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Category: Tourism & Travel
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Two Wheeled Nomad
Upon registering Pearl’s mileage clock 10,000 miles, without conscious volition I stopped seeing our trip as an extended holiday.
 This had now become a way of life for us. The honeymoon period wasn’t altogether over, it was simply the start of a new chapter having learnt the basic ropes of two wheeled travel. Namely journeying into the unknown and coping with all its capricious twists and turns – coming out the other end all the richer for it. South America so far was adorned by many pleasurable experiences mingled with the odd misadventure thrown in for good measure. We were able to carry all we needed on the back of two motorcycles, which wonderfully, excluded all those unnecessary societal burdens. I’m done with those. My new mantra naturally emerged: to wring out as much fun from life in the most gutsy, earthy, rollicking, lip-licking way. Philosopher Alan Watts said exactly that – let go and be hung up on nothing and I would add, by nobody. We felt free.
The 50 mile ride from San Pedro de Atacama took us north longitudinally in ascent to the Antofagasta region. The sky was an animated arrangement of clouds straight from an episode opening of The Simpsons. En route to El Tatio, we were ungrudgingly slowed by a herd of goats consuming the width of the road. Watching the mature ones amble and kids toddling along bum-to-bum, my heart went out to commuters back home in murderous bumper-to-bumper traffic. Straggling behind a frisky band of bearded goats was my kind of traffic jam. In eventually skirting around the herd we blasted through our first ford of water; my lower half got drenched. The splash I’d zealously made soaked my legs trickling into the top my boots. Wet feet forgotten, we were favoured with clusters of vicuña dotted on the mountainous plains – a wild relative of the llama, supposedly valued for its fine silky wool. Like the llama, vicuña were a lot less skittish than the similar looking but larger guanaco. It gave us a moment to marvel at them in the altiplano high Andean pastures against a brilliant blue sky backdrop.
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Two Wheeled Nomad
Santa Cruz, Copacabana, San Jose and Londres, translated to London – what do they all have in common? They’re all the names given to friendly little towns of dusty dwellings, doing their individual Argentinian ‘thing’, a world apart from their counterparts elsewhere on earth. Most boasted tree lined central plazas bearing ripe oranges and one had a collection of trees whose trunks were patriotically painted in Argentinian flag colours – blue and white. Heat shimmers rose off the road as we rode through all the aforementioned towns en route to Santa Maria, giving a dreamlike quality to our surroundings ahead.
Passing through Tinogasta was perhaps more memorable: it was akin to a waste disposal bin overflowing with litter; piles of plastic, used tyres and unwanted household items strewn about everywhere. Pretty this place was not. Around a corner, a snarling Alsatian flung itself towards Pearl and me. The pair of us was a split second away from being grappled by a voracious dog suffering clear anger management issues and sporting a love for wrestling moving motorcycles. I opened Pearl up and off we shot, just out of reach from the mongrel’s gaping maw. Phew. Yards down the street saw a bunch of ragtag lads charging on their mopeds, some being lairy wolf-whistling louts, others paying no one else any mind. A rowdy duo ‘two up’ in particular made me chuckle as the rider beamed a dashing smile my way and waved wildly, while the pillion gave me the finger. At least the motorcyclist was a decent chap!
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Compass Expeditions is pleased to announce that Charley Boorman and his good friend, and manager, Billy Ward will be returning to Australia to lead his 4th Compass Expeditions Motorcycle Tour. This ride will be from Sydney to the Outback over the course of 10 days ending in Melbourne.
 The 2015 Sydney to the Outback tour is set to depart Sydney on the 11th of March and travel via the Blue Mountains, Broken Hill, Flinders Ranges, the Grampians National Park and the Great Ocean Road before culminating in Melbourne on the 20th of March. Compass Expeditions includes a pre-tour bonus night of accommodation on the 10th of March in the hotel in Sydney and this is a good chance to meet Charley and Billy over a few drinks before beginning the adventure the next day.
“We’re really happy to be able to work with Charley and Billy again and we’ve already had several riders from the 2014 tour sign up and eager to do another adventure with Charley,” says Jerry from Compass Expeditions, “Previous trips have been a great deal of fun with Charley and Billy keeping things entertaining and they are again looking forward to this ride through the outback, which has a combination of paved and off-road riding”.
The tour can be undertaken on your own motorcycle or alternatively Compass Expeditions have a fleet of BMW GS Models and Suzuki DR650 available for rental.
To reserve your spot of for more information about the tour visit
www.compassexpeditions.com
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Follow Kevin Turner, also known as ‘The Hapless Biker’, and his great Russian motorcycle adventure as he sets off with nothing more than an 11-year-old Ninja 636, Michelin Pilot Road 3 tyres and the challenge of reaching Moscow on two wheels…
 Last August I embarked on a 6,000 mile motorcycle adventure, from London, up through Norway and across Finland to Moscow. I gave myself three weeks to squeeze in a trip that should rightly have taken three months (or rather, my employer gave me three weeks…)
Still, over those 21 days, I experienced some of the most wonderful moments of my motorcycling life, and also some of the worst. I rode along the extraordinary Trollstigen pass in Norway and felt my heart skip a beat as I looked down on the majestic Geirangerfjord; I experienced first-hand the beauty of St Petersburg and felt the presence of so much history in the Russian capital. And I also came very close to a horrible, mangled death beneath the wheels of 1,000 enormous trucks as I bounced across the loose rock and rubble which constitute so many of Russia’s roads.
The journey represented the culmination of ten years of riding: it was a challenge set for no good reason; a mountain to climb simply because it was there. Throughout, my only companion was my bike, an 11-year-old Ninja 636; stock, except for the after-market exhaust, a tinted screen and a few too many stickers.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, it’s nigh-on impossible to pinpoint a single highlight from a trip packed full of discovery and surprise, but my time spent riding through Norway was very special. The beauty, the silence, the isolation felt like one long soul-cleansing experience after so many frantic rush-hour battles across London.
As a counterpoint, the brutal reality of the Russian roads could not have been more striking. For 13 terrifying hours I weaved my way through a never-ending convoy of tankers and juggernauts as I rode first towards St Petersburg and then onwards again to Moscow.
It seemed unimaginable at the time that the journey from the border to St Petersburg would not represent the very worst that Russia could throw at me. It was dreadful in a way I was completely unprepared for. The M10 was a road without embellishment; a patchwork mess of crumbling tarmac, potholes, trenches and gravel, its surface pounded into parody by the relentless motion of heavy traffic. At its edges, among the detritus, stood a ramshackle collection of sad-looking people, selling trinkets and bits of fruit. A broken line of hopeless faces dotted along the highway, like desperate refugees that had stumbled from the trees, hoping ‘the road’ would bring salvation. But it didn’t; not to them and not to me, nor anyone else stupid enough to try and ride a sports bike along its decomposing surface. *
At such times it’s very easy to forget that the angst, the fear and the desperation are all part and parcel of a journey that felt at times like a very real metaphor. But the lows were almost always followed quickly by towering highs, as was the case when I finally staggered off the Kawasaki late at night in central Moscow and felt myself overcome by a wave of jubilation upon reaching my goal.
If the ride was tough for me, it was ten times worse for my bike. The Ninja is a sports-tourer, but it is not an adventure bike. It was not designed to ride across hundreds of miles of rubble, lugging two heavy panniers, a tent and a hapless biker way out of his depth. I lost count of the times I felt sure the poor machine was about to grind to a halt, its chain and sprockets thick with congealing mud and its suspension hammered beyond belief. But it just kept going.
As did the tyres, a set of new Pilot Road 3s that I’d had fitted a week or so before I left. I had read that the Pilot 3s were very good in both wet and dry conditions, and in truth that’s all I expected they would have to contend with. I had not anticipated so many miles of lunar-like surface, so many huge pot-holes and loose gravel tracks. I could have forgiven them for expiring at any time, especially on the return leg. But like the Kawasaki, they not only survived, they excelled.
As I write this, the Ninja is parked outside my house, clean and polished and fully recovered from the adventure. In fact, it’s just returned from a rather wet track day at Donington Park, followed by a weekend’s touring in Wales. It’s still wearing those same Pilot Road 3s that I left for Russia on nine months ago, and barring errant nails and broken glass I suspect those tyres will remain wrapped around the stone-chipped wheels all summer long. Hopefully that will include a few more adventures, though perhaps none quite as epic as my Russian marathon.
 Kevin’s Russian adventure features in his new book: From Crystal Palace to Red Square - A Hapless Biker’s Road to Russia, published by Veloce Publishing and available from Amazon and all good bookshops. More information on Kevin’s books can be found at www.haplessbiker.com
* Extract From Crystal Palace to Red Square - A Hapless Biker’s Road to Russia
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There’s nothing quite like biking; extreme speed, magnified by one’s exposure to the elements, all whilst the aggressive and bullish throng of the engine plays beneath you; it’s quite hard to beat! In fact, the only thing that could possibly improve the experience is the location at which one wishes to barrel down. Dramatic mountains; winding, sun beaten coastal roads; and calm and scenic countryside all have their respective draws- here’s the best five biking locations we could think of.
Tuscany
Smooth, meandering roads, dotted with cypress trees and flanked by sunset-beckoning rolling hills are what a traveller coated in leathers can expect from this quintessential Italian region. Areas such as Siena and Volterra boast roads that are very lightly travelled, and small, picturesque hamlets along the drive where one can park up and relax for an hour before opening up the accelerator once again. Bliss.
Rhône-Alpes
Tucked away in the south-east of France is the Rhône-Alpes region, blessed with mountains, vineyards, valleys and olive groves. Hidden in this region is the D24 road, a decidedly rural and lesser-travelled track blessed with staggering sites and hundreds of corners, just waiting for a pair of wheels to go screaming down it.
 The Death Valley Run
Bone dry land and azure skies await those who wish to complete the Death Valley Run in Nevada, USA. Though extremely desolate, thanks mainly to the exceptional heat and waterlessness of the desert, Death Valley is utterly awe inspiring primarily due to the fact it looks so incredibly alien and unlike the majority of the earth’s various environs. If that hasn’t peaked your interest there’s also always Las Vegas nearby; head over to online casino UK to train yourself up before your big trip to Sin City!
Transfagarasan Highway
Built decades ago as a military supply road, the Transfagarasan Highway, Romania, is one of the best known and most loved roads in Europe. Stretching along one of the most dramatic and altitudinous areas of the Southern Carpathian Mountains, the 2034 metre high road is one of the most winding, wonderful and well maintained mountain routes in Europe.
 The Cat & Fiddle Run
Running between Macclesfield and Buxton, UK, the Cat & Fiddle Run is frequently classified as one of the most dangerous roads in Britain. Meandering through the Peak District National Park, the route is perfect for bikers thanks to its many sharp turns and wonderful moorland scenery.
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