River City Beemers

"Down the Left Side of the Road"
A Photo Album of
Motorcycle Adventures in England

Crossing the stone bridge on a day ride west of Ambleside in England's Lake District

English weather in early Fall can vary from warm and bright to frosty, wild and wet. Whatever weather the motorcyclist encounters, the beauty of the English countryside and the warmth of its people make the trip a wonderful adventure. More often than not, September in England is a lovely Indian summer with the roads finally empty of  tourist crowds.  It's a pleasant and unhurried time, a chance to see the English isle at its best. It is also a trip that can be enjoyed without spending a king's ransom. We even speak the same language, almost. This is the story of  a motorcycling trip four of us made touring the north of England.          

Tandy Bozeman

Matt and Jim are veterans of several previous motorcycling ventures to England, and I had joined them for a couple of trips several years ago. This will be Tom's first experience on a bike in the country. We all share a common background as airline and military pilots.

 Matt and I begin the trip by bending ourselves into center seats in United steerage out of LA for the 10 hour/two bad movie flight to London's Heathrow airport. Jim and Tom have elected  to travel together on American through Chicago. We plan to join forces at our hotel in the London suburb of Ruislip where we have bikes reserved at the local Honda dealership.

   
Matthew                 Tandy                     Tom                        Jim   

During the taxi out to the runway at LAX, Matthew, who spent the final years of his airline career as a captain flying the  polar flight from Los Angles to London, announces himself to our aisle seatmate with "are you going to London on holiday, or you being deported like us."  We pass the rest of the long night crawling over the young man for restroom runs and to update Matt's GPS at the exit window.       

In Ruislip we drag our bags out of the cab, check into the Barn hotel (a tedious process) and fall onto bed for a short nap. In less than an hour Jim and Tom arrive and, as the British are fond of saying, "knock us up" out of a dead sleep. I'm hammered by jet lag and feel like a million lira, but start to come back to life in the fresh air as the four of us walk the village the short distance to HGB Honda. Here we sign paperwork and pick up two Honda NVT650s (Matt and I) and two CB500s (Jim and Tom). We visit a while and inspect all the neat motorcycles one never sees in the states. 

Then the four of us fire up the bikes for the first time and form up a parade for the six block ride to the hotel, each of us mumbling to himself "keep to the left, keep to the left." With the bikes safely parked in the Barn parking lot, we amble into Ruislip center to celebrate our arrival with a pint (ok, two) at the Swan.

Matt shows young Tom "experienced" helmet hair                The Local Watering Hole                   

We fill up on a full English breakfast featuring bangers and beans, check our extra luggage at the hotel desk and load the bikes. With Matt in the lead we ride out of the hotel parking lot into a swirl of London morning traffic. Several roundabout confrontations later we locate the entrance to the M1 motorway leading north and begin a hunkered down high-speed drone. The day remains gloomy and the air cool, but the road is dry and we're all wearing enough layers to remain comfortable. 

The English motorway driver appears to be better disciplined than his/her U.S. freeway counterpart. The high-speed lane (far right in England) is used for true high speed, and is usually quickly cleared for faster vehicles. English drivers also tend to be more aware of and courteous to motorcycle riders. 

In an hour or so we cross into Derbyshire and begin our first adventure, which has its origins in an internet email exchange a month earlier. While searching the internet for suitable B&Bs for our England trip, Matt encountered a web site with the catchy title "Virgins Corner Club" of the Malt Shovel pub in Spondon, England. Intrigued, Matt responded to a section of the web site offering honorary club memberships. He applied for himself and also for his dog Limerick, reasoning that many pubs in England welcome pets by the fire. 

Matt's and Limerick's applications were both received and processed. However, while Matt was welcomed as an honorary member, the idea of a dog member produced a fierce debate during a hastily convened and  extraordinary meeting of the Club Membership Committee. The sticking point was the Malt Shovel's policy of no dogs in the hostelry. In spite of this rule, a stubborn pro-dog lobby formed among certain committee members and the "meeting ended in deadlock and uproar" (Malt Shovel Times). 

 Next followed a flurry of emails between England and California. The dog deadlock finally ended in compromise when Matthew diplomatically suggested Limerick's membership to be "virtual mascot in absentia." This ploy resulted in a good natured "reconsideration" by the membership committee and, after much discussion (and elbow bending, of course), the club in an emergency meeting voted to give in to the "Yank" and welcome Limerick as "Club Mascot in Absentia." Limerick's photo was duly posted on the club website (http://www.skorpion.freeserve.co.uk/limerick.htm). Limerick was unimpressed by all the attention, but did like his photo on the web.

On the flight over Matthew was adamant that our England tour should include a detour to visit the Malt Shovel.   So, it is no surprise when a few miles south and east of Derby, Matt exits the motorway and, after 20 minutes lost in the village of Spondon, we arrive at the Malt Shovel. We park the bikes to find the pub filled with people, all waiting for the four of us to arrive. The Virgin's Corner Club had gathered for a "special meeting" to greet the "wild bunch" who had violated the urban calm of their village with the roar of motorcycle engines. 

After a round of introductions and raised glasses, we sit down to lunch together, make speeches, and exchange gifts. Matt makes a presentation to our hosts of  "Limerick in Absentia" sweat shirts. Tom, thirty-something and a ruggedly handsome lad, is a real hit with the ladies. 

We pass a couple of pleasant hours with these new friends before the demands of our first day schedule force us back to the bikes and onto the road to the Yorkshire Dales. Pete, Kim, Barbara, Emily, Margaret, Peter, Keith, Eileen, Gil, Richard, Gordon, John, Sandy and the other club members come out for a closer look at the bikes and to wave us off. We depart with a promise to return to attend a regular evening meeting of the Virgin's Corner Club. 

For the record, there is an actual "virgin's corner" in the pub, a quiet alcove in a back corner reserved for new ladies. 

An hour or so after leaving the nice people at the Malt Shovel and returning to the motorway we exit onto secondary roads to make our way to Scarborough. Billed as the "Queen of the Yorkshire Coast" this busy resort town has been a popular seaside retreat for the British for 360 years. We put ourselves up for the night in the modest Howdale hotel which sits on the headlands above a gray-green sea whose windswept beach is bordered by an elegant Victorian esplanade. Later, after a pint with our host at the hotel, we walk through a light mist into town center for an English dinner of fish and chips. 

It has been a successful first day. We escaped the London traffic snarl without incident. The little sport bikes are proving to be light and nimble, and as riders we are beginning to fit well together as a group. Each of us is equipped with two-way helmet radios for bike to bike communication and this will prove very useful throughout the trip.

The following morning we meet downstairs in the hotel for breakfast and to review travel plans for the day, being careful to designate a convenient meeting place in case one our party becomes separated from the group during the day's ride. We follow this procedure each day for the rest of the trip. 

Leaving Scarborough we ride up a fog-shrouded coastline that reminds me of a winter day on the Big Sur. A few miles to the north we turn off the main road at Whitby to visit St Hilda's Abbey, an impressive stone ruin whose adjacent churchyard is famous as the inspiration for Bram Stoker's 'Dracula'.  The ancient fishing port of Whitby, situated on the estuary of the River Esk, is also the birthplace of Captain James Cook, the 18th century explorer and voyager. 

 
Yorkshire Dales

After a couple of hours of delightful motorcycling we pull up for morning coffee and scones in the Dales market town of Leyburn, a stone village straight out of a black and white WWII movie. We dismount and Matt, ever the dog lover, checks out the local pooch. 

As the four of us troop into the small tea shop looking like an alien landing in our Aerostich suits and leathers, none of the several middle-aged English couples seated about the room bothers with a second look. A few minutes later when two young English couples come through the front door also dressed in full-up riding gear,  I understand that sport motorcyclists here in England are an accepted part of the landscape.  An English friend tells me that this a relatively recent phenomenon largely due to the fact that in the last 10 years biking has become a leisure activity for the middle class. 

Walking the "Fells"

Our home for two days in the Lake District is a stone cottage located in Windermere on the shore of a lake of the same name. For once Matt and I get a room larger than a postage stamp and spread out our gear. "En suite" rooms are now common, and bath-down-the-hall accommodations are less and less the English B&B norm. 

We even have color TV whose awful BBC programming reminds me of  Bill Bryson's description of Norwegian television: "... gives you the sensation of a coma without the worry and inconvenience."

The next morning I apprehensively reach to draw back the curtain of our window and immediately resolve to crawl back into my warm bed. It's spitting rain from low broken clouds scudding by on a stiff breeze. I groan, but Matt bounds up and begins sorting out his rain gear and talking cheerfully about where to ride today. I have no choice but to crank up a positive attitude and move. So, up and off to breakfast.

Three GPS receivers and we're still lost

The next morning we pack, fire up the bikes and head south towards Wales.  We thankfully leave the rain gear packed away and use the M6 motorway to make a fast pace until we're south of the industrial heart of England between Liverpool and Manchester. We then turn west on the M56 towards the cathedral town of Chester, and then south on A494 down into the rolling moorlands and deep wooded valleys of Wales.  This is a country of  romantic castles, old mining towns, and very long place names. The road signs are now posted in both English and Welsh. 

Croeso i Gymru - Welcome to Wales

Wales is one of the oldest countries in the world with archaeological evidence of human habitation stretching back nearly 200,000 years. It is said that the Welsh characteristics of eloquence, warmth and imagination can be traced backwards in time to the Celts who arrived from Europe around 600 BC. Over the centuries Wales has been a cultural melting pot of Roman, Scot, Irish Catholic, Viking and Anglo-Saxon cultures.  For more than a thousand years Wales has vigorously resisted attempted English assimilation. Today's 3 million Welsh remain defiantly proud of their national identity and cast a jaundiced eye toward English outsiders. On a trip a few years back, Matt stopped off for a pint in small village pub near Carmarthen one evening. As he entered all conversation in the smoke filled room instantly shifted from English to Welsh. Only later when the Welsh farmers learned that Matt was a "Yank" and not a bloody Englishman, did the conversation in the pub revert back to English.

A few miles into Wales we halt for coffee at a roadside pub and discover to our delight that the serving wench is a lovely lass named Lucy. Also in residence is a handsome Old English Sheepdog calmly guarding his master's position at the bar. This 70-year-old gentleman is a fellow motorcycle enthusiast and shares with us tales of past adventures on a leaky BSA. He confides with a wistful sigh  "I still love me bike."

Back on the road with Lucy's email address safely stored away, we trail up and down the sheep-dotted  hills and dales through  the villages of Bala, Trawsfyndd, Dogellau, Glyntwymyn, Pontdolgoech, and Caersws. Had we gotten lost on this leg it would have been back to Bala as the only place with a name any of us could pronounce well enough to ask directions. Welsh is a language of weird and unpronounceable double ls and consecutive consonants.

We roll through the wooded Welsh countryside down an empty two-lane toward Builth Wells. The afternoon shadows lengthen and the pavement is transformed into a latticework of light and shadow as the road bends back and forth to follow a tree-shaded stream meandering down a deep cut between emerald hills. For a long time, it just the four of us and the road.  

We cross the old stone bridge to enter the quiet village of Builth Wells. This ancient market town of 2,000 traces its origins back to Norman time when a castle was built in the vicinity. The local mulish Welsh objected and repeatedly destroyed this symbol of outside authority, which survives today as a group of low grass covered mounds. In the 1350s the town was ravaged by the Plague. People living in the countryside surrounding the town left food and provisions for the townspeople on the bank of a small stream to the west of town. In gratitude the Builth survivors threw money in payment into the brook in an attempt to prevent the spread of the Plague. The stream became know as "The Money Brook", a name which it carries to this day. 

We've booked rooms in a rural farmhouse a few miles out of town and arrive to find our innkeeper, Mrs. Williams, waiting for us at the gate. She's the middle-aged daughter of an RAF officer and is warm to the idea of four pilots in the house. The solid old house is roomy and charmingly furnished, and is home to two fat fluffy cats. Matt claims one and Jim the other. 

We unpack, shower and then ride off to a country pub recommended by our hostess who kindly calls ahead to arrange for a friendly welcome. Here we pass a pleasant evening in conversation with a group of noisy locals and enjoy a filling meal of pub food. Afterwards, the short ride back to the farm is very cold and very dark. Crawling into the warm feather bed comes as a great reward.

The next morning after breakfast we say our goodbyes to Mrs. Williams, roll the bikes out of a farm outbuilding and start off on a meandering arc westward across rolling countryside toward the coast.  We take a break from racing through roundabouts to stop for morning coffee and scones in the coastal village of Aberystwyth (try saying that three time with a mouth full of walnuts).  

From here we turn eastward aiming for the English/Welsh border town of Monmouth and the Burton B&B, where we are received like family by Barbara and Roger, old friends from previous trips. The hostelry is located in Monmouth center and fronts directly onto the street, but has a gate leading to secure off-street parking for the bikes. While our rental bikes are not prime theft targets, we've taken precautions to properly secure them throughout the trip.

We spend two days in Monmouth. Matt and I use the day off to wander through the surrounding countryside and to visit the old coal mining area along the coast. Much of 19th-century mining ugliness is now replaced by reforestation and young upscale families moving into the area to fix up the old row houses.

Jim and Tom ride off together to chase one another over the hills of Brecon National Park. 

 An interesting sidelight to our stay in Monmouth is an invitation by Roger and Barbara to visit friends who work on the Lord Raglan estate. It was for us an opportunity to appreciate how the British "upper crust" lives. As Scott Fitzgerald said "the rich are different." Right Scott, they have more money. 

The estate (house and 238 acres) was a gift in 1858 to Field Marshal Lord Raglan GC.B by 1623 of his "admirers and comrades in arms."   Raglan was the British general made the scapegoat for the decimation of the Light Brigade at Balaklava.  This low point in British military history was the subject of the famous poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson written in 1855:

Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!' he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

 Tom is more impressed with the garden statuary.

After a couple of days with Barbara and Roger and seven days after our first arrival in England,  we leave Monmouth for the trip back to London to turn in the bikes. Traveling eastward out of Wales and up into the Cotswolds we treasure the last of the roundabouts and narrow back roads, but soon reach the M1 motorway and begin the grind south toward London. 

It's Friday afternoon and traffic on the four-lane motorway begins to slow as we approach London. Soon the M1 becomes a passable example of LA freeway gridlock. As best we can determine an accident up the motorway has reduced traffic to a stop-and-go crawl.  We're pressed for time to return the bikes today before closing time and we're stalled in traffic stretching as far up the motorway as we can see.

Ahead of me I see Matthew shake his head in frustration, bank slightly and ride off up the white line dividing  the lanes of traffic. "Dear God" I think, but punch it to fall into trail behind him as closely as I dare. I catch a glimpse of Tom and Jim working up an adjacent lane. Edging between lines of lane-enveloping lorries I feel like an about-to-be-crushed insect, but the four of us are now making what I consider to be good forward progress through the heavy traffic. 

Then, immediately to the front of Matt and me,  a rider on a late model Triumph flashes across traffic from left to right at a 90 degree angle, locks up the rear wheel just prior to plowing into a van in the lane to the right of us, slides the bike around 90 degrees to line up with the flow of traffic, and,  just as the bike pops upright on the way to high-siding the rider, he drops the clutch and vanishes like a cannon shot up the white line ahead of us. I still don't know if what I observed was an almost accident or a superb act of control. That afternoon I saw several other acts of dedicated "white lining" as local riders blasted by us at high speed, but none as stunning as the British kid on the Triumph. The Brit riders call it "filtering" and are quite a show.

Five miles later we finally pass the accident scene and traffic begins to pick up speed. As we approach Ruislip we exit the motorway for a return match with London street traffic. Today bulling through city roundabouts seems far less daunting than it did a week ago on the way out of town. Back at the Barn hotel, we pause to hurriedly toss off our bags, and, a little sadly, ride the bikes for the last time the short distance to the Honda shop. 

In the final intersection prior to the dealership, Jim's bike flames out and he's off and pushing the empty bike. For a moment I have a vision of Jim stranded in the middle lane of the M1 where we had been only a few minutes before. No matter, a miss is good as a mile. We're all back safely after seven days of memorable motorcycling. We hand over the bikes just moments before closing time. 

Tom and Jim work off motorway combat fatigue with a cup of hot soup compliments of the Honda folks. Then the four of us start back to our hotel discussing the events of the past week.  As we walk along the quiet village street my pulse rate slowly begins to return to normal. It's been a great week enjoyed in good company.

Author's Note:  All the photographs of riders on bikes were taken by Matthew who is daring enough to ride on the left side of the road while peering into the electronic screen of his Sony camera. I took most of the other photos with an Olympus 2000 electronic camera.

Trip Expenses: Any trip in Europe is definitely more expensive than a comparable trip in the United States. That's why last summer everyone you met in the National Park was speaking German. 

However, this trip was done for surprisingly little money. Airfare, seven days on the bike, and a couple of days afterwards sightseeing in London came to less than $2,000 total. The airline ticket to London was no particular bargain at $722.12.  Rental of the 650cc bike from HBG Motorcycles was $340.25. You can plan on $30 to $50 per person double for a nice en-suite room in a village Bed and Breakfast. Evenings in the pub will average less than $15. In all, our trip was certainly far cheaper than the $2,500 to $5,000 (not including airfare) price of a guided motorcycle tour. 

We had no difficulty booking rooms before the trip using the internet and making a couple of telephone calls. Our experience in September has been that most village B&Bs in England have room for walk up guests.  Matt and I became dear friends with Barbara and Roger at Monmouth's Burton B&B after we appeared unannounced and dripping on their rug during a rain storm. Over the years Matt has developed a list of favorite places and knows the name of the resident dog or cat.

HGB Honda rents everything from sport bikes to Gold Wings, and the rental includes insurance. However, a self guided motorcycle trip does require a keen sense of adventure, and an understanding that you may on occasion ride around the same village square more than once looking for the right road out of town. But, that's part of the fun of it all. Some of the best roads we rode were found when we were lost.

Well, we always knew that we were in England.