Home » Archives » April 2008 » Itchy feet

"I'm sorry honey but I've got my sea legs again, I stand on dry land for a minute and I feel sick and then, I have to start moving again" - Frank Turner

Spring is coming, the weather's getting warmer, and my feet are getting itchy. I've been stood still too long.

Our last major trip abroad was spending four weeks travelling around Europe in the van in the summer of 2005, in that precious couple of months between being full-time students and full-time employees. By 2006 Sarah had passed her bike test and we took the bikes around SW England, spending some time with Sarah's family and seeing Muse at the Eden Project. Last year, our wedding intervened, meaning we spent a fantastic two week honeymoon in Barcelona, but flew there and back and didn't go anywhere else during the year. We're overdue a road trip.

"It is no trick to go round the world these days, you can pay a lot of money and fly round it nonstop in less than forty-eight hours, but to know it, to smell it and feel it between your toes you have to crawl. There is no other way." - Ted Simon, Jupiter's Travels

I don't like flying. That's not to say I have any fear of being inside a tin box at thirty thousand feet - my childhood was punctuated by occasional trips in light aircraft courtesy of a family friend, so by comparison a flight in a commercial airliner provokes neither excitement or concern. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I have a profound dislike of the commercial flying experience. Already this year I estimate that I have spent at least 24 hours in airports, waiting for delayed flights, filing through endless security checkpoints to 'ensure our safety' (when even I can think of several ways in which they could be overcome by anyone sufficiently determined to take control of or destroy a plane). Standing 6'4" tall an economy class flight is invariably an exercise in contortionism. But mostly, the ease with which one can fly anywhere in the world removes some of the wonder of the destination for me.

"...but if you're all about the destination, take a f***ing flight, we're going nowhere slowly but we're seeing all the sights" - Frank Turner, 'The ballad of me and my friends'

I don't particularly enjoy staying in hotels either. Any longer than a weekend and the novelty wears off and I get annoyed with knowing that someone is coming in and rearranging the room every day, with having to come and go, eat and breathe at certain times.

So we're taking it back to basics. Three people (Me, Sarah, and her brother Martin), three bikes (ZXR400, GPZ500S and R6), and a couple of tents. We're definitely going to the Sachsenring MotoGP round, and we have a few ideas of other places to go in a general loop through Germany, Austria, Switzerland and France, but mostly it's going to be two weeks with no real commitment or agenda other than being back at the Eurotunnel terminal at the end of it.

I can't wait.