Jupiters Travels: Four Years Around the World on a Triumph (3 page)

BOOK: Jupiters Travels: Four Years Around the World on a Triumph
7.8Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Fuel costs I estimated at £300, shipping costs at £500. It was 1973. Petrol in Europe cost around a dollar a gallon, and there were two dollars and forty cents to the pound. The war, which came to be called the Oil War, had just begun. Inflation was considered bad at five per cent. I could allow myself £2 a day, on average, for food and occasional accommodation, and consider that to be generous. 730 days at £2 comes to, say, £1,500. Grand total: £2,300, leaving £200 for troubles and treats. Crazy arithmetic, but the best I could do. How was I to know the world was about to change, not having been there yet?

The idea of travelling round the world had come to me one day in March that year, out of the blue. It came not as a vague thought or wish but as a fully formed conviction. The moment it struck me I knew it would be done and how I would do it. Why I thought immediately of a motor-

cycle I cannot say. I did not have a motorcycle, nor even a licence to ride one, yet it was obvious from the start that that was the way to go, and that I could solve the problems involved.

The worst problems were the silly ones, like finding a bike to take the driving test on. I resorted to shameless begging and deceit to borrow the small bike I needed. There was a particularly thrilling occasion when I turned up at the Yamaha factory on the outskirts of London to take a small 125 cc trail bike out 'on test'. I had my L-plates hidden in my pocket, but first I had to get out of the factory gates looking as though I knew how the gears worked. Those were the first, and some of the hardest yards I ever rode; now it can be told.

I failed my first driving test and I thought I might just as easily fail the second. Since that would not do at all, I obtained a fraudulent licence and was quite prepared to go off with that, but fortunately it turned out to be unnecessary, and my life of crime ended there.

I was lucky to get the support of the
Sunday Times,
and in particular its Editor, Harold Evans, and it was partly to acknowledge my good fortune that I chose to ride the Triumph rather than the BMW. The British motorcycle industry had crashed to its lowest point ever and I felt that a journey started in England and sponsored by a great British newspaper ought to be done on a British bike. The decision gave me some heartaches later on, but no real regrets. It always felt like the right thing to have done, which was all-important.

The bike was essentially the same Triumph that had been on the roads for decades; a simple, solid piece of engineering, difficult to break and easy to repair. It was a vertical twin, with pistons that moved up and down in unison and had a reputation for drilling the marrow out of the rider's bones, but I had low compression pistons that allowed me to run on low grade fuel and also flattened out the vibration. In fact it was a comfortable bike to ride. It was the 500 cc Tiger Hundred that had been used by the police. Its single carburettor was easier to tune and more economical than the twin carburettors of the Daytona. Good petrol gave me sixty-five miles to a gallon, so that even a standard three-gallon tank offered a range of nearly two hundred miles. It had high, wide handlebars so that I could sit up and take notice as I went, and good ground clearance to take me over rough going. And it was light as well as sturdy. Of all the bigger machines it was the lightest by thirty pounds or more, the equivalent of about three gallons of petrol.

We had planned all sorts of interesting modifications at the factory, a list as long as a sheet of foolscap, but when the time came to fetch it, I was lucky to get a machine at all. The workers had just decided to lock the management out, it was the end of the road for the old-style Triumph company, and I think my bike was the last one to leave the factory for a very long time. It was totally unmodified, and so hastily prepared that a pint of oil fell out of the chain-case on my way down the Ml from Coventry.

I
know Triumphs are supposed to leak oil, but this is ridiculous.

But it was nothing, a paper seal slipped in assembly, easily put right. You could stop the oil if you took the trouble. That was what British bikes liked, a bit of trouble. They thrived on attention, like certain people, and repaid you for it. Not a bad relationship to have.

We got on well together from the start. I thought of us as constituting a sort of space capsule that could travel at will, at least in two dimensions, unconstrained by the need for hotels, shops, restaurants, good roads, bottled water and sliced bread. I was aiming at self-sufficiency because I wanted to travel the way Livingstone did, or Columbus; as though anything could happen and all of it was unknown. It was going to be the journey of a lifetime, a journey that millions dream of and never make, and I wanted to do justice to all those dreams.

In spite of wars and tourism and pictures by satellite, the world is just the same size it ever was. It is awesome to think how much of it I will never see. It is no trick to go round the world these days, you can pay a lot of money and fly round it non-stop in less than forty-eight hours, but to know it, to smell it and feel it between your toes you have to crawl. There is no other way. Not flying, not floating. You have to stay on the ground and swallow the bugs as you go. Then the world is immense. The best you can do is trace your long, infinitesimally thin line through the dust and extrapolate. I drew the longest line I possibly could, that could still be seen as following a course.

Generally the great overland journeys follow the Asian land mass East until the traveller is at last forced to take to the water at Singapore. I chose a different way because I was powerfully attracted by the challenge of Africa, and in great awe of it too. If I could conquer Africa, I thought I would be able to face the rest of the world with confidence.

So I chose Africa, and logic prescribed the rest. Cape Town led naturally to Rio de Janeiro. A cruise ship sailed that route three times a year at very reasonable rates, and as an act of faith I booked my passage for 24 February 1974. From Rio a long loop of fifteen thousand miles round South America would bring me up the Pacific coast to California. Across the Pacific the picture was more confused. China was only interested in receiving coach parties, and South-East Asia was seething with the war in Vietnam, but there was Japan, Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. Coming home through India seemed absolutely right. That was a challenge I would be better prepared to meet after being loose in the world for a while.

Dutifully I collected information about Pacific fares and sailings, about

road conditions in the Andes, ferry services in Indonesia, the weather in Northern Australia, but it was all foolishness and at heart I think I knew it. When I spread the Michelin maps of Africa on the living room floor (and they must be the most beautiful road maps ever made), when I gazed down at the enormity of that continent, the physical variety and political complexity of it, and when I considered my complete ignorance of it, Cape Town seemed as distant as the moon.

What point, then, in worrying about the stars. It was enough to know they were there and that I was heading for them. I thought myself to be the most fortunate man alive to have the whole world almost literally within my grasp. There was no one on earth I would have changed places with.

Or so I thought - until that black night on the pavement of Gray's Inn Road, when I stood dripping rain water, sweat and despair, crushed by the unwieldiness of the monster I had created, and the enormity of the prospect I had invented for myself.

Only three yards away, behind the thick glass doors of the
Sunday Times
lobby, was the bright and comfortable world that suited most people well enough. I could see the commissionaire, smoothly uniformed behind his desk, looking forward to a pint of beer and an evening with the telly. People in sensible light-weight suits, with interesting jobs and homes to go to, flaunted their security at me and I felt my gut scream at me to strip off this ridiculous outfit and rush back into that light and the familiar interdependence. It struck me very forcefully that if I went on with this folly I
would
forever after be the man outside in the gutter looking in. For a moment I was lost beyond hope, utterly defeated.

Then I turned away from all that, somehow fumbled my packages away, got on the bike and set off in the general direction of the English Channel. Within minutes the great void inside me was filled by a rush of exultation, and in my solitary madness I started to sing.

All the way I was saying goodbye.

Goodbye to parents and friends, goodbye to London. Goodbye to Snodland on the Canterbury road, always good for a laugh. Goodbye to the lambs and oasthouses and orchards of Kent. Goodbye to Friday night piss-ups and Saturday football and Sunday roasts.

In Dover I bought a big blue and white golfing umbrella for £4. How can I explain such craziness? It fitted neatly alongside the bike.

Goodbye to the White Cliffs, to Boulogne and the
sugar beet
of Picardie, to Grandvilliers ('Son Parking, Sa Zone Industrielle') to the
saucisson
of Beauvais and the Paris Peripherique, all intimately known to me for a decade or more.

In Orleans I slept in a hotel and basked in the admiration of a garage proprietor. 'I owned many English motorcycles, AJS, Norton, Matchless,

Sunbeam. I wanted to make a journey like yours, but . . .' He shrugged. 'All this Japanese rubbish they make nowadays.' Not true, but I appreciated the sentiment, so goodbye to him too, and to the fog over the tree-lined avenues and the high passes and the fairy citadel of St. Flour, all so familiar but all seen with fresh wonder because of where I am going, because of knowing that maybe, possibly, I might not quite make it back here again.

And the swoop down into Millau where I just, and only just, miss being killed. With my lungs full of adrenalin I shout 'Madman! Assassin!' at the blind commuter who overtook me in his liver-coloured Simca and pushed | me off the road against a stone wall. I squeezed past on the dirt, very shaken. How can I possibly anticipate such insanity? Yet I must, somehow, to survive. I
will
survive. Remember, then, that outside cities, towards evening, when the light is failing, people are driving home in a hurry, tired and bored by their work. And you will be going the other way, also tired. So
at the end of the day, when you're anxious to go quick, SLOW DOWN.

Lodeve. A Last Night in my house. How can I bear to leave something so beautiful? The contradiction is too painful, and the pain makes me anxious to be gone.

There are other goodbyes too delicate and too fraught with emotion to be written about in passing, for I have lived a while. On my way down through Europe I learn the value of the love I am abandoning. At times I experience a degree of misery and lovelessness I have not known since adolescence. I wonder whether I will have the capacity ever to bear such pain again. It occurs to me that that may be the condition for perpetual youth.

Goodbye to my unfinished dream, to the toasted vineyards of the Herault, to Montpellier, Nimes and Aix-en-Provence.

In Nice I have a friend who manages a 'Grand Hotel' on the Boulevard des Anglais, called 'The Westminster', slightly faded since its Edwardian heyday when expeditions like mine were undertaken by gentlemen. It strikes me as a suitable place from which to say a Last Goodbye, and the 'departing explorer' poses for a picture by the potted palm outside the revolving door. We hoped to line the hotel staff up outside, but the union won't allow it. So off to Monaco and the Italian frontier, Goodbye to France, and . . .
Shit! I've left my passport at the hotel.
The departing explorer returns red-faced to depart once more. Dramatic farewells, it seems, are not for me.

Enough of this messing about,
I tell myself.
It's time to take the journey seriously. For one thing, no more hotels. Tonight you sleep out and save money.

Monaco, Genoa, La Spezia and, as night falls, Florence. I pick up a Camping sign and follow it to Fiesole where I am ambushed by an English
couple in a small restaurant who tell me to look up their relatives in Sierra Leone. If only I were going there.

It is late. The Camping sign leads up a very narrow steep hill, with a gate at the top. The gate is locked; the camp site deserted. The slope is too steep and the bike is too heavy. I can't turn it round. It falls over and I am too weak to move it. Disgusted with myself, I unpack it, pick it up, turn it round, re-pack it. Rain begins to fall. I
will not
go to a hotel. At the bottom of the hill is a small parking place. I put the bike up on the centre stand, put up my umbrella, and go to sleep in the saddle, lying forward on the tank bag. I am amazed how easy it is, how little I care what others may think, how little sleep I need. I am riding high on energy, like a surfer on a big wave.

To Rome on the autostrada, but the tolls are too high, and I get off it to go south through Latina and Terracina. Just before Naples, in the dark, I find a camp site that's open. During the last hours on the bike, my mood plunged to despair, but the work of unpacking and cooking keeps misery at bay, and a bottle of wine washes it away.

To Naples and Salerno, and now the autostrada is free. It rides the bumps down the spine of Italy, a wonder of engineering, always either tunnelling or soaring across great airy chasms. The weather is wonderful too, hot sun, crisp clean air. On the empty highway I begin to feel the rhythm of a long, uninterrupted ride. In most of Europe this is impossible, life is so dense, intricate, a million parishes joined up higgledy-piggledy and every patch intimately known to somebody for hundreds, sometimes thousands of years. I feel I am already leaving Europe. I can feel Africa there, so vast I am already within its aura.

BOOK: Jupiters Travels: Four Years Around the World on a Triumph
7.8Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

A Fatal Fleece by Sally Goldenbaum
Times and Seasons by Beverly LaHaye
Two Evils by Moore, Christina
Lizard World by Terry Richard Bazes
Mojave Crossing (1964) by L'amour, Louis - Sackett's 11
Mia Dolce by Cerise DeLand
Atonement by J. H. Cardwell
Collide by Melissa Toppen