The Scottish bit

The Scottish part of the trip is now complete. For most of the time I was accompanied by Tim, an old university friend and roommate from the 1970s. My DR650SE is no match for Tim’s newly acquired Pan European (1993 reg, in immaculate condition.) but it is still be a nippy beast when needed. It does have some quirks and peculiarities, though. The side-stand is ridiculously long for the bike. I’ve had an inch and a quarter taken off it and it still makes the bike unstable if it is leaning into even a very moderate up-slope. The problem is even more acute now that the rear shock is weighted down with full panniers. I'm also told that the screws on the neutral sensing unit under the clutch casing apparently have a habit of working their way loose and disappearing into the engine, and the upper chain roller is known to break off after a time, taking part of the frame with it. More personal to my own bike is its disinclination to change once it has been running in one gear for a while. It has to be forcibly persuaded.

17 March: A fast and chilly motorway ride (M5/M6/M74/M8/A82) from Malvern up to Tyndrum, north of Loch Lomond. The A82 from Glasgow to Tyndrum is always a lot of fun, especially the twisty northern section, where it becomes jammed in between vertical cliffs on one side and the shores of Loch Lomond on the other. I discovered today that I eat about three times as much food as Tim and need more frequent food breaks. Tim is discovering that I also take about three times as long as anyone else to do anything. (I’ve never understood why this is. I'm really quite impatient and don't dawdle over things.) He is handling this realisation with patience and good grace. Apart from Tim and me, there was only one other person staying at the hostel in Tyndrum this evening. Her name is Tasmin, and she has driven over from Aberdeen for a day’s climbing. Both Tim and Tasmin are musicians and just happened to have woodwind instruments tucked away in their packs, so an short Celtic-flavoured jam session enlivened the hostel dining room this evening.

18 March. Another day of riding. From Tyndrun we headed north for Rannoch Moor and Glen Coe. We’d made such good progress yesterday that beyond Glen Coe we had time to take a scenic detour round the Moidart peninsular via the ferry. The road round Moidart soon turns into a bumpy, twisty single-track affair that had it not been for the glorious scenery would have felt like a fairground ride. I’m sure there are some ugly places in Scotland, but if so I have yet to find them. We had lunch in Fort William before heading up the Great Glen to Inverness and then on to a campsite at Dornoch. By mid-afternoon it became clear that my expensive brand new camera had stopped working – so no pics then. Similarly it became clear that the fan on Tim’s Pan was kaput when the bike overheated in rush hour traffic in Inverness. Tim worried discretely about it for a while and then got on with the ride. I fumed all the way up to Dornoch about my camera. We got separated in Inverness, with me doing most of the fretting on this occasion, but managing to give the impression that I was taking it all in my stride. We met up again on the outskirts of Dornoch where we hoped to find a campsite. Dornoch, which looks on the map like a small and not very significant town, surprised us with the remains of a medieval city centre, complete with castle and tiny cathedral. More immediately practical were a welcoming pub and a Chinese chippy.

19 March. We packed up the tents early and set off up the A9/A99 coastal route to Gilles and the ferry to the Orkneys. We breakfasted comfortably in a chintzy café in Wick. On the way to Gilles we passed through John o’Groats which has always seemed less like a town to me than a large field with a few houses half-heartedly scatted about within it. The ferry pulled into St Margaret Hope in South Ronalsay. The island guards the southern entrance to Scappa Flow home of the British naval fleet in times of conflict, and its southern shoes are spattered with gun emplacements and other wartime constructions. South Ronalsay is connected to the main Orkney island of Mainland via three ‘Churchill Barriers’, causeways which serve to block seaborne access to Scappa Flow from the east but which also carry the road between a string of islets. On either side of the barriers, the remains of rusting hulks poked out from, the water. We rode to the capital, Kirkwall, found a supermarket, an information bureau and a hostel on the edge of town.

20 March. We got up early and rode to the Ring of Brognar to watch the eclipse. The ring is a dramatic Neolithic stone circle on a narrow spit of land between two lochs, one fresh, one saline. About seventy people had already gathered there waiting for the big moment, and were sharing eclipse-watching tinted glasses and home-made biscuits. Tim was expecting to find a bunch of ‘hippies’ and travellers, but for the most part they turned out to be Orkney folk, who were making a morning of it with dogs, hampers, cameras and a lot of bustle. Half the people there seemed to be civil servants. (If you aren’t a farmer, a craft worker or a shop keeper in the Orkneys, then it’s likely that you will work for the government.)

Far from obscuring the eclipse, the thin layer of cloud scudding across Orkney skies (and they are vast), eliminated some of the harshness of the sun’s light and made the event easier to watch. By wearing my lid and watching through my tinted visor any remaining glare was removed and gave me a ringside view. As the moon ate away at the sun, the air became colder and the day darkened, though not as much as I had expected. I was astonished that the sun’s penumbral energy is so great that even a 98% eclipse can do no more than dim the daylight. My one disappointment was that in an island full of sheep there were none nearby. I’d been told during an eclipse they lie down and go to sleep. The small child in me really, really wanted to see that.

Later that morning we rode up to the west coast of Mainland on a road that was almost lost among the island’s pale green rolling hillsides. It wasn’t an entirely pleasant ride. On an island with no trees, the Orkney blustery winds can do some interesting things to a motorcycle’s line of travel. We’d come to see the Neolithic village of Scarra Bray, which is billed in the tourist brochures as the best preserved site of its kind in Europe. And it was seriously impressive. As the wind continued to thrash around us, one of the wardens, wrapped up from head to toe in an enormous black windcheater so that only her eyes peeped out, gave us an extended history and explanation of the site. Like other native Orcadians we met, her speech was slow and soft but with an attractive lightness. I can see why so many people fall in love with these islands.

A new brewery miles from anywhere and keen to attract the tourists provided us with a restaurant lunch – one of the best meals I’ve had in a long time. The bread was wonderful, light, fluffy and melt in the mouth. Orcadians certainly know how to keep you happy and sell you stuff. From there we continued our Neolithic ramble, stopping off at the Stenness stones and getting an eccentric guided tour of Maeshowe, one of the best preserved neolithic burial chambers in the area.

The guide books are keen to point out that the Orkneys have a mild climate. Most of the Atlantic depressions that affect Scotland and the rest of the UK miss the islands, so the summers are warm for their latitudes and the winters are brief. If snow does fall, it doesn’t linger. The two most noticeable features are the winds and the skies. The winds are inescapable and the skies appear to have been stretched out in all directions. They are vast. From an Orcadian’s perspective the world must look very horizontal. We rode back into Kirkwall and spent a while in the city’s Norse cathedral, getting an impromptu guided tour who was clearly in love with the place and wanted to show us its carvings of Green Men and its Sheila na gig. After dark we rode out to Deerness, a peninsular on the eastern side of Mainland, where we were told we would find the only campsite open at this time of year. It turned out not to be a campsite but a big lawn behind the Deerness Community Centre, which welcomed campers. After parents had picked up their children from an evening event, the cheery warden showed us round the centre and gave us the keys – just in case we wanted to let ourselves in to make a cup of tea. ‘Just hang the keys behind the door and close it when you leave in the morning’, she said. How often do you find such trust!

21 March: We rode back from Deerness to the ferry, along country roads, stopping off to look at the ‘Italian Chapel’ on Lambs Holm, one of the small islands between the Churchill barriers. The Italian Chapel was originally a Nissan Hut, converted into a place of worship, and decorated by Italian prisoners of war held here in the 1940s. It was a bizarre place: very Catholic; very Italian, (very kitsch - somewhat between a strawberry flan and the Sistine Chapel) and completely out of place among the islands’ bare and washed-out, protestant hillsides. After the ferry crossing we rode down the A9 to Inverness and then on to Fort William where we stayed the night at The Wild Geese, yet another hostel, which offered the most luxurious and comfortable bath of the trip.

22 March: From Fort William, We rode down to Glasgow and then on to Edinburgh. I’ve never been to either city before. Glasgow impressed, but Edinburgh grabbed me and wouldn’t let go. We didn’t have time that afternoon for anything other than a quick look round. We wandered up Princes Street in the New Town and down the Royal Mile in the old one, and then spent the rest of our time in the Scottish Art Gallery. On the way out of the city we parted company. Tim was on his way to stay with some friends and I was heading for a campsite at Musselborough. The parting was an unceremonious affair. I caught sight of my turning and veered off while Time rode straight ahead. I’m not sure he even sore my going. ('Sore'?! I think I must have been thinking of my bum when I wrote that.) I don’t like staying at holiday parks as a rule but the site at Musselborough was an exception. There were a few occupied campervans or mobile homes, but I was the only camper there with a tent. The warden conducted me into a small walled enclosure, full of daffodils and inhabited by birds and rabbits. The wall was tall and ancient, looking, built from deep red sandstone. I woke up the next morning to the sound of a woodpecker in a nearby tree.

23 March: I wasn’t yet ready to say goodbye to Edinburgh, so caught a bus back into the city from a bus stop just outside the campssite – and then did all the tourist things: I admired the castle on its basalt plug; walked up and down the Royal Mile; visited Charlotte Square; got a certificate for climbing to the top of the Scott Memorial; did a walking tour of the old city; looked in St Giles cathedral; went to Greyfriars cemetery and rubbed the nose of Greyfriars bobby; visited statues of David Hume and Adam Smith; pored over exhibits in the spectacularly interesting museum of Scotland; and yes, I even had a cup of tea in the café where JK Rowling wrote the first volume of Harry Potter. What a city! It’s as monumental as Vienna, but with a happy, human face – there is little that is pompous and overbearing about it. I was told that Glaswegians say it’s all fur and no knickers. And that may be so, or maybe not, but I loved it. It’s the most beautiful city I’ve ever visited.

24 March:I woke up early, intending to ride back down to Hertfordshire in one go. I didn’t get going though till after 11.00, partly because I woke up feeling groggy and not really ready for the day and partly because the café in Musselborough where I had breakfast took nearly forty minutes to cook my scrambled eggs. I didn’t mind though, I was happy just to sit at the table and watch the world go by, or read the joke book that they left on each of the tables. (Maybe waiting 40 minutes for scrambled eggs is a common occurrence.) I couldn’t help thinking that Musselborough sounds like something out of James Joyce or JK Rowling, but I couldn’t make my mind up which.)

The ride home was cold and wet and occasionally miserable. Throughout the morning and early afternoon, it rained or hailed and the wind blew and blew. On this occasion the wild and beautiful hillsides of the Scottish Lowlands failed to work their magic for me. On reaching the border, the weather changed dramatically and almost instantly: rain and grey cloud yielded to bright skies and skimpy sunshine. But it didn’t make much difference. I was still cold, and the traffic volume rapidly quadrupled, demanding my full attention. I had my only real panic of the trip at a service station on the M6 in Cumbria. It was miles from anywhere. I’d stopped to get fuel and something to eat only to discover that my debit card had stopped working. I tried to ring my bank from the public phone. (I had, of course, forgotten to take my new mobile.) The phone, however, failed to put me through and ate up the last of my spare cash. Eventually, one of the staff in the restaurant leant me his mobile so that I could ring the bank and get it the problem sorted.

The rest of the ride home remained cold and windy, growing chillier as the day wore on and the sun went down. I lost count of the number of times I had to stop off, and the number of cups of tea I drank at service stations to try to keep warm. I got home just after 11.00 pm, feeling a bedraggled and exhausted but far to wired to go to bed, and ready for more. Much, much more.

Health Hazards? I’ve been investigating the health risks of travelling in Central Asia, and here is my conclusion: I am definitely going to die. The opportunities in this region to be slain by any one of a million bugs, parasites, animals and people are generous by any standards. The bugs all have strangely effervescent names, and promise an array of  excruciating and frankly disgusting symptoms to carry me to my end. Many of these bugs, the web informs me, I am likely contract through an intimate exchange of bodily fluids with a stranger. (I had no idea that Central Asia would be so exciting.) As a result I have spent the afternoon composing my final words.  They will be delivered, I conceive, in the crisp mountain air, while the shadow of a mighty snow-capped peak slants across the grassy slopes towards us in the setting sun. They will be heard by a lusty maiden (if I'm lucky) or more probably by a wrinkly stranger with twinkly eyes and high Asiatic cheekbones. I couldn’t have imagined a more romantic way to meet my end if I had thought of it myself.

A new Journey? After months of feeling like rubbish and dithering around, I've begun seriously thinking about my trip. The plan, such as it is at present, is to ride from the UK down through some of the remoter parts of Europe and on into Turkey, where I know some people and may stop over to do a little bit of walking on one of the long-distance trails. The start date will be the end of this coming March. If, when I get to Turkey, I'm not heaving up my guts by the side of the road (I have dietary issues) and I still have energy for the ride, I want to go on to South-East Asia. Which route I take will depend on the local bureaucracies and where the bullets are flying. The southern, most common route through Iran and Pakistan has recently become problematic. Between them, the Iranian government and the RAC (which issues vehicle carnets for the UK) have just introduced rules that will make Iran difficult and expensive to travel through - legally at any rate. Travelling through the Stans can be a bureacratic nightmare. China is out of the question for solo riders without bottomless financial reserves and endless patience. The only straightforward route I can see is through southern Russia, with a possible diversion into Mongolia and a trip up Lake Baikal. I'd like to see some of the steppe, but I don't want to follow it all the way: the route to the south is more interesting and varied. So, all things considered, I'm presently investigating a route through the Stans, stopping off at Bukhara, Samarkand and Tashkent. The biggest problem will be getting into Turkmenistan which used to insist on your hiring a minder while in the country. Whether that is still the case or not, I will need to check. I'm told that regulations of this kind change all the time in this part of the world. There is really no way to avoid Turkmenistan on this route, though, as it is the destination of the only ferry across the Caspian. In any case I'd like to see the capital, Ashgabat. I bought the bike for the trip a couple of months ago, a new, 2014 Suzuki single-cylinder DR650SE. I have now run it in and have taken it on a couple of hundred-mile trips within the UK. It's fun to ride and by all accounts, bomb proof. I'm now finally arranging to get it kitted out to do the job (rack and panniers, bash plate, engine guards, decent screen, 25-litre tank, sub-frame reinforcements, that kind of thing). For this, I was recommended to Zen Overland, a small privately owned company based just outside Wells in Somerset, and so far they have been both friendly and very helpful. I've also started to get my head round visas and a huge pile of travel issues, like how to avoid American drones, local gunfire, bandits, lurgi, border 'guards', swamps, etc. (Just being dramatic here to see how it sounds.) Once I've crossed the Caspian, the aim is to follow one of the the 'silk road' routes and head for the Pamir Highway. The highway winds its way through Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and into Kyrgyzstan. (I might just miss out the Afghan section, though word has it that there has been no fighting in this north-eastern corner of the country for some time.) That's something I need to check (very carefully!). The highway ends at the town of Osh (founded by Alexander the Great 3,000 years ago and inhabited continuously since). I've dreamed about visiting Osh ever since I was 9 when I was told to draw a picture of Alexander riding up the main street for history homework. (And a damn good picture it was too, as I recall.) I'm investigating the highway a little at a time so as not to scare myself silly. (See below.) The highway is also known as the M41. (Umm.) http://upload.wikimedia.org/…/3/36/Transport-dush-khorog.jpg

A few more pictures from India. The first four were taken on Palolem beach, Goa. Fancy a super-cool, super laid-back holiday in a beach hut that looks like it has been made out of packing cases, and where every night is party night? Then Palolem Beach is where you need to be headed. The rest of the pics were taken at various places as I rode southwards through the Western Ghat mountains.




OK. These are prawns?


Looking across to my beach hut.


Ah, yes. The dogs! Feral dogs are everywhere in India. A large number of them live on Palolem Beach. They fight and play and bark and yowl there all night long. I love dogs, but I also like my sleep. If you are a more dedicated party animal than I am, you might not notice them.


Just a common or garden family outing in India.


For hundreds of miles down the western coast the landscape consisted of red sand, red dust and red mud.








This is a common enough sight on Indian roads. In the background is a plantation of rubber trees.






Well, I said I was sloppy about dogs. One night, I went for a midnight stroll round the city of Mysore and came across this mother feeding her litter of pups in the deserted streets.


Every Sunday evening at nightfall, three-quarter of a million lightbulbs ping suddenly into life, illuminating the centre of Mysore and transforming the palace of its resident Maharaja from earthbound edifice into a fairground of glittering... well, er, lightbulbs.

The palace was built by the British at the turn of the last century in return for the Maharaja's political support. A hefty bribe, you might call it. Not that it had any lasting effect. For, like his colonial overlords, the Maharaja is long gone and his palace walks now teem, not with peacocks, British diplomats, royal flunkies and members of the visiting elite, but with thousands of tourists carrying digital cameras and slurping on ice creams. Powers crumble, regimes rise and fall, riches and poverty persist, and the world staggers on.

Lighting the palace puts such a strain on the local power supply that part of the city is plunged into darkness every time someone throws the switch to begin the show.


It's a cliche to say that India is a land of contrasts but cliches get to be cliches because they are true. Those contrasts are nowhere more obvious than in the faces of the people. Some of those faces glow with an unmistakable aura of wealth and wellbeing. Others are darkened and shaded by a life of poverty.

Historically, India has always had a fabulously wealthy 'aristocracy'. More recently it has given birth to a super-confident 'middle class' of up-and-coming businessmen. I met this trio of kids at an India Day/Hindu festival. Affluence and confidence drip from their every pore.


Here is another group I met on the road, not quite so obviously well-to-do but clearly not from a family ground down by a life of toil. The look of calculation on their faces is real. There are a lot of tourists coming through here today and they want to be in the game if there are some major freebies on offer.


By contrast, here are a couple of lads from the tiny village of Sanyasipura which clings like an accident to the side of the main road. Faces like this haunt you all over India.


This small boy posed uncertainly for my camera before melting back into the holiday crowd. He has a particularly European looking face, I thought. A 'gift' of the British Raj, perhaps? In many parts of India you find a complex mix of racial features, European and African among them.


These two blokes live and work all year round on the mountainsides mending roads. Throttle your bike out of any corner up in these hills and you may have to swerve to avoid road-menders like these who squat perilously in the middle of the highway filling the pot holes with carefully broken and graded stones - no warning signs, no barriers, no protection from oncoming traffic, just a common fatalism or belief in the next driver's capacity to miss them.


I happened on this old chap while he was preparing for a funeral. He seemed unperturbed by the circumstances or by my arrival on the scene and was just as curious as anyone else I met to know things about me.

"Hello! What is your good name?" "What is your country?" "Do you like Karnataka/Goa/Kerala? (Never 'India' which seems to be a foreign concept here.)". Accompanied by an ineffably Indian waggle of the head, these are the questions you will get asked everywhere. The old chap wanted to know if I was married and whether I had children. What might you find if you could read behind face like this? He reminded me that my four-week experience of Indian culture was little more than a quick pyrotechnic blur.


And this... is Mr Selveraj, the most charismatic and cheerful conman I have ever had the pleasure of being skinned by. He was not just personally interested in unburdening me of a wholly excessive number of rupees (why would one person want so many?) but used all his skill to make sure I benefitted his fellow 'traders' as well. If I hadn't steeled myself against his charm I would have bought his entire stock of beads, and everything else in town, too.

Just in case I needed to get rid of any additional cash when I got back home, Mr Selveraj gave me his address and advised me that notes of any denomination were quite acceptable.


Indians have a unique way with the English language. An eighteenth-century floweryness and a delight in formal manners combine to produce an unmistakably Indian form of expression: naive and knowing at the same time.

Indian English is as idiosyncratic as the culture. There is no guessing for example what a 'military hotel' might be. It turns out that a 'military hotel' is not any kind of hotel but a non-vegetarian restaurant. The Rapsy is a 'military hotel.' I stopped off, and ordered a chicken dish of some kind which was... interesting. ("Chicken" is a very loosely defined term in Indian cuisine, and should not always be taken to imply that its owner ever possessed feathers.)


Indians are famous for their skill in mathematics.


Down in steamy hot Kerala, palm leaves are the building materials of choice and are not necessarily signs of poverty.


Need a builder's merchant's to pick up a few DIY materials? In this part of the world a European might be forgiven for not recognising one when he saw it.

Subject: motorcycles and travel

In recent years, I've found a new aim in life: to do as little work as possible and spend as much of my time as I can on two wheels. Work pays the bills, occasionally provides a focus of interest and occupies time, but not a lot else. On the road I have the leisure and the freedom to think. There are people to meet, mountains to see, experiences to be had. Something unexpected is always on hand to bust wide open the comfortable nest of assumptions I carry around in my head. On the road, I can begin to breathe.

I don't do as much travelling as I would like. But in the last couple of years I've had several great trips. To start off the blog, here are a few pics.

The SV1000S in Donegal, Ireland, 2007. Dodging the rain in Donegal is as natural as breathing, but the land is wild and beautiful (and wet). In 2007, I rode over to Ireland from Hertfordshire, taking the Holyhead to Dun Laoghaire ferry. From Dublin, I travelled slowly north-west across the country on minor roads, visiting family on the way. I'm as English as toast and marmalade, but my mother was Irish and, as chance would have it, my son-in-law, foster daughter and some of my grandkids are too. My feelings for the country are mixed. Ireland always strikes me as beautiful, poor, and lonely. It has a downbeat feel to it, full of struggle. Like its people, it is wiry, unsparing and tough as old boots. Maybe my feelings about Ireland reflect my feelings about my extended family, but I can't help that.

Enfield 500cc Bullet in the Himalayan foothills, 2008. Just a little further up this road a cow fell out of the sky and smashed into the tarmac in front of me. It must have stumbled from the cliffs above. The look of surprise on its dead face is burned forever into my memory. Two minutes later it was surrounded by vultures hopping about and preparing for dinner.

There are two distinct views about motorcycling in India. One is that it is a suicidal occupation and only the deranged would attempt it. Indian drivers are gifted with superabundant confidence and no foresight. Suicidal manouvres like triple overtakes on blind corners are not just common but normal. On Indian roads there is no rule (none!) that may not be broken, and there is only one principle that everyone accepts: size matters. Trucks have right of way over elephants, elephants over cars - and cars over bikes. Motorcyclists are the lowest of the low. On Indian roads you do what you like, when and where you like, and it is the job of everyone else to miss you. A lack of skill in these matters is not forgivable.

The alternative view, and the one I have come to share, is that riding in India is a real hoot! Pure exhiliration! Every moment of your ride, you must negotiate with other traffic to find your way ahead. It's a dance in which you must not only expect anything to happen, but you must also accept everything you find. I only fully came to understand this when, about a week into my trip, I saw a youngster riding towards me with what was, to all intents and purposes, a telegraph pole balanced precariously across the well of his scooter. He rode matter of factly without regard to other traffic and other traffic matter-of-factly ran off the road and onto its dusty margins to let him past.

When in India, ride as the Indians ride. If you don't, you will soon find yourself in trouble. Obeying the Indian highway code can be fatal.

Like the traffic, and like everything else about this country, the roads themselves are unpredectable. One moment, you can be riding on good (well, relatively good) tarmac, the next you can find yourself on loose gravel or soft sand. And that sudden change can happen at any time - when you are on a bike leaned over into a corner, for instance. Ouch!

One thing, above all, symbolises the attiude of Indian drivers for me (and the nature of the culture in general.) Before setting foot on the sub-continent I was warned that trucks do not have rear lights. This, I discovered, was untrue: truck drivers are very particular about their rear lights: They paint them on with great care.


Enfield 350cc Bullet in the Palani Hills of Southern India, 2007.

For mile upon mile the road snaked its way upwards from the plain to Kodaicanal, an American concessionary town at the time of the British Raj, set high into the Southern Ghats. Looking down from the flanks of the hills into central India, you can see the Deccan plain fade gradually into the distant heat haze. The Deccan is vast and astonishing, the last, levelled remnant of a gigantic volcanic event that some argue was responsible for the disappearance of the dinosaurs.

The 350cc Bullet is a great bike for riding in India but it's a plank. The cushion duck-taped onto the saddle proved only a temporary cure for the creeping numbness of monkey butt.



I bought the cushion late one evening from a street vendor in Shimoga, a city rarely visited by tourists. I found her standing on a street corner, a slight, vulnerable figure among all the traffic. She had the most radiant and fragile of smiles. Her wares she carried about with her in a huge bundle which she balanced on her head.

While we were bargaining over the cushion, a small man appeared out of nowhere and attached himself to me like a limpet. He spoke rapidly in Hindi. Someone translated. He was - apparently - telling me that he was my guide for the evening, He was also it seems offering me one of his daughters. Under exactly what terms I never found out.
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The Daytona 955i on an idyllic day in the French Pyrennees, 2008. The roads here are custom made for motorcyclists. The mountains are green and expansive. The land raises the spirits and the sun is liquid enjoyment. Warm? Comforting? Seductive? Would anyone ever want to return to the cold embrace of an English climate after this? It can also rain, of course. Hard!

The SV1000S in Donegal again. This time in 2009. Up in the very north-west of the country, the landscape is raw and bold. its rawness gnaws at your innards sometimes, but it's never bleak like some English uplands.

SV1000S in Scotland, 2006.

When I said I was going to ride round the coast of Scotland in November the stormcrows flocked around me, cawing and flapping and telling me I was mad. I would get soaked to the skin they said. I would have a miserable time. Well, they were right: I did get a soaking - on a couple of occasions. But I also got something else - ten days without sight of midges, tourists, or traffic.

In November, the Highlands are beautiful. Woodlands sweep over the hillsides clad in their autumn shades of cream and emerald. Leaves glitter like metallic gold, or glow quietly among the greens. The land is mauve and ochre, yellow and tawny red. Rocks are sandy or flash a brilliant cobalt blue at you as you pass by. Sky, clouds, mist and moorland dissolve into the milky surfaces of the lochs.

One broad valley put me into what I can only describe as a state of shock. The vegetation roared with the colour and intensity of burnished copper. I stopped the bike close to a parked car, one of the very few I had seen that day. Beside it, a Norwegian woman was running up and down, her hands covering her mouth, exclaiming, 'Oh, my god, oh my god.' I could only stare and share her feelings. I have never seen anything so extraordinary, beautiful or dramatic in all my life.

OK, it rains in Scotland in November, but that's only because it rains even in paradise.

My name is Richard. In blogs I use my childhood nickname: Hud (old English short-form for Rich-hud, I guess). I live in the UK in North Hertfordshire.

My life is a messy amalgam of: motorcycles (goes with eating and breathing); walking and camping (real life); mountains (alternative to religion); fiction (escapism); travel books (dreaming and planning); writing (self-torture); posting on the web (ego satisfaction); friends (friends); socialist politics (keeping my adrenalin levels up); anthropology (keeping my adrenalin levels up) classical music (anchoring my sanity); rockabilly (setting it free again); and wondering where I belong in all this. This blog will be a messy amalgam of the same.

I'm in my late 60s and beginning to find some interesting ways of making up for a well-spent youth.

What do I believe in? That's a question. Certainty makes me gobby at times. Doubt makes me squishy at the knees. Somewhere, between the two, there must be a rock to stand on?

Maybe not.

Certainties [on a 1-10 scale]: I'm an atheist [10/10]; a socialist [9/10]; and a believer in the proposition that motorcycling is good for you [9/10]. I believe in the importance of human life [10/10] but am convinced that doctors are seriously bad for your health [8/10]. I also believe it is entirely OK to be mushy and sentimental about dogs [8/10].

Doubts: Lots - except where the existence, opinions and career of 'god' are concerned. The nuns at school tried very hard, but the deity never made much sense to me, even as a kid. Most of my beliefs trouble me with doubts, but the non-existence of 'god' isn't one of these.