was. I think I must have fallen asleep. We had never discussed when I should put my feet down. I suppose I thought I had to wait until Nick told me to. How stupid is that? But the incident helped me in some way because now we had had our first ‘accident’ the whole journey didn’t seem so unreal.
A man came over and asked if he could help. Very nice of him but when he saw we were okay even he couldn’t stop laughing.
We picked the bike up and put it on the stand. There was not a mark on me or the scooter but Nick had a black slick all down the sleeve of his jacket and on the leg of his jeans.
Nick – After I had cleaned up in the washroom, the coffee tasted great. In fact, everything was looking good. We had jumped in at the deep end and survived. By now we knew the drill, the roads were beginning to dry, the sky was brightening up and so were we. Apart from a blow to our pride we were doing fine and there was nothing to stop us now.
Nancy – Thanks goodness for wet wipes. They really cut through the road film on the visor.
Nick – So, with better visibility and feeling refreshed and positive, we drove back onto the M25.
10 minutes later, as we beat our way down the motorway, both mirrors started swivelling, independently, like chameleon’s eyes. I imagine the screws had loosened due to the constant vibration. It would have been useful if it had happened before we stopped so I could have fixed them in the service station, but that would have been too easy.
Nancy – Nick and I often say that nothing comes easy for us. Everything we do has to be earned the hard way and this is a case in point
Nick – I had options: I could drive on blind – not really an option with all the lorries overtaking, pull over onto the hard shoulder and fix it there, or try and tighten them with my hand as we drove along. I didn’t have it in my heart to stop again, we would never reach our destination, so I chose the last option, by far the most stupid and most dangerous! Continuing to drive at 45 miles an hour and using my left hand (remember you can’t take your right hand off the throttle or the bike comes to a grinding halt) I twisted the mirrors around, one at a time, until they seemed to tighten against themselves. After 3 or 4 tries, they settled into acceptable positions so that I could just about see behind us. Every so often one of them would slowly creep sideways but then I would grab it and tighten it again. We drove like that until our next petrol stop, half way to Dover.
The scooter came fully equipped with a neat little set of silver spanners. How brilliant and all the way from China. However, after trying them all, not one of them fitted the nuts on the mirrors. Brilliant. I imagined a worker on the assembly line, somewhere in China, with a wry smile on their face.
With a lot of fiddling, and by using brute force, we got the mirrors tightened so that I could see behind us in both, and that is how they remained all the way to Greece.
Petrol was interesting. We filled up and it cost us £4.35. Admittedly we were being careful and filling up before it got too low but at this rate we were going to cross Europe for about 40 quid! The handbook said the tank held just under 7 litres so how far on a tank of petrol and how many miles to a gallon? As we drove on, I tried working it out. One litre is approximately one and 3-quarter pints. There are 8 pints in a gallon so one gallon is about 4.5 litres.
We never found out. To calculate it properly we would have had to empty the tank and then drive the scooter till it was empty again. That was not going to happen, not on this journey anyway. The last thing we wanted was to run out in the middle of nowhere, miles from a petrol station. However, we think we were doing somewhere between 70 and 90 miles to the gallon but don’t ask how many kilometres that is to the gallon let alone kilometres to the litre, for goodness’ sake. We gave up on the calculation. As long as we were careful and kept the tank topped up, we didn’t care.
We soon got into a ritual. In an hour, we drove about 45 or 50 miles, which was when the gauge started to drop below half full, and after that we began to feel stiff and in need of a stretch anyway. So, it was going to be ‘slow and steady’ all the way across Europe. We reached Dover at 10.30, an hour and a half early but jubilant and hardened bikers. We were the first in the queue of bikes. We had made it.
We took off our helmets and my hair was all messed up. Tut, tut, not like a car. We put the bike on the stand like a couple of professionals and I sat back on the seat to ponder. We had driven for about 4 hours including stops and I ached.
Driving a 2-wheeler is absolutely nothing like driving a car. When driving a motorcycle, you form a rigid triangle with the machine. Your arms, from the handlebars to your shoulders form one side of the triangle, your body from your shoulders to your feet and the running board form the second side, and then the bike back to your hands form the third side. Unlike in a car, where you can relax, on a bike you can’t move. It is imperative you concentrate one hundred per cent, all the time. You cannot take your hand off the throttle, it must be constantly fixed hard back to keep it open. (Why haven’t they invented overdrive on bikes like they have on cars? Just press a button and it cruises at the desired speed so you can relax and stop throttling the poor throttle.) Also, unlike a car, you can’t move your legs without affecting the balance, you can’t really move your left hand without affecting that rigid triangle and drifting off line, you can’t relax and look at the scenery, you can’t have a proper conversation with your passenger, let alone grab a drink or a sandwich.
(Of course, we never do the last 2 things because we could be fined for it in Britain! And, by the way, we could also be fined for snow on the roof of our car, splashing a pedestrian as we drive through a puddle – my favourite pastime – or having a dirty number plate! Good old nanny state!)
Anyway, perhaps with one of the larger, new, fully equipped motor cycles one can relax a little but, half way between London and Dover, I decided that I would never drive a long way on a bike again. Tootling around my local community would be quite enough in the future and surely that was what they are ideally designed for? For a long journey, give me the comfort of a car every time.
I can hear hardened bikers everywhere, groaning. And speaking of which, as we sat there feeling proud of ourselves, a hardened motorcyclist joined the queue. He roared up behind us, on a 1250 cc BMW. He was German (surprise) and, as he dismounted and de-togged, I gave him a serious nod, biker to biker. He was nice enough to acknowledge us. He even came up and admired the scooter. We exchanged information about each other’s machines, man to man. Him in his all black leathers, me in my yellow, all-weather, boating, waterproof coat and blue jeans. He might have looked good, but I would be alright if the boat went down!
Nancy – He was very pleasant. He had been touring Britain on his own and was now heading back to Frankfurt. He obviously had none of the issues that Nick was having with motorcycles. Maybe he had learnt to relax!
However, it was then that I noticed a red sticker, on the front of our scooter, between Nick’s knees which said “WARNING”. I asked Nick what the notice was and he said he didn’t know because he never used his reading glasses when he was on the scooter. I leant over and read it out loud:
‘The speed in the first 300 miles should not exceed 25 miles an hour.’ I looked at Nick. We had been topping 50! So, as a hardened biker, what did he have to say, ‘Oh well, it’s a bit late now.’
Nick – It’s true. It was too late. There’s no point in crying over spilt milk. What could we have done anyway? Spent 12 hours the day before, cruising around London just to burn off 300 miles? Crawled our way across Europe at 25 miles an hour? I think not. It also said, ‘Always wear a helmet.’ I rest my case.
So, we went for breakfast in the port cafe and put it from our minds. We were hungry, but I don’t know why. We hadn’t done much.
Isn’t it amazing how travel makes you hungry? When Nancy and I set off on a journey anywhere, we get about half a mile down the road and simply have to eat all the sandwiches! What’s that about?
I chose a table in the café from where I could keep an eye on the scooter. Like any owner of a shiny, new object, I had to continually make sure no one was stealing it, even though the steering lock was on and the Port of Dover had to be one of the most secure places in the world.
As Nancy perused the automatic chocolate dispenser in the corner, I found an information leaflet. Did you know that, up until 1953, the Port of Dover had to lift cars, and even coaches, on and off the ferries by crane! How quaint is that! Now, apparently, it is the world’s busiest passenger ferry terminal in the world with around 12 million travellers a year. Perhaps you did know that?