England Expects: We're Coming Home (Conclusion)

From the archive...  Sunset in the Arctic Circle - hour after hour after hour.

I'm jumpy as I weave through the filthy wet Kentish lanes.  It's slippery, flooded in parts and I have to keep reminding myself which side of the gutter, sorry, road I should be on.  I could do with a rest and my urge to settle in at a roadside pub is a giveaway.  Mmmmm,  rest and a quiet beer.

Hey!  Before hanging up the gloves, don't let's make any snap decisions: I'm STILL enjoying my marvelous motorcycle and... well, I don't want to stop riding yet.  Because then it's over.  Done.

Tierra del Fuego.  Time enough to go round again?

Startled by a light at the end of the tunnel, the fat lady shrieks, trips over the final curtain and credits roll everywhere.  It's pandemonium and The End is now rushing towards me -  aaagh, this is sad.  Don't stop the ride - can't I stay on?  I mean, there are fewer new places to visit now, granted, and my savings are long gone.  On the other hand, I could winter in Morocco.  It's an inexpensive warm place, Morocco.  I could make a little turn here, catch a ferry south from Portsmouth...  Hmmm?  Please?

Enough.  This is it.  You're coming back to real life now.  Stop the false bravura, kid, and FEEL the moment... 

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I took Steve's advice and have been riding the last hour alone, cross-country on the back roads.  I wanted a little 'me time' to savour the moment and, supposedly, clear my head of churning thoughts.  It wouldn't do to arrive home looking like I've just eaten a sack of Smarties.

Belize - hot and humid.

But it's proving difficult to ignore the clamour in my head - after all, here comes real life, rushes the refrain - so I try to engage the voices and think my head clear, rationally.  It's like pulling on a loose thread.  Uh-oh, here we go again. 

Ok, deep breath.  Real life.  Think!  Well, let's pick a definition: a life more ordinary, free from fantasy.  Remember planning this journey?  You didn't buy in to the life of comfort, remember?  'Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore' (Andre Gide).  That sort of thing.

It's true: I felt simply building a legal career until I retired was too safe. And saving into a pension, picking a package holiday or an oak dining-table... even nurturing a young family... that life seemed to satisfy so many, but not me.  Not yet.  Would it ever?

Tajikistan

I worked an opportunity to do things differently - to take a chance on adventure, or in the words of Kipling 'make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss'. It might prove foolhardy, I felt, but the gamble would be a rare and special experience.  Real life could wait.

Chile

USA

And now? Three years in planning, almost two in the riding: over 100,000 km, 53 countries and one motorbike.  Do I better understand the lives others choose?  Can I use this understanding wisely?

Across those 53 countries people share experiences of life, love and death.  Discovering local interpretations of each is fascinating, because the fundamentals are often the same.  It showed me that those fortunate enough to choose their lifestyle should do so knowing the alternatives.  Perhaps now I can value those universal truths properly.

I suspect I sound like a saturday preacher on Speaker's Corner; but riding the wet winter roads I've no one to roll their eyes at me, or shout out abuse.  At least I'm feeling calmer now.

On the Himalayan Plateau

The mental dialogue continues gently.  'Neither material wealth nor trappings of status equate to happiness', I propose confidently.  Remember those charming moments between the grandfather and his grandson - in probably the least affluent place I visited?  It was priceless.

So, if most wealth seems surplus, where does real value lie?  From 'generosity', perhaps?  Generosity from those who have little, just as much as those blessed with plenty.  Mean people seem to miss that point. 

I've made friends who live in contrasting locations.  With them, a kind deed or friendly gesture jumps borders.  I received warm shelter from those with hearts bigger than their wallets: shy Mexicans, bold French, Americans (North and South) and Swiss.  Whether a penthouse in Korea, a tyre store in Alaska, or a desert train station in Eygpt, five star friendship is a measure of generosity. 

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 I'm only a few miles away from my family home, a few more turns.  I don't need the Garmin as the lanes are now very familiar.  The voices have given up.  I should bring this cosy chat with myself to a close, and hope I remember it. 

After my long journey I feel uneasy about crossing the threshold into the world that I used to know well.  Am I really going to pick up where I left off?  Surround myself with reassuring touchstones, or totems of security that measure the days; each as telling as a chalked line on a dull stone wall.  If so, I don't believe that will make for a satisfying life.

I hope I've rediscovered, changed or unpressed my personal values.  Will I now have the strength of character to embrace real life without letting go of those values?  Or, to riff off Kipling once more: to trust myself when all men doubt me, but make allowance for their doubting too... to talk with crowds and keep my virtue?

As I idle, ready to make that final turn up the hill, I promise myself to tackle this new challenge with commitment.  

So, an end to this tale of nomadic travel and let's start a fresh story: one inspired by riding in the tracks of giants.

My trusty Bavarian slots into gear and we smoothly ascend the hill.

'Hi there folks, I'm back.'

Me and my gal.  Home sweet home.

Thanks for listening.  There will be a post-script in due to course to let you know how the reintegration process goes...  Meantime, I'll finish the last couple of movies and tidy up loose ends.

Lots of photos and HD movies here:  Photo and HD video galleries

England Expects: We're Coming Home (Part 1)

The British Cemetery, Tilloy.  Near Arras, France

It's Saturday.  Our last morning in France.  Just on the outskirts of Arras, Steve and I locate a British cemetery to which our father has given us directions.   Front and centre, sort of, we find the grave of Captain Douglas Stanley Higgins, of the Oxford and Bucks Light Infantry.  He's our great, great uncle and we doff our motorcycle helmets in respect.  He died 9 April 1917, aged just 37.  

I'll be just 37 myself in a few weeks, but my brief push across France could not be more different to his continental campaign in WW1.  Almost a century separates us, but there's that thing about family to bridge the decades. 

I'm nervy and curious, instinctively so, as my brother and I inspect the smart lines.  Medic lies next to artillery man lies next to infantry officer.  And so on, and on and on.  

All the gravestones are carved from handsome Portland Stone, sourced from Dorset, England.  In addition to the name and dates of the underlying solider - if known - each stone bears the title and insignia of the regiment that he honoured.  The care and attention taken to slow chisel these details is touching.  It contrasts with the rushed fate of young men dropped by machine gun fire, or cut from the scene in an instant by shells and shrapnel. 

It's probably natural that I've begun, however gently, to weigh the sum of my journey: to measure it against something.  That something should certainly not include the world wars: any incident I can recount is dwarfed by what happened at the front; my own acts of endurance rendered pathetic when measured against those suffered by Tommy, by Dick and by Harry.

When we leave the cemetery we're quiet and pensive.  The heavy fabric of history provides cold comfort.

Low cloud and drizzle are also now making this a gloomy, wet ride - I think for the first time since I left Ethiopia.  Riding in our waterproofs across the expanse of French countryside rain soaks through our gloves and is dripping down our necks.  We pass more and still more war cemeteries and memorials.

Grandpa DD fought in WW2.  He was Lt. Col in the Royal Artillery - their
insignia from WW1 is shown above.  By 1958 he'd risen to Major. 

The weather seems to suit the setting.  Yet those who slipped or fell in these same muddy fields endured conditions I can barely imagine, despite the rain.  Today a mild misfortune earns professional counselling, a genuine shock might get diagnosed as PTSD; but what of all those poor sods who saw, heard, felt and smelt the brutal months of trench warfare?  I wonder how anyone who made it home ever led ordinary lives afterwards - and what would constitute ordinary after such experience?  

The weather is a metaphor also for my own sadness that this motorcycle adventure is nearing the end.  I'm feeling melancholy as we ride in the truck spray, along autoroute A26, bearing north west ever closer to Calais. 

I'm cheered that my brother is with me, as he has been for many significant chapters in my life.  Together, we can focus on the job of following the toll road, jumping a train and getting home safe.  He knows me well enough to give me space, without filling these strange final hours with troubling questions: what did it all mean?  What'll you do now?  Would you do it all again?  Some folks say a long journey provides you with answers - perhaps: but it raises just as many quesitons.  Steve understands that.

I know I must evaluate my experiences, and examine more closely what will make me happy at the end of the next ten or twenty or thirty years.  I need to resolve the half-thoughts and casual musing that occupy me part of every day; remind myself to make the most of the life fate rations me beyond the age of 37.

At 12.30pm the doors hiss shut and we feel the train strain and then speed us towards England.  It's exciting and my earlier melancholy is lifting - rising like the steam from my gloves, which I've tucked on top of the bike's hot cylinder heads to dry.  Only twenty minutes to go...