About
ABOUT THE TRIP
My name is Mike.
My task: to ride round the coast of Europe.
And you can email me too. I'm very modern, really: mikewith [ at ] hotmail.com
Forgive me for expanding on what seems to me to be a very simple proposition, but reactions have so far included:
"Do you mean the coast of Britain?"
"When will you get to Switzerland?"
"Why?"*
I'm starting in Murmansk, which is as far north-and-east as you can get on anything approaching a real road. Starting up there means I get the arctic out of my system during what is laughably called the "summer'.
It also means.. as I ride round Scandinavia, the Baltic, northern Europe, Iberia, the north Mediterranean coast, round the Black Sea (and possibly Turkey) through 31 (or 32) countries 27 (or 28 border crossings), mileage unknown and time taken unknowable, through great cities and teenyweeny villages, tourist hotspots and forgotten corners, super highways and dirt tracks.. one thing all these roads have in common is that people there drive on the right. So.. tenuously.. the bike and I will be closer to the sea than if we were going in the other direction.
I'll be meeting many people from many lands, as different as can be, but with ties that bind: the sea. What does a fisherman from Norway's Lofoten Islands have in common with a barman in Malaga? Could a ship's captain from Piraeus get on with a dockworker from Kaliningrad? And where is Kaliningrad anyway?
Lots of Europeans: a chance to find out what they think of Britain, while I'm at it.
*I get this a lot. I hope the site will give you a few reasons why.
ABOUT ME
40. Divorced. I am a walking, talking, biking, blogging Mid Life Crisis, and a cliched one at that. After 18 years in London, with my job coming to a natural end, the flat sold and the cats living with my ex, I have absolutely no excuse not to go off and live my dream.
ABOUT THE BIKE
A happy conceit: for a trip around the coast of Europe, the Triumph Bonneville is the most British of motorbikes. Even to people who've never seen one before. And it was built in Hinckley - not far from the geographical centre of England. A less coastal bike you could not hope for.
It would have been even more appropriate if my Bonnie was an old one, built in the original Triumph factory at Meriden, the traditional 'centre of England.' But the old Bonnies don't have electric starters... hell, they barely have brakes... and I need a bike I can trust.
ABOUT THE SITE
Big thanks (gracias, even) to Diego Lago for design and build, Dr Rakesh Patel for the maps, Susan Kemp and FoM. And everybody who knows me.
ABOUT BLOODY TIME
I first concocted this trip in August 2001. I was driving along a coast road in sunny Mallorca, a windy, uppy, downy, lefty, righty route that plunges up and along coastal cliffs and down to a perfect blue sea. Magnificent. But why stop at a small island, I thought. It's taken me five years to to realise there is no answer to that.. not to mention, to realize that almost all the roads I'm heading down will be flat.
At sea-level, in fact.
ABOUT FAME
or, if you want to hear me waffle on, try this interview on BBC Radio Norfolk. It's with Wally Webb.