Walking the Apocalypse

Walking from Wellbury to Pirton

 The lane running down to Wellbury.  The world is full of pastel shades here.

Oilseed rape field beside the lane at Wellbury.  Thirty years ago when rape began to appear in English fields, its bright yellow flowers were considered an eyesore. Now they are a familiar and colourful part of the landscape.

 

Cottage at Wellbury

On the field path to Little Offley 

Looking back towards Wellbury from Little Offley. Saddle Plantation on the right.  I saw two hares here, scuttling away when I turned the corner of  saddle plantation.  It pleased me to know that they have not all been killed off by myxomatosis. 

                                                  Shrubbery at Little Offley House

The back of Little Offley House

Gardens at Little Offley House

Emerging from The Baulk, a small spinney, onto Telegraph Hill, the highest point of Lilley Hoo.  Telegraph Hill is so named because during the Napoleonic Wars it was the site of a signalling station, one of a line that ran across East Anglia and Hertfordshire  from the newly established naval port at Great Yarmouth down to the Admiralty in London.  With the use of improved telescopes and a system of signalling boards, messages could be relayed from station to station to warn of an invasion. The station immediately to the north of Telegraph Hill was at Baldock (possibly located on the top of St Mary's church tower.)  The military personnel on Telegraph Hill would intercept the message from Baldock and relay it on to the next station on Dunstable Downs. From there it would continue on its way south to London.  (Thanks Keith for doing the research on that.)

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The Icknield Way at Telegraph Hill.  The origins of the Icknield Way have been disputed, but it is generally regarded as England's oldest road, in use centuries and perhaps millennia before the arrival of the Romans. Some argue that it was a neolithic trading route that ran along the tops of the chalk hills from the Western counties and up into East Anglia, avoiding the marshier land in the valleys below.  At this point the lane forms the county boundary between Hertfordshire (to the right) and Bedfordshire (to the left)

                               Looking back towards the fields at Wellbury from Telelgraph Hill

Looking along the chalk ridge towards Deacon Hill.  A smoothly curving wold valley, characteristic of this chalky landscape lies to the left

 

The other cow's grass is always greener at Telegraph Hill

 

Telegraph Hill is one of the last peaks on the chalk ridge of the Chilterns.  Some three miles to the east, the ridge dips down under an area of surface glacial deposits, before rising again a few miles further east as the grandly named East Anglian Heights.  this dip is occupied is known as the Hitchin Gap, and is occupied by the town of Hitchin.  The chalky heights then curve northwards through Suffolk, Norfolk and Lincolnshire, and finally terminate in the East Yorkshire wolds. To the west of Telegraph Hill, the chalk ridge of the Chilterns runs on down through Hampshire and Wiltshire where it finally spreads out into the expanse of Salisbury Plain.  Chalk is relatively rare in the world.  Most of it lies here in the South of England.  I've lived in various places in the UK, but apart from three years living in Manchester, I've lived all my life at some point or other on this same chalk ridge.  I feel a kind of special kinship with it.  The photograph looks north out across the Bedfordshire plain, an area of intensely cultivated lowlands mostly composed of gault clays.

  Following the track down to Pegsdon.  This tree at Noon Hill  turns into a blaze of fiery light in the right kind of sunset.  Not today unfortunately.    A gracefully curving wold valley lies to the right.

                                           The Chiltern chalklands near Tingley Wood

Sunset near Pegsdon

The chalklands near Wood Lane.  The 'soil' here is little more than soft crumbled chalk.

Sunset, looking across the meadows from Wood Lane

Cowslips in the chalklands between Pegsdon and Pirton. I have a complicated relationship with cowslips. They used to grow on a grassy bank at a point where I caught the school bus into Hitchin every morning. I hated school.

Wood Lane by twilight, with the lights of home in the distance.  Still a long way to go.

Walking the Apocalypse.

Still building this post.  Bear with me.  Should be ready in a day or so.

Walking the Apocalypse

Coping with Covid-19

 I count myself lucky, these days,  to live in a small market town with direct access to the countryside where I can walk for hours every day if I wish and never see another soul. With the coming of the Coronavirus and the lockdown in the UK, I began taking regular walks, exploring the local footpaths and trails. At the beginning of April I posted an account of one of these walks on facebook and was surprised by the amount of positive feedback I received, so I did another, and then a third. People started sending requests for more until gradually my occasional posts turned into a blog. A friend in Georgia suggested the title and it took off from there. After the first post I began to take my camera with me and record the coming of spring in the North Hertfordshire countryside.

Spring is here in Hitchin.

Here are the first four blogs posts.


Thursday 2nd April 2020

I'm kicking myself that I decided not to take a camera on my walk today over the fields. Up by West Wood I came across a herd of young deer. Deer are not a particularly unusual sight around here. What was unusual was the size of the herd. I counted at least 65 individual animals. There were probably a lot more as they were running two and three abreast and I was unable to spot them all. They ran directly across my path only ten yards in front of me, emerging from a gap in the hedgerow into the open cornfield. They were badly spooked. That didn't surprise me. Earlier in the day, as I walked up Tatmorehills Lane, I almost stumbled across two guys lying on their stomachs under cover of the hedge and squinting into the sights of rifles with silencers. Given their Barbour jackets and tweed caps I took them to be farmers. The early corn crops (that's wheat and barley if you are American) are coming up now with the milder weather and deer love them at this time of year. A few minutes after seeing the herd, I heard the loud phut, phut of rifle fire. The hedgerows are now white and frothy with blackthorn blossom, and the fields around West Wood are thick with pheasants, but there are no hares this year. Usually the big open fields around the wood are full of them, all going crazy, careering up and down as hares do at this time. I'm told that myxomatosis has skipped species from rabbits to hares, so their absence is worrying. I did see a couple later on near Cornelius Wood, and Chalk Hill, which cheered me up. I'm rather fond of hares.

Hitchin in April

April Blossom and Holy Saviour Church, Hitchin

Ransom's Rec. Community Garden

Walking the Apocalypse

Thursday 9th April 2020

People seemed to like my last walking post, so I'm writing up another, and since I remembered to take my camera with me this time, I have some photos to share. I walked out to Pirton today through Cadwell and Ickleford, and came back over the fields to Westmill then home via Oughton Head, a distance of about ten miles. In the space of three hours I saw at least five people. Since the lockdown, it's getting like Piccadilly Circus. But spring is definitely springing up all around The blackthorn is frosting the hedges with blossom, and even the hawthorn is out too in some places.

Hanbury Lane, between Ickleford and Pirton

I didn't see any deer on this walk - they tend not to be found this side of Hitchin - but I did run into a couple of highland cattle having a boss fight on Oughton Common

Two Highland Cattle on Oughton Common

It might be my imagination, but wherever I go out the birds seem to be singing more enthusiastically than usual. I'm starting to feel like I'm the intruder now, venturing into their world. They are no longer just an attractive backdrop to mine. I reached the common as evening was falling. The crows were flocking together in the skies and settling down to roost with their raucous whistley cries. I love that sound. As a child I lived in a house on the edge of a village surrounded by woods and spinneys. There were several huge rookeries in the nearby trees. I went to sleep every evening listening to their calls. As the skies over the common darkened they became full of bats, and I had to step carefully to avoid frogs socialising on the paths. I usually time my walks so that I get back into town when the night is coming on and there are few people around. The big show this evening was a spectacular lunar eclipse. As I came down Grays Lane, the moon was round and full and a gorgeous deep peachy colour. My camera unfortunately was unwilling to be convinced, and it turns out rather pale in all my photos.

Lunar eclipse over Grays Lane, Hitchin

Saturday 11th April 2020

In the early 1970s, I took a small flat in Holborn, in the dead centre of London. I was 23, full of hormones and looking for excitement in the big city. It was a disaster. Within weeks I was having nightmares. In them I'd be running up and down endless escalators or frantically climbing over concrete walls looking for a green field. After six months I left The Smoke and came back home to North Hertfordshire, relieved. I did try living in other cities after that, but it never worked out. Now, with Covid-19 on the rampage, I'm glad that I live in a small market town where I can get out into the isolation of the countryside. If the 'government' limit our movement further as they are threatening, then at least I have access to a couple of nearby parks.. I was going to restrict myself to posting photos once a week. Self-discipline, however, has never been my strong suit and I had such a great time today walking around Hitchin's green spaces that I couldn't resist sharing a few more. My route around town was one that Di and I used to take regularly back in the day. It avoids crowded pavements and passes through most of the town's parks. Celandines and forget-me-nots, are bursting out now in Ransom's Rec. Community Garden and all along the river path to Cadwell. Here and there, I even saw the odd bluebell poking through the loam, and one solitary orchid. Spotted Woodpeckers were hammering at the trees by the river and I'm pretty sure I heard a green woodpecker calling in the distance. As I was taking a photograph of the culverts which carry the Hiz and Purwell rivers under Grove Road, a small bird came and posed for me on the dividing wall. I thought it was a greenfinch at first but now that I look at the photo, I'm not so sure. In Walsworth Common, I came upon woman gathering Jack-by-the-Hedge (Hedge garlic). When I asked how she was going to use it, she told me that she was going to make a pesto. I can stay away from other people in the parks and out in the countryside, but undoing the latches on gates poses a problem. (The virus hangs around on metal for up to three days.) I pondered this one for a while, and thought about bringing a soapy spray with me, then realised that the simplest solution is to avoid the gate altogether and climb over the adjacent fence. Much more fun. On Windmill Hill, I met another guy with a camera, trying to get the same shot as me. We had a deliciously British conversation, whingeing about everything we could think of, but most particularly about the 'government'; a word I am writing in inverted commas these days. (Better still if HMG went away altogether, but hey, that's a different blog.) The need for 'social distancing' however, has brought out a lot of unBritishness in the British. It's forcing us to be more aware of one another. To cope with this outrage, or to deal with the embarrassment we seem to be smiling and talking to each other more. We even start a conversation now and then. Strangers have even been heard asking each other how they are coping with the lockdown. We soon revert to type though. I had to queue yesterday for the supermarket. (They were only letting people in one at a time to maintain 'social distancing'.) There were about 100 people in the queue, patiently standing two meters apart in almost total silence for an hour and a half. Someone in the Grove Road area is putting up notices on walls and railings. Attached to the notices are little strips of paper, each with a word written on it like, 'courage', 'good humour' 'friendship' and so on. The notices say: "please take what you need". Over the last few days all the strips have disappeared, except the one which says 'passion'. Not a British thing evidently. Be cheerful folks.



Monday 13th April 2020
No walking today. April showers were my excuse, and a desire to lie in bed till 4 o'clock in the afternoon reading Agatha Christie novels.  I'd never read anything by her until a year ago, and them immediately fell for the charm of her writing. She's not a great stylist, but her writing has a naturally flowing and unaffected manner, so that reading her is like floating down a quiet stream on a spring day. It's effortless, almost not like reading at all. And her plots are fiendishly clever. Reading her detective novels is so enjoyable in itself  that I don't really care whodunnit. I'm happy to let Poirot or Miss Marple tell me in the last chapter.

Yesterday was a real spring day, so calm that time seemed to float by like dandelion clocks drifting over the meadows. It's not often in adult life that moments like that return to capture some of the unconscious freedom of childhood. So, I had to get out for a walk. But which way to go? There are so many tracks and footpaths around Hitchin that it is sometimes difficult to choose. In recent days I've been setting out frequently in the direction of Ransoms Rec and the river path to Cadwell. It provides a green corridor out into open country from the bottom of my street without my having to go into town. That's they route I took yesterday too. But there was another reason. I've been waiting for some good light to get a photograph of the Ickleford willow plantation. It always looks a little grey and drab unless there is some evening sunlight slanting across the stream to catch the the boles of the trees and bring them alive.

It wasn't a long walk, just to Cadwell and Ickleford, then over the fields to Westmill, before coming back at evening by Ducklands and the town centre.  After dark, the town centre is spookily deserted in these days of lockdown. It's a lonely experience, walking among familiar buildings in the chill air of night, while the only sounds are those of my own footfalls echoing off the walls andthe striking of the church clock telling the quarter hours.

There's little ground-living wildlife to be seen out beyond Cadwell (if you except teenagers with spray cans making their mark on the world), but in just three days since I last came this way, leaf buds have appeared on many of the trees and more and more plants are coming into flower. I like eccentric plants like butterbur which flower before they produce their leaves. I watch out for them every year in the damp and marshy places they like so much. And there they were  all along the side of the Hiz, their sturdy flower heads poking out from among the other foliage which they will soon overwhelm with their enormous leaves.








I stopped for a while where the river runs under the railway bridge on the main east coast line from London to Edinburgh. Sometimes if you are lucky and you stand quietly here, you can catch the blue flash of a kingfisher darting along the length of the river. But today I had another reason to stop and ponder: which river is it? The bridge lies half a mile downstream from confluence of two chalk streams, the Hiz and the Purwell. But which is the main stream and which is the tributary? Is this then the Hiz or the Purwell? No one seems to know. The Ordnance Survey map says it's the Hiz; Google maps and the plaque attached to the bridge above my head seemed to think it was the Purwell. One thing I noticed, however, was that the river itself was bubbling along happily.  It didn't seem to have identity issues.  The weighty mattedr of the river's name should perhaps be left for the learned debates of philosophers or the political wrangling of town surveyors.  I'm happy to go with the Purwell on this one.  Or is it the Hiz?

I hadn't been past Gerry's Hole for a few years and, on an impulse made a side-trip up to the nearby embankment and took a look. Not a lot had changed in that time.  The Hole is a tree-lined pit, excavated a hundred years ago for material to build the now dismantled Hitchin to Bedford railway. The Hole is not very big, but it's deep and full of stagnant water, its green scumminess broken here and there only by the rotting hulks of fallen trees.  The spot is both fascinating and repellent. I stood on its slippery banks for several minutes weighted down with some heavy thoughts.  It has that effect on the mind.

Gerry was a 'old boy' of the nearby village of Ickleford who, by legend, was walking home after a night's heavy drinking. Being seven sheets to the wind he stumbled into the Hole and was drowned. Who Gerry was exactly has long been forgotten.  What pleasures he took in life and what sadnesses befell him we can only imagine, but his name lives on here in this unlovely place.  His death, as often as not, is  memorialised by the presence of a few discarded beer cans floating among the Hole's fallen branches and matted weed.
        

Gerry's Hole

 The Hiz/Purwell at Cadwell

 The Hiz/Purwell at Cadwell

Scratchbuilt garden shack on the allotments at Old Hale Way

 

After June, 2015 I reverted to facebook to keep my motorcycle travel blog up to date. It was much quicker to upload photos there at that time. The full blog of the journey can be found at: https://www.facebook.com/Richard-Field-overland-journey-1015923625103027/

I've been in Turkey now for three memorable and event filled weeks. Here is a little background and a few of the highlights.

Neither Felix (The DR650) nor I are going anywhere at present. Felix is in the hands of a mechanic in nearby Ortaca getting its 8,000 mile service. The guy’s workshop is in a local sanayi (pronounced San-eye-ee). In the UK it would be described as an industrial estate. Almost every Turkish town has one. But a sanayi's resemblance to a British industrial estate is superficial. The units are small. And their business is fixing things. If you want something fixed, there will be someone in the sanayi who can do the job. And if they can't, they will have a cousin in the next town who can. No problem!

Whether people have a dodgy modem or a thirty-year-old washing machine, they don't throw things away here; they take them to the sanayi and the sanayi fixes them, fabricating or modifying parts, as necessary. For the most part businesses here don't need to carry much stock, because there is usually someone in a nearby unit who can supply what is needed or can make it. The person you approach to do the work will take responsibility for it, but will contract out parts of the job to others as required. I'm told the system works very well, but as I discovered, it can take time if you need something unusual, and a DR650SE is pretty unusual in Turkey (in the UK, too, for that matter). Erhan, the mechanic who did the work for me, had never seen one before and appeared to be smitten. ('Lovely engine' he kept saying.) Before taking Felix to him, I had to give him three days to order an oil filter from Istanbul. And when he did start the service and found that the brake pads were badly worn and the front disc was slightly warped, I had to wait another five days (because of the week-end) while he got them, too. That's the way it works here, and I'm not complaining.

Like Felix, I've been getting about a little less than I would like because this part of Turkey is experiencing intermittent and unseasonal rainstorms. They don't last long, but they can be heavy. (And mucky too: after the last one everything was streaked with mud from the Saharan dust that sometimes blows over from Africa. I am, though, getting plenty of opportunity to relax and recharge my batteries which is what I need. I wasn't aware just how exhausted I had become. I'm eating a lot of wholesome Turkish food and seeing some of the immediate neighbourhood which is mountainous and spectacular.

Not far from the village where I'm staying is Dalayan, a tourist town with a beach where turtles come to lay their eggs. Until last year, the demands of commerce and conservation were held in a delicate balance by the municipal authorities. Coachloads of tourists came to the beach by day to sunbathe: female turtles came by night to lay their eggs. Night volunteers identified the nests and erected fences to keep the daytime tourists at bay. More recently, political shenanigans and local protests have resulted in the administration of the beach being taken out of the hands of the municipality and given to nearby Mugla university which (as is the nature of universities) doesn’t appear to know what to do with it. Service outlets and tourist numbers have declined and the fragile local economy has been affected. A drop in visitors to the beach is having a knock on effect for family restaurants, local taxi and minibus firms and their small-scale suppliers, while there have been few gains for the turtles. The babies can now incubate in a little more security, but adults are still being maimed by propellers and fishing nets. On the beach is a turtle rescue centre, which cares for sick and injured animals. It became famous recently when it successfully repaired an injury to one animal using a 3D-printed titanium jawbone.

I've been in Turkey for three weeks now. I arrived here on 11 May from northern Greece, full of dizzying excitement at the thought of exploring Istanbul. Constantinople-Byzantium-Istanbul - the threefold city. Can there be another like it? Is there anywhere on earth with such a spectacular location, or such a dazzling history? For decades, I have had an imaginative engagement with the city's exorbitant and catastrophic story.

My first night in Turkey, though, I camped just outside the city at the beach town of Silivri on the banks of the Sea of Marmara. The Sea of Marmara! I couldn't believe it; here it was, lapping placidly at my feet, the great waterway, a sea lane to Phoenician traders; Greek settlers; Roman legionaries; Persian armies; Ottoman sultans and slaves in their thousands. the Sea of Marmara has been a gateway for Russian sailors, Anatolian princes, Mongolian hordes, Byzantine patriarchs and Crusader knights. The whole of the ancient Western world tumbles together in this spot. That night I sat on the sandy beach for hour on hour watching the lights out at sea and letting my thoughts wander far and wide. Memories and feelings, hopes and dreams, facts and fantasies flowed through my thoughts. Traces of events from my past I had long since forgotten or buried surfaced here againagain. I didn't know it but I was on the point of exhaustion, and not just with all the travelling of the last two months. I was full of emotion. Tears and moments of elation came and went for reasons I could hardly explain. Watching the lights far out on the tideless waters brought back intimate memories of my grandfather and gathered his memory closer to me. Not far to the south lay the Dardanelles, where, as a Tommy in the British army he had fought, reluctantly in the first world war, a conscript in an imperial conflict he had no sympathy for. It was there he had received an 'enemy' bullet under his heart. He survived, but the wound proved to be inoperable under the conditions of the day, and he carried the bullet to the end of his life.

It may have been naïve of me to enter Istanbul, the monstrous and miraculous city, the second largest on earth, without a detailed map or a GPS, but... there it is. My plan had been to buy a map as soon as I hit the outskirts and use it to try to find my pre-booked hostel. Little did I understand at that time, that in Istanbul there are no maps, signage is incomprehensible to outsiders, traffic jams are a way of life, and homicidal driving is a permanent part of the experience. It took me eight hours, several litres of bodily fluids, and a year’s supply of adrenalin to find my way through the city's maze of streets. These are often cobbled and canted at impossible angles, with gradients never intended for motorised traffic.

It was a tedious and terrifying time (if you have ever been caught in a blitz of Turkish drivers you will understand), but once I had located the general area, I was able, by a gradual process of elimination, to use dubious or near-incomprehensible directions from a string of passers-by, to home in on my destination. I should perhaps here acknowledge a particular debt to Olaf who recognised the ‘Horizons Unlimited’ sticker on Felix and bounded up to me with great good humour to offer his help; his wife who persuaded the clerk of their hotel to provide me with detailed directions; and to Onur and Meltem, two Turkish students who early on in my quest took me under their wing and came up with a brilliant - if life-threatening - plan to get me to the right quarter of the city (It sounds easy enough, but Odysseus never had a wilder or more hair-raising time of it): follow the 86C bus.

The hostels I had booked and where I was to stay for the next four days were close to Taksim Square and the adjacent Gezi Park which, in that short space of time, I got to know extremely well. Both square and park are of huge political and emotional significance to Turks as symbols of their fight for national independence and, more recently, for their personal and collective freedom. Only two years ago the square became the focus of huge political protests that spread rapidly across the country, gathering a great deal of international media coverage as it went. Because of those events, many of the buildings surrounding the square and park, now have iconic status.

Eventually, I tore myself away from Istanbul, crossed the Bosporus bridge, and rode into Asia. That trek out of the city was one of the most miserable of my life. To avoid getting sucked back, once again, into the monstrous labyrinth, I stuck to the motorways. But motorway traffic in Istanbul crawls along at the speed of a tortoise, while motorway drivers exhibit all the manners and temperament of wild boar. Water and fruit vendors festooned with their wares made their sweaty way down between the rows of honking and jabbing cars. Pedestrians climbed over the dusty barriers and made their way listlessly across the road to god knows where, faces set, their eyes fixed and impassive. In the intolerable heat, my motorcycle gear rapidly became a personal sauna. Sweat ran down my body and dried. On either side of the carriageway, for mile after mile, tall cranes in bright, primary colours were busy raising what must be the most insolent and soulless modern high-rise development that I have ever seen. Built, it seems, for androids and not for human beings, this nightmare cityscape was a place for people to go mad in.

And beyond the city itself, there was no relief. The ugly urban sprawl continued. Clinging to the long northern shores of the Sea of Marmara, a huge industrial development scattered across the landscape all the filth and detritus of modern commercial life: dirt, dust, chunks of concrete, rusting metalwork, broken crates, half-finished and abandoned buildings, scattered panelling, patches of wasteland covered in dusty weeds and rotting brickwork: it just went on and on. Hours later, as I began to think it would never end, the world turned green and orderly once again, and the relief I experienced was like a long-wished-for release from physical pain.

Izmir, where I arrived two days later, proved to be a much kinder and comprehensible community, gentler in every way than Istanbul, its crazy, exuberant and unsleeping sister-city to the north. Navigating through it was relatively straightforward. A cheap hotel turned out to be hard to find on my first night, though, and when I did find one, proved to be little unexpected. The first indication that it was a love hotel came with the sight of the massive 'emperor'-sized bed with its tiger-skin rug. The second indication was the mirror strategically placed on the wall beside it. The clincher though was the toilet roll which was not located in the bathroom but over the bedside cabinet. I slept that night in my sleeping bag. It did the job, and for the remaining four days of my stay I found a super-friendly hostel inhabited by a lovely and fascinating group of international travellers, each with an extraordinary tale to tell. I spent my time there exploring the harbour and bazaar and taking a trip to Selcuk and the evocative remains of the Greek/Roman/Byzantine city of Ephesus.

After Izmir, I travelled slowly down the coast to Ortaca where I was to stay for a few days with friends. There were a number of possible ways to get there. I had initially chosen the fastest. A friendly and enthusiastic waiter in Izmir, though, had insisted that I should abandon this plan and take the tiny coast road that runs through Oren. I orginally determined to ignore this advice, when I got the same tip from a guy I met chilling out to rock music in a lay-by near Kusadasi. (While still talking to me, he rang his girlfriend, and with a great deal of shouting and gesticulating, told her that he had just met a madman who was planning to ride a motorcycle to Kazakhstan). Two unforced and enthusiastic recommendations cannot be ignored, so I went with the advice.,/p>

Minor roads, though, can be hard to find and as a result, this part of the trip turned out to be somewhat adventuresome. (Having no detailed map and no GPS are always good preconditions for an adventure.) Before finding the right road, I turned down several wrong ones, the last of which gradually broke up till it became a non-road, and then hardly more than a pile of rubble. And it was there on a hairpin bend that I took my second tumble on Felix. Neither the bike nor I were injured, so the only damage was to my ego. Once on the right road, though, the advice I received proved to be excellent. I think it would be hard to find a more beautiful and spectacular mountain road anywhere on earth than the wild little single-track road from Oren to Mugla, or one that was so much fun to ride on a motorcycle.

And once I had reached the road's end and turned onto major roads near Mugla the surprises continued. This stretch of the D500 must rank as one of the world's most dramatic motorway experiences as it careers down the almost sheer face of the mountainside in tight sweeping arcs giving dizzying views of the coast and coastal peninsulas below.

It was after dark that I arrived at the home of friends near Ortaca, in a state of manic excitement over everything that I had seen and had happened that day and in the days preceding it. I babbled on late into the night. Now, though, I’m now appreciating the opportunity to recover from what has been a sometimes traumatic but always exhilarating couple of weeks.

Unlimited Horizons

I'm writing this from a hotel room in Macedonia, a vast and rambling edifice tucked away in a fold in the hills, designed partly in the grand manner, and partly put together by string and sticky tape. How its endless corridors and crazy staircases connect with one another, I'm still to find out. It's the sort of place where, with a little imagination, you might hear the swish of evening gowns in the corridors, and catch a fleeting glimpse of the Princess Dragomirov in the restaurant. The hotel is my latest overnight stop on a motorcycle journey which has already taken me through much of South-Eastern Europe (the Balkans), and if all goes to plan, will take me through Turkey, the Caucasus, Central Asia, Siberia, Western Russia, the Ukraine and then some of northern and central Europe on my way back home. The plan, though, changes every day. As do my encounters with places and people. This afternoon, in eastern Macedonia, I met Niko, a young rice farmer. Niko was waiting at a bus stop to collect his father, home from Slovenia where he had been working (over the winter period, I presumed, when there is little labour needed here in the Macedonian rice fields). 'It's a good living, here,' Niko said. I could believe it. It also seemed a good way to live. As the light declined, a solitary figure was casting seed by hand into his flooded field. Tractors rumbled up and down the roads and into nearby villages. People shouted greetings to one another. On such a quiet evening, this corner of Macedonia seems a peaceful place. 'Do you like Macedonia?' Niko asked. 'People are friendly here. And the mountains; they are beautiful.' He pointed across the wide open plain to the line of low peaks and gentle slopes beyond. He was right; they are beautiful, and gentle, too. A bus pulled up at the side of the road and its door puffed open. And older man, strongly built with a face full of experience, stepped down, and Niko introduced me to his father. After a brief exchange, Niko invited me for schnapps, an offer which, with great regret, I declined. I cracked a rib while riding through Italy and have been forbidden to mix the medication with alcohol. And the truth is I have extremely poor brains for alcohol. Riding and drinking do not go together with me very well. I liked these people and would have appreciated a chance to get to know them better. But they have my contact details. I've had many memorable encounters since I began this journey in April. A few weeks ago I met Boro high in the mountains of Montenegro. Boro had just purchased a small piece of land, squeezed between the road and the lower mountain slopes. He was finding his excitement and pleasure hard to contain. Though I was tired and would have been happy to camp on the lower terrace, he insisted on taking me and my camping gear up to the highest one so that I would have the best view. He swept his hand across the scene, a full 180 degrees. 'Panorama' he said. He pointed out his haystack, which had hay stacked around a pole set in the ground, a traditional construction in these parts. He explained that it wasn't really a haystack, but a rumpy pumpy pole. Montenegrans like 'natural' sex apparently or, at least, Boro does. His arms windmilled. It set me wondering whether the horizontal racks that Slovenian farmers build to make their haystacks have had an influence in that country's sexual practices, too. Two days ago in Albania I met Klinton, a twenty-something who is studying at the University of Tirana. Klinton had been summoned by two friends who worked in a cafe in the town of Lac where I had stopped to ask the way. Klinton spoke English and was needed to come and sort out a crazy British motorcyclist bent on getting to Russia, but who had ended up in a cul-de-sac in Albania. He arrived at the cafe in his car where I was drinking tea and refused to leave me until he had guided me out of the town for several kilometers, put me on the right road and made sure I was going in the right direction. He dismissed my thanks, describing his actions as a simple matter of 'respect'. It was in Albania, too, that I met the Dutch family Wesselingh - mother father and three children (and until her recent death, a grandmother too) - not so much a family, more a social project or a way of life. For 20 years the family has devoted itself to helping members of the local community establish some sort of life for themselves as they and the country emerged from a period of intense poverty. They baked loves in their kitchens for the hungry and destitute, rebuilt a maternity unit and restored people's houses after a disastrous flood. They now run an extensive recycling project, as well as a campsite and an organic restaurant to help attract tourism to the area and create employment. They still feed old people with no family to support them. Meeting them was a chance encounter as was my meeting with Aco, way up in the mountain town of Cetinje. I'd knocked on the door of Aco's soba (B&B) looking for somewhere to stay for the night. Aco was an engineer and had been a keen motorcyclist in his youth. His father, too, had been a motorcylist, a professional sports rider. Huge pipes were being installed under the road where Aco lived and the whole area had been dug up. To get my DR650 into his garage, I had to negotiate an open drain and do a little off-roading across a pile of builders' rubble. In Croatia I met Ana who told me about her family who had lived through the siege of Dubrovnik and how it had affected their lives. People are rebuilding their lives, but there is still a lack of trust especially among the older generation. She thought, though, that younger people like herself have a more nuanced understanding of events. And that was good. In Italy, I ran into Alfredo who ran a hostel occupied in the main by young men from Afghanistan and Pakistan looking for a new life. These are encounters and experiences that could only have occurred on this journey. They are all different, but each one, in its own way, has challenged my preconceptions of people and cultures. Everywhere I have travelled so far, I have had my expectations altered, and my journey has only just begun. Friends sometimes say of me, in a kindly way, that I'm not really connected with the 'real' world. But I'm not sure which 'real world' they are talking about. I've dreamed about doing a trip like this since I was in my teens, which is now a fair few decades ago. Even now, it would probably never have happened without the encouragement and example of other overland motorcyclists, many of whom I met through Horizons Unlimited. So, this blog entry is in part a big thank you to all those Horizons riders wherever they now are who made me believe that doing something like this was actually possible, and that I didn't need to be a Commando or street-fighter to survive it. Since going to the Horizons annual meet in the UK, I've discovered a big friendly open family. So, thanks everyone for all the inspiration, the help, advice and information. And if anyone reading this has ever dreamed of riding a motorcycle to distant parts or even to Western Europe, these are the people to speak to. Check them out.

Go to Horizons Unlimited, the website that's all about motorcycle travel. Travellers Community, Bike Travel information on the Bulletin Board, free Monthly Motorcycle Travel E-zine, Travellers' Stories, and plenty of tips and info!

This little guy was standing at a motorway junction trying to sell baby rabbits to passing motorists. He tried to sell me one. He didn't appear to see the problem. I gave him a Euro for letting me take his photo. He accepted it, but reluctantly. He seemed offended.

This is a Ukranian guy on holiday with his wife in Montenegro. He stopped me to ask me for directions, which I was actually able to give him. He asked where I was going. His wife insisted on taking a photo of the 'heroic' motorcyclist. At last, I'm somebody's hero.

This is Klinton. I'd stopped at a cafe in Albania to ask directions. Neither of the youngsters spoke English, so they summoned Klinton by phone to come and sort out the crazy English motorcyclist. He arrived a few minutes later in his car. We chatted at the cafe table for fifteen minutes while I drank my tea. He then drove several kilometers to show me the way to the right road. He wouldn't leave me until he was sure I was on my way and going in the right direction.

This is Aco and his wife who put me up, and encouraged me to do some off roading down some roadworks near his home. His father was a professional motorcyclist in the Montenegran team, which, if I recall, was quite famous in its day.

I'm not sure if you can see the fireflies in this. You may need to expand it. I tried to capture them, but the photo doesn't do justice to how magical they actually were.

This is my first view of Albania taken from a mountainside in Montenegro

It's a blisteringly hot day. You are an elderly Montenegran couple. You take the car out into the country and leave it by the side of the road, put on your walking gear and go for a walk. What must you remember to do? Clearly you must leave all the doors and windows open to make sure the car doesn't overheat. Different world!