Pt 6 On the road again

Thursday 13^th May 2010. ‘One if by land…’

Thursday morning saw me wake-up feeling more than a little on edge. I got up early feeling a little fuzzy from Matts smoke the night before, and ran around the house in a manic state of getting the last things done. I ran down to Granny Mays place and dropped the big travel bag and tripod off there for Eileen to collect and take back to her place. Then after a quick coffee laced with something soothing I’m sure, I left her place with a promise to be careful, and ran down to Gorebridge post office where I felt sure I’d be able to buy a couple hundred more euro’s just in case. No I couldn’t was the answer I got from the carmudgeonous little freak behind the counter, but the post-office a mile up the road beside the Co-op should be able to help me. I bolted up the road, clock-watching as I went. Five minutes later I was walking out of there with a wallet full of Euros, and an hour and a half left before I had to leave. I ran back to Simons place, gobbled down a couple of rolls and a coffee, then packed the final bits I’d left until the bitter end, and brought the luggage down stairs.

Before too long it was 1.30pm, and time to load the bike and get it on Simon came out with my camera and took some shots of me loading up. Then before I could say ‘I’m finished’ I was finished, and the bike was ready to roll. I hate goodbyes, especially when it’s family. But it’s not like I’m not going back, so it wasn’t a problem really, just that I’ve really enjoyed my time there, and kinda didn’t want it to end; but for the time being it had to, and so we hugged each other manly, shook each others hand strongly and said our see you soon’s. I fired up the bike, revved the engine, kicked it into gear and rode off down the road singing Willie Nelson songs inside my helmet.

On the road again, here I am, I’m on the road again. The life I love is blah-dee, blah-dee blah-dee blah, dum-dee, dum-dee doo-tee doo-tee doo…

I’d forgotten how heavy the bike was when it’s fully loaded, but it sits on the road beautifully, and the luggage packed on all around me forms something akin to a comfy armchair on wheels. I’d allowed an hour to get to the ferry terminal at Rosyth, and another hour on top again just to be on the safe side. I made the trip in a little over thirty minutes, so got there an hour and a half before loading time.

The Rosyth ferry terminal is literally just across the forth road bridge from Edinburgh. I crossed the bridge standing high up on the foot-pegs, with my arms held out to either side of me…I was flying across the forth. The car and truck- drivers loved it, with tooted horns and thumb’s-up friends from both sides of the road. I put my hands back on the handlebars, and took the turn off to the terminal and found myself at the tail-end of some forty or so bikes waiting to board. They were all from Belgium and had just finished a five-day tour of Scotlands highlands and island, and were now heading home. Honda’s, moto-guzzi’s, Yamaha super-teneres, and the obligatory BMW GS 1200’s were everywhere. Big touring bikes; shiny, new, sexy-looking things with customised luggage racks and matching girlfriends in matching helmets and leathery, wet-suit looking gear with long, blonde hair, bright blue eyes and names like Annie from Ostende.

But it didn’t matter how shiny bright and new their bikes and girlfriends were, because they all wanted to talk to me on my dirty little TDM 850, loaded up beyond belief, and sporting an Aussie flag on the fairing. We chatted and laughed and dinky-di’d our way through an hour and a half wait, until suddenly we were being ushered up a ramp, and into the big, hungry mouth of the ferry.

I was right, it was a big boat. I strapped the bike below decks, smiled hello then goodbye to Anna, then climbed the stairs that took me through the seven decks. After realising my deck was actually in Rat-class, I climbed back down to deck five, found myself a reclining Pulman seat and staked my claim. I had no-sooner laid all my bits out on the jumbo-jet styled seat beside me and wondered how I was going to pass the next twenty-odd hours, when a mop of blonde hair lifted from the seat in front of me and turned around. For a moment my heart skipped a beat as the platinum swish of hair filled the air with all manner of Belgian promises waiting to be fulfilled; but then my heart sank just as quickly as a gangly looking 48 year old guy named Al introduced himself. He was from Fife and heading out to Brussells to visit a lifelong friend. After the usual pleasantries, we decided that drinking Guinness would probably be the only sensible thing to do; so that’s what we did….for the next eight hours!

Al was a self un-employed artist who now worked as a cleaner. He had decided early in his artistic career that he was of the minimalist school of art, and at University even submitted a blank canvas as an example of this belief. I told him I was a journalist and writer of such renown and repute that I also didn’t have to bother writing anything anymore, and that I also had a portfolio of blank pages as testament to this fact. We drank to our mutual imminent failure, then for reasons best known to God alone, we thought we’d try our hand at the Casino. We played blackjack for the best part of two hours, where I managed to rack-up the incredible fortune of three pounds, before my steady decline into the realm of losing a tenner. We went back to the bar and drank more Guinness, and talked about writing and photography and art. We wandered from time to time out onto the windswept decks, where we smoked cigarettes and chatted with the likes of Erich from Lyon, a software engineer with a penchant for speed, who owns an MGB, an Austin Healy and an Aston Martin DB7. Out there in the darkness, amongst the briny sting of icy cold north sea air I met Stuart, a truck driver from Arbroath who was on his way down to southern Italy via the train from Germany. He told me he has a girl in every country, and that the current one is a beautiful thirty-eight year old blonde from Belgium. Before that it was a twenty-three year old brunette from Sunderland, and before her there was a nineteen year old with hair as black as a ravens wing; she gave him a heart attack right in the middle of sex. Throughout the twenty minutes we stood talking, he must have smoked a dozen or more cigarettes, but then Stuart believed that life was all about smoking and shagging, and told me he normally smokes 80 plus per day, but also that’s an average, and sometimes it’s upwards of 120.

The so the night wore on; the drinking the smoking, the dreadful cabaret singer who came on stage and sang wedding singer songs. The drunken Belgian biker who opened his mouth too wide and had it filled with someone’s fist. The whole while Al continuously dipped his finger into a bag of Methodrone, and just as consistently asked me if I’d like a dab too. No I don’t think so Al, I told him, but I will have another pint of Guinness while you’re offering things around.

I didn’t see Anna again for the entire night which was a shame, and I ended up hitting the sack at about 2.30am. I’d seen other people laid out on the floor instead of on their seats. That seemed like a good idea to me too, so I slept on the floor laid out like a true traveller, wrapped in a blanket and using my backpack for a pillow; it was like sleeping on a wooden sled being dragged across concrete; fine when your fifteen, not so fine when you’re fifty.

Friday 14^th May 2010. ‘…two if by Sea’

I woke up next morning at about 7.30, stretched the aches out of my sea-tossed body, and went forward into the restaurant for a big breakfast of Bacon and eggs with all the trimmings. I wanted some alone time after last nights follies, some time to get my thoughts together about what was unfolding before my very eyes; I grabbed a coffee, wandered back to my seat and turned on the laptop. My head wasn’t exactly thumping, but it wasn’t really pink and fluffy either, all I wanted was some quiet time to get my slightly disjointed thoughts on paper, or screen as the case may have been.

“Helo Tem” came this husky, come-hither voice from right beside my ear. It was Anna, the 38 yr old honey from Ostend in Belgium. I must have had my ‘tell me all your troubles’ face on, cuz that’s exactly what she did. Turned out she’s not happy with her man; she’s riding pillion with him on this trip, but he’s just too possessive and needs to chill-out she says. Turned out she just lost her job as a fashion designer with over twenty years service to one label. Turned out she’s got three kids too, and a mortgage she can’t afford, and an estranged husband, and a lust for living a life she really can’t afford. That all sounds very familiar I remember thinking, and as she was really quite lovely, I soon found myself searching her out for this mythical Celtic cross that I’ve been told to look out for. Needless to say it wasn’t there, so I guess she wasn’t the one. We exchanged e-mail addresses, phone numbers and ‘Maybe in another lifetime’ smiles. Then she left me and returned to her cabin, and a man she really didn’t want to be with.

I had some thoughts and wrote some words. Then, just like Goldfish and rubber bands, I decided they made no sense, deleted them from the screen and went outside to suck in some fresh North sea air.

“We’re not in the north sea anymore” I was told. “We’re now in the English Channel and Belgian is jus beyond the horizon”. John Daniels was with the Scottish touring group, a ‘Hello, my name is John’ type sticker told me so on his jacket. It also told me he was riding a BMW GS 1200 and that he was carrying a pillion. “It’s the busiest waterway in the world you know”. He also told me, and as if to prove it, a dozen large freighters suddenly appeared out of the mid-morning mist just off the portside. “You look a little rough”. He laughed. “Did you have a good night”? I told him all about it, then asked him about his own night.

“It could have been better” he replied. Aside from a smack in the mouth, it turned out he was with a women who was using him for his money, using him as a surrogate father to her three kids, using him to enliven her own lack-lustre life. Despite her beautiful looks and long sun-kissed hair, when they get back to Ostende, he was going to dump her…!

I swallowed hard, wished him well, and bid him farewell as the ships speaker advised we were porting in Zeebruge in just under twenty minutes, and could we prepare ourselves for dis-embarkation.

I caught a last glimpse of Al wetting his finger and dipping into a bag of white powder; he looked like a shadow who’d lost his human counterpart. A whistle blew, and we walked sheeplike down deck after deck of stairwell to the vehicle landing and my beloved TDM 850 waiting way down below. John and Anna were right there too, not smiling, not talking, just not being very happy together at all in general. I unstrapped my bike, gunned the engine and rode off on the wrong side of the road. through passport control and into Belgium.

Zeebrugge, Belgium to Cambrai, France.

I stopped at a service station just out of the terminal and put in nine Euro’s of unleaded to fill the tank right up. I entered the shop to pay for the fuel and attempted “Une’. The man behind the counter looked at me and said ‘Twah” and rang up thirteen Euro’s on the till. Your kidding, I’d been in the country five minutes and I was already being ripped off. “Non…numero une” I again attempted in half French , half Italian, pigeon-english. “Your on pump number three” He then said in perfect English,”the yellow bike isn’t it”? He was right; the nine euro’s was actually nine liters and it came out at exactly thirteen euros. I paid him, and continued the road into Bruge.

There was a bright and colourful fairground there, with people laughing and smiling, enjoying the clear-blue sky above them, and the medieval landscape around them. I took lot’s of wrong turns and spent a pleasant couple hours getting lost. I had intended stopping properly in Bruge, as Lyndal had sent me a text saying ‘Beautiful Bruge, home of hand-made Lace, and of course, fine chocolates’. But I’d got turned around and confused so many times, that when I suddenly saw the sign pointing to Lille in France, I jumped at the chance to get going in the right direction again, leaving beautiful Bruge in waiting for another day.

The ride to Lille was nothing short of nothing exciting aside from seeing the Police tearing a car apart at the Belgian/French border. I passed through Lille without incident and soon found the signpost directing me to Cambrai where I’d always intended staying the very first night on the continent.

The last time I was in Cambrai I filmed the journey I took to bring my great grandfather home from his resting place on the war-torn Western-front; it was very strange to be there again, the place was so familiar to me, and yet so alien at the same time. I rode through town, remembering landmarks here and there; the Beatus Hotel, the 14^th century gatehouse, the medieval town square with it’s Cafe’s and Tabac’s. On the road to Masniere I stopped at the supermarket ‘Cora’ where I again fell in love with the giant chain store as it shares it’s name with my eldest daughter. There I bought Tuna, butter, a bread-stick, two tomato’s, and some tins of this, and packets of that; then I rode down to the Canal du St.Quentin, unloaded the bike, and set the tent up to the background choir of gently lapping water and nothing else at all. I made coffee on my military issue hexamine cooker, smoked a cigarette and watched the sun go down.

Saturday 15^th May 2010 Cambrai to Chatillon Sur Marne.

The sun again rose, and beamed in through my canvas wall like an angelic wake-up call from heaven itself. I brewed a coffee, and broke camp while barges laden down with cars and tarpaulined loads plied the waterway bound for places unknown. I’d camped beside this canal last time I was here too, and last time I’d dropped the bike trying to get back onto the road over the high kerb that separated the canal-path from the main road it lead off. It was with this painful memory well in mind that I crept up the steep, gravel pathway towards the road proper. At the kerb I gently eased the front wheel up and over, being sure to keep the revs high and the clutch feathered and constantly in contact. With a roar and a bump and a relieved ‘oo-rah’, I eased the bike back onto the road and headed towards the place where I’d collected Walters spirit from the soil in September 2008.

The place looked different now. Last time it had been the site of an archaeological dig, with flat, smoothed out sub-soil dotted with dig-trenches and thrilling with excited archaeologists withdrawing the long-forgotten remnants of a war from a battle-site that many never even knew existed. Now the land here was scarred with the marks of bulldozer tracks; and the perfectly flat-sided trenches, and the smooth, finely-sieved sub-soil had all been filled in and pushed aside to make way for the encroaching housing estate that buzzed just meters away with the sound of power-saws and the hammering of nails into wood.

I walked onto the site where I’d filmed the collection of the sacred soil. There I spoke with Walters spirit once again, and laughed about the journey I’d previously taken here. “Did I do you proud Walter?” I asked him. “Have I now allowed you to rest at peace with the knowledge that your deeds and final sacrifice at this place are known to thousands of your countrymen who had never known you existed?” I stood in silence, contemplating the site and the previous pilgrimage here. Then a voice came loud and clear, like Walter himself were right beside me. “Yes you did me proud Tim, and now you must let me go; let me rest at last in peace”. Emotion rose in my throat, tears welled in my eyes, a warmth enveloped my soul like I’d been hugged by an Angel. I walked from the site, stood at attention and saluted my great grandfather from the side of the road. Then I remounted my bike, and rode away towards Riems, gently releasing him from my earthly grasp, one turn of the wheel at a time.

The road I took to Reims was the A26 motorway, had I taken the time to study my maps more closely I would have realised there were alternate routes that would have given me a much more picturesque journey there, rather than the dull, featureless high-speed drone of motorway travel. I stopped for a coffee break at the St. Quentin services where I met Ray and John, a couple of bikers on their way back to the uk after a week touring through France, Germany and Switzerland on a pair of sexy, black and silver, Triumph RS 900’s. I left there and re-entered the motorway, thinking how it was strange that it all looked so familiar to me, almost like I been this way before. Ten miles later I was turning around to head back the way I should have been going! The road was flat, straight, grey and lacking in anything remotely interesting. The landscape spilled out on either side of me in an undulating tapestry of greens, yellows and browns; and the sky above was Sapphire blue. I saw the sign for Riems and took the exit into town, where I quickly discovered a pedestrian promenade filled with parked motorbikes and outdoor, umbrella’d café’s.

Coffee shops, bars and Tabacs thrilled with the clink of glasses and the chatter of happy-go lucky French-folk. I considered walking into an Irish bar advertising the good word on Guinness, but then, having drank the real thing in the good town of Dublin itself, it seemed a pointless folly; and when in Rome, or France, as the case may be, there seemed little point. I dropped my helmet on a table, pulled a chair from beside it and sat down. A waiter approached, giving me the opportunity to put my atrocious rendition of his language into use. “Bonjour Monsuer” I ventured. “Une Café’ crème si vous plais”. Qui Monsuer”. He replied easily, and set off to fulfil my request. Success, I’d actually manage to order myself a cup of coffee without incident or terrible fumbling or embarrassment. He returned minutes later and placed the cup of hot, creamy coffee in front of me while I rolled myself a cigarette and took in the pantomime unfolding about me.

Street performers dressed in macabre garb of Goths and vampires, vied with men dressed as female nurses, and women dressed as circus clowns for the attention of onlookers drawn into their world of street fantasy and impromptu performance. A clown spied my loaded camera looking at her and made a bee-line for me. “Voule-vous blah, blah, blah in French”? she asked me. “Je suis desolet” I replied “Je ne parle pas francais…je suis Australian”. “Ahh, Australi…” She responded, with a tone of mirth-making intent in her voice. Then followed it up with an exposition of her understanding of what it is to be Australian, including bouncing like a Roo, and standing on one leg like an Aborigine. Her fellow clowns exploded in laughter as she talked to me in pantomime and encouraged the gathered onlookers to join in the piss-take of me without pause for breath. After five minutes she kissed me on both cheeks French-style and asked me to sign her ‘visitors’ book. I returned to my table slightly shaken, slightly stirred, and very un-James Bond like, just as another biker sat opposite and laid his helmet down. His name was Laurent, and he rode a black Honda CBR 900.

Laurent’s english was broken but good, and my French atrociously funny, but nonetheless communicable. I learned some new words as we sat there watching the beauties of France stroll on by in their mini-skirts, high-heels, make-up and great manes of golden and auburn hair; Woman is Femme, and Beautiful, Jolie. We had a coffee or two, smoked about the same in cigarettes, and talked about bikes and travel and beautiful women. I told him I was on my way to Troyes, but he didn’t know what I meant, so I wrote it down for him. “Ahh, Twah”. He exclaimed. “Like the number three…Une, Du, Twah”. He then told me about this campsite he knew twenty miles from there that was on the Marne river and well worth staying at for the night; then he showed me on the map where it was. After many attempts at following an explanation of roads that didn’t actually appear on the map, he said he would take me there himself instead. Minutes later I was roaring along a country road at ninety miles an hour with the warm French wind in my face, and the scent of high-octane fuel in my nostrils.

We blasted along a magnificently winding road through hedge-rowed hamlets with tiny cackling streams, and up long steep hills, and down super-fast straights on the other side again. At the peak of one such hill in the town of Chatillon sur Marne, Laurent pulled his bike to the side of the road and pointed out the high commanding statue of an age-old Pope who had been born there, and the all encompassing view it had over the wide-ranging hills as far as the eye could see. “Champagne” he told me. “Everything you can see around you is Champagne vineyards, thousand of them”. He was right of course; there were thousands of them it seemed, stretching out in all directions except that from where I’d come. I had entered the Champagne region, and was now just minutes away from my campsite for the night.

We wound our way down through vineyards and the small commercial sector of town, then crossed the Marne river and turned off into a large open tract of land bordering it. There were tall bright trees set on little islands of long fine grass that were separated by sweet pathways of twisting gravel. Laurent told me that the place had once been an official campsite, but for reasons unknown to him, had been shut down a couple of years back, and was now open to anyone who wanted to simply arrive there and set themselves up. So that’s exactly what I did, I pitched the tent beside the river, walked to gather some nearby firewood, and settled down for the evening, watching the sun dance on Champagne fruit lazing on the Papal-blessed hills all around me.