Today has been an uncomfortable day. There was a visit to a dentist, relief at being able to be seen, disappointment that the only offer was antibiotics, to which I added painkillers. 34 degrees, on the motorway, standing still in traffic. Still better than my Uncle Alan 84 years ago today.

If you have read some of the early posts in this publication you will know that in some ways this journey is a pilgrimage. To test myself, to pay my respects to my uncle, and to one more thing that is not written and won’t be until the end.

Introducing Alan

My uncle, Flight Sergeant Alan Campbell, was an air gunner in the RNZAF.

He went from danger to danger over the course of 52 combat operations. He lasted longer than most of his compatriots. Served as a gunner in Boulton Paul Defiants during the Battle of Britain. At the time they were being shot out of the sky by the Luftwaffe and were soon withdrawn from daylight operations.

He served a tour on Wellington bombers, spent time instructing other gunners. He was engaged. He had done his duty and, barring unforeseen accidents or simply bad luck, he had a future, a life to lead.

He then volunteered to do another tour, and 84 years ago today, as I sit writing this in the former enemy state of Germany, he was preparing for his final mission.

Flight Sergeant Alan Campbell, 391857

Weeks before I crossed the Channel, I stopped in Lincoln at the International Bomber Command Centre. Alan is one of 55,573 names engraved on the memorial there. Panel 140. I ran my finger across the rough steel. I did a small video. My voice broke.

So many names. So many lives impacted. Not just then. Still now.

Then I rode south.

Every pilgrimage has stations before the destination. The road to Alan continued through Le Quesnoy, Ypres, and Langemark before it turned toward Germany. Through cemeteries of a war 25 years before his own, one that his father had been part of. I hadn't planned it that way. That's just the way it unfolded.

Le Quesnoy

My first night in France was at Le Quesnoy. Le Quesnoy is a walled town with a fascinating history going back to the medieval period. Le Quesnoy was occupied by German forces in August 1914 and liberated by the New Zealand Division in their last major action of the war. It was done without the loss of civilian life or wholesale destruction of the town.

There are many references to New Zealand in the town. I spent the morning walking the ramparts and finding the spot where the Kiwis used a ladder to scale the wall, exchanging fire with the defenders. 122 New Zealand soldiers were killed before the remaining Germans surrendered — this just seven days before the end of the war.

I drank Campbell Clan Whiskey and laughed with the operator of a café as she tried to understand me. Early morning coffee in the quiet town, watching locals start their day with a beer and a brandy.

Ypres

Then I packed the bike and headed to Ypres in Belgium, some 120 odd km north-east.

On the way I spotted a sign for a Commonwealth War Grave and headed down a narrow road through some farmland.

Oak Dump Cemetery.

Oak Dump Cemetery. Not exactly a fitting name.

The name comes from the war itself. Oak Dump was a Royal Engineers ammunition and materials dump near Vlamertinghe. When men were killed working the logistics chain, they were buried where they fell. The cemetery grew around the dump.

There are graves at Oak Dump, as there are in every War Cemetery, marked simply:

Soldier known only to God.

The photograph: seven identical stones in a row. All Royal Garrison Artillery. All killed 26 March 1918. Corporal A. Wells. A/Bombardier G.R. Hawkins, age 32. A/Bombardier J.P. Smith. Gunner J. Hulley, age 29. Bombardier G.H.J. Smith, age 30. Gunner W.D. Fraser, age 34. Gunner T. Mitchell, age 27.

A row of seven headstones caught my eye. Same unit, same day. Operation Michael, the German Spring Offensive, was five days old. The British Fifth Army was falling back. An entire artillery position — seven men on a gun crew — killed together.

Hmm.

Anyone that has read anything about WWI will know about Ypres, the Ypres Salient and the industrial scale slaughter that took place there.

Ypres too is a town that remembers. Even the wifi password at the hotel was ‘wewillremember’.

I wandered the town, looked through the WW1 museum and in the evening just before 8pm I made my way to Menin Gate.

I was surprised by the large crowd already there. Gathered under the gate, waiting, some quietly reading the names on the wall. They have been playing the Last Post there, every night, 365 days a year at 8pm, since 1928. A service that was only interrupted during WWII.

The service is brief:

Call to Attention

The Last Post

Exhortation — from ‘For the Fallen’ by L. Binyon which many of you will be familiar with.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them.

Reveille.

Perhaps 15 minutes in total. Complete silence from the crowd, except for the quiet sobs as people gave way to the emotion. A man beside me, crying, comforted by his partner. He too had a story. Loss.

As the crowd dispersed I walked past every panel, inside the gate and out on the upper ramparts. Nearly 55,000 names is overwhelming. I was struck by how many Australian names were carved into that stone. Row after row, representing young men from the other side of the world that died in that place and had no known grave. British, Canadians, South Africans, Indians. From all over the world they came.

My thoughts went back to Oak Dump. The graves of the unknown soldier there. Did my eyes linger on his name here? How many of those names have been read, really noticed, thought about, since they were carved on that stone?

No New Zealand names are on that memorial. I checked every panel twice before pulling out my phone to understand. The New Zealand Government decided that we wanted the names of our fallen to be where they fell, not on a grand memorial. The names of our boys, given over to the mud in Belgium, with no known grave, are not listed next to their comrades in arms at Menin Gate.

I’m still not sure how I feel about that, not even after visiting Tyne Cot and Messines Ridge. It also led me to another question, and another war cemetery — what about the German dead?

I backtracked my way to Messines Ridge next. This is a relatively small site, with the remains of 1,534 allied soldiers, names carved into the memorial that you walk around to get to the cemetery. This includes over 800 New Zealanders who died at or around the area in 1917 and 1918, and who have no known graves.

You stand on that land and look over the surrounding countryside. The few metres in height that it offers explains why it was fought for so hard.

Tyne Cot was next. This is a large and one of the most well-known Commonwealth War Graves. There are 34,991 names carved into the walls and 11,954 graves to walk around. A woman’s voice solemnly reads the names of the fallen. 520 New Zealanders are on those walls. Wellington, Otago, Auckland, from towns and cities all over the young nation of New Zealand.

Commonwealth graves, for all their horror, have a certain grandness about them. They honour the dead, the individuals who gave their lives. Unto God, Never Forgotten, We Will Remember. These are the phrases that make these places familiar. They are invariably beautifully kept. A fitting tribute for the men that sacrificed their lives.

Langemark

Langemark is a German war grave. More than 44,000 German soldiers are buried there, almost 25,000 of them in a single mass grave. Langemark is different. There are no individual headstones here. No honouring. No, ‘we will remember’. No God. Just a few simple stone crosses scattered amongst the dark foreboding trees, which strangely provide a sense of peace.

Mass grave after mass grave. 68 bronze panels, names engraved either side to mark the largest.

No glory. No honour. Just the dead.

What makes these young men different from ours? Simply that one side won and the other lost. A loss further complicated by the horror that was to come just a few decades later.

Still pondering the last few days, I rode to Amsterdam. It was a relief to spend a few days in this vibrant city with its canals and bars. I spent half a day riding around on a pushbike, which reconfirmed for me that motorbikes are the superior form of transportation. Then I headed south again, to a city I had read about for years.

Cologne

I arrived late afternoon and wandered to the river. The Rhine. Walked across the bridge, over 400 metres. The centre fence that runs parallel to the adjoining train track is completely covered with padlocks upon padlocks. An enormous amount of steel. I wondered if the structural engineers had accounted for that when they designed the bridge.

I found myself having a beer and then an Aperol Spritz on the far riverbank, looking over the river at the Cologne Cathedral.

My uncle probably saw the spire. If not the spire, he would have certainly seen the river on his six bombing runs against this city. One of the most targeted cities in Germany. The Cathedral hit, blackened and still standing defiant. A Cathedral that took 632 years to build, survived the deadliest conflict in history and now provides a backdrop for me while I drink my Aperol.

I thought about it some more. Alan and so many others fought and sacrificed for simple moments like this. So that people could sit in peace, enjoy a drink, go about their lives without fear.

I like what I have seen of Cologne so far.

A modern city with antiquity at its heart, a museum and the cathedral and a river. A river whose name is endemic through history books about Europe.

The train station has an entire shop dedicated to Moleskine journals.

Imagine that.

The next morning is cloudy. Only the slightest hint of the sun. It’s still, just the faintest of movement in the leaves of the maple trees that grow amongst the tables where people eat and drink on the banks of the Rhine, a few hundred metres from the Cathedral.

It’s warm, even though the waitress asked if I wanted to sit near a heater. I politely declined.

Continental breakfast. Meat, cheese, buns, jam and liverwurst — which I tried but didn’t especially enjoy.

A big cup of black coffee — double shot. The waitress surprised when I asked for another.

Of all the places I have been, this is the most significant and probably the most pleasing. The easiest.

I feel comfortable here. Why would a Kiwi feel comfortable in Cologne? I have no idea.

Later I took a boat ride on the river, learned more about the history of Cologne. It goes back to Roman times. WWII was just a passing moment for this ancient city.

From Cologne I headed to Bremen, another city that featured in my reading.

Bremen

My notes simply say:

Two days I have spent in this place. Pleasant enough though there has been rain, and it’s cooler than summer should be.

Bremen has its share of street sleepers, beggars and drug addicts.

Despite being targeted for bombing during the war it also has its fair share of old buildings and churches in the centre.

The walk along the river is charming, a good place to get a coffee and slow down.

Bremen is a mixture of old-world charm and modern living.

My uncle flew at least two raids against this city. I am privileged to have enjoyed a couple of days here.

From Bremen, to one of the reasons this trip took place.

To Becklingen War Cemetery

8:45am, riding out of Bremen.

I am riding out of Bremen after a couple of days off the bike. It feels good to be moving.

It’s 19°C. A cloudy day. Some blue sky but no heat in sun. A small breeze rustles the trees on the side of the motorway.

I am cruising literally. The cruise control is on. Lagertha is beautifully balanced, and for once my packing seems to have worked. I take my hands off the bars and she stays straight and true. Almost. There is the slightest tendency to wander left. Maybe it’s the breeze, or the camber in the road. Riding at 100 km/h with no hands is wonderfully refreshing.

I am catching up to trucks, caravans and campervans. I play a game. Can I get around them without using my hands, without touching the bars, not having to speed up or slow down because of cars racing behind me in the fast lane?

Often I need to overtake to allow room for following cars, accelerating into the left lane and then back into the right. Sometimes they don’t come quite fast enough and I am forced to slow down to let them past, before swinging in behind them to pass whatever is blocking my way.

I whisper to Lagertha that since we are in Germany she should identify as a BMW. She agrees, so I don’t even have to use the indicators.

Stupid, dangerous? Not really. A stable bike, good roads, minimal risk.

Satisfaction factor very high.

And Lagertha — the Husqvarna Norden 901 Expedition that is my companion on this journey — engage your Jeremy Clarkson voice:

“What a machine!”

From Becklingen War Cemetery

I ride through the forest and back on to the autobahn. Destination Stade.

I am doing around 110 km/h. The truck in front of me is doing maybe 5 km/h. Distance closing rapidly.

My brain is still processing as I move the bike to the left, seeking salvation in the fast lane.

Traffic in the fast lane is screeching to a halt. Not something I want to get mixed up in.

Two fingers on my right hand are squeezing the brake, hard but not yet to its full extent. I want to save something, and I don’t want the ABS to engage. Not yet.

Already I have squeezed the clutch, jammed the gear lever from 6th to 4th and released the clutch. The engine howls in protest, but we are a team and need to work together.

The front forks are compressing, a lot. I have the rear brake depressed as hard as I can. I want the rear stable, low, not lifting, and putting more weight on the few square cm of Continental rubber that is gripping the tarmac as the front tyre does its job.

I shift the bike to the right, looking for the shoulder or run-off. Distance still closing.

The bike has a small tail light and my rackless Mosko bags do their best to hide it. My right thumb jabs the hazard button, lighting up all the indicators. It’s a practiced move rather than instinctive, but I’m pleased how easy it comes.

I can see the big red station wagon in my mirrors. Probably an Audi. He must have seen the situation fractionally before me. His nose is down, obviously braking hard, but he has increased the distance between us. Good man. I see his hazards come on as well.

At least I only need to worry about one direction now.

A quarter of a second later I have more options, including the one I should have always had — being able to stop before I slammed into the truck.

The traffic ahead starts to move, gaps open on the left. I am down to 10 km/h, back to accelerating and working my way through the traffic.

The moment is over.

I ponder how amazing the human mind and body is. We are not made for the speed of the machines that we control, yet millions of times every day drivers react fast and decisively to avoid catastrophe. It’s pretty cool.

Of course, sometimes we aren’t fast enough. But that’s not me. Not today.

I laughed in my helmet. Dying this close to Becklingen War Cemetery would be somewhat ironic.

Note for Mum: As dramatic as this sounds, I was always confident that the big brakes and Bosch ABS system would pull me up in time if I really needed it to.

Becklingen War Cemetery

The cemetery is different to what I expected. But I didn’t really know what I was expecting. It’s in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by farmland, a single farmhouse opposite. Becklingen is the final resting place of 2,086 souls. Many of them, like my uncle, in common graves. He lies with the crew that flew with him that night, 84 years ago to the day.

I am possibly the only person ever to have specifically visited Alan Campbell’s (Flight Sergeant 391857) grave.

Dad travelled many years ago, but I don’t know that he came here. I never asked.

There’s lots that doesn’t get said between fathers and sons. Can’t live your life with regrets, but you can learn lessons.

It’s been a long time getting here. Years really.

I sit on the grass in front of Alan’s headstone. He is flanked by the headstones of those that he flew and died with. All young, the eldest just 28. Three of them, including Alan, 22 years old.

I had a bit of a chat to him, asked him some questions.

Why did you volunteer for another tour? You had done your bit, you were safe.

It was a rather one-sided conversation, but in my heart I knew the answer anyway. I have always known it.

I sat there for a while, before wandering the site to read some other names.

I wrote in the visitors’ book.

I went back to the top of the cemetery and sat at his grave again. I felt lighter. I left a Ride It Home sticker on his headstone — the only thing I had to leave, with a small note written on it. And that was that. I left. Promise fulfilled.

Thank you, Alan, for your service and your sacrifice. We do remember.

Stade

The final stop on this pilgrimage part of the trip was Stade, a medieval German town.

Why Stade? Well, apart from having a gorgeous town centre, Stade is where Alan and the crew were first laid to rest. They were buried here by German townsfolk before being reinterred in Becklingen after the war.

It seemed a fitting place to end this part of the trip.

We remember those who sacrificed, we cry and marvel at the horror and loss. It is right that we do so.

Do we remember the reason why?

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I’m writing, strangely enough, from a Pub in Southwest England, near a town called Devizies, not too far from Tidworth and Towbridge, and very close to Bishops Cannings.

There, you now know exactly where I was. By the time you read it I will be somewhere in France, which will present a whole new set of linguistic oddities.

England are out of the World Cup. It’s time for me to leave. Correlation, not causation.

I have spent quite some time here, yet have barely scratched the surface of this land and its people.

Almost every day has been clear blue skies. Every interaction with the English warm and friendly. I guess it shouldn’t be surprising that a New Zealander feels at home here.

I figure I have completed over 7000km in the UK. On roads that have been mainly decent, where you can travel at reasonable speeds, where the police presence is sparse at best. That 7000km was enough to wear to wear out a set of brake pads on the rear wheel. Which is interesting, and just a little disconcerting.

Lagertha, my Husqvarna Norden 901 Expedition has performed flawlessly. What niggles we have had have all been mine in the making. She deserved a service. She got one, courtesy of one of the few Husqvarna specialists I could find. My faith in this bike grows every time I turn the key.

Unfortunately, Mid-West Racing was unable to source a lowering kit. This makes it highly probable that there will be more photos of her lying on her side.

It is time to leave. This trip needs to be an adventure, it needs to test me (just a little), England has been a jolly good show, a decent warm up, but England was never The Trip.

France will present some new challenges. Germany too. More time in Denmark than planned for reasons I won’t disclose - two weeks that I am looking forward to more than I can describe.

And then? And then the trip changes. The goals shift. The story moves. From one of wandering to one of travelling, with purpose, at pace. Yes, there will be some time for contemplation, places visited just for the sake of being there and experiences off the bike.

First though, France, Germany, a grave and two weeks that I wish were eight.

The Saxon Church of St Laurence

A slightly different chapter this week. Sometimes a place slows you down enough to write differently about it. Bradford-on-Avon did that.

I had allocated thirty minutes to Bradford-on-Avon. I am still here three hours later, drinking a beer in the shade, and Bath, which was the point of the day, has quietly given up on me.

Bradford-on-Avon is a small town in Wiltshire, flanking the River Avon in the valley below the grand estate-like hotel I am staying in. It has a bridge and a river and a pub on the river and a square in which the buildings shade the tables from the afternoon sun. It has, around every corner, a picture. I have taken more photographs here than I have taken in some entire countries. Most of them will be no good. The town does not photograph; it presents itself, and by the time you have raised the camera it has already moved on to the next arrangement.

The plan had been simple. Walk around. Have a massage. Go to Bath.

The massage happened. The therapist worked on a body that is, I am told with some regularity now, no longer twenty-four. I did not argue. Then I sat down for a coffee and looked around the square, and thirty minutes became forty, and forty became an hour, and I ordered another coffee, and then a beer, and here we are.

The problem with English towns of a certain age is that they do not respect your schedule. They were arranged by people who did not have one. They were arranged, in many cases, before anyone had one. Bradford-on-Avon has been here since the tenth century, at a minimum, and possibly considerably longer, and a man in a hurry is not really the sort of person it is designed to accommodate.

There is a street here called The Shambles. I had assumed, before I saw it, that the description was atmospheric, that some clever guidebook writer had called it that because it reminded them of the more famous one in York. It turns out to be its own street, properly signed, running up from the market square between buildings that have been leaning affectionately toward one another for several hundred years. In the medieval sense, Shambles meant butchers' benches. The word survives in modern usage to mean a mess, because a medieval butcher’s street was, in fact, a mess, and every English town of any size had one. Most have lost the name. This one has kept it.

I walked up The Shambles slowly. There is a sign on the corner and above the sign a small plaque I could not read from where I stood, and above the plaque a lamppost of the ornamental Victorian sort that the twenty-first century keeps rediscovering.

Window boxes everywhere. Petunias in the pink-and-white striped variety that look like they were drawn by a slightly manic child, and geraniums, and something red I couldn't name. They provide a contrast to the browns and stone-coloured hues that dominate everything else.

Everything else, that is, apart from the greens of the river.

You come down into the town and there is a bridge and beyond the bridge the Avon runs slow and green between banks that have buildings built to the edge on one side and a tree-lined walkway on the other. There are water lilies. There are willows. There are, on the water, what I believe are ducks, though from the bridge they were only motion. Somewhere in the middle distance a swan, which had presumably been placed there by the tourist board.

I stood on the bridge for some time.

The river is not spectacular. It is a river running through a town, which is a category of thing England does better than almost anywhere else in the world, because so many English towns began where the river was fordable (the town was originally called Broad-ford) and then stayed there for a thousand years and now have a stone bridge and a walk along the bank and a pub with tables looking out over the water. It is not a landscape. It is a domestic arrangement made with a river.

The town streets frequently alternate between empty and logjammed with cars.

I resent the cars. I know I'm not supposed to. But this town was built before cars were imagined, and you can see the cost most clearly at the moments when a modern hatchback tries to negotiate a corner a fourteenth-century mason cut deliberately narrow because he didn't want carts blocking his window.

I walked back up into the town and found a church.

This is where the thirty minutes I had allocated became a lost cause.

The Church of St Laurence is small and Saxon, according to the sign that literally said Saxon Church. There is no other information, no other signs, no plaques, no guides. This meant that I had to resort to Wikipedia, a contrast of old and new that seemed a travesty. The church may have been built in the early eleventh century, when King Æthelred the Unready gave the site to the nuns of Shaftesbury Abbey, who were refugees from the Vikings.

Read that sentence again. That is one sentence. It contains four questions and no information at all.

King Æthelred the Unready. What a name to give a king. The Unready part is an Old English pun that has been slowly bleeding out of the language for a thousand years — his real name, Æthelred, meant noble counsel, and his nickname, Unræd, meant no counsel or ill counsel. His own subjects were making fun of him, in Old English, in real time, and the joke has survived. He was king from 978 to 1016 and he spent most of his reign trying to buy off the Vikings with an annual payment called Danegeld — literally Dane-money — which established, for future taxpayers, the immortal principle that once you pay the Danegeld you never get rid of the Dane. Kipling wrote a poem about it. Æthelred is one of English history’s great losers and one of its most interesting figures precisely for that reason.

Shaftesbury Abbey. Thirty miles from where I am standing. Founded around 888 by Alfred the Great — Æthelred’s great-great-grandfather — as one of the great female religious houses of Anglo-Saxon England. Alfred’s own daughter was its first abbess. By the time our sentence takes place, the abbey has been standing for over a century and has become a wealthy institution with land and books and a library. The nuns are not a small group of women in habits. They are one of the political and economic centres of southern England.

The Vikings they are running from? Not a raiding party. By the late tenth century the Vikings are coming inland in armies, under proper commanders, with proper plans. The one who would have been on Æthelred’s mind in the early 1000s was Sweyn Forkbeard — I promise this is his real name — who was harrying the south of England systematically and who would, in 1013, briefly be king of it. The nuns would have been running from Sweyn Forkbeard, or from his subordinates, or from the general knowledge that Sweyn Forkbeard’s people were in the country and one wanted to be somewhere they were not.

None of this is written at the site. A single sign is all you get.

The Saxon Church of St Laurence.

And then there is St Laurence himself, to whom the church is dedicated.

St Laurence was a third-century deacon of the church in Rome. In 258, during a persecution under the emperor Valerian, he was executed by being roasted on a gridiron. According to tradition, at some point during the process, a process I do not want to think about very much, he told his executioners that they should turn him over, as he was done on that side. This is the earliest recorded example of what we now call gallows humour. It is why he is the patron saint of comedians. He is also, for more obvious reasons, the patron saint of cooks and firefighters. There is a certain grim logic in all three, and one is grateful for the comedians because otherwise the logic would be too grim to enjoy.

Why the church at Bradford-on-Avon was dedicated to him, I do not know. Nobody, so far as I can tell, does. Sometimes a church is dedicated to a saint because a founder had a personal devotion, or because a relic was available, or because the local bishop preferred him, or because a Roman-era foundation on the site had been dedicated to him first and the dedication was inherited. In this case the reason has been lost. It is one of the many things about a very old English town that no longer has an answer, and that is part of what makes standing outside a small Saxon church on a summer afternoon such a strange and pleasing thing to do.

I have finished the beer.

Bath, on the whole, can wait. Bath has been waiting for two thousand years and does not, I suspect, mind. The road can wait. My thirty minutes ran out about two and a half hours ago, and I have decided to stop apologising to myself for it.

The town, if it noticed my plan at all, was gracious enough not to laugh.

Here is what Rudyard Kipling wrote, on making a payment as a way to avoid conflict.

Dane-Geld

It is always a temptation to an armed and agile nation

To call upon a neighbour and to say: --

“We invaded you last night--we are quite prepared to fight,

Unless you pay us cash to go away.”

And that is called asking for Dane-geld,

And the people who ask it explain

That you’ve only to pay ‘em the Dane-geld

And then you’ll get rid of the Dane!

It is always a temptation for a rich and lazy nation,

To puff and look important and to say: --

“Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you.

We will therefore pay you cash to go away.”

And that is called paying the Dane-geld;

But we’ve proved it again and again,

That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld

You never get rid of the Dane.

It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,

For fear they should succumb and go astray;

So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,

You will find it better policy to say: --

“We never pay any-one Dane-geld,

No matter how trifling the cost;

For the end of that game is oppression and shame,

And the nation that pays it is lost!”

Rudyard Kipling, 1911.

I turned around to make sure I wasn’t dreaming.

A narrow country lane. A downhill left-hand corner. I was travelling. Not fast, but not dawdling either.

A man was walking toward me on the road, close to the hedgerow. A farmer, I took him to be.

The bike moved toward the centre. That subconscious movement that happens before you even realise it. Motorcyclists will recognise it.

A blue hatchback came around the corner. Shit. They were enjoying the drive too.

I was almost past the farmer so I threw the bike hard left. Then I saw the dog. A border collie. Lying on the side of the road. Just lying there. Almost where my front wheel would roll. And then my back.

Please don’t move, dog.

Then it was gone. The farmer, the dog, the hatchback. All gone. I rode on.

Ireland has been bog and fog. Two weeks of it.

There are some absolutely stunning landscapes here. A bubbling brook over mossy stones and under an ancient stone bridge that I had to turn around for to have a proper look. It was genuinely breathtaking.

I followed country lanes where the GPS said I could get through, but the roads and the farmhouses at the end told a different story. Past lakes, sheep that slept on bridges and refused to move for something as insignificant as a motorbike, and ancient ruins. Just there. No signs, no entry fees. Just in some farmer’s paddock. Over mountain passes that could challenge a heavy adventure bike, and through small towns with small shops and small lanes that the traffic somehow managed to traverse.

I stood and watched for a while — the patchwork of greens and browns, farmers’ paddocks running up the gentle hills of Ireland.

This is where I got lost.

I dropped the bike because I was stupid. Have I mentioned she’s quite tall?

The Atlantic coast, just south of Lauragh, on the Beara Peninsula. The camber wasn’t quite right and instead of getting off and moving her, I tried one more time. Twenty minutes earlier I had filled her with gas. Even empty she is heavy.

Helmet off. Gloves off. Jacket off. I took a photo.

Five cars passed in the next twenty minutes. None of them stopped.

Take all her luggage off. Lift from the rear and slide a bag under. Handlebars, one, two, three. Brute strength — well, all my strength — and ignorance were the order of the day. The wall she’d almost hit meant there wasn’t room for a more finessed technique.

I managed to lift her, on the fifth try, to a point where there was no way in hell I was going to let her back down.

I don’t think I could have done it again.

Brute strength and ignorance called for.

Ireland has been a mixed bag. From 30 degrees and stuck in traffic one moment to 22 degrees and deep fog five minutes later. Plenty of main roads, plenty of traffic. Some wonderful lakes, farms and valleys to get lost in.

From Dublin north to Donegal. Down the west coast — Galway, Doolin, Dingle. East to Cork and Wexford. Two weeks of Ireland.

I have mixed emotions about it. I was excited to get here. I am not disappointed to be leaving. That’s not Ireland’s fault.

Travelling solo is harder than I remembered. Harder than I planned for. The richness of the experience has as much to do with who you’re with as where you are.

Rebecca is meeting me in Copenhagen in three weeks.

I’m counting the days.

I’m writing this from a bar in the hotel in Galway. Not that I have really seen Galway yet. I’m not sure what I expected from Ireland, or what it might yet deliver. There’s not much to write about really.

Rode on to the ferry in Holyhead after showing my passport. Does that make it my first real border crossing? It all seemed a bit formal for a ferry from Wales. Rolled off in Dublin. Got my passport stamped. Yes really.

Rode north to Slane. Small town. Some wonderful old buildings, a decent hotel. Slane was named after a king, so legend says.

Then west toward Donegal — after a detour to Brú na Bóinne, the passage tombs that predate the pyramids by a thousand years. Then east again, because I’d left my backpack with my passport in the café. Sixty kilometres of unnecessary riding to correct a five-second lapse. Ireland was fine about it. Someone had kindly placed the bag on the window ledge behind the table where I had enjoyed my coffee and fruit tart.

A quick stop at Tara Hill, a place where kings were crowned. Ireland seems to have a thing about kings. The view was… large. I don’t really know how else to explain it. I spent some time leaning on the the Lia Fáil - the Destiny Stone, taking it all in, thinking.

It rained. Then it rained some more. The roads were fine. There wasn’t much traffic. It was chilly and it was raining. I laughed.

A week ago I was in a field in Warwickshire with 20,000 other motorcyclists in 40 degree heat, listening to a woman on stage say the way to feel proud is to do something really hard and finish it. Now I was pulling my neck warmer up in the rain in Ireland.

The lodge was old. The woman that ran it looked like she had seen it being built. Still, nice enough, and once she realised I was booked in she was happy to let me out of the rain.

“Terrible day. Breakfast at 8. In there.”

I woke up to a cloudy day, but at least it wasn’t raining. I had high hopes for the day. Some decent Irish roads. I found the Atlantic Ocean. I explored some B roads. The riding was uneventful and mainly on two-laned ‘main roads’, complete with trucks and locals that all seemed content to be 10 km/h below the speed limit. I admit, the Kiwi rider came out as I took the opportunities to pass that were presented.

You can take the Kiwi out of NZ, but…

Anyway, I might as well have been in New Zealand. In the Waikato. Between Pirongia and Otorohanga. Rolling hills, flat paddocks, fences, cows, green. Apart from the signs having weird names and the odd building that was obviously older than New Zealand, it was hard to tell the difference.

A stop at the grave of WB Yeats the poet.

Cast a cold eye
On life, on death.
Horseman, pass by!

It seemed appropriate to stop at the Yeats Country Inn. The best cold meat, potato and beetroot salad ever.

“You don’t sound like a local” I said to waitress.

A laugh. “I thought I was getting good at hiding it”.

Figures. She is from Taranaki. The chef is also a Kiwi. She has been there ten years.

We are slowly taking over, she confided.

I told her where I was from.

“One of those.” A slight smile. It felt good to be ribbed for being an Aucklander in the middle of nowhere in Ireland.

On to Galway.

Conversations. Laundry. Planning.

More on that later.

For now, I have a couple of weeks left in Ireland. Let’s see what she offers.

I left the Ye Olde Robin Hood Inn in Ironbridge around mid-morning. The night before had been a long one — Paul and Gail from the pub, a red haired woman and her husband from a nearby village, a man with tattoos asking pointed questions. By the time I’d packed Lagertha and headed south, my head was full of conversations I hadn’t fully sorted yet.

I walked to the Iron Bridge first. Built in 1779, the world’s first cast-iron bridge. Paul reckoned the riverbanks are closing in and they’re waiting for it to snap. Probably an urban legend, though I couldn’t help but recall his words as I stood in the middle. Would there be warning signs?

Then the road.

While exploring a nearby town (I swear I was not lost), a car came up fast behind me with its lights flashing. The driver was waving me over. I pulled over and kept watch in my mirrors. A young man jumped out, no older than mid-twenties.

“Mate. I saw your plate.”

His name was Isaac. British-born, had been living in Christchurch, came back to join the British forces, was thinking about going back to New Zealand to join the police. He was lit up — the kind of excited you only get when you’re a long way from somewhere you love and suddenly you see a small piece of it in front of you.

We talked for ten minutes by the side of the road. About New Zealand. About Christchurch. About what it’s like to be in two countries at once.

I hope Isaac makes it back. He seemed like a fine young man.

A few miles further on I saw a sign for Lilleshall Abbey and pointed Lagertha down the little gravel road. Twelfth-century ruins, partially standing, the kind of place England has scattered across its counties like loose change. I walked around for half an hour. Empty grounds. Birdsong.

Coming back to the bike, a man on crutches was looking at it with his wife.

“Nice bike.”

The standard introduction of motorcyclists everywhere. I returned the standard reply. You ride?

He used to. Big accident in 2000 — hence the crutches. His wife let him have a scooter, then another, then a third. I doubted it would be the last.

“You back up. You don’t give up.”

He told me about another ruin worth seeing further south. Used the QR code on Lagertha’s tank and took a couple of photos. His wife was patient. Good couple.

A few more miles down the road I stopped to set up the camera for some bike footage. I was walking on the verge back to Lagertha when a red Africa Twin pulled up beside me.

“All good?”

I nodded. Nice bike.

He switched the engine off and we got chatting. He was on his way to work. We talked about my trip and about his. He mentioned the ABR (Adventure Bike Riders Festival) — the big rally we were both heading to. I told him I probably wouldn't recognise him in the crowd but I'd recognise the bike.

He waved and rode on.

I stopped for a coffee in a forest car park a little later. A golden retriever that lived in the cafe came over and put his head on my knee. He was decisively committed to being my new best friend.

I tore a piece off my sandwich and gave it to him.

Don’t tell anyone, I whispered.

He looked at me with what I took to be genuine love.

Then he wandered off to another group at the next picnic table.

Oh.

I see.

I sat with my coffee and thought about the night before. A tattooed man had had asked me a leading question. Of all the people who have helped you on this trip — what culture have they been?

I thought about the morning. Isaac saw a number plate. A man on crutches admired a bike. A rider stopped to check on a stranger. A dog wanted a sandwich.

In America it was Americans. Scots in Scotland. English in England. New Zealanders and people who knew about New Zealand everywhere. In Estonia it’ll be Estonians. In India it’ll be Indians.

Whoever’s around is who helps.

The road kept going south.

I rolled into Luib in the late afternoon with rain coming sideways across the glen. The Luib Hotel sat on the side of the road like it had always been there, which it more or less had — almost five hundred years, by John’s reckoning. They don’t know exactly. The paperwork only goes back to the first time it was sold.

Inside it was warm, low-beamed, and quiet. The bar opened at six. Scotland were playing football that night. There was controlled excitement.

The bartender, I never got his name, which I regret, was an older man working alone. We were the only two in the room for the first half hour. He pulled my pint and we got chatting. He’d been in 2 Para in the Falklands in 1982. Went back ten years later to work. Got into a bar fight there at some point, copped a £400 fine, was politely asked to leave the island and never come back.

He’d been married four times. The last one twenty years ago. Still married.

He told me he’d had the chance to move to Australia once. His wife at the time wanted to stay near her mother.

He asked where I was riding. I told him: London to Auckland, ten months. Europe, Middle East, India, Asia. He thought about it for a moment.

“Just don’t ride in a straight line for more than two seconds in Israel.”

I’m still thinking about that one.

I went to bed after Scotland scored. Good decision. It was the only goal of the game.

The next morning I came down early to call Rebecca. The wifi was better in the bar than upstairs. John, the owner, was already there. He made me coffee and breakfast before the kitchen had officially opened.

John is also ex-2 Para. Watching the two of them the night before, you could see they had a friendship forged in something I wouldn’t ask about. The kind of friendship that doesn’t need explaining.

Another motorcyclist came down to the bar while I was eating. We all started talking. John has stories, a lot of them, and tells them at volume.

There was a woman from Tennessee who’d stayed there a few weeks earlier. She’d asked where the air conditioning was in the room. It had been 21 degrees Celsius that day. John laughed. AC in Scotland. Then she’d asked when the rain was going to stop. He’d asked how long she was staying.

“Three days.”

“Then it’s not stopping before you leave. This is Scotland.”

He told me about the building. Nearly five hundred years old. A drovers’ stop, back when the Highland glens — Glen Coe, Glen Dochart, all of them — drove cattle west to Fort William for shipping. There was a stop every twenty miles. Luib was one of them. The drovers came through here in their thousands, year after year, generation after generation. Cattle, sheep, men, dogs, weather. The same building, watching it all.

He talked about the glen. Seven people live in it. Two of them live in the inn.

The road outside is the Scottish equivalent of a motorway, he said. That made me laugh. It’s all it needs to be. There are seven people in the glen.

He has views on single-track etiquette. Strong ones. He’s had run-ins with tourists who refuse to reverse to the nearest passing bay — the bay they should have stopped at in the first place. He talked of locals locking their own vehicles in place on the road and walking across the fields to wherever they were going, leaving the offending campervan with no way forward.

He told me Rob Roy wasn’t a villain. He was just trying to survive. The cattle he stole he stole to eat. You keep people under the thumb for long enough and eventually they find a way to fight back.

We talked about Trump. The Russians. The Iranian regime. John has views on all of them. I mostly listened. And laughed.

Eventually I stopped laughing and got on the road. The rain had paused for the morning. I rode east through the glen without navigation, exploring. Dochart Falls. Rob Roy’s grave — the same Rob Roy John had been telling me about an hour earlier, which made it feel different than it would have otherwise.

Endless views of lochs. A few dead ends. Eventually, late in the afternoon, I rolled into Pitlochry. A humming village. I checked into the Pitlochry Hydro Hotel — a grand Victorian building, magnificent in its way.

It’s not Luib.

I sat with that for a while, with a pint in the bar.

There’s a particular kind of place that holds a country’s history. Luib is one of them. Not because of the building, though the building helps. Because of the people who run it. Because of the conversations that happen in it. Because John and the bartender will be there next week and next month and next year, telling the same stories to other travellers, who will arrive in the rain and leave in the rain and remember it for the rest of their lives.

I’ll remember Luib. Not for the road. Not even for the glen.

For the people.

I arrived at Housesteads before it opened. The car park was empty. The walk up the hill to the castle lonely. The gate was locked. I sat on a low wall and looked east along the ridge, enjoying the view.

I video called Rebecca, Sophie and Harrison. The signal was decent. The sky was grey but not raining. Some sheep wandered into the paddock and made their way toward me with what looked like genuine curiosity.

I felt every one of my years walking up that path. Motorcycle boots are not made for walking.

I sat on a stone wall, alone.

After a while a man came along the path from the museum, carrying a shovel. He was scraping sheep shit off the stones as he went. I watched him work his way toward me.

“Thankless job,” I said.

“I don’t mind, really,” he said. “Not a bad way to start the day, if the weather is OK.”

It was hard to disagree.

We got chatting. His name was Ian. I showed him my English Heritage pass. He didn't have the keys but knew how to jiggle the gate open. He let me in early.

“Best preserved communal latrines in England,” he said, pointing. “Twenty metres that way.”

He was proud of the latrines.

I think a lot about that.

Housesteads is one of the forts on Hadrian’s Wall, which runs seventy-three miles across the neck of Britain. The northern edge of the Roman Empire for almost three hundred years. From here, all the way to North Africa, was Rome. North of here, was not.

I walked through the fort for an hour. The barracks. The hospital. The oven. The commandant’s house. The communal latrines, which were, in fact, impressive — not my thing, but impressive all the same. The wall itself runs from the corner of the fort eastward along the ridge, and it is genuinely magnificent. You feel the size of what was attempted here. The edge of an empire that ruled from Rome.

Three hundred names of soldiers stationed at Housesteads have been identified.

No stories are readily available.

That number sat with me as I walked. Three hundred names. Where did they come from? Other parts of Britain? Somewhere else in the empire — Gaul, Spain, North Africa? Did they choose to be here, or were they sent? Did they make friends with the locals or hold themselves apart? Did they die at this fort, on some forsaken hill, or on a beach somewhere on the way back?

Did they get home?

The tingles up my spine were not entirely about the Romans. Standing on the wall, with the ridge running east and the sky low overhead, I felt strangely emotional. Maybe it was the men tied to this fort, serving an empire whose capital was further away than they could imagine. Maybe it was that I'm a long way from home too, even if mine is a softer kind of distance.

I rode the same road twice. Back to Chesters. More ruins. A magnificently preserved bathhouse. More stark stones with no stories attached.

Vindolanda was further south. A steep walk down from the car park. My knees were not appreciative. The museum is enormous.

And there, finally, are fragments of stories.

The writing tablets at Vindolanda are small pieces of wood, written on in ink, preserved by accident in the wet ground. They survive because someone threw them away into mud that didn’t let them rot. The fragments are tiny. A few lines each. A man called back to the fort to account for himself. Another man deported, for reasons unknown.

Tantalising and sad.

It is a reminder of how short a time we have, and how little will be known about us in two thousand years. From the camp commandant to the slave who fetched his water, they have been washed away by history. At least the ruins of the fort remain. How much of what we build now will last a fraction as long? The freeway I rode here on will be gone in two centuries. Most of what we make will not outlast us by much.

I rode the rest of the day to Portinscale. It rained. It was cold. I didn’t have enough layers on and spent the last hour shivering. I didn’t mind.

I thought about Ian. The Wall. The three hundred names. The man called back to account. The man deported.

The Romans were on the edge.

I’m not. I’m on a trip — chosen, planned, paid for, with a partner who knows where I am and a way home if I need it.

But riding alone across a continent does put you a long way from anyone who knows your face. That part I felt for the first time at Housesteads.

Did they get home?

The first two days of Ride It Home are covered, more or less, in Dispatch number 4. The short version: I dropped the bike before I left the suburbs, the GPS wouldn’t talk to the Sena, the pub was closed, and I booked the wrong date at a hotel. By Tuesday night I was sitting with a beer asking questions I hadn’t planned to ask for another six months. I’m only in England.

On the morning of Day Three the suspension was finally dialled, Lagertha fired up willingly, and Wales was waiting on the other side of Shropshire.

The road over Long Mynd is one to write home about. You come up out of Church Stretton, it’s misty, raining in places. The hills are almost imposing. The road; steep and narrow. Then the hills open up a little, and you can see the tarmac in front of you, cutting a path through the sheep-strewn paddocks.

The bike, Lagertha, with the adjustments made, felt lighter, more responsive, more fun, than she had all week. I let her go. Standing on the pegs. The road was a little slippery in places. I don’t care. I put my trust in the bike and the Continental Road Attacks that had been fitted back in New Zealand.

I didn’t stop grinning for an hour. Somewhere up there, on Long Mynd, in the rain and the fog, I forgot I had been doubting any of this. That’s what I came here for.

Half a pint of Estrella in Shrewsbury before crossing the border. Shrewsbury is Charles Darwin’s hometown. The market building dates from 1598. New Zealand didn’t have a permanent European-style building of any kind until the 1820s. Sitting in a 400-year-old market with a cold beer is the kind of thing a Kiwi notices, and never quite stops noticing.

Then Wales.

The Pontcysyllte Aqueduct is the highest in the world. You walk along a narrow towpath above the Dee Valley with a canal on one side and a 38-metre drop on the other. I got talking to a man, 76, with two Triumphs at home. A Bonneville and a Tiger 800. He does regular Wednesday runs to the pub with his mates. He told me the towpath used to be for horses pulling the boats, and that the place has a darker side that I won’t write about here.

I think a lot about that man. He’s me in twenty years, if I’m lucky. Two bikes in the garage and a regular pub ride with mates. This trip is mostly about getting home, but it’s partly about meeting that version of me on the way.

Stayed the night at Cambrian House, said to be the oldest coachhouse in the region. Reportedly haunted. Slept fine.

Day Four started gently. I walked into town and found the working horse, Tobias, who pulls the canal boats — he had his day off but seemed keen to be out of the stable anyway. I knew the feeling. On the way out of town I stopped at some abbey ruins and walked through them slowly. A green lane that I scouted on foot before committing Lagertha. Coffee and soup at a place I forgot the name of by the time I’d finished. I have all day.

Then it rained.

Then it stopped.

Then it rained again, properly. I rode through the hail and thunder on roads that turned, somewhere west of where I had intended to be, into the kind of Welsh single-track lane that has a personality all of its own. Six feet wide, maybe. Hedgerows so tall you can’t see what’s beyond them. Blind corner after blind corner. And locals that drive them at the speed they have always driven on them, because they know the roads and they don’t know I’m on them.

Four or five times that afternoon a car came around a blind corner and stopped skidding somewhere between 2 and 10 metres from my front wheel. I was keeping the speed down, riding wide to create as much visibility as possible. It didn’t matter. The single track does not care how careful you are.

I spent half the day terrified. Exhilarated but terrified.

The corners were what they were, and Wales kept producing them, and I rode on, because the alternative was to sit on the side of the road in the rain and, and what?

By the time I reached Bryn Derwen B&B in Conway I was wet and ready to find a pub. It rained as I walked into town, my previously dry clothes now not so dry.

I found a Snowdon Lager. They didn’t do food. I went back out into the rain to find some.

I’m in Wales, I wrote in my notes that evening. What a privilege. Now, if only it would stop raining.

I’d planned to spend the next day exploring the north Welsh coast properly. I didn’t. The forecast wasn’t great. I had an 8-hour ride on the GPS to get to York looming. Around 1pm I called it and took the motorway. Three hours of intermittent rain and grey road took me to an English town, a hotel with broken wifi, and a pub with a perfectly good burger.

The bar lady was lovely. The beer was good. The wifi could be figured out tomorrow.

The thing I keep coming back to, sitting in an English pub, having left Wales prematurely, is that I should have given it more time. The country offered me Long Mynd, an aqueduct in the sky, a horse on his day off, abbey ruins, single-track roads that scared me, and roads that were mind-blowingly beautiful. The coachhouse, the man with the Triumphs, a bartender who had lived a year in Queenstown.

I should have given Wales more time.

Those immortal words come to mind.

I’ll be back.

She’s mine.

Keys handed over. Screwdriver to reconnect the battery. She fired up immediately.

Relief.

Fuel, then packing. I still have too much gear.

I can’t get the GPS to work. Fuck it. I’ll use Google Maps today and worry about it tonight. I want — I need — to get on the road. At least three passers-by comment on how awesome she looks.

Yep. She does.

I get on the road. Two kilometres later it’s clear I can’t see the phone, and I’m not getting voice instructions through the new Sena.

Sigh.

I stop to see if I can come up with a solution.

Okay. Think we’re good. Damn — my sunglasses have dropped on the ground. I put the stand down. I’m on a slight slope and there seems to be too much weight on the right. She’s a tall bike at the best of times. I can’t weight her to the left.

Over she goes.

My first fall.

FUCK.

A kind passer-by helps me pick her up.

My phone magically connects, and we’re off. Somewhere.

I stop at a gas station for a drink and to get my bearings. The plan was to get to The Farmer’s Dog — Jeremy Clarkson’s pub. I check my phone.

Closed Mondays.

FUCK.

I decide I need to sort my gear out and repack, so I book a hotel. M4, M25, A-this and A-that. Not pretty riding. Functional.

Bike covered and locked.

Unnecessary gear dumped. There will be more.

Not the day one I planned.

I’m alive. The bike’s okay. I’m thirteen miles from The Farmer’s Dog and I’ve got the GPS working.

It ain’t a holiday, is it.

That’s the official start of Ride It Home.

Except - is it?

Six months ago I wrote down that I was going to do this. I told people. I made it public, which is what made it real. That’s a contender.

Three months ago I booked the tickets. The first money that wasn’t coming back. That’s a contender too.

Weeks ago Lagertha, the actual bike, the one I’m picking up tomorrow, went onto a ship. She’s been crossing the world without me ever since. That’s also a contender.

Twenty-one days ago I picked up a different bike, a CF Moto in Denver, and rode it through Colorado, Utah, Nevada, and Arizona. Two close calls. One Uber driver with views. One stranger at a bar. The American shakedown. By any reasonable definition, that was riding, and it was in service of this trip, so, also a contender.

Twenty-three days ago I landed in Houston and felt something I hadn’t expected. Not relief. Not nerves. Just the simple, physical fact of finally moving. That felt like a start.

Tonight, London. The hotel is not five star. The shower is decidedly average — probably not the worst I’ll have on this trip. It’s warm outside. Somewhere down the road, in a freight warehouse, is the bike.

I keep being asked when the trip starts. I keep giving different answers depending on the day. Tonight, in a budget room near Heathrow, the honest answer is I don’t know. It started in all of those moments. It started in none of them. The line you cross is only obvious in retrospect, and the people who tell you exactly when their big trip began are probably tidying up after the fact.

What I do know:

The American leg taught me that the people I expected to be wary of were kind, and the moments I’d planned around weren’t the ones that mattered. The bike I’d never ridden held up. The body I’d worried about held up. The partner I came with made every place better.

Tomorrow I meet Lagertha for the first time as the bike she’s about to be — not the bike in the showroom, the bike in the garage, the bike on the ship.

The one that’s about to do the actual job.

Some part of me thinks the trip starts when I see her.

The rest of me knows it started a long time ago, and I just didn’t notice.

Either way.

Monday at ten. Three-minute walk from the hotel. Key turns. Throttle opens.

First job: find a petrol station.

The UK first. Then Europe, eventually east through the Balkans and Türkiye, and home from there.

Home is east. Eventually.

Google said the pass might be in the 30s Fahrenheit. Two degrees Celsius. Seven in the morning to eight at night if we did the whole loop.

We balked. We only had summer gloves. Only so many layers.

Then — crunch time. We came here to see Telluride and Ouray. When were we going to be back? We could manage some cold. Harden up.

Decision made. I’ll admit I thought about it a few times in the night.

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Colorado City sits just inside the Arizona line. Two thousand people. The kind of fundamentalist town that gets documentaries made about it.

We rolled in late afternoon and checked into the Desert Sage. After a shower we rode three miles up the road to the bar — American towns are geographically larger than they have any right to be. Upstairs, on a deck looking out toward the cliffs.

The bartender came out to take our order.

“No mixed drinks. No salad.”

He turned around and shuffled off.

Welcome to Utah, except we were in Arizona. Throw a stone, you’re in Utah. Throw a stone, I thought, and you’d hit nothing else.

A man with a beard at another table guessed our accent. Australian. Not a bad effort. He was there with his wife and two small children, who were very interested in our motorcycle helmets sitting on the bench beside us. He told us he knew everyone in town. He told us the best hike was an oasis, forty-five minutes’ walk. He mentioned multiple mothers, in passing, the way you might mention a job.

I didn’t ask.

We talked a while. The kids kept looking at the helmets.

After a while, he and his family stood, said goodnight, and headed down the stairs.

Maybe thirty minutes later, Rebecca went to settle up. The bartender told her the first round was already paid for.

He’d quietly covered us, and left without saying.

Rebecca ducked into the supermarket downstairs for some ice. The man behind the counter picked her as English. When she corrected him to New Zealand, he didn’t miss a beat — recommended Cardiff Castle and Kidwelly Castle for the next time we were over. Wales, as it happens. Two strangers in a row, in one small Arizona town, giving us things we hadn’t asked for.

We left some money behind the bar for the next time the man came in for a drink.

That was it.

We rode out the next morning. The road was decidedly average. The destination had been the adventure.

What a place. What people.

Most of the ride was ho-hum. The endless straights that seem to make up much of the roading network in these parts.

Then came Monarch Pass. A climb. Some real corners. Snow down to the road.

That's better.

Over too soon, and now more straights. I need to turn somewhere to reach my destination. I move to the centre — two lanes each way. Is this it? I glance at my phone. Google Maps. Yep. A car ahead of me is making the same left turn. I crack the throttle and follow him across.

Beep.

I can still see the quintessential white pickup bearing down on me.

Across the oncoming lane I hadn't checked.

Left turns are safe in New Zealand.

Got to be more careful.

“Juan?” I ask, climbing into the front seat of the Uber after stowing my gear in the back.

He gives me a look that suggests I am not that bright.

Some casual conversation and Juan picks the accent straight away.

He doesn’t really know where New Zealand is. Fair enough.

Juan is Mexican, and gets rather animated when I tell him where I am riding.

“Be careful in the mountains. Crazy drivers. How do you say — rednecks. They drunk drive. They don’t care, man. Lots of racists out there.”

He looks at me.

“Not that you need to worry with your skin colour.”

I nod knowingly, while thinking that Juan is not much darker than me. But then, I’ve never met a real-life American racist. Maybe they are more discerning.

“It’s all because of Trump.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. He’s so racist. He enabled all the other racists to come out. The whole January thing. They killed cops and he pardoned them. They can get away with murder.”

“Wow,” I say, and he takes the obvious cue to continue.

“He is so stupid. He doesn’t have a plan. The whole Venezuela thing. He took the president but nothing’s changed. The regime is still in place. He is too stupid to know that Venezuela has a $400m contract with China. Exxon, Mobil, all the big companies won’t deal with him. This country is always about oil. About resources.”

“How long have you lived here?”

“Forty-seven years.”

Interesting number, I didn’t say.

“Forty-four years in San Francisco, and then I moved out here.”

“Why the move?”

“It got crazy in the pandemic and I moved back to Mexico. I ran out of money though, so had to come back.”

“It’s beautiful here. All of this — all of Colorado, Texas, California — used to be Mexico. It was taken by the Americans. We were weak then. We had just come out of a revolution. Thank god we have a strong president. She stands up to Trump. Relations with the US are bad. Did you hear about the CIA agents?”

“The ones that got killed?”

“Yes, yes. The Mexican government didn’t know they were operating in Mexico. His girlfriend, or whatever she was, was sleeping with one of them. She was giving away secrets under the covers. The US has declared the cartels — how do you say — a terrorist organisation. They are going to invade Mexico. I tell you, they will get a shock. Mexicans are proud. There are fifty million Mexicans in the US, and when they invade we will all fight for Mexico. Think of it. Fifty million. Of course, everyone has traitors…”

I assume he is thinking of secrets being shared under the covers.

I liked Juan.

I just didn’t think it wise to ask too many clarifying questions.

Six months ago I made the decision to ride a motorcycle home, from Europe to New Zealand.

Yesterday I landed in Houston, Texas and felt something I hadn't expected — elation. Not nerves, not relief. Just the simple, physical fact of finally moving.

Today I’m in Denver, Colorado.

Twenty-six weeks. That’s what it took to get from idea… to here.

A lot has been learned in that time.
I learned that it’s easy to waste money, even when only ‘planning’.
That making a goal public builds commitment faster than any internal dialogue.
That’s part of it. The process. The mistakes. The small discoveries along the way.

Some things wouldn’t have happened without this.
Time with friends. A growing understanding of how much people actually care.
Time with Mum. Time I’ll always be grateful for.
Conversations with my partner, Rebecca — laughter, a few tears, and the quiet understanding of what this means for both of us.

Confidence is a strange thing.
I’m confident I can ride the ride.
But there’s still fear.
Not physical fear.
Something else.

What if I don’t enjoy it? What if I ride through twenty countries and feel nothing? What if I spend days without speaking to anyone?
What happens when I come back?
What does life look like then?

None of it entirely rational.
That’s the nature of it.

Still—
I’m all in.
This isn’t just a trip.
It’s something I need to do.
Part adventure. Part work. Part something I don’t fully understand yet.

The work part matters too.
The content. The writing. The videos.
I don’t know if anyone will want to follow along.
A middle-aged guy who isn’t a great rider and knows nothing about long-distance travel.

But that’s fine.
I’ll do it anyway.
If nothing else, one day I’ll sit somewhere, watch it all back, and laugh at how seriously I took it.

Part One ends here.

Part Two starts now.

London, Europe… the ride home.

Lagertha, the day I shipped her to London

I don’t regret selling any cars. But I regret every motorcycle I’ve ever sold.

So I’m not selling this one. I’m riding it home.

My name is Alan. I’m a middle-aged Kiwi, a former project manager, and not a particularly great rider. Over the next ten months I’m going to ride Lagertha — a Husqvarna Norden 901 Expedition — from London to Auckland. Twenty-something countries. 50,000 kilometres. Mostly alone.

Along the way I’ll pay homage to a piece of family history: an airman buried in Germany whose name I carry, and whose death rippled down through the generations. My partner Rebecca will join me for parts of the ride. I’ll meet others. But most of it will be me, the bike, and my own head.

What if I ride through twenty countries and feel nothing?

That’s the fear. The answer, I think, is up to me — whether I enjoy it or endure it is a choice I’ll make every morning.

I’ve learned one thing already: making a goal public builds commitment faster than any internal dialogue ever could. That’s part of why this Substack exists.

If you want a sense of what you’re stepping into, two chapters worth starting with:

The Name I Carry — the airman in Germany, and why this isn’t only a motorcycle trip.

My Last Week as a Project Manager — closing one chapter of life to start another.

Subscribe and ride along.

I have a love–hate relationship with my garage.

On one hand, every time I walk in, I see three motorbikes.
Two BMW R1200GSAs — old, well used.
And a KTM 1190 that still makes me giggle every time I open the throttle.

Love.

They sit against the wall now.
Batteries disconnected.
Odds and ends piled on and around them.

They’re not there to be ridden anymore.
They’re just… waiting.

Hate.

It’s strange how something inanimate can carry so much weight.
Motorbikes become part of the story. The memories.

They take you to places — real and imagined.
They expose you. To the elements. To people. To yourself.

I don’t regret selling any cars.
(With the possible exception of a 1962 Volkswagen Beetle.)

But I regret every motorcycle I’ve ever sold.

Maybe that’s just me.

Lagertha is getting closer to London.

And in less than a week, I’ll be heading to the States.

The States.

That still feels slightly unreal.

The waiting is done.
The packing is done.

All that’s left is to get on the plane.

Then I get to ride.

We get to ride.

I can feel it building now — that edge of excitement that makes you rush things if you’re not careful.

So for now—

Steady.

It’ll come soon enough.

A small mistake on my part and it went to the wrong address.

Eventually I got my hands on it.

My travel bag.

Big enough to carry everything I think I need.
Small enough to remind me I can’t take everything.

A few more admin tasks.

Drone licenses. Courses. Tests.
At one point I somehow found myself completing one in Norwegian.

Not entirely sure how that happened.

Visas checked. Then checked again. Then one more time.

All good.

A farewell party. More goodbyes.

According to my head, it was a good night.
According to my heart, it was harder than I expected.

These are the moments that catch you.
Good friends. The ones who’ve been there the whole way.

Excited for you.
A little concerned too.

That mix means something.

So many people I won’t see for months.

Still, everything is ready.

I’m ready.

Now it’s just waiting.

Finding small things to do.
Adding to the list so I can tick them off.

Everything that can be prepared… is.

The rest isn’t up to me.

The bike will arrive.
The flights will leave.

And when they do… so will I.

Chapter 23 – Connections

On the last morning in Adelaide, over breakfast, Mum mentioned something I hadn’t heard before.

Her father, my grandfather, had come from Adelaide to Dargaville, New Zealand when he was four years old.

I stopped.

Jack had just moved to Adelaide.

So, without knowing it, he had returned to the city his great-grandfather had left decades earlier.

That caught me off guard.

You think you’re heading somewhere new.

Turns out… maybe you’re not.

A bit of digging later and it became obvious the story didn’t end there. Not all of the family had left. The name still shows up across Adelaide.

Threads that never quite disappeared.

It’s a strange thing.

We think of our lives as linear. Moving forward. New places. New directions.

But every now and then, something loops back.

A connection you didn’t know was there.

This trip is supposed to be about movement.

New countries. New roads. New people.

But maybe it’s just as much about rediscovering things that were already part of the story.

Connections between generations.

Between places.

Between people who never met, but are still linked.

When this chapter is published there will be 19 days before I head to the US.

That feels like the start.

I’m back in New Zealand for only three full days before heading out again — this time to London.

It’s close now.

Most of the jobs are done. Most of the paperwork is in place.

What’s left is simpler.

Time with family.
Time with friends.
Saying goodbye.

The world still has its problems.

That won’t change.

But what does matter is time.

The time I had with Mum.

The time I get now, before I go.

I keep telling myself it’s less than a year.

A year goes quickly.

But standing there in Adelaide, realising Jack had unknowingly retraced a step his great-grandfather had taken in reverse…

…it didn’t feel quick.

It felt like something that had been waiting a long time to connect.