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    Notes From The Road Volume IV: Notes From The Road, #4
    Notes From The Road Volume IV: Notes From The Road, #4
    Notes From The Road Volume IV: Notes From The Road, #4
    Ebook102 pages1 hour

    Notes From The Road Volume IV: Notes From The Road, #4

    By Derek Mansfield

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    About this ebook

    5.0 out of 5 stars David Coulson
    Suddenly a piece of music or art or literature can arrive that becomes a landmark for it's genre. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Jupiter's Travels and now Notes From The Road by Derek Mansfield.
    5.0 out of 5 stars Paddy Tyson, Overland Magazine
    Just occasionally a book arrives on the motorcycle travel scene that is different, brave and definitely intriguing. This book is an observational classic, the acerbic wit pin sharp.

    5.0 out of 5 stars  Sam Manicom, Author, Into Africa, Under Asian Skies
    Like Dr Who’s Tardis! Small on the outside, big and unique on the inside. I learned, I laughed, I sympathised, and I was surprised. It’s very easy to give the book 5 stars.
    5.0 out of 5 stars Nathan Millward, Author, The Postie
    I loved it… one of the best written books I’ve read… humorous, adventurous, informative. Exquisite writing… amazing …Well recommended.
     

    NOTES FROM THE ROAD Vol. IV were formed mainly inside a motorcycle helmet on a journey from London to Ukraine via the Baltics and the Balkans. Twice.
    Within the first thousand miles the petrol-soaked Google map dissolved and GPS became increasingly intermittent. A thousand miles later road signs changed from Latin to Cyrillic and the skills for dead-reckoning, remembered from the author’s nautical past, turned out to be less than adequate.
    No matter. The interior of a motorcyclist’s head is lit with flashing synapses long after the ignition is switched off. Thus the author, whose memory is on the brink of age-related failure, stopped regularly to make notes. Reviewing these later he realised they made little sense, but were not without humour and distilled here take the reader on an increasingly surreal journey of language, customs and culture.
    Since 2010 the author has travelled in more than 56 countries on four continents; many, more than twice. Some 65,000 of these miles were travelled solo, on a motorcycle.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherShuvvy Press Ltd
    Release dateDec 4, 2015
    ISBN9780956430557
    Notes From The Road Volume IV: Notes From The Road, #4

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      Book preview

      Notes From The Road Volume IV - Derek Mansfield

      The Journey

      A picture containing text, map Description generated with very high confidence

      Contents

      The Journey

      Dedication

      Foreword

      Anxiety Rules

      A Land that Speaks with Another’s Tongue

      Now with Added Squiggles, but Lacking Lickspittle

      Dogging in the Carpark

      Handmaidens of Joy

      The last Soviet Ice Cream Parlour

      Of Oil and Elasticated Knickers

      The Country with Twenty Three People

      A Tree Painted Orange and Questionable Sex

      I can see Mermaids Sitting on Rocks

      Chocolate Box Cities, Lolita and Lakes

      Serendipity

      Cross Dressing in the Land of the Cedillas

      The Boy Who Ate an Octopus

      Tax Avoidance and Evasion

      Revisiting Broken Bones

      The Rocky Horror Road

      Coffee and a Bitch by the Lake

      Keep Calm

      One Language as an Excuse for War

      Musical Entertainment

      A Policeman’s Bravura Performance

      Alphabet Soup

      Now with Added Navigation

      Butterflies and Beautiful People

      Journey’s End

      Why I Travel by Motorcycle. Alone.

      Kit for the Journey

      About the Author

      Other books

      Dedication

      THERE ARE MANY PEOPLE I wish to thank, but I cannot list them all. Here are some.

      My wife Gabrielle, my family and Natalie my business partner in Ukraine; you’ve all had to live with my curdled brain for some time. Thank you all for your patience and forbearance.

      My friends in the Fellowship who have helped me to stay upright in more ways than one; most especially Keith and Bob.

      To all those people who showed me such kindness and generosity on the road. I’ve changed their names to avoid embarrassment.

      The staff at Shuvvy Press for their unerring encouragement.

      Petrol station employees and border guards everywhere, especially those who work the night shifts.

      Finally, this book is dedicated to my grandson Luke, whose smile and unconditional love is the best reason ever to come home.

      Foreword

      DON’T TAKE LIFE TOO seriously; you’ll never get out alive.

      I used to be an average man. In this year, 2015, at the age of sixty-nine I am a proud father and grandfather. I’m also physically small and slight in comparison to the giants growing up around me.

      I have experienced 19 careers, many of which were alcohol fuelled.

      I speak only one language, English.

      I have three terminal illnesses. Only one needs to get me, but I am happier now than I have ever been.

      I have found that if you spend a long time alone on a motorcycle, travelling long distances over long periods, there is a very good chance your brain will curdle.

      This book is the result of one such curdling.

      Anxiety Rules

      AFTER POSTING NONSENSE on Facebook for weeks and finally deciding that delaying my journey would not help a noisome client, someone paid an invoice and I thought... ‘Ok, tomorrow would be good’.

      The more I travel, the less I plan. The less I plan, the less likely it is that I can get lost. Routes, eventualities and outcomes usually take up eighteen worrisome seconds; but this, the fourth of my long rides, took less.

      Onward is the mantra. Onward, the next horizon.

      No matter that I have no maps; I have a compass, a recalcitrant phone-powered GPS and some admittedly vague ideas on the trajectory. I had gathered new kit just in case. Two ten litre jerry cans for petrol – lack of which proved such an embarrassment on previous outings – a new stove that could use said petrol as fuel, a pair of on-trend hipster boots and some waterproof socks. And for special evenings out on the road, a pale blue shirt decorated with tiny white flowers. My anxious but ever-loving wife had pressed a packet of dried noodles into a pannier to stave off starvation and a bar of Kit-Kat in the tank bag, secretly stashed.

      Thus at this dawn I stood tippy toed, manfully compensating for disadvantaged leg length, straddling the bike trying not to notice the awful sensation of nerves flickering and fingering around in my stomach. I had thought, this year, that as I hadn’t told myself when I would be leaving, the tendrils of fear would not have time to attack. But they did.

      My wife enquired if I had been to the toilet and with a nodded yes, I rolled out of the driveway and wondered if I had packed my passport and if not, how to get past customs.

      Minutes later, sun in my eyes; a morning so fresh I can smell the starch as I pass an early commuter’s car. I’m shining inside with lands unseen, new friends to make. Fear has gone, the unknown welcomed forward. Small boys startle awake, laying slack jawed in wonder at my passing.

      Wives tighten their grip on a husband’s arm and older folk smile; five thousand two hundred revolutions of impossibly beating Italian steel create a pitch perfect howl at ninety-six point four miles per hour as the beautiful bike projects me across the dawn.

      Whoa a bit. Steady as she goes. Twelve hundred kilometres as well as the ferry to make in this present now. Except; too much time fiddling in toilets, fresh fuel to up-fill and a long way to the ferry. So the first of thousands of fuel/mpg/speed/distance computations begin, and the curdle in the brain is spectacularly unleashed.

      The passport I had left behind is, by very good fortune, discovered in my tank-bag so I hand it over to the ferry person; no-one else seems interested in it or the length and breadth of my future journey. Perhaps I should have left from the Ace Café with cheering crowds and souped-up sponsors to wobble off and deck it at the first opportunity. Or Twittered ahead for a flashcrowd; big brass band. But you can’t organise this in less than eighteen seconds with both hands full of handlebar.

      So onto the ferry looking gainfully manly, hoping to catch an eye and tell a good story. To find all ears being filled and me, with Big English eaten, feeling a little queasy. But one man ventured conversation. Mid-thirties, podgy, self-satisfied in a BMW way and I mentioned not that I was a biker of the bravest kind. ‘The benefits of forward planning, mobile phones,’ he said. I thought ‘beam me up’. His provider gave free roaming in nine different countries. Because I didn’t have it, I sneeringly asked who wanted to travel in those countries anyway. And felt bad for him when his wife started laughing. And bad for me too, for making cheap laughs and not having the best phone provider.

      The reason it was easy to get on this ferry was because it’s bound for Dunkirk, not Calais. The town of Dunkirk is fifty kilometres north of Calais by road. But the Dunkirk ferry port is thirty kilometres south of the city, so the advantage by road

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