Transport of Delight

Dam, that's big.

2012-02-23T22:31:00.005+01:00

The lovely thing about travelling is that activities which would be mundane at home become fun and exotic. I can't imagine Australians find anything particularly inspiring about a visit to Coles. But I have lots of fun in Collie choosing flatbread and fruit and peanut butter, so that I can make picnic lunches while I'm out and save big pub meals for every other day. Compared to the UK, there's an immense choice of fruit, piled up in big bins in the aisles. The raspberries are frozen in punnets, maybe ready for smoothies? And the bananas look great. I buy some then realise too late that stuffing them in my panniers is not going to be very good for them. I cheat and buy processed cheese slices. My excuse is that it saves me buying a knife. But actually it's because they're my Guilty Pleasure. Sitting on a shady bench in Ballingup, a man walks past and makes a joke in German. (At least, I think it's a joke). Are Germans famous in Australia for making processed cheese roll-ups?

#29in29 When the student is ready...

2012-02-22T22:37:00.004+01:00

I can't remember if it was the Dalai Lama or Mr Miyagi who said "when the student is ready, the teacher appears." But in the afternoon of my day off in Augusta, he did.

I had a Little Creatures beer and a book as a prop, and I sat down in the yard of the Youth Hostel in the shade. A guy was dragging a chair over to one of the tables. "I'd join you," I said, "but if I sit in the sun I'll shrivel." So he dragged the table over to my chair instead. He was from New Zealand and he looked like a cross between Kurt Russell in Big Trouble in Little China and Shane Warne before Elizabeth Hurley airbrushed him.

Dwayne was 40, had recently stopped travelling and was learning to settle down. I'm 40, have recently stopped settling down am learning to travel. It was a good moment for our paths to cross.

He was a man with a plan. After 20 years travelling round the world, sometimes on cruise ships, sometimes not, he'd spent 2 years in South Africa, trying to make a romance work and getting paid under the table, before admitting defeat. His mother, who sounds like a sensible lady, sat him down and told him that charm and good looks weren't going to last him forever. So he went back to school and qualified as a PE teacher, so that he'd have a career. He bought a dog, so that he couldn't go back on the road, and now, equipped with permanent residency in WA, a career and a canine companion, he was on a mission to find a wife. It isn't plain sailing. Most single women in their 40s, he said, either have lots of baggage, are being deafened by their biological clocks ticking, or are mad. I couldn't really fault his logic. As a newly-qualified teacher he's getting jobs in very small mining towns where the workforce is overwhelmingly single and male. It's a good life and the people are friendly, but there aren't many women to meet. So he's joined a dating agency for girls who like the outdoor life. If the dates don't go well, that's fine, he said. Maybe she'll have a friend who's more his type. And not baby-crazed. Or bonkers.

I liked his optimism and his certainty that this final part of his plan would soon be realised. I liked that he had identified his weak spots (with help from his mother) and had designed a life that would make it easier to reach his goals.

We talked about single travelling and how to meet people. You have to make the first move, he said. If you sit reading a book, people will think you want to be left alone and will give you space. Put out what you want to get back.

Take time to value the little things, he said, as we opened some more beers. Like sitting under the moon and stars, with good company and eye candy.

Federico the Italian chef and I were the good company. The eye candy were the girls from the bakery who were trying to figure out how to light the barbecue. They were young, beautiful and blonde, and having immense amounts of fun. Federico told us about his friend who had been riding round the world on a bike. He couldn't get a visa into China so he had to ride round it - into Siberia. Federico shivered at the thought, then had to go and talk to his girlfriend on Skype. He's in Australia on a working holiday - she's still in Italy. "Complicated," he said, with a very Italian shrug.

PS: this is a slightly random photo from my cruise up the Blackwood River. The water comes halfway up the dog. The necessity for a boat as opposed to a pair of waders seems unproven.

#29in29: If not you, then who?

2012-02-21T21:17:00.003+01:00

Having missed out at Swings and Roundabouts, I made like a squashed grape on Facebook and let out a little whine. My friends delivered support, ego-rubs and arse-kickings in equal measure and it finally dawned on me that the only person who was going to make sure I had a good time was me: "If not you, then who?" as it's written in that important book of moral reference, Only You Can Save Mankind by Terry Pratchett.

So in the morning I implemented Plan Happy Traveller. That was the first important change, as recommended by Andy Myles. Being on holiday alone may feel sad and pointless. Travelling alone is exciting and challenging. I returned to the Augusta Bakery, purveyor of excellent pizza, and almost fell at the first hurdle. My accent was, apparently, impenetrable to the lady behind the counter. I tried a few times but got worse rather than better, because when I get stressed I start to stutter. After a bit of pointing I achieved my goal, which was a big black coffee with an extra shot and a vanilla slice, because what finer pastry could there be for a traveller's breakfast?

Back at the Youth Hostel with my spoils, I found a the kitchen was full of interesting people, and best of all, for the cash-strapped lady biker, free bread. One of the girls staying in the hostel worked in the bakery and was allowed to bring home the unsold loaves in the evening. The tomato bread was particularly good. To maintain good karmic balance I put my bananas on the pile. I'd bought them in Collie and they had not travelled well. I am a banana fascist, there is a narrow window of opportunity when they are at their best but if they get brown and bruised I can't bear them. But because we live in a universe of infinite diversity, my reject banana is another person's bliss.

"Battered and free," said Margaret, later. "The perfect banana!"

Margaret was travelling with her daughter Gill and was enjoying being the oldest backpacker in Western Australia. Her husband was at home with three weeks worth of meals in the freezer and a barn full of vintage bikes. I told her about riding with the Blue Knights and my RBR adventures. She laughed at my rubber scrambled eggs. We compared flight notes and I told her the story of my accidental oxygen tank. Sometimes I think I enjoy my disasters, because if my life went smoothly, what stories would I have to tell?

To arrive is sometimes better than to travel.

2012-02-20T22:31:00.003+01:00

My day started literally and figuratively under a cloud. I decided that maybe I felt weird and dislocated because my I'd eaten nothing the previous day except espresso, iced coffee and bar snacks. I have been trying not to turn to food as a mood-enhancer but I felt this merited an exception, so I had Eggs Benedict in Samovar in Busselton. Which came with avocados. I love avocados. And a white Magnum before climbing the lighthouse.

But my brain refused to be consoled. It was enjoying a good wallow.

These things were wrong:-

- I was the only person at the lighthouse on my own. Everyone else was a couple or a family group.

- I was going to have to share a room with someone I didn't know. Because I was on my own. I didn't want to share a room. But I had booked a double.

- I stopped to try a Cellar Door. @sharemyoyster had told me about these. I fancied a coffee and maybe a pizza. Or a cheese platter. That looked nice on the menu. I waited while the group of 15 placed their orders. Then the girl behind the counter took orders from four women who'd come in after me. As she headed past me again I said "Could I have a Long Black..." and before I could say "and a pizza" she said "Would you mind coming back when I've got everyone else's orders taken?" Because single people's money is apparently not as important as the money spent by people who have arrived with their families in tow. The Winery was called Swings and Roundabouts. I was going to sit with my coffee and my cheese plate and maybe even a small glass of something sparkly and write a witty post about how the day had been up and down but now it was improving. But it wasn't. Part of me understands the economics. Part of me was just having salt rubbed into a wound that was particularly sore that day. So I got back on my bike and carried on south and had a little blub inside my lid.

Why? Because I'm stupid and I get myself worked up anticipating dramas that don't deserve it.

When I got to Augusta the Youth Hostel was beautiful. It had a balcony with a white staircase leading to the upper floor, and a garden with a barbecue. Who am I sharing with, I asked the manager. Nobody, she said, looking at me like I was a bit dim. You've got a double bed, we don't make you share with someone you don't know.

So I took my bags upstairs to my room and it was a beautiful calm room, full of light with great big windows and vintage furniture.

I had a little walk around town. The Augusta Bakery was doing pizza night, so I ordered ham and pineapple. The Augusta Hotel Motel was doing excellent beer. The bottle shop had tins of VB and luxury crisps. I watched the sun go down. Tomorrow would be better. This was a good place.

#29in29 That would be an ecumenical matter

2012-02-19T22:23:00.002+01:00

Following the storm south along the wet Caves Road, and on my way to the Cape Naturaliste, I am offered a different kind of enlightenment. On my right, between the road and the ocean, a Christian camp site.

Two hundred yards later, another one.

Two hundred yards after that, another.

The Christian Brethren Youth Camp.

The Busselton Baptist Youth Camp.

The Bussleton Catholic Youth Camp.

The Churches of Christ Camp Site

The Seventh Day Adventist Youth Camp.

And the Anglican Camp Site. I imagine Rowan Williams hammering his tent pegs in, wrestling with his folding chair and putting a match to his trangia. I think he'd be rather at home.

The devil may have all the best tunes but it looks like Jesus has got the good camp sites. It made me laugh, because it reminded me of the Monty Python sketch about the People's Front of Judea*. But it was sad as well. Being young should be a time to meet people who are not like ourselves, so that we can test out the things we've been taught by our parents against the greater world and decide whether we agree with them. There will be plenty of time as grown-ups to divide the world into them and us, people we like and people we talk about behind their backs. Bikers we nod at at and bikers we ride by.

I tried to think of a good joke about how you would tell the difference but I didn't work in the Ecumenical Office when I worked at Lambeth Palace so I don't have much to go on. Presumably the Catholics barbecue fish on Fridays while the Anglicans stand up to sing campfire songs. There ought to have been an Amish campsite too, they would rock at camping. Though they might just raise a barn instead and not bother with the inconvenience of canvas.

*There is some swearing in this clip - NSFW!

To the Lighthouse

2012-02-18T21:36:00.003+01:00

My luck held as I rode round the bottom of Geographe Bay and took the Caves Road up to Cape Naturaliste lighthouse. Ahead of me the sky was heavy grey, split by the occasional flash of lighting, and underneath me the roads were soaking wet, but above my head the sky was blue. A good reason to meander along and enjoy the scenery. The earth is pink, and as the road gets nearer the coast the trees shrink into low green brush.

As an RBR rider I'm conditioned to take photos of my bike outside lighthouses, but I fancied climbing these as well, as practice for the Gloucester Tree at Pemberton. Cape Naturaliste, the northern lighthouse, is quite stumpy. Cape Leeuwin, at the bottom of the cape, and from which you can see the meeting point of the Indian and the Southern Oceans, is tall and slender.

As we walk up the path to the lighthouse, Liz, our guide talks about the isolation, and how hard it was for the lighthouse keepers and their families to live here. But it's only taken me a few minutes to ride the 8 miles from Dunsborough, I say. Liz looks at me with well-deserved contempt. When the lighthouse was first built Dunsborough didn't exist, she explains, carefully. Lighthousekeepers in need of medical help, company or supplies had to take a horse to Busselton. I think about this for a while. To me, lighthouse keepers are isolated because they work on tiny rocks surrounded by turbulent seas. These men, and their families, were isolated by the land itself. I think their houses look beautiful, with verandas to shade from the heat, and gardens to provide veggies and a few chooks, but they are a very long way from Waitrose.

The light and the mechanisms came from Birmingham. Travelling the other way, Australia sent trees chopped up to be used as cobbles in the streets of London. This seems an undignified way for trees to end their lives, though it is apparently kinder to horses' hooves and quieter for sensitive Victorian ears.

"People with breathing or heart problems are warned against attempting to climb steep stairway leading to light," it says at the foot of the stairs. I think this may be a metaphor. It is always a difficult climb to the light.

#29in29 Bad Day, Part I

2012-02-17T23:14:00.001+01:00

I have been escorted, supported and assisted, and now it is time to move on and face the world solo. The day starts abruptly, with a massive electrical storm. The lightning is impressive and slightly scary. A kind-hearted person had made sure I didn't miss it by making their breakfast in the kitchen, which is on the other side of my bedroom wall, at 5.30am. Even with determination to be stealthy, which they had, it is difficult to microwave quietly. But pretty soon the sound of the rain beating on the tin roof of the Dolphin Retreat drowns out everything else. The storm sits overhead for around thirty minutes. There isn't time to count any elephants between the lightning crack and the thunder roll. The rain is coming down so hard I worry that the sand under the bike will wash away. It doesn't, but it does leave immense puddles all over the car park. This is Australia. It is not supposed to rain. I have not come prepared to be wet and cold. I read my book and drink instant coffee, because I forgot to pack my coffee filter and now I am doomed to start my mornings with Nescafe, scavenged from the Premier Inn and tucked into my wash bag next to the mascara.

There is no point starting the day under a cloud, so I lie reading and not really sleeping for another two hours.

I feel unusual. Tired and unfocused. The trees in the Tuart forest smell of mint. Can that be right or am I hallucinating?

In Busselton I want to see the Big Pier. It is grey and damp and I struggle to find a place to park. I think, maybe breakfast would help. In my fantasy I thought I would have breakfast in a beach-side cafe looking at the pier. In reality I have a small thimble of lukewarm gritty mud in a cafe on the main shopping run. I read the local paper. It seems that people getting married, crashing cars, suffering break-ins and writing long letters make news anywhere in the world. In a few days time there will be a big festival here, but today is just a weary working day.

Going Postal

2012-02-16T23:16:00.000+01:00

My copy of "Going Postal" has arrived, except that in the UK it's called "The Long Ride Home." I sent Nathan an email before I went to Australia because I really wanted to do my exploring on a postie bike - that's why my overnight stops were so close together - and he was really helpful and generous with his advice.

Here's Nathan's intro:

"This is the story of my motorbike trip across the world. It took place from January to September 2009, on a little Honda called Dorothy. She's a brilliant bike, painted red, the colour of speed, though she herself is not very fast. One time we hit eighty-five kilometres per hour and almost crashed with excitement."

In the end I decided to take what ought to have been an easier route, and rent a GS. Didn't quite work as planned! And I nearly got a go on a postie thanks to the Postie Bike Club of Western Australia, but I ran out of time. I still think they look brilliant fun. So I'll just have to go back.

Riding with the 99%

2012-02-15T23:25:00.003+01:00

Cool people say things like "I'm not much of a one for joining things." I used to try that line. I pretended that I aspired to be Rudyard Kipling's Cat that Walks by Itself, self-sufficient and above wordly things like small talk and The Price Of Cheese. The truth was that I was a peculiar child with limited social skills. Joining in happened to other people.

But now I ride a motorcycle and the best thing about that is all the people it brings me to meet.

I loved my day with the Knights. Everyone I spoke to about it thought it was very funny that the Australians felt the need to organise me a police escort for my first ride in the country. Rolling up the freeway in a column of chrome and rubber, I thanked the gods of random life opportunities and laughed like a crazy woman.

Riding back down from the lookout point, Zeke, Muffy and I parked up and caught up with Mel and the rest of the club. They hadn't persuaded the Castle Hotel to open up, and were a little further down the main drag on a shady verandah. Over a long black, Mel said a few words of welcome and awarded me a Blue Knights patch - a proper one, not a "Knight's Lady" which is what the pillion partners wore - and a 99% diamond, and a badge. I don't have powers of arrest so they are honorary. But I do feel honoured. So many people took a day out of their holidays to ride with me and show me their fine roads. But then I remember that they are bikers, and this is what we do.

"Every attraction that a country in a state of nature can possess."

2012-02-14T21:56:00.005+01:00

Today being Valentine's Day it is wholly appropriate that I bring you the story of a pair of Star (Southern) Crossed Lovers.

While President Mel tries to persuade the waitress in the hotel to wind up the coffee machine, Zeke (pictured, with Large Honda) takes me and Muffy to the Mount Brown lookout over York and the Avon Valley.

The mountains have a sad story attached. In the Dreamtime the Hill People and the Valley People used to meet in the Avon Valley for sports and games. A young Valley Woman and a young Hill Man fell in love; but their people did not allow them to be together. Their relationship was taboo. As is traditional in such situations, they ran away so that they could be together.

The Valley People asked for her to be sent home. The Hill People said they did not know where the two young lovers had gone.

As is also traditional in such situations, the Valley People sent an army to bring her back.

The Hill People, having the advantage of the high ground, were handing out a pasting to their Valley brothers. So the Valley People called on their medicine man, who turned the Hill warriors to trees where they stood.

The warriors having been well and truly rooted, the medicine man then cursed Wunding and Wilura. Their bodies were found, but their spirits are tied to the mountains. He is stuck on Mount Bakewell, and she is stuck on Mount Barker, until the mountains turn to dust.

It would be a better story if she, being such a tart, were stuck on Mount Bakewell.

Put the fan on the tourist

2012-02-13T20:54:00.005+01:00

It is so hot that the ice cream I'm eating melts off the stick before I've finished it. And trust me, when it comes to ice cream I don't hang about.

We are eating ice creams from the servo in the car park of the Coca Cola Cafe, Toodyay, instead of sitting in the cafe with cold drinks, because it has just closed. In the UK my special blessing is the bringing of rain. Here in Australia it seems to be the closing of cafes. None of the ones we have been to on today's ride-out have been open - not this one; nor the York Cafe, nor the one in Northam at the head of the Avon Descent.

I was expecting hot. I brought my summer jacket and my thinnest gloves. The very polite Blue Knights, with whom I am riding today, raised an eyebrow. They are mostly riding in leather waistcoats and t-shirts. Zeke has some nifty removable sleeves, more to keep the sun off than to protect against gravel rash. But expecting hot and experiencing it are two very different things.

One day in January I rode from Kenilworth to Ely when the temperature was minus 2, not counting the windchill. The only thought my brain gave house room to was "Fuck me, it's freezing." Over and over again. Today is the exact opposite. It is is incredibly hot. The heat is bearing down on my brain and scattering my focus. I don't feel terribly safe on the bike. I have been to Las Vegas and to Syria and to Cuba and none of those places were as hot as the wheat and sheep country around Northam. By the time we sit down in the cool, dark dining room of the Northam Tavern I have a matching set: red t-shirt, red hair, red face.

In Britain it is a terrible crime to hog the fire. I assume the same may be true of the large chrome pedestal fan stirring the air in one corner of the dining room. I take my 2-litre jug of ice and lemon squash and sit at a polite distance. A shout goes up. "Put the fan on the tourist!" I accept the gift with gratitude.

The Blue Knights are a police motorcycle club. If you have power of arrest, you can apply for membership. They have the same dry coppers' humour as the police riders in the UK I've got to know through working on safety campaigns, government lobbies and advanced training. They have a good laugh at my pasty skin and my ungainly deportment on the Ducati. I'm all knees and elbows on it, because it's tiny, and I'm always in the wrong bloody gear for a corner, because it's temperamental and Italian and needs to be ridden with a great big handful of attitude. "Don't worry," they tell me. "If we aren't ribbing you we don't like you."

I am learning from the Knights. The most important thing is that the drink that I have learnt to call an Americano should be ordered as a "long black." If I stop for a drink or for lunch, I should park in the shade, because it is unnecessarily unpleasant to come back to a scorching seat. The toasting of crown jewels, while not a problem I expect to suffer, can be avoided with the use of a sheepskin seat cover. Pannier essentials include big bottles of water and roll-on sun block. I have no panniers. Being Italian, the Ducati is about glamour not practicality. I scavenge sun-block and water from Adrian and Woody.

The ride is a long one: we cover just over 200 miles in about 8 hours. And it is amazing, to be riding in convoy on the beautiful black stuff, through forests and farmland and bush, and, in the late afternoon, back through the city to my brother's house near Fremantle. There will be time enough to ride alone later. Today I am enjoying the luxury of being part of a convoy, being shown the best roads by new friends.

"Did you find her by the side of the road?"

2012-02-12T22:56:00.005+01:00

Bec's mesh jacket doesn't fit. This doesn't come as a surprise to me - she's about 5 10 with a small waist, I'm 6 foot and go straight up and down, except on bad days when I go out in the middle - but men seem to see a smaller version of me than the one that exists in reality. I have a small pile of unworn t-shirts bought for me by the ex, who thought I was about a size 10. I think his subconscious was buying them for his lost love, who was tiny and half Chinese. But I digress.

My Triumph jacket with the liner out has been too hot on, I think, one day in 15 years of riding in Blighty. I though it would do fine for Australia. What it actually did was boil me in the bag like Batchelor's Savoury Rice. On safety grounds alone I persuade myself that I ought to buy a new jacket and gloves, for dehydration and thermal overload proved just as distracting and unpleasant as being too cold. Adrian and Becs take me to their favourite gear shop on the way to Innaloo to collect the GS.

The Motorcycle Pit Stop is in North Perth. It looks reassuringly like a bike shop in Blighty, with the used bikes lined up in a row out front, the dayglo colours of dirtbike polyester to one side and the road-riding gear to the other. If this was a shop in England most of the gear would be about keeping warm. Here it's the opposite problem - there's perforated gear, thin gear and gear with integral Camelbaks. But wouldn't that get really hot really quickly? Maybe you stick a teabag in there too and brew up on the move.

The girls' gear is pink and has butterflies on it. The jacket I end up with, on the grounds that it fits and is affordable, is manly blue with white flashes. I remind myself that, if I want to wear a jacket that fits where it touches, then lurking in a cupboard at home I have a made-to measure jacket with a purple dragon on the back. And when I've lost the next 2 stone I'll measure the same as I did when it was made and can start wearing it again. Though not in Australia. I think half-inch thick cowhide really wouldn't be very practical in 42 degrees.

Adrian introduces me to Karen, who owns the Pit Stop and is struggling with a EPOS card reader which is dialling her fax machine in preference to the bank. This sounds like a good plan to me. I could fax her a picture of 200 dollars. How do I know Adrian and Becs, she wants to know. I am not sure where to start the story, and am distracted by the realisation that the shaggy cushion on the counter next to the card reader is in fact a small hairy dog. It sleeps peacefully until Adrian mentions that Becs, who has done her time on a 250, might be in the market for something bigger. The words "new bike?" wake it up in the same way that "brew?" galvanises a lethargic Yorkshireman. When it realises that a sale is not in prospect today it goes back to sleep in disgust.

I have a Dri Rider jacket and summer gloves. All I need now is a bike and I'm sorted.

30 Dec: Happy GS Day!

2012-02-11T08:56:00.001+01:00

I fear I am never going to love sportsbikes. Especially not shiny ones covered in fragile carbon fibre bits that cut out if you let the revs fall below 5,000. In my normal life I rarely get above 4 and a half - I have been allowed to fall into bad habits by Ruby, who was willing to go up to at least 7 but would quite happily lump along at half that. This is my excuse for being unreasonably excited on 30th December, which is GS Day.

It starts poorly. I have arranged to get the bus into town to meet Adrian and his girlfriend Becs. Becs will lend me her mesh jacket, if it fits. We'll get some lunch and then they'll drop me at Wotan Street, where Big Boys Toyz are. @sharemyoyster, one of the lovely bikers I talk to on Twitter, is going to meet me there and take me up the Swan Valley. (NB This is a wine region, not a position in the Australian Kama Sutra).

As I'm about to leave, my brother offers to drive me over to collect the bike in the afternoon. I didn't want to impose so I am already sorted. I wonder if this offends him. He doesn't say.

I'm 30 minutes early at the bus stop, just to be sure. After 30 minutes there is no bus. I check the TransPerth website and the bus is definitely running. Once it is 10 minutes late I call and ask when the next bus is. In 50 minutes, they cheerfully advise. What happened to the one that was supposed to be here 10 minutes ago? It ran as normal, she says. This is why I do not like public transport. If they render the buses invisible, how am I supposed to put my hand out to get one to stop? Still, it was a lovely morning and I watched a postie doing the rounds on his postie bike. He knew I had designs on it, I think - he never got off it, instead giving a splendid demonstration of the art of drive-by delivery.

In the end Adrian and Becs pick me up in a low, loud green sedan. Wotan Street is a dead end and when we get there a very tall black GS Adventure is waiting, accompanied by a very tall Englishman and his wife.

It is just possible that collecting motorcycles from Brian is not normally a group activity.

"Are they making a film?" he asks, while photocopying my driving licence and levying an eye-watering security deposit on my credit card. We spend a few minutes being rude about Ewan and Charlie and their inability to leave home without SAS medics and a support truck. I don't think I have met any SAS medics yet here in Australia but I am not short of support, which is lovely.

Brian backs the GS out into the road for me. It's an 800 not the 1200 I booked because there was a screw-up over dates, but it's tall and squinty-eyed and also rather battered. This is good for two reasons. Because it's already battered, Brian is happy for me to take it off the tarmac. And because it's an 800 not a 1200 I might have a fighting chance of picking it up when it falls over.

David and Lynn lead out into the traffic. I follow them. I am sitting upright, the engine sounds like a tractor and all is good.

And the days are not full enough

2012-02-10T14:53:00.005+01:00

My list for #29in29 says that today I should tell you about Mogumber Tavern, but I've already done that. So today I will give you the poem that my amazing friend Rio sent me when I asked for encouragement at a low point in my solo adventure. it is by Ezra Pound and we think it has no title:

And the days are not full enough
And the nights are not full enough
And life slips by like a field mouse
Not shaking the grass

She added, "Better have full days on your own than empty days in a relationship. xxxx"

And I realised that the idea of living a life that didn't shake the grass was even worse than living a life the wrong side of the glass. Occasional loneliness is a fair price to pay for freedom.

Rose Hotel, Bunbury

2012-02-09T21:42:00.005+01:00

If I were pitching this story as a Vogleresque 12 Stage Hero's Journey, this part would be Stage 7, Approach to Inmost Cave. I've Crossed the Threshold, met my Allies, made some enemies and now I am taking my leap into the great unknown. I am resolved not to sit in my room at the Dolphin Retreat Youth Hostel, eating peanuts and cheese spread on flatbread and drinking water from a tooth mug, which is what I usually do in the evenings when I travel alone. I have had a fantastic day riding the Balingup-Nannup road, looking for the Big Apple and drinking excellent coffee and now I am going to go into a pub and buy myself a proper dinner and a pint.

It may sound daft that I am making such a big deal of this. Going into pubs is not difficult. Or, it's not difficult in your own country. Although Australia is hardly in the same league as Syria or Cuba for culture shock, the clues that unconsciously inform my choices in the UK are missing or misfiring here. For example, I know at home that Giraffe is kid-friendly and that going into one of their restaurants and asking for a table for one might lead to anxious looks from over-protective parents. All Bar One, on the other hand, is a great place to go for a solo dinner. What is the equivalent here? I can't tell.

I walk around the town centre and find that Bunbury has lots of restaurants but mainly they are full of big groups, all having a lovely time. I start to lose my confidence, because this scenario is the one you would create if you wanted to kill me. Winston Smith's biggest horror is rats. Mine is everyone else in the world having a wonderful time and deliberately leaving me on the wrong side of the glass.

In the end I pick the Rose Hotel because it is on the street back to the hostel, and because it looks pretty. The Victoria Street bar is all wood panels and high, lazy fans. It's nearly empty - there is a table of fifty-something men talking loudly about somebody they work with but don't like, and me. I order a bowl of wedges and a pint, carry my pint to the table, sit down with too much gusto and bounce my head off the mantelpiece behind me. My attempt to pretend it didn't happen is foiled by one of the businessmen asking if I am OK. Wedges and a pint cost 15 dollars. I think for some time that the barmaid must have charged me for a full meal by mistake but it turns out beer in Australia is upwards of £6 a pint. Not quite such a lucky country after all.

Silhouetted by the sea

2012-02-08T22:00:00.004+01:00

I have come to watch the sun go down. The glossy leaflet I picked up in Perth Tourist Information Centre tells me it's one of the things I mustn't miss while I'm in Geographe Bay. I have on my dinky vintage frock with the flippy skirt and flowers, and a pair of very cheap sandshoes from K-Mart. I am clutching my camera and look like a tourist. This is not a good thing. The sand is warm but the wind is cold. Later, walking down the street in search of something to eat, and in an ideal world, a beer to wash it down with, the wind will catch this skirt and flip it over my head, to the detriment of everyone in the thai restaurant whose view of the moonlit sea will be interrupted by a flash of my purple knickers. Sorry about that.

Further up the beach a gang of teenagers are having a laugh and shoving each other around, violence as a proxy for affection. If I climbed the rocks in front of me and shoved the bloke minding his own business with an esky and a fishing rod, I think he would not find it as funny as the lads by the waves do.

I love the sea. I love the white noise of the surf, and the way you can see to the edge of the world without obstacle. As the sun sinks lower the sky lights up crazy pink and gold. On the horizon there are three big ships: a couple of container ships and one that is all cranes and funnels. I wonder if the guys on them still find the sunset worth looking at. Maybe they have seen it so many times that it is just the way the world is painted.

I suffer a sudden attack of melancholy. The sky is Barbara Cartland pink, the sand is warm and I have a dress on. The sunset is genuinely extraordinary but I have no-one to share the moment with. Later in this trip I will realise that it is enough that I should be enjoying such experiences, but tonight I have yet to learn that lesson.

I dance with the waves for a little while, letting them wash up to my knees before jumping to safety. Maybe tomorrow I will swim, if I can work out what to do with the bike keys.

It is getting dark, and it is time for a beer. I scrunch my toes dry in the sand, put my shoes back on and go back to being a grownup. But walking through a party town where the glass-fronted restaurants are full of families does not lift my spirits.

Back seat rider

2012-02-07T22:18:00.004+01:00

8.00 am on New Year's Eve and I am sitting on a table at the Fremantle Fishing Boat Harbour, while Woody takes a phone call from his accountant.

It is not where I am supposed to be. I am supposed to be riding south on a gnarly yellow GS, not sitting looking at a placid harbour. I am between bikes. The ailing GS has been returned, and, rather than leave me in Rockingham with a book, Woody has taken responsibility for me for the day. He says that he doesn't mind at all, that it will be a good opportunity to see how Trac Tor, his immense new Kawasaki, copes with a pillion. It is possible that he is just being polite and he would rather be at home with his wife and a glass of wine than entertaining me until Colin arrives back at Witch Suzuki to rent me a Bandit. But I choose to believe him. I spent too long with a man who would brood on every statement until he could turn it into something dark. It is not a habit I wish to acquire. Woody says he has done well out of life and now he enjoys helping people. I enjoy being helped, although, like cream cakes or tanning, it is something I ought only to indulge in sparingly. He is an entertaining and informative guide. He came to Australia as a young man with half his family - they only had enough money to pay for one parent to emigrate. He began as a policeman, and later became a very successful businessman, though the day is quite well advanced before he lets this slip. In Fremantle he tells me about the Kailis brothers, who own a fishing fleet, and a restaurant, and now a pearl business. In Scarborough and Cottesloe he tells me about Alan Bond, who made himself a rich man by spending other people's money. Over coffees and lemon squash we talk about families, and bikes, and from my immense, comfy seat I watch the beautiful people on the beaches, and the trees which now have to be called Grasstrees, and the charcoal-and-ash fire breaks, and the windmills, and Woody doesn't even let me pay for lunch as a thank you.

Peeling with Feeling

2012-02-06T22:01:00.004+01:00

I am relieved to be through with trees. In the end they freaked me out a little. Endless, ancient and crowding in on me with no respect for my personal space. I am happier when I can see the sky. Riding north from Albany to return the bike to Colin in Rockingham, it isn't too long before I am back under beautiful, blazing blue.

Just north of Mount Barker, a sign for "Peeling with Feeling Shearing Services" marks my return to wheat and sheep country. I have a day to cover 400km - 250 miles in old money. I have been allowing myself to be nervous about making the distance but it's far less than I cover in a day on an end-to-end or with Graham on the Old Farts Tour, and if I really screw it up I have dispensation to return the bike on Tuesday morning.

Because I am making good time, and the riding is easy, I allow myself a detour to Wagin to see the Big Ram. And maybe an iced coffee. It has been too cold for those in the south and I am in withdrawal.

My route to Wagin is via the Kojonup-Katanning Road. It is straight, like a cartoon, and black, like beauty. A silver pipe runs on my right, carrying water to the wheatbelt, and looking like an opportunity for malice in a Bond movie. I want to stop on the centre line and take a photo. I can see for miles in front and behind me. There should be plenty of time to pose the bike, take the picture and nip back to the verge. But fear of having to explain to Colin why his bike has been flattened into roadkill by an invisible road train forces me to compromise.

I also have to compromise on my plan to avoid the highway for as long as possible. Filling up in Narrogin I ask the pump attendant at the garage if he can point me at the start of the Wandering-Narrogin Road. I'm out of luck, he tells me. The bridge is down at Pumphrey and there's a 25km detour via gravel. Unless I fancy myself as the next Steve McQueen. We look at the bike, and at me, and at the bike, and I ask him to point me back towards the Albany Highway instead. If I hadn't had a chat with him I would have had to spend a long time backtracking. The universe is rewarding me for being sociable.

My reward to myself is a stop at what looks to be an excellent tourist trap. The Williams Woolshed held out the offer of a sheepy souvenir or two to come with me on future travels. I used to travel accompanied by a moose, but he went AWOL on a trip to Glasgow to see Def Leppard and talk about road safety. Since then I've tried a Highland Cow and a small dog from the Ducati factory, but they're just not the same.

The Woolshed has a range of upmarket booths selling art objects and kitchen things, a restaurant which is packed, and a shop selling a range of spectacularly unattractive jumpers. This leaves me a choice between Ugg boots, which I can't fit on the bike, and can't really afford, or a teatowel. I have a look round the Shearers' Yarn gallery to postpone the decision.

I know a very small amount about sheepshearing. I know that you do it in two-hour runs. I know that you need to know whether someone used straight combs or pulled ones before you offer to buy him a pint. And I know that wrestling sheep gives you flat knuckles.

But I want to know what it feels like to stand in a sling and shear a sheep every three minutes until the bell rings as part of a shearing team that works hard and plays harder. What it sounds like. Is it noisy? It must surely be, with machines to drive the shears, and sheep stamping around, but is it a place where people shout and banter, or can you only get the job done by keeping your head down and concentrating?

The Woolshed does its best. It's got a display of equipment, and some posters about union rates and wool prices, and a copy of a newspaper interview with an old boy who talks about trying to do better than the bloke next to you, while playing fair - shearing the first sheep you pick, not picking the easiest ones to shear - but it's terribly solemn and quiet. Which I suspect may be the exact opposite of how a shearing shed really is.

I don't buy a souvenir in the end. All the cuddly sheep seem to have been shipped in from China.

In which I learn a second valuable lesson about life

2012-02-05T22:08:00.005+01:00

The older I get the more like my dad I am becoming. This is my excuse for taking a tram ride on what purports to be a motorcycle tour of South West Australia. The other reason I am riding the Pemberton to Northcliffe tram is that it has a roof and should, if all goes well, give me a chance to dry out before I ride back to Augusta for the night. My Dri-Rider mesh suit does an awesome job of keeping me cool. It's not quite so good at keeping me warm when the rain is blowing in sheets. Is this normal for the time of year, I ask the cheerful man in the car park who commented on the bike, looked at the black cloud heading towards us and suggested that I'd better get my rain gear on. No, he says.

Didn't think so.

I book my ticket in the Pemberton Railway Station, which is stuffed with tram-related souvenirs and presided over by a stern-looking lady. Did I need her to look after my helmet, she asked, unexpectedly helpful.

I decline her offer, as I've spent five miunutes shuffling all the things in my top-box around so that I can squash it shut on my lid and soggy gloves, but I'm glad she made it, as she's proved yet again why Australia is such a fantastic place to ride motorcycles.

The tram has a roof, wooden seats and PVC sheets for windows. The woman in front of me insists on pulling the sheets down to keep the flies off her. She has, she informs the carriage, been bitten to pieces. The flies just love her. I haven't seen any flies today. They'd be doing well to avoid getting hammered out of the sky by the force of the rain. Having the windows down keeps the occasional rain off but means that the rest of the time we can't really see the forest which we're travelling through and on which the driver is giving us a commentary.

The woman, who sounds like she comes from Manchester, has booked 8 seats: for herself, her partner and what looks like daughter, son-in-law and numerous children. They are spread out over 10. The tram driver asks her to sit next to her husband instead of having a double seat each. "Oh, I can't," she says. "There isn't enough room on these seats."

It is true that the seats are close together and were designed more with practicality in mind than comfort. I'm squished sideways, but I'm a tall person and have my bike boots on. She's about five foot two. Her feet don't even touch the ground.

I brought three books with me on this trip: Lois on the Loose, my Secret Santa present from work. Sam Manicom's Under Asian Skies, for Australia tips. And Old Man on a Bike, Simon Gandolfi's book about riding a C90 to Ushuaia, in case I did manage to get hold of a postie bike. Gandolfi, on his trip, had brought Paul Theroux's account of making the same journey by train, The Old Patagonian Express. He wonders the same thing that I did when I read it. How is it, he asks, that Theroux has never met anyone that he likes while travelling?

I have to be less judgemental of Paul Theroux now, because I don't like this woman on the seat in front of me.

But that's OK, because she doesn't like anything.

She complains very loudly about the lack of shopping in Pemberton. She and her family are staying in a forest lodge. To me, that sounds idyllic. To her, it's a denial of her favourite hobby. Now, this may only be my first visit to Australia but even I can guess that coming to Pemberton for retail therapy would be rather like travelling to Dubai for a spot of swinging.

She doesn't like trees very much. The driver loves them. He tells us all about the karri, and the marri, and the snotty gobble, and about how hard it is to clear a forest with hand tools, and about how you choose where to put the axe so that the tree falls in the direction you want it to. Or I think that's what he's talking about. I can't be entirely sure because she kept up a running commentary of her own. The flies. The uncomfy seat. The lack of shopping. The price of cheese. She wishes the driver would stop talking. She rolls her eyes at every new piece of information. She predicts with some confidence that she will be sick when the tram reverses direction but the seats don't turn round.

She irritates me. She is in this beautiful town, being talked through amazing forest by someone who could not be any more passionate about the trees and the people who worked them, and she can't see past her own petty obsessions. Then I realise with some horror that I am no better than she is. For two days I've been whinging on Twitter and on Facebook about how I'm feeling lonely and tired and not enjoying myself as much as I'd thought I would.

I stop judging her and start judging myself. She says there are no shops. I've passed craft centres and cellar doors and tourist traps. She's just not looking hard enough. I say that I'm feeling lonely when I could easily call any of the Blue Knights, or my brother, or I could just walk downstairs in the youth hostel, make a pot of tea and find someone to talk with. Just like the Lady of the Flies, I am surrounded by opportunities to enjoy myself but am wilfully looking the other way. The stupid thing is, this is a lesson I have already learned once. When I was 18 I went to university, and I knew then that the odds of someone knocking on my door and saying "Hey, we heard there was a super-fun party person here that we just had to get to know" were slim. If I wanted to be a super-fun party person then I had to go out and track down the opportunities to make that true. If I want to be an adventurous solo travelling person who has conversations that make for interesting anecdotes in blogs like this one, then I need to start acting like one.

I am mortified. I decide that I will ride back to Augusta, take a day off to be a tourist, and learn how to talk to people again. I'd like to say that after this moment of epiphany I rode home in the sunshine but that would be a lie. I rode about half the way in sunshine and the rest in freezing rain. Thank god for hot showers. They probably didn't have them in Pemberton either...

There is no safety net.

2012-02-04T08:44:00.003+01:00

One...two...three...five...six...seven...eight...nine...ten....and pause.

The spikes are about a foot long and about as thick as my thumb. They've been driven more-or-less horizontally into the side of the tree. They spiral up into the canopy. And they're a bloody long way apart. I'm 6 foot tall, it's all in the arms and legs, and I'm having to stretch from each one to the next. I'm trying not to think too hard about what I'm doing. Because what I'm doing is climbing up a very tall, very thin tree. To see if I can.

This is my second attempt. I set out this morning, from Augusta to Pemberton, with one goal - to climb the Gloucester Tree. It's an old fire lookout, now a tourist attraction in the karri forest. Jack Kerouac spent some time as a fire watcher, so tree-climbing has a fine literary pedigree. I also want to do it because I'm afraid of it. My sister-in-law's first comment was "You won't be able to do that." She'd got five rungs up and come back down again. Would I do any better?

I took advice. "If other people can do it we can do it," he said.

It rained on the way into Pemberton so I arrived very wet and rather low. I have come to Australia to be Bloody Hot and ride in sunshine, not be hammered in a downpour. That's what happens at home. What doesn't happen at home is the way the roads steam gently after the sun comes back out. The Gloucester Tree was well signposted and - after handing over my 5 dollars to ride in the National Park - I was soon at the bottom of it.

As was a very loud park ranger.

"There is no safety net'!

"You climb at your own risk!"

"There is no safety harness!"

"If you fall off you will be hurt."

Cheers, love. I hadn't thought of that.

Children pour up the tree like ants. If you are going up and someone wants to come down, you have to plaster yourself against the trunk while they teeter on the edge of the spikes. This does not look like fun.

I join the queue of Australian tourists and step up. First rung. Second rung. Third rung, and the voice in my head starts to tell me that I am insane. Fourth rung, and I don't want to go any higher. Fifth rung, I give up and climb back down. No-one knows I've given up, because you're encouraged to do those first few steps as a photo opportunity. Except no-one took my photo.

It starts to rain again so I stand in a hut and read about the first loggers who climbed these trees without spikes, just ingenuity and bravery. Some of the trees can be a thousand years old.

I have lost. My fearful nature has got the better of me. I go and eat potato wedges in the Millhouse Cafe, which is excellent. I smile in what I hope is a friendly way to a guy riding solo on a GS just like the one I'm not riding, but he goes and sits outside with his dinner. I ride on the Pemberton to Northcliffe tram, which doesn't go all the way to Northclifffe. A bit like me and climbing trees.

And then I head home.

But as I headed north out of town, under the blue skies which have returned, I pass another climbing tree. The Diamond Tree is just sitting there, down a short length of unsealed road, minding its own business and waiting for me.

No-one is standing at the bottom enumerating the many ways in which tree climbing can be bad for you. In fact, no-one is here at all. I lock my gear in the top box and say hello to the tree. This time I have a plan. I will count. That's all I will let my brain do. Ten rungs at a time - not too scary. There are no big dents in the forest floor so people be can't falling off that often.

The first ten are the hardest. Maybe it's a caveman thing - the reality of climbing is underlined by how clearly you see the ground that you are rising away from.

The second ten are easier.

The third ten sail by. I look down. It's interesting and a little bit exciting. The tree sways gently with its friends. I keep going.

Halfway up there's a rest platform with a railing. You can't see it in the photo - it is a long way up. There's a helpful sign there: "you've just finished the easy bit"

I decide that halfway up is enough of a win. It feels like an incredible privilege, to be up so high and to be here alone. The other tree was more of a party tree - families and shouting and lots of fun. Here I can be a bit reflective. I sat at the bottom of the Gloucester Tree for a while watching the people come down. A very round girl staggered away on legs so wobbly she looked like she'd been playing the old Girl Guide game which involves putting your forehead on a hockey stick, spinning round 5 times and trying to run. "I'm over my fear of heights! I've done it!" she kept saying, jubilant.

I don't think I actually am afraid of heights. I like it up here. I like looking out at the other trees and seeing them from a new angle. It's just that I've been afraid for so long that I got stuck there.

I'm not afraid but I am being careful - I'm standing away from the edge and with one hand on the tree. Because I don't want to die. This may sound obvious to you but 12 months ago for me, the jury was out, sufficiently so that my GP sent me for psychiatric evaluation. I am not afraid, and I want to live. I feel it's much better to learn this halfway up a tall tree than halfway down a tall building.

Here's the plan...

2012-02-03T10:11:00.000+01:00

26 stories about Australia, one for each day in February. Before I forget all the good stuff :)

What we do in life echoes in eternity

2012-02-03T00:13:00.003+01:00

Gladiator is on ITV2. The last time I watched it was New Year's Eve on my brother's mahoosive telly with surround-sound, in solitary splendour with a cheese bun and a bottle of Little Creatures beer. My brother and his children (who I am not allowed to mention) had gone to a family-friendly New Year's Eve party somewhere else in Perth and I wasn't back from picking up my replacement hire bike in time to go with them. I could have sat on the Chair that Must be Kept Clean but didn't want to risk the children getting the blame for my crumbs. So I sat on the sofa with three remote controls lined up - one for the TV, one for the DVD and one for the hifi. In my family we are all about the gadgets.

Gladiator and my biking history are woven together more closely than this one occasion. The film came out in 2000, a time when I was struggling to find reasons to ride. The 10 miles between Chesham and Jarman Park, through Bovingdon and past the pub owned by a bobsleigh racer, were about as big an adventure as I could muster. Gladiator was the excuse for me to get on the Triumph. I may have gone more than once but that would make me look like a sad person so I won't admit to that. The film plays fast and loose with history but it has awesome lines and it has Russell Crowe looking buff so I suspend my disbelief and enjoy it. Though these days I tend not to watch it all the way through. I watch the Battle of Carthage and stop after the fight with the tiger guy, when Maximus is still winning. And then I usually raise a glass to Oliver Reed for going out in such style.

#29in29

2012-02-02T01:01:00.001+01:00

I don't think I've ever managed a post a day for a month. There's a Twitter meme going around called #29in29 encouraging people to post a photo a day for the whole month of Feb. Photos aren't my forte so I shall try and be disciplined and post every day for the whole of Feb. I'm going to try and use the oppostunity to capture a few Aus memories before they fade. But tonight I have had rather too much Aspalls so all I can say is I love you man, you're my bes'mate.

Post holiday blues

2012-02-01T00:13:00.003+01:00

The last of the post-Australia washing has been put away (I'm not that much of a domestic slattern, honest, it's just that stuff tends to linger on the drying rack until I need to clear it to hang the next load up). So now there is no evidence that I have been on an amazing trip. I've shown the photos to my dad, and that's my worry of the day. There's so much more to travelling than the pictures we take - even if you're me, who takes a lot of pictures. And yes, they do all have the bike in. How do I stop the memories fading into those 475 frozen moments? I have my map, and things I picked up on the way, and my journal. I have often wished that it was possible to download memories onto some sort of brain chip. It would be great for two reasons: it would be possible to definitively check who was right in those domestics that start "but of course I told you." And I wouldn't have to rely on a rickety configuration of neurones to recall the red earth and the blue sky and the line where the oceans meet.

Girl, put your hi-viz on

2012-01-27T14:48:00.002+01:00

Something dreadful has happened to me. I have become a bus commuter. I was spoilt by riding the beautiful hot roads of South West Australia and since I came home the prospect of breaking 2Moos out of the garage, riding to work in the wet and the cold and the slime, and repeating the operation in reverse at the end of the day just hasn't appealed. As I lamented before Christmas, in the absence of any parking spaces at work my only alternative is to get the Guided Bus. There are severe limitations to this as a mode of transport, not least that the cheap one (Whippet - I wonder if the Tight Fisted Northerner stereotype was deliberate?) ends at 5 to 8, when the night is yet young. But it turns out I do quite enjoy the 2-mile cycle to and from the bus stop. I have my "Now's the Time" hi-viz jacket and a pair of robust boots. Except last Friday when I had my Now's the Time hi-viz and a pair of 7-inch heels with flames down the side. And I pay £12.50 for the week. I had to take 2Moos to the office yesterday and - quelle horreur - I didn't enjoy it. What on earth is going on? Have I been abducted and replaced by an imposter?

Back to work

2012-01-16T08:46:00.000+01:00

This hasn't really done justice to the amazing colours in the sky!

2 down, 48 to go :)

2012-01-14T07:15:00.000+01:00

Scores on the doors

2012-01-10T07:48:00.005+01:00

Miles travelled: 1983
Koalas photographed: 11
Days on the road: 8
Dolphins seen: 7
Bikes ridden: 4
Swedish barmaids met: 2
Lighthouses climbed: 2
Emus spotted: 1
Lookout trees climbed: 1/2

The view from Albany

2012-01-09T15:59:00.000+01:00

Greetings from Albany

2012-01-08T13:18:00.001+01:00

I am staying in a motel getting ready for a long day tomorrow getting my hire bike back to Rockingham. It's very exciting, i've never stayed in a motel before. The bike is parked outside my door, as is correct form. I have a fridge and a toaster. Sadly I don't have my preferred wash kit - as I headed towards the Stirling Range I started to wonder why I could see yellow in my mirror when my jacket, the bike and the panniers come in black, white and blue. The answer, as I'm sure you've figured out quicker than me, is that the pannier lid has come open and was wantonly displaying my exped drybag. And no longer carrying a Cath Kidston wash bag with a rather nice Clarins moisturiser in it. I left the mountains looking mysterious in the distance and rode back to see if I could find it, but I think the roos have made off with it. So I am abluting, under a shower of frankly awesome power, with the best that the Coles Express can offer. Which actually isn't too bad. And my VB stubby is chilling in the fridge. I am eating junk food and watching Neil Oliver on the telly. It has been a great trip, and I am ready to go home now.

D'entrecasteaux point

2012-01-07T08:39:00.000+01:00

There are days when I think my life has been damaged by too many wrong decisions. If those days come again I shall remind myself that all those choices brought me here, to the south coast of Australia. What an incredible blessing, to have ridden here on a bike, to be sitting warmed by the sun and looking out at the beautiful colours of the ocean.

sadface

2012-01-05T11:05:00.000+01:00

I wanted to ride to this lookout and watch the sunset over the ocean. I've even been a little way down the unsealed road, but it's not nearby, and if I drop this bike I'll forfeit $3,000. Bugger.

Cruising for birds on the Blackwood River

2012-01-05T05:41:00.000+01:00

The water is the same colour as the peaty water in the Highlands. Wonder if it would make good whisky?

Barrels Round

2012-01-04T08:56:00.000+01:00

I am in the Margaret River Wine region. I tried a Cellar Door, where the wineries do tastings and sell bottles. They wouldn't serve me. So I have come to the Bootleg Beer Company instead, where I am having a middy of their least strong brew, which is Tom's Amber Ale. It was $6 - is beer expensive on Australia or is it because this is a boutique brew?

Spotted one in the wild!

2012-01-04T04:24:00.000+01:00

Biker's Paradise!

2012-01-03T06:50:00.000+01:00

Omnia sol temperat

2012-01-01T23:56:00.004+01:00

Rental bikes don't come cheap. In order to get my money's worth, I need to have around £100-worth of fun every day. What does that look like? About 25 pints of beer? I have downed that many in a day, but it was a long time ago and I'm not sure it was fun even then. Maybe it's more like a ticket to a West End show, a meal before it with friends and a couple of drinks in the interval. Every day for the next ten days. I can live with that ;)

This Bandit is a sweet, sweet bike. I feel rather closer to the ground than normal, but I can finally do all those things I've practised on Norfolk airfields including the feet-up U turn, though I have not yet ventured one on full lock. No point tempting fate, and I've already heard the expensive crunchy sound of plastic on tarmac twice this trip, both times my camera slipping off the bike seat and hitting the deck. Why so many U-turns? Because this bike doesn't have a GPS. I have a good map and the number of roads available to choose from is closer to Caithness than Camden, so I think I will be OK - and in a slightly Spartan way I think it's good for me to practise the discipline of looking at maps and trying to remember them rather than just blind following.

For New Year's Day I rode up the coast, past the dog-walkers, joggers and surfers who were out and about. I'd say "making the most of the sunshine' but this is one of the big things you have to know about Australia. You probably know already, but it's different when you're feeling it for yourself. It's always sunny. Every day. This creates a very different head-space. If this were a summer morning in Blighty I'd be thinking, "Oh, sunny again, great! Wonder how long it will last?" Like hungry people or binge drinkers, there would be a feeling of needing to grab it all before it's gone. Here there's none of that panic. The sun shines, you put on your protection and go out and have a ball, and you can do the same again the next day. It creates relaxation.

The other thing about Australia that you might know in your head but not in your spine is how big it is, and how thinly spread the people are. I followed the coast to Yanchep, where there's a National Park with koala bears. Tourist photos in the bag, I headed back into farming country to New Norcia via Mogumber, These towns are marked on the map....Mogumber is a railway crossing and a tavern. New Norcia is a very odd collection of Benedictine monastic buildings. Between them were miles of warm, well-kept tarmac roads with bugger-all other traffic. I realised that carrying water isn't necessary for comfort and feeling a bit thirsty. It's because if I have a problem in a place with no mobile reception I'll be waiting a very long time for someone to come along.

So: New Year's Day was all about hot, red roads, the brilliant colours of the roadside flowers, flashes of bright red and green from the parrots as I scared them up from the verge, and one-horse towns. I stopped into the Mogumber Tavern for a cold drink. A cattle dog inspected me on the porch - I passed and got a wag of the tail. Inside an old guy with legs as leathery as his thongs said "G'day! How ya going." It's a fantastically warm greeting and "Very well thank you, how do you do?" seems inadequately British in response. He wished me an increase in happiness and I sat at the bar in my un-natural fibre mesh jacket feeling very out of place. I'll do better next time...I'll leave the jacket on the bike! (and I'll practice "How do you do? " in my best Betty and Phil voice. I'm a tourist, I might as well sound like one!)

Today I start south :)

Reasons to Love Australia

2012-01-01T00:47:00.004+01:00

This picture shows you one of the main reasons I'm really liking Australia. The first reason is, of course, that it seems to be full of really, really lovely people. I'm open to the idea that it's just the ones I've met, but so far it's pretty much a 100% success rate.

The other reason is that it's very bike-friendly. This is a tourist brochure for Australia's South West, where I'm going on the bike tomorrow. If you look carefully there are 2 bikers in the photos, just doing tourist things and clearly being seen as the kind of people you might like to have visiting your region.

This just wouldn't happen in the UK.

Anyway, that small spot of politics aside, Happy New Year. It is warm and sunny here, and I am about to lard on the factor 30 and go hunt some koala bears.

Back on track, I think.

2011-12-31T15:01:00.003+01:00

These are my new wheels. The GS had a problem which made it surge like a rocking horse. Also the "Service Due" indicator was showing. If I'd paid a bargain price I'd have settled for a knackered old shed but this was top dollar. So after a short breakdown last night, this morning saw me and Woody The Sweeper returning the GS before heading up the coast for a coffee and to await a call from Colin of Sunset Motorcycle Hire, who opened up specially for me on New Year's Eve so that I could take possession of a rather nice 1200 Bandit. I was very happy on the GS, because I know how to ride a Gnarly Thing, while the Bandit is an unknown quantity and has no GPS. I will have to rely on paper mapping and following people.

Happy New Year's Eve Eve

2011-12-30T17:04:00.003+01:00

Things have not been going marvellously. Hence the absence of photos of me riding bikes and having a fantastic time. I had a brilliant ride out on Wednesday with an amazing bunch of guys called the Blue Knights and I will write more about that; and today the very lovely @sharemyoyster took me up the Swan Valley (which is a place, not a Carry On title) for coffee and ice cream. Tomorrow I have to swop a decrepit rental GS for something that I actually trust to ride roads that don't see a passing car for a day. Wish me luck.

Me, looking hot ;)

2011-12-29T16:01:00.001+01:00

The smart locals park in the shade.

And breathe ...

2011-12-27T10:06:00.000+01:00

Day three in the Big Brother house. Highwaylass is in the drive being shown a very shiny motorcycle. It's early evening here, the roads are still holiday quiet and ideal for trying out a very different bike to the tractors I normally ride. Tomorrow I am going on a ride-out to York with some friendly local riders. I have said as often as I can "slow rider: borrowed bike" in an effort to pre-empt any exploration of the scenery.

Surely some mistake...

2011-12-26T01:09:00.000+01:00

No postie bike in the postie game!

Boxing Day

2011-12-25T22:33:00.001+01:00

It's 5.20am here in Perth and it's a beautiful morning....at home it's still yesterday.

I'd like to say the flight was uneventful but it actually involved my own personal oxygen tank so that would be a big fat lie. It turns out that when you find a member of cabin crew, explain that you are having an allergy problem with something on the plane (I think it was to the cheap seats, the first leg was fine!), are having problems breathing and wondered if they had an antihistamine available they take it very seriously. Or possibly they were bored and wanted to practice using all the kit. So the first half of the journey was very lovely and the second half very miserable. I guess that averages out!

This is what money buys you

2011-12-24T07:42:00.000+01:00

Outside the airport is rammed. I have the Business Lounge and its buffet breakfast to myself. A waitress has just brought out a bottle of champagne. Is 6.45 too early for a Bucks Fizz?

Waiting....

2011-12-24T06:22:00.000+01:00

I am about to be deprived of internet access for 36 hours. Like a detective in an HP Lovecraft novel, my sanity may not survive.....

Let us go then, you and I

2011-12-23T12:37:00.000+01:00

It's the day before Christmas Eve. Or, in my personal festive itinerary, the day before I fly to Australia. The last time I was this impatient to get to Christmas my brother made me sort his plastic soldiers into Germans (pale blue, if I remember correctly); Brits (olive green); and Yanks (beige), to make it simpler for him to line them up in the sandpit before he shot them with his air pistol. Happy days...!

In the absence of small soldiers or big brothers, I am whiling the day away in one of my favourite places on earth (no, not the front row of a Lee Mead gig, that was last night) - Trafalgar Square. I have a rather watery coffee, a window seat and a very heavy bag. If I didn't have the bag I could go and have a look at the National Portrait Gallery, which I also love. When I was 17 a Frenchman offered to take me home from there and paint my portrait. I felt this was a rather long-term prospect and I had a date with Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes in the Wyndham Theatre that evening so I declined, as politely as possible, wondering what he saw in a hefty teenager from Macclesfield.

Maybe I will trust the bag to left luggage....i've got my passport & my bike licence in my pocket, that's all I really need for a successful trip.

I left London to make someone else happy (it didn't work). One of my resolutions for next year is to base decisions on what will make me happy. Even writing that down makes me feel selfish. But I think it's a healthy selfishness. Like the rule with oxygen masks - in the event of cabin depressurisation, put your own on before helping anyone else. You're not going to be helpful if you're blue with oxygen deprivation. Or unhappiness.

In 24 hours I will have been in the air for 2 hours. If I see Santa up there I will ask him to bring you peace, happiness and good friends. Because if you've got those, you'll have everything you really need for a successful year.

Happy Chrismas Eve Eve. I love you all xx

Preparations for Australia #5: Leaving on a Jet Plane

2011-12-20T22:59:00.003+01:00

I pack more than this for a weekend in Hayfield. Though the fact the bag is mostly full of dinky sundresses wholly inadequate for a British campside in July has helped to save a lot of space.

I find packing incredibly difficult. This is my first solo long-haul trip since - well, ever. It's not like I didn't make all the travel arrangements when I had an other half, and I am going to a place where most things that I may have forgotten can be obtained with a credit card - not sure what the position is on size 10 ladies shoes, but other than that I reckon I should be fine - it's just becoming harder every time I do it.

The situation is not helped by massive work stress. I live in a happy rose-tinted world where the fact that you were hired to do a job matches up with the fact that it needs doing, you do it well, and everyone is happy. What I can't cope with is having to fight for the opportunity to get off the starting blocks - after being hired to do the job in the first place. This is my problem not theirs, it must be because the same difficulty has followed me round in my various employments. I have to manage another day and a half before I get to leave it all behind, if only for a little while. First I head to London to celebrate Christmas with Lee Mead and some very fine lady friends, and then it will be about another 24 hours before check-in. I was worried about the plane journey but after this week even a screaming baby in the next seat will be a welcome relief.

All I want for Christmas...

2011-12-16T14:56:00.001+01:00

Yesterday was our works Christmas do, which involved a Secret Santa with a £5 budget*. I had to buy my Secret Santee 2 bottles of beer, because though he's a lovely bloke, his hobby is MC-ing and there's not much in the way of equipment for that you can buy for less than a fiver. Which slightly disproves my theory about hobbies making you easier to buy for. Though the fact that my Secret Santa bought me Red Tape and White Knuckles suggests it may still be true for bikers.

When she decloaked at the end of the karaoke I realised why we'd been having quite such an intense conversation over the turkey about who writes the best motorcycle travel books. I always feel slightly aggrieved that Lois stole my life - bright red hair? Yep. Also does music? Yep. Rides bikes and writes witty self-deprecating stories about the experience? Well, I like to think so. Hopefully this globe will be big enough for the both of us!

In other news, because I was a dirty stop-out (missed my bus home) last night I had to go and buy something to change into (party dress not really the thing for dress-down Friday!) and am Very Happy that these jeans are 2 sizes smaller than the previous ones.

* it also involved a 12-hour drinking session and karaoke. We take our fun seriously in the FlatLands.

Many bike based adventures

2011-12-15T00:16:00.004+01:00

It has been an expensive day. 2Moos has new tyres, I have a new haircut and my bank balance has £450 less in it than was there this morning.

Neither of these items could be postponed. The tyres are both flat and bald, leading to some very squirrely white line moments on these cold greasy mornings; and though my hair might not be bald it is certainly grey in parts it should not be, especially with a works party tomorrow and a holiday coming up.

After entrusting 2Moos to Phil at Cambridge Motorcycles I folded myself onto the tiny Suzuki and had an equally diminutive espresso from Christina to kickstart the day - but when I went back to the Suzuki a few hours later for the return journey to collect a freshly reshod Africa Twin, the battery gave the engine one limp spin and died.

Not really good news on a freezing cold night and with a pressing appointment for a new coat of dye.

So I called Phil, and he said give me five minutes and I'll come round in the van. I lurked on the street corner, fortunately not reciving any offers, until the van arrived and Phil opened the back doors to reveal....a rather small moped. Which didn't seem a fair swop for an Africa Twin, even if one of the heated grips isn't working and the high beam switch keeps getting stuck on.

One short van ride later and a brief pause to admire the Cambridge Motorcycles tree, I was back where I am supposed to be - on a large Gnarly Thing, which feels at least 2 inches taller on new rubber.

Back to the office, grab stuff, run to Toni & Guy for what is a really rather splendid retouch, then to the Hungry Horse to catch up with some biker friends. One of whom was the wronged party in this case, which is on my mind these dark evenings when cyclists ride with no lights and then write to the Cambridge News claiming that the only person they are endangering is themselves. Not so.

And now I'm shivering next to my hot water bottle and consoling myself with the thought that in 10 days I will be on a plane, migrating south.

Preparations for Australia #4

2011-12-12T22:25:00.003+01:00

I am a feminist. I disapprove of the time and effort modern culture requires to be expended in depilation to make adult women resemble Thai ladyboys. However, I am also vain. Being 6 ft tall and fond of comfortable shoes, I fear that arriving in a Hot Nation with furry thighs and a swimsuit will leave no doubt as to which end of the Oval I bowl from. So I have invested in the instrument of torture known as the Epilator. The last two hours have revealed two useful facts. The first is that pain isn't what it used to be. The first time I tried one of these I had to give up after 20 minutes and take it back to the shop. All that falling on my head has at least been good for something. The second is that I have a *lot* of scars on my legs. I'm really bad at shaving. Thank god dowager beard-dom remains some years away. The third is that "perfect results in minutes" is either a lie or is based on a test subject with significantly shorter legs than me.

Preparations for Australia #3

2011-12-09T08:45:00.001+01:00

I am given to understand that Australia is a toasty nation ("it will be Bloody Hot"), a thought of great comfort as I shiver in my bedsocks and mahoosive Aran jumper. (It was a present from a friend of my dad's when I was at uni - something went wrong with the measurements and it reaches to my knees). In anticipation, I have made a sunhat, ably modelled here by the Ducati Puppy.

For those who like to know such things, the yarn is Blue Sky Alpaca Organic Cotton and the pattern is a free download from Lion Brand Yarns in the USA.

It's getting a bit chilly

2011-12-05T14:45:00.005+01:00

The past few days there's been frost on the car in the mornings, which makes me feel bad because I know I have to put it in the garage but there's not room. And then I start to feel anxious about the arrival of winter. I'm not a fair weather rider by any means and I'm a very happy bike commuter but this is the first year that I've had to ride to work with no real alternative. When I lived in London I could ride, or take the bus, or take the tube or even the train. When I worked in Coventry it was take the bike, with an option of a fairly straightforward car journey with a guaranteed parking space outside the office, because it was on a barren industrial estate next to the world's ugliest hotel. Now I live in the boonies and my village has no public transport. I could theoretically drive to work, if by driving you meant sitting in a queue for at least 45 minutes and having nowhere to park at the end of the interminable wait. So I really don't know what I'm going to do in January and February when the snow and ice arrive. Last year I was working from home, which was lonely and expensive on the central heating, but did mean that getting to work was a straightforward affair. Maybe I need to find temporary winter quarters in the centre of town.

Happy December

2011-12-01T08:35:00.004+01:00

Not only is it the 1st of December, it's Happy New (Old) Trousers day. While I am loathe to prove that, at the root of everything, ladies are indeed obsessed with matters of weight and body image, I am very excited to report that today was the first day I got back into my Belstaff winter trousers. I had to retire them last year in favour of a special pair of Fat Bastard-sized Hein Gericke ones owing to an unfortunate tendency to comfort eat when unhappy. While there is some way to go before, to quote acam@cix's excellent gender-neutral weight loss goal, "I'm fucking Kate Moss," it is a source of significant joy that I am at least making progress.

Preparations for Australia #2

2011-11-28T14:34:00.003+01:00

This is where I'm going to be riding. The Aussie sent it to me to console me for the fact that he's going to be doing a double shift at work instead of riding with me. As the south-west corner used to be his manor, my hopes are high for great roads and excellent pubs.

The other fantastic thing about this route is that it includes a Giant Ram. I have only just discovered that Australia is famous for its Big Things. I feel a calling to visit them all by motorcycle...

Preparations for Australia #1

2011-11-23T00:56:00.004+01:00

These are the important necessities which I have gathered so far. In no particular order, they are:-

small purple sundress (diet is going well; hopefully in 4 weeks time I will no longer be at risk of being harpooned by the Japanese).
kick-ass noise isolating headphones for the flight.
Sam Manicom's book, Under Asian Skies, which includes his travels in Australia.
2 books by Simon Gandolfi.
HEMA's Australia Motocycle Atlas - Peter Thoeming reviews 200 of the best motorcycle roads so I will know which ones to aim for.
upper-crust cabin bag.

I'm planning to buy Nathan Millward's Going Postal when I'm in Oz for the return trip.

I think that pretty much covers it. Though I guess knickers would also be useful.

Objects of desire...

2011-11-21T20:51:00.007+01:00

When it comes to visits to the NEC, I feel like a chameleon. Obviously if you've met me this stretches credibility. How much blending can a 6 foot woman built for comfort with hair the colour of a London bus do?

It's more of an internal adaptation. The first year I went to the show I had a guest ticket courtesy of Craig Carey-Clinch. It said VIP on it in silver leaf and I enjoyed the insider status that came attached to a job working as head of campaigns for a Large Motoring Organisation. I spent the next few years getting closer to the industry, until one year I found myself with a staff pass, which came with an obligation to spend my time in the show having meetings with chief executives about sales data rather than having meetings with the rest of the lobby, motorcycling friends and journalists in the bar. Though I did sneak off for the Wall of Death.

Paradoxically the nearer I got to the centre of things the more of an outsider I felt. So I walked away from that job, and 10 months later out of work all together. Oops.

Last year I went to the show in a new disguise - freelance journalist. I'm still not sure it's a role I'm playing terribly well. I feel like there's a Haynes manual for it that everyone else in the motorcycle media has got, and all I've got is a smudgy pdf of the page that says "reassembly is the reverse of disassembly."

But it must be true because editors ask me to write for them. Sometimes they even ask me twice.

This year was my second visit on a press pass. I've come full circle and am about to start again. Instead of discussing data with Chief Executives and Chairman I talked travel with Paddy Tyson and Sam Manicom. I looked at off-road bikes and I asked lots and lots of questions. KTM were happy to let me stand inexpertly on the pegs of the new Freeride 350. The lovely people from Bumpy's walked me in a nervous figure of 8 on their Gas Gas, finishing their lunch ten minutes early to make it possible and offering me a warm welcome at their Yorkshire Trials Park. And I entered all the competitions offering trail riding holidays in warm places with the gusto that I used to enter the ones offering shiny new fast bikes.

What's it all in aid of? I'm going travelling. I'm starting with Australia, and when I get back I'm going to find out just how little money it's possible to spend on the tedious business of living so that I can build up enough funds to just keep rolling. It's not an original plan, but it's the one with my name on it.

I nearly bought Building the Ultimate Adventure Motorcycle: The Essential Guide to Preparing a Bike for the Journey of a Lifetime for three pages in it by Austin Vince. He's incredibly rude about guided tours and writes of the importance not only of making your own plans but also of creating your own diary, movie or website about what you did. His view is that we should be doers, not passive consumers. Something that it's been too easy for me to forget these last few years. Slightly ironically, it was the point about not being consumers that stopped my buying the book, because one of my great failing is the belief that reading about something is pretty much the same as actually doing it and that's a trap I'm trying to escape.

So this year for me, just as it was way back in the beginning, the NEC was all about possibilities. It's about becoming a new rider again, and about finding the allies who are going to help me reach the horizon. Probably rather slowly, and with a lot of stopping and putting my feet down, but, after all, as Ted Simon said, the interruptions are the journey.

Looking at bikes makes me smile

2011-11-12T10:47:00.002+01:00

I was feeling rather sorry for myself last night. I'm damaged again having nearly broken my neck trying to change the bed sheets. (Got my foot tangled up and fell into the pointy edge of the wardrobe. Normally sympathetic colleague couldn't stop laughing at this point of the story).

This morning is much better. The RBR has ended (boo) but it does mean that lots of people are posting their photos (yay!).

When I first started the Rally I waited in anxious anticipation for the Gallery to go up so that I could check whether I'd got the right landmarks. These days, between the Conkers arbitration weekend, and the speed with which Dave the D emails back with comments, that's less important. The photos are much more about happy memories of a year's riding.

Publish and be damned?

2011-11-07T12:28:00.005+01:00

I am unfashionable among my smarter friends for two reasons. I quite like Liz Jones, and I watch the X-Factor with enthusiasm.

The man I left London for judged me for reading Liz's columns. Every week he would pick up You, read the back page, making increasingly outraged harrumphs, and then regale me for a few hours about how shallow and self-obsessed all media types are.

I stand guilty as accused - I've kept this blog going for 5 years with an endless stream of tales about me and my life - but I take the view that if you don't like something, don't read it (or watch it, for the X Factor). And don't judge someone else because they do.

Liz takes stick for being shallow and for moaning about her single life. But being single is difficult, especially for women. Not because we're not emotionally complete without a man, but because there are some jobs which require either physical strength or 2 people. I have an armchair I would like the council to come and take away, but it's upstairs and I can't get it down on my own. My chain needs adjusting but I can't get the Africa Twin on its centre stand without help - apparently there's a knack, but I haven't got it yet. If I had a man around the house, or even a lodger, the job would be done in two shakes.

I usually recognise something in what she has written (though I promise I have never done this). This week I recognise the whole column, because we share a problem slightly more serious than not having anyone to hold the ladder while I try and clean the gutters:-

She's writing about her new partner:-

"How about a bath together," he says. "That would be something to put in your column. You could write about how I displace so much water because I'm so fat."
"Ha ha. I wouldn't do that."
"Yes you would. You did it to your husband."
This is true...I wrote about my husband because I didn't really care about him. My column, my opinion. was more important."

I don't write as much here as I used to. I have become worried about trampling on the people who make my life the incredible adventure it has become. The people I used to write about as strangers have become my friends. Is it better to write from the heart, publish and be damned, or to say nothing because words can bruise just as much as tarmac, even by accident?

Liz then worries that she's become addicted to misery, because "happiness isn't interesting." A post I actually wrote here.

And then they go out where she used to live in London. "I have a flash of my life if I'd stayed here: I could walk to Waitrose and the cinema. I'd be clean and happy. I start to sob." I've done the same, in the back seat of a black cab heading from the Embankment to Euston, because if I'd stayed in London I'd have been able to walk under the fairy lights strung between the trees outside the Royal Festival Hall and get a night bus home, instead of having to book expensive hotels and worry about missing the last train.

Graham says that everything happens for the best. I live in the countryside now. I shop at the Co-Op. I have time instead of money. This weekend I went to the Dirt Bike Show, next weekend I'm going to see friends, then it's the NEC show, and in less than 2 months I'm going to be in Australia. That doesn't sound too bad.

Oh, and the X Factor? I help run a jam night. We welcome anyone on stage who wants to give it a go. Some people are amazing, some are just enthusiastic. The X Factor is a silly, manipulative entertainment show but it takes a lot of courage - or, I suppose, iron-clad self-confidence - to get up on a stage and sing. So knock the judges, or Simon Cowell, but not the contestants. They're singing live every week and some people will watch and be encouraged to think "I'm better than that." And hopefully they'll find a lovely local jam night or music venue and get up on stage. Sharing music is a Good Thing. Unless it's you with your mobile phone on the back seat of the bus.

Sticks and stones may break my bones...

2011-11-03T14:17:00.002+01:00

... but sprox and chains excite me

Another first today - the Africa Twin had to go in for replacement chains and sprockets. The Triumph hasn't needed them yet, and Ruby had a shaft drive, so this is a new experience. After another excursion on the dinky Suzuki ("better than walking, but only just" said the man behind the counter, handing over the keys) I collected 2Moos and rode back to work.

I like new tyres. I love the three-dimensional fluidity they bring to my riding, for the brief period before I square them off again. The new chain brought fine throttle control and the re-introduction of engine braking to my arsenal. And we could accelerate without sounding like there was a spanner stuck in the spokes.

But the gear change didn't feel right. So when I was back in my parking space I knelt down for a look and found the chain was tighter than a mermaid's fish mitten. If I'd been sensible I'd have checked it while I was still outside the shop, but it didn't take long to nip back over and ask politely for someone to come and check the tension with me.

There was a slight rolling of eyes and a patient explanation of how to check a chain. You do this, and then you do this, and then yes, it's too tight. Which was a relief. Junior garage person was chastised and told to try again, and I've been given a compensatory tin of chain lube. Thanks due to Graham for showing me how to check!

"I'll tell you what freedom is to me: no fear."

2011-10-30T21:42:00.003+01:00

Although I've been single for about a year and a half I still sleep on "my side" of the bed. At the moment, in the space where an other half used to be, I have two workshop manuals, the crossword, and Blue Highways by William Least Heat Moon. Travel, and the knowledge to make it possible.

There are lots of things to miss about my previous life. There's the benefits pointed out in When Harry Met Sally: "You guys were a couple. You had someone to go places with. You had a date on national holidays." There's massive comfort in knowing that there is one person out of everyone in the world whose job it is to be concerned with my wellbeing. To make me a cup of tea when I get home, and to bring me magazines and chocolates when I feel ill. But that's lazy too. The person whose main responsibility it is to look out for my welfare ought to be me. Anything else should be a bonus. (Though I must add at this point that I am blessed in my amazing friends who do look out for me, all the time.)

There are benefits in being single too.

Last week we had the final RBR event of the season - the Conkers camping weekend and barbecue. Jim brings his caravan, his superior coffee machine and his large awning. Viv cooks up a storm, and Ian and Carol make bacon butties for breakfast. Graham checks photos so those seeking a 100% allrounder have a chance to remedy any mistakes. It's a fantastic weekend. And this year was the first year I was able to enjoy it fully. The first year I was with someone who made it clear that he was desperate to leave from the moment we pitched the tent. Last year I was having immense job stress and had to leave early in Sunday morning to meet a deadline. This year I had no worries and a wonderful time.

One of the new faces was discussing whether he'd go for a 100% all rounder again next year. The problems of making time for family events, other hobbies, and keeping a non-riding partner happy argued against. And these are the things that I no longer have to worry about. Love might mean never having to say you're sorry, but being single means I never have to say "do you mind if..."

If I want to commit to riding to Shetland for the Simmer Dim I can do it. If it seems sensible to me to ride for 10 days in Scotland on the Old Farts Tour, and I have enough annual leave in the bank, I can take those days without having to negotiate. And if I want to spend a large amount of wedge flying to Australia for Christmas, hiring a bike and exploring a new continent, that's just peachy.

Some people will think this sounds terribly lonely. And on a bad day it is. But on a good day the only thing that stands between me living the life I want, the way I want to, is whether I'm brave enough to get out there.

And that's worth a little loneliness.

Meet the Meat...

2011-10-10T20:43:00.005+02:00

For a short while tonight I thought somebody was having an October cook-out, for the smell of roast beef hung temptingly in the air. After a few miles I realised it was following me home. Yesterday my lid was hanging in the kitchen for the three hours that a particularly fine slice of cow was roasting in the oven and it seems to have taken the experience to heart. It's an improvement on the usual ambience of slightly mouldy rainwater, though it did make me head straight for the fridge when I got in.

Though, in all honesty, I would probably have done that anyway. I live in a happy rose-tinted world where all you need to do to prosper is work hard at the thing you're good at, not deal with schoolboy games from someone old and well-paid enough to know better. I can work hard, it's the bullshit that kills me.

And makes me fat. Proponents of slimness like to say "Nothing tastes as good as thin feels." I think that's because they've never had yesterday's roast potatoes sitting in the fridge waiting for a quick zap in the microwave and a topping of extra-mature cheddar, stuck under the grill until brown and bubbling.

My excuse is that it's not just about the joy of carbs. It's also second helping of the joy of having a great Sunday. Two of my lovely friends have three small boys, for whom I'm a kind of mad Auntie with a house full of odd toys. Yes, that's a keyboard that you have to pedal. Yes, that's a record player. A bit like CDs but bigger. Yes, that's a shark on a stick. And very bravely they come round every few months and test my Sunday dinner skills before running round the park. My roasties were fine, my yorkies were more like little biscuits, but the lump of cow was a triumph, because I took the advice of the blessed Delia who said "start with a good cut of meat."

Lurking in an industrial estate on the edge of my village is an excellent butcher. I told him that I needed enough roast for three small boys and three big grown-ups, he chose me a bit and put it on the scales. I asked if I needed to take the string off before I put it in the oven. He sized me up and said "You're not very good at cooking, are you, love?"

I like to think it's more that I'm out of practice.

Anyway, I had a point when I started this post. It turns out today is World Mental Health day. My mental health was sorely tested today but there are two infallible cures that I can recommend to everyone.

Food for friends, and riding motorcycles. And if your lid spends a week smelling of beef, well, that's just a happy reminder.

PS: This weekend was also my 2nd Plinthiversary. Which is why there's a photo of Rufus on the plinth up there instead of something more relevant.

Spread a little happiness as you go by...

2011-09-27T18:46:00.003+02:00

A long time ago I drove a 2CV whose previous owner had got up one day, looked at a small comedy French car and decided that its image would be greatly enhanced by the addition of some Winnie the Pooh cartoons. It was cheap and not too rusty, so I bought it, and then I found out that it's really quite life-enhancing to be the cause of small children breaking out in smiles and cheerful waves. (One of my gifts is that through a form of remote mind control I can make babies cry just by looking at them). It was a helpful antidote to the gruff contempt which it attracted from the maintenance guys at work.

This morning I was riding Two Moos along the road which is a shortcut to our village primary and got waved at by at by several Very Small People. I think the fact that he has shiny pink glitter stripes helps. It's lovely to be popular!

"She who succeeds in gaining the mastery of the bicycle will gain the mastery of life"

2011-09-23T07:40:00.004+02:00

The moon is bouncing off the glitterball that lives in my window and has covered the walls with spots of soft silver light. For some reason I have started falling asleep at about 9.30 in the evening but the benefit is that I wake up early enough to see things like this.

Actually, I think the reason I am in bed so early is that I have started cycling to work. I could blame the excessive cost of petrol but in fact it is the excessive amount of lard that I am carrying that has made it necessary. I am going abroad for Christmas and I don't want to be a fat pasty English bird sweating my way round Australia. As I am rubbish at denying myself food the only way forward is to cycle 60 miles a week. It sounds like a daunting number but it only takes an hour each way. I'm used to taking an hour to get to work, anything less and I'm never quite sure what to do with myself. It's very flat - there's only one small hill on the way home, which I have to do battle with in high gear because if I change down the chain gets stuck. And only about 200 yards of that has to be done on rural roads with a national speed limit.

I find it a very peaceful way to travel, particularly when compared with the challenge of filtering five miles of standing traffic. It's good for my head, too - because the middle part of my route is traffic-free I can safely let my mind wander without the worry of stuffing myself up the back of a Skoda.

The drawback with this, of course, is that I now have a crisis of identity. I asked the Cambridge Cycle Campaign for advice on the etiquette of passing on cycle paths - do we behave like little cars and hug the left? What do I do when someone faster comes up behind me and dings for attention? They were very kind and helpful and naturally invited me to join their group, which lobbies for better cycling facilities in the town. And right there is where we have a problem. I'm all for Advanced Stop Lines - as long as I can put Two Moos behind one after we've filtered to the front. Most cyclists (well, most of the ones who post on The Guardian's Bike Blog) don't like to share. They think of motorcycles as two-wheeled cars. I think of bicycles as motorbikes without an engine. I can't lobby against myself. I might have become my own power lump but I'm still a biker.

The other reason I need to be more svelte when I get Down Under is that I'm going to be travelling on a 110cc twist-and-go. I had such a laugh on the 125 that Cambridge Motorcycles lent me that I'm going to spurn a rental GS in favour of buying a postie bike to explore Western Australia. The less of me it has to carry the more room I'll have available for creature comforts.

Tibbie Sheil's Inn

2011-09-10T21:34:00.000+02:00

I am on my way home from the Old Fart Tour, via a 40th Birthday party in Boot. The YHA page describes Boot as "at the foot of the Hardknott Pass." This is a bit of a lie as it is actually at the end of the pass if I want to arrive there from the east. So my riding of lairy roads would appear not to be over yet. It is raining a lot, but I am in a very nice conservatory looking out at it, for a change. Four bikers arrived in the night and are camping by the Loch. They look rather damp. I think the B&B rate is looking like an excellent deal to them this morning....

I had thought about visiting the monks in Eskdalemuir but it is so wet I will flee straight to the Lake District via Moffatt.

The sky over Skye

2011-09-08T08:44:00.000+02:00

Proof that the flood is of biblical proportions...

2011-09-07T18:28:00.000+02:00

double rainbow over Skye.

In search of a bacon roll...

2011-09-05T11:27:00.000+02:00

The Househill farm shop, Nairn.

This much blue will do...

2011-09-03T14:33:00.000+02:00

Heading for Glen Prosen. Last time I was here a deer nearly took me out.

snack break, Galloway

2011-09-02T14:15:00.000+02:00

One of Old Farts is missing

2011-09-01T19:21:00.000+02:00

This is the view from New Lanark Youth Hostel, which is lovely, but Graham has a room to himself as Paul was taken ill before we left Birmingham and has had to go home. The hills are still beautiful and we are hoping he feels well enough soon to catch us up.

Back in the Saddle Again.

2011-08-31T13:34:00.003+02:00

Today is the opposite of Lupercalian Goat Sacrifice Day. It is the first day that there's been a tart bite of cold at the edge of the morning, and a hint of woodsmoke hazing the view of the horizon.

I enjoy spring because I like to be warm, but I love autumn because on days like today it isn't just woodsmoke in the air, it's change. Everything is possible on mornings like this one.

Ruby has gone, and the Metal Mules and I are now mounted on Two Moos Lautrec. I am en route to work but after work I am heading to Scotland to ride the 1,000 miles necessary for a Touring Award. One day soon, when I am bored of the bourgeois requirements of owning capital and making progress in the world, I will ride off and not come back. You'll know when this happens because I'll post a photo with a camel in it.

I know this girl's got loads of scars....

2011-08-20T20:45:00.003+02:00

I have an offer for Ruby so the last few days have been about taking off all the bits that might be useful on the Africa Twin and restoring her to stock.

I thought it was going to be a difficult process - there's a reason I've only got round to selling her now, at the end of the riding season, not at the beginning, when I might have got a better price.

More than half a lifetime ago my mum died. (It may be crass to compare selling a motorcycle to a bereavement. If you think you might think this, I recommend you go and check out Nikos's latest update instead while I blunder on with this simile.) I was left with an abiding sense of being cheated of my Hollywood ending. In sentimental films, the dying parent gets to offer words of wisdom and encouragement that their family get to carry with them when they're gone, as consolation and as a guide to their future selves. In real life, or in my real life at least, when she was compos mentis enough to offer parting words, she wasn't ready to admit she was departing, and once she was departing, she was whacked out of her head on morphine and couldn't tell the difference between me and a lamp post. Shuffling off the mortal coil is a long drawn out process and it's difficult to pinpoint the moment the soul goes and the body is left breathing on its own for just a little longer.

Ruby stopped being Ruby when her Metal Mule rack came off. I put the stock BMW handgrabs back on, and she turned into just another GS, and I can let just another GS go without too much pain.

She's just another GS with scars, though - no amount of polishing can take the scrapes off the screen where she tried to headbutt Julian's caravan, or the scuff in the left-hand cylinder head where we bounced off the A1; and though I've taken the RNLI sticker from the 2010 Lands End-John O'Groats off the screen, I've left the Thundersprint scrutineering stickers on her beak, just to leave a little bit of glamour on her.

In a perfect world I'd keep her, but she's an expensive girl. I wish the bike that used to be Ruby some more great adventures. We had more than our share.

alea iacta est

2011-08-14T11:07:00.004+02:00

Decisions are not my strong point. I blame my genes - if Scots were supposed to be good at making choices, would we have invented a word like swithering?

I have three bikes. One of them has to go. If I had more money, or more mechanical experience, I could afford to keep all of them. But I don't. Also come the winter the car will need to go in the garage too, which with current population numbers would require one bike to come and live in the sitting room. I'm not averse to that idea, but I can't see how to achieve it without knocking a wall down.

So I have hummed, and hawed, and swithered, and nearly sold the Africa Twin to a man who wants to take it to Morocco. But I have been looking at pictures of all the awesome back roads in Australia, which I would like to ride before I get too much older, and the hard fact of life is that if Ruby falls over I can't pick her up. And she costs 100 quid an hour to service. And no-one says hello when I ride her.

So the game of eeny meeny miny mo is over. As proof of which I offer you this photo. It is the space where the sat nav used to be. No amount of polishing will make her as elegant as others on the market (rather like her owner) but she's got plenty of adventures left in her.

The good friends that we treasure

2011-08-07T22:56:00.002+02:00

It has been an old-school weekend. Because Ruby's battery is playing silly buggers and stranded me outside the chip shop I thought I'd better not take her to the inaugural Cheddar Mendip RBR Gathering. Also, and don't tell either of them, one of the two Gnarly Things in the garage has got to go. I can't afford to run three bikes any more, and one of my lingering doubts has been whether I can do all the things on the Africa Twin that I'm used to doing with Ruby. (Apart from waiting outside the chip shop for the man from ETA.)

This was also a test weekend for the tipi - which means I was probably the only camper this weekend hoping for rain - properly timed, in the hours of darkness, so as not to upset too many people - in order to find out whether rearranging my flaps as recommended by Tentipi UK will indeed prevent unwanted leaks. (The answer appears to be yes. Who'd have thought it?)

The only flaw in this plan is that the Africa Twin has neither a satnav mount nor a baglux harness for the attaching of mapcases to. The challenge this presents to me is amply demonstrated by the fact that it came as a surprise when I sat down on Thursday night to plan my route to find that the Mendips are not in fact near Minehead.

An anxious Thursday night editing the amount of kit I normally sling on the bike for a weekend, writing out instructions that, at a pinch, I could sellotape to the tank, and fretting about the lack of frame to strap the tipi to, was followed by a 6am wake-up call from next door's screaming child. One cup of coffee and a short amount of faffing with tie-downs later, I was off. Thanks to the miracle of modern communications - and the fact that I'd mentioned my planned route on twitter - I had a rendezvous with @Jezza1956 at noon in Monmouth to hit - and 5 landmarks later I made it just 45 minutes late, which I thought wasn't too shabby.

"Blimey, that's big" said a man on crutches as I parked up. Assuming he was referring to the Africa Twin and not the size of my arse, that made it two for two in terms of stops and conversations, which I think may have sealed Ruby's fate. No-one talks to me when I pull up to a kerb on her. The Triumph is a magnet for nostalgic old men, who like to tell me about their national service, while at the M6 services the Africa Twin had attracted the attention of a chauffeur who wanted to tell me about the Brough Superior he'd owned as a lad but sold on for 25 quid.

Cheddar is Jerry's stamping ground so we had a short play in the Wye Valley, a steak-and-ale pie lunch in Tintern, a rather hot and sweaty time battling traffic on the M5, and then he very kindly delivered me via Burrington Combe to the gate of the campsite and handed me into the care of Jacki and Mommybear.

Checking in has become my least favourite part of staying at a Camping and Caravan Club Camp Site. "It's just a small tent, isn't it?" said the site manager. No. It's a tipi, it's 10 foot in diameter, and I did tick the box that explained that on the web site. "Oh, we thought it was just 10 foot in one direction. Well, maybe you'll fit."

They took me past Jacki and Phil - and the two big empty sites opposite them - and to the bottom of the site and a small corner about 8 by 6 foot. "No chance," I said. "Oh. Oh, I'll see if there's anything I can do," said the manager, and vanished.

When you've been riding for 12 hours, you look forward to getting your tent up, having a shower and getting changed into civvies. You don't look forward to being left standing like a muppet on a campsite and then having to go and hunt down the people who are supposed to be sorting it out, to find that they've been distracted by selling loaves of bread and tubes of toothpaste to campers who've been given a site that does fit their tent.

I had a small strop in the shop and they gave me a great big pitch under a tree. So on Saturday afternoon I could lie in the tent for a disco nap and watch the leaves making patterns on the canvas. Which was nice. Opposite a family with three boys who wanted to play football with my bike as the goalpost. Which wasn't. Yes, I felt like a bitch when the keenest footballer picked up the ball with his saddest face on and went back to see his dad. But it wore off pretty quick when his dad expressed the view that no-one fucking cared about my fucking bike and people like me should leave his family the fuck alone. The thing I used to like about the Club was that they were strict about noise after 11pm and about ball games outside the play area. This site wasn't particularly bothered about either and I don't think I'll be rushing back.

But the weekend wasn't about the site, it was about the company. As well as Jezza@cix, who was one of the people who watched over my first wobbly U-turns, figures of 8 and camping weekends when my bike was a KH100, Viv's birthday barbecue brought together the usual suspects of the RBR social section, a scattering of grandchildren, Gordon's girlfriend and the RBR debut of Desperado, who packs up a tent even quicker than Paul Belcher.

On Saturday Jerry and Marysa met us at the Rose and Portcullis for carvery and skittles - analogue ten-pinbowling. With only nine pins, Andy picking up the skittles and the balls being sent back to the business end through a length of sloping drainpipe. Told you it was an old-school weekend!

Sunday morning was about packing up and saying goodbye. I am still a long way from coming to terms with going home from these fantastic events to my quiet house and my own company. I distracted myself with a ride over Salisbury Plain and past Silbury Hill, one of my favourite places on earth. Not that I've seen much of the rest of the earth yet to compare it to. So this is my new cunning plan. If I just keep going, then I don't have to worry about going home.

Downsizing

2011-07-29T11:41:00.003+02:00

I was tetchy this morning for no very good reason, though it may have been a combination of not enough sleep and making the mistake of reading this column in the Guardian defending cycling on the pavement. In the comments to which many cyclists declare their right to cycle on the pavement if it makes them feel safer without apparently having any awareness of the fact that it's very intimidating for pedestrians. When I was waiting for the repairman to come and jumpstart Ruby I was sitting on the pavement - for lack of anywhere else to wait - and cyclists shot past at speed only a few inches from my head.

I was also tetchy because I was rather lost - trying to take the Triumph back to Cambridge Motorcycles to have her leaks stopped. But now I'm in a much better mood. To save me from a long walk to work Phil lent me this very fine Suzuki 125. Looking like a frog on a matchbox I zipped up the Newmarket Road laughing my head off and feeling 26 all over again.

Motorcycles - making the world less tetchy, one rider at a time :)

The two foes of human happiness are pain and boredom.

2011-07-27T00:15:00.003+02:00

This morning I got the park-and-ride in to work. Because I was planning on going to a do in London, and the Triumph doesn't have anywhere safe to leave a helmet. (I didn't go in the end, which is interesting in its own right - perhaps I am leaving London behind at last.)

Now, it was all very trouble free, but it was also a rather stony-faced experience. Bus drivers in Cambridge don't talk, they just nod gnomically and take your money. The other four people on the bus sat in gloomy silence as we travelled a roundabout route to the centre of town. So I had to buy myself a Pain au Chocolate from Christine just to get a smile and a cheeful hello.

Yesterday I rode the Triumph to work. "New bike?" asked the man from the cycle shop, after watching me park up and give the bike a farewell pat. No, I said. Old bike. New tyre.

And we talked for a bit about the unbreakable bonds we have to our first bikes, the horror when they get nicked, and the sense of pride from being able to do work on them. And then I went to work.

On Saturday the Triumph and I went to Cambridge Motorcycles to get the new tyre put on - for I can do some simple things, but I can't do tyres yet. And when I was walking back to the workshop, having wandered way too far along the river, a car pulled up, and a bald man with tattoos said "are you heading to Cambridge Motorcycles, love? Hop in, I'll give you a lift. We work just opposite."

And I got into a car with two strange men. And yes, I did pause to wonder if that was the last the world would see of me.

But on a day when terrible things were happening in another country, sometimes it is necessary to do unwise things in order to prove that the world is, most of the time and for most of us, a good place full of good people. A stranger made a kind offer because he recognised me as a biker. I got a lift down the road, and picked up the bike in time to go to Barney's graduation party.

And this is why riding motorcycles will always be better than taking the bus. Because I ride a bike, people I don't know talk to me. And that makes my life more interesting. And for as long as life is interesting, it will be worth living.

"Om én mann kan vise så mye hat, tenk hvor mye kjærlighet vi alle kan vise sammen". Stine Renate Håheim

Still Crazy After All These Years

2011-07-23T19:22:00.003+02:00

I met my old lover
In the street last night
She seemed so glad to see me
I just smiled
And we talked about some old times
And I kicked her into gear...

Still crazy after all these years.

This is a Triumph with a decent battery and a back tyre that doesn't have any cracks in it, parked in the sunshine while I go off to a small graduation party. Posh frock on top, jeans and German army boots below. Too long on the sidestand has caused her to spring another leak, but it's nothing that can't be fixed.

I have too many motorcycles and they all make me happy, but this is the only one that makes me grin like a loon.

Catching them young

2011-07-21T22:13:00.003+02:00

It's a lovely evening in the Flatlands. Which is good, because I had to spend 40 minutes of it waiting for a man from ETA to come and jumpstart Ruby. We stopped for chips on the way home and when I tried to make a dashing exit with chips and a battered sausage in my top box I got nothing but clicks instead of her usual cheerful rumble, and the occasional flash of "EWS" on the screen. I was a bit worried that she'd suffered permanent collapse after her adventures with the Hyundai, but Peter at Lind listened down the phone and diagnosed a flat battery. Which was bang on.

I think the bike has more brain than I do. We've both had a blow to the head recently and 40 minutes with nothing to do but wait in the sun were actually very welcome.

But I hadn't planned to tell you about this. I was actually going to say that an even more interesting piece of two-wheel exotica was parked in the bike bay this morning. It's a Kickstart moped - loaned to young people so that they can get to work, or to college. What a brilliant thing to spend my taxes on :)

How to win friends and influence people

2011-07-20T22:00:00.005+02:00

My dad used to have a special gift. (He may still have it but it's a long time since we've been shopping together). He could walk into a shop that was so empty that the goods would be dusted to a shine and lined up not only by name, but also by size and colour, and within ten minutes the place would be rammed. (He also had the gift of arriving at the chip shop just as they ran out of chips, but that's a side issue).

I appear to have the same talent with motorcycle parking. When I started parking here Ruby had the entire bay to herself bar a 125cc Japanese cruiser that appeared to be entirely ornamental judging by the pile of blossoms drifting around the wheels.

Now I have to squeeze in between an array of exotica including a Goldwing and, today, a rather nice Ducati with French plates.

The box on the back is my tipi, which is going back to the importers so they can help me work out why it leaks in the rain. Some people might think this was over-ambitious to strap on the back of a bike, but I have taken lessons from Kevin Ash who once carried a fish tank on the back of his GS. He wasn't specific about whether it had fish in at the time.

Slippery when wet

2011-07-18T16:38:00.002+02:00

My head hurts. This should perhaps be unusual for a Monday morning but it doesn't hurt because I didn't take enough water with it, it hurts because on Saturday morning I slipped on a wet path and bounced my face off a railway sleeper. Given a choice of taking an eye out, losing some teeth or having a bruised cheekbone I do accept that the latter is the least worst option, but it made getting my helmet on this morning a rather unpleasant experience. Also I have a bruise the size of a palm on my left hip. Which made putting my foot down at the lights an experience which required lengthy and voluminous swearing to cope with.

So I am going back to the doctors at 5.30 to see if I've done anything serious to my face, my head or my neck. This makes it the second time in three years I've had to have my head officially examined. Two weeks ago I had to go to the doctors with a gardening wound.

Some people think motorcycling is a dangerous hobby.

Green eyed monster?

2011-07-06T18:49:00.005+02:00

I've found to my cost before that Ruby is a jealous girl.

Now it may be that the dropping of a media bomb at 9.52 this morning, which required me to drop everything else, slap the Emergency PR beacon onto my desktop and run around like a blue-arsed fly for the rest of the day, was a complete coincidence and nothing to do with the fact that I declared on Facebook last night that I intended to head up to Hayfield this evening by car (via a work conference in Manchester).

I'm sure Ruby had no interest at all in the fact that, since dealing with the issue pushed all the stuff I was going to do today back into the pile marked "tomorrow's problem," neatly requiring me to be in the office tomorrow not in Manchester, I will need to scorch up the country on Friday afternoon in order to reach The Sportsman in time for my dinner.

And lovely as my 2CV is, "scorch" is not in her vocabulary in the same way that it is in Ruby's.

We think we are evolved into independent thinking humans. What we actually are is a detachable opposeable thumb for Bavarian twin-cylinder manipulatrixes. When she learns to pay for her own petrol I'll be toast.....

Oldest story in the book....

2011-07-03T22:29:00.004+02:00

It's not a very original plot, I'm afraid. Girl-biker meets man-biker on holiday. Rides with him for a few days and starts to think, finally I have met a man I could ride round the world with, for he is friendly, and funny, and big, and capable, and rides at the back of the group to make sure she stays safe, and likes beer, and riding to interesting places, and knows how to tease her without hurting, a trick which none of her other men ever cracked. She offers her honour, he honours her offer, leaves on his next adventure and promises to come back soon. He changes his mind, which is his prerogative, and lets her know once by text, which is rescinded the next morning, and once by email, which has proved permanent. The sound of an inexperienced heart breaking echoes through the twittersphere.

For reasons which my counsellor used to enjoy earning a significant fee per month exploring, I have the body of a 40-year old but the emotional maturity of an 18 year old. Which seems to be a rather unfair way round. This rollercoaster is supposed to be ridden early in life by teenagers who fall for elegantly wasted lead singers, or the bad lad at the back of the class: who grow giddy with excitement when he smiles at them and weep buckets when he ignores them in the bus queue. To get Shakespearean for a moment, at my age the hey-day in the blood is supposed to be tame. And I wasn't ever the one with the hopeless crushes at school either. I was the loyal, slightly puzzled friend standing by with the tissues and with a part-share in the long-suffering dog who was happy to do laps around the estate where the object of my friend's affections lived, so we could casually pretend to be just passing if we bumped into him heading to the corner shop for some ciggies.

So this level of emotional suffering has been an unprecedented experience and it would be fair to say I have not coped well. In place of girls in grey polyester skirts, tumbledown socks and kitten heels forming a protective huddle round the sinks in the girls' loos, the job of providing moral support and passing the metaphorical tissues has been amply upheld by my twitter army, who have made me laugh and cry in equal measure with their messages and replies. And with the continuing but so far unsuccesful campaign to #findfruitybikerabikerchick.

Thanks from me to you all, and a special mention to @ibikerapp. His mission in life is to improve biker safety with an iPhone app featuring James Toseland and safe riding tips. I'm not sure how sending me DMs helping me to keep breathing fits in with this mission statement but I'm very glad it does.

My smartphone runs Symbian, while the app comes in Android or iPhone versions. So I can't tell you whether the app is any good. But I'm certain that the bloke that built it is.

When you saw this in your mirror you got out of the way...

2011-06-30T16:32:00.000+02:00

Getting in early

2011-06-28T09:13:00.000+02:00

I have time to cross one thing off my To-Do list each morning before I head out to work. This was today's.

You Give Me Faron Young

2011-06-26T21:02:00.006+02:00

At four o'clock this morning I was watching the sun rise over George White Superbikes in Swindon.

Strictly speaking I wasn't watching the sun rise because it was one of those pearl-cast misty mornings that doesn't come clear until about noon. But it was steadily getting lighter, the dawn chorus were giving it laldy and we were able to put the gas lamps out while arguing about whether there was a pop lyric for every hour of the day. (Andy and I had got 4am in the bag with Prefab Sprout, and 3am covered with the KLF, then Biker Paul trumped us both with "Rock Around The Clock," which covered all bases but left us in need of something new to talk about.)

These are the ways you pass the time while waiting for very road-weary bikers to roll up every twenty minutes or so to get their cards stamped, complain about the impossibility of finding the checkpoint, and ask how to get back out of town again.

For them, the absence of sunshine was probably a blessing. I've never done an all-nighter for the ACU English National Rally - when I was married it was always held at the same time as a Lib Dem training weekend in Peterborough, so I used to stop in the Great Northern Hotel for a few hours kip. When I was living in sin PB lived about half a mile from the Ely control point so I used to clock in there and go home for a few hours. Now I'm neither, and I still can't make it through the night - Chateau Belle Cher, Paul's camper van, was much comfier and warmer than the folding chair and I had a bit of a fading-from-view between midnight and 4am. But if I had been riding continuously since 2pm on the Saturday I think the last thing I would want was hot sun in my tired eyes and sweat creeping down my back. Not till I'd finished and was sitting down to a bacon sarnie and a mug of tea, at least.

I originally offered to help Paul out with the Control Point when I was working Sunday mornings and wouldn't have been able to do the full rally as a competitor. Now I'm back in the 9 to 5 and I could have signed up to do the miles, but I've done that a few times now and I've never done the stamping before. Sitting with tea, biscuits, pizza and good company while lots of lovely bikers come and talk to me - what's not to love?! (Though we were disappointed in the pizza, it came in a small Renault not on a step-thru)

Some riders said Thank You for being a control point, which was nice. Some took photos and said they were having a FB competition for the coolest checkpoint. I hope we won! Most just wanted to get their cards stamped and get on, though a few were grateful for a sit down and a cup of tea.

With almost perfect timing, the RBR contingent - Jim, Steve and Gordon - turned up within 5 minutes of each other - and in the only 5 minutes when I was on the phone. Fortunately Paul had brought enough biscuits to keep them distracted until I was able to come and say hello and to find out what happens when you accidentally hoover up a budgie.

Later in the evening some of Paul's friends turned up and one of them asked The Question....

"Where do I know you from? Have we met?"

Unfortunately there are only 2 answers to this (unless we actually have met, but that hardly ever happens.) The first is "you've seen me on the telly" and the other is "from the photo next to my column in The Road."* But I've yet to work out how to say either of these without sounding like an utter wanker. Suggestions on the back of a postcard please....

* Like the one above.

Confiteor Deo omnipotenti...

2011-06-21T13:30:00.005+02:00

This is a photo of my own special crime from the Cambridgeshire County Council parking enforcement website.
I'm very sorry. But it's nearly a motorcycle and it was very very wet, so there weren't very many bikers wanting the rest of the space. And I was late for the Senna movie. But I'm still very sorry and I'm glad I didn't meet any of the militant parking enforcers they used to write about on cix who used to take wheels off cars until they were reduced to the appropriate number for the parking space in question.

Ruby Slipper

2011-06-18T00:05:00.003+02:00

Well - I went to collect her this morning, and apart from the small matter of £2500 of cosmetic damage it appears that Ruby is going to be fine. Which is a big relief. The new GS is narrower, lighter, and more responsive, but my GS is comfortable and wide, has the bars in just the right place to fall under my hands and has a smooth bit where my shin rubs against one of the hoses. Though it seemed unlikely when she was new, we have come to fit each other. And hopefully will continue to do so for the next 36,000 miles.

Nip/Tuck

2011-06-16T22:16:00.005+02:00

I went to a poetry event last night. Now that I work in a bastion of intellectual elitism, I thought I'd better try and adopt some of the habits of my academic betters.

On a rather sultry evening, 5 student poets performed their compositions and Isabella Shaw was declared the winner by the extremely fabulous Benjamin Zephaniah.

Her winning poem, "Variations on the Westron Wind*," opens like this:

"The stones remember me
Ay, in the pale and deathless hour
Between the sun's setting forth and the sun's return
They recall
The shape of my long hand
The taste of my heart interred."

In the pale and deathless hour between the sun's setting forth this morning, and about 45 minutes later than intended on account of not being able to find the paper part of my driving licence, I went to Norwich and the lovely people at Lind lent me this younger, fitter, and healthier version of Ruby to use while they check her over for damage. She's taller, because after 36,000 miles Ruby's back end is saggier than Winifred Hathi's. The gearbox moves with a snick, not a kick. And she's had a bit of lipo around the front.

Younger, fitter - but better? Well, the thing is that after all those miles Ruby remembers not so much the shape of my long hand - though I seem to have worn the handgrips smooth - but the shape of my lard-arse. Which is not quite so poetic. But it does prove that Ruby is the most Important, the most Beautiful, the most Magical Saggy old GS in the whole wide world. And I hope that she's going to get a clean bill of health in the morning.

*The Westron Wind is a medieval fragment which is mostly about sex.

Only the good die young

2011-06-03T12:59:00.003+02:00

I was going to write an incredibly witty post about buying the wrong battery but that has been rendered profoundly inappopriate by today's news. In a very modern way I found out via Facebook that a former colleage and friend, Andrew Reeves, died suddenly this morning of a heart attack. He wasn't a biker, so I apologise for being off-topic. But he was incredibly kind. Mark Pack's tribute captures the quality of the man. I will miss him.

Vanity, thy name is woman

2011-05-31T13:45:00.002+02:00

At the Soham Bikes and Bands event I made the slightly alarming discovery that although the Metal Mule topbox did rather suit the Africa Twin, it wasn't actually locked to the frame. If I'd taken the traffic calming with any more gusto I suspect it would have bounced free and gone for an adventure all of its own.

The rack on Ruby has a little tongue for the locking lever to bite. The new rack doesn't. So I spent some of yesterday wondering if I had accidentally committed myself to spending another 500 quid so that Ruby and the Africa Twin can have a top box each.

I called Metal Mule this morning and the good news is that I'm not the only person out there with more than one adventure bike but not enough money for 2 sets of panniers. A new clamp is on its way to me in the post, for about 480 quid less than the cost of a topbox. And why am I feeling vain? Because when Mr Mule asked for my name for the parcel he remembered me from my visit with Ruby three years ago, and asked if I was still on the telly. I like to be memorable :)

Passenger looks a bit ruff!

2011-05-29T12:59:00.000+02:00

Norton outfit at Soham Bikes and Bands.

Conversations unlikely to be had by Kevin Ash #2

2011-05-27T16:23:00.003+02:00

"Hello, I need to arrange an insurance estimate, I bounced my BMW off the side of a car last Monday"

"Was it a motorcycle?"

If it wasn't a motorcycle, I wouldn't be calling BMW Motorrad Norwich, now, would I?!

Strong correlation between bikers and Rush fans...

2011-05-25T20:00:00.001+02:00

Did we all read Neal Peart's book?

I am being what I please

2011-05-24T23:08:00.002+02:00

I need to write the words that go with the pictures from the Air Ambulance ride, but it's not an easy one to start. I am at risk of dire sentimentalism! I have done the trip three times now. The first time was while I was trying to come to terms with choosing to leave my husband, an act for which I still feel massive guilt. Last year the relationship I turned my life upside down for was in its death throes, and as we ate our chips in a sandy car park on Anglesey it was clear that I would be going home to start living alone for the first time. This year I have a new job which is going well, a by-line in RiDE (the fee for which paid for most of the petrol), and a small diamond-bright sense of optimism that finally, maybe, it is going to be OK.

Optimism which didn't save me from the terminal embarassment of bursting into tears in front of Steve, this year's travelling Aussie, on the last day, just like a 7 - year old who doesn't want to go home from the seaside. With all its miles, frustrations, crashes, oil panics, broken nights and downpours, it is still an amazing experience and one which I wish could go on for ever.

"And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth."

At the Great North Air Ambulance

2011-05-20T23:39:00.000+02:00

So cold i could cry....

Time to turn

2011-05-19T08:48:00.000+02:00

Leaving Dingwall always makes me sad. From here each day takes me nearer the real world. Life on these tours is simple. Get up, pack, ride 300 miles or so with an Air Ambulance visit and a few RBR LMs en route, get rained on, make camp, have shower, eat, sleep. Repeat. Only twice more now.

Dunnett Head, most northerly part of Britain

2011-05-17T15:06:00.000+02:00

He's called Boffin for a reason....

2011-05-17T09:31:00.000+02:00

Andy's bike has a socket for 3-pin plugs.

Tuesday morning, 7am

2011-05-17T08:13:00.000+02:00

It's a bit chilly in Dingwall so I've taken my coffee back to bed for a few more minutes toastiness. A successful detour to Barter Books (which preceded a slightly less successful detour into the side of a small car, I am fine, Ruby seems fine, the car has a BMW-shaped dent in the side) means I have the luxury of reading a book! (stuart Maconie's Cider with Roadies, for those who prefer detail).