Time and Place - the South-West in winter

I’ve long held the view that the motorcycle can never be wrong and if there isn't harmony, then it must be the type of road that’s at fault. It's a bit like touring in winter: the season is not going to change, so if any pleasure is to be had it'll be a matter of place as well as time. It was mid-December when I pulled on a rucksack and set off with the Enfield on a three-day circuit of the South-West of England, a peninsular overlaid with the sort of roads the bike was made to explore. With often the best UK Winter temperatures, and as a popular destination all year round, I was hoping for some good riding along with a reasonable supply of cafes warm up in.

My Classic 500 has no luggage, hence the rucksack, and I left Lyme Regis on the Dorset coast relieved to feel perfectly comfortable with it sitting on my back. The minimum of personal stuff was needed but with the inclusion of some extra warm layers the pack was full. I intended to travel anticlockwise completing at least 150 miles per day and had two night's accommodation booked, the first near Bideford in North Devon and the second close to Falmouth on Cornwall’s south coast. The A358 was an obvious choice on which to ride north to Watchet in Somerset, where I stopped at the public loos before dropping onto the edge of the pedestrianised harbour area.  Parking on block paving just beyond some black posts seemed to be the thing to do, as there were a few other bikes already standing there. 

Using a rucksack means that kit has to be carried both on and off the bike but the waterproof Kriega R30 sat quite low with a cross belt harness configuration that meant it didn’t pull on my shoulders, so I happily walked off to the nearest café while still wearing it. Watchet has a sculpture of the Ancient Mariner by its harbour and the town is said to have been the inspiration for the late 18^th Century Samuel Coleridge poem that tells this tale of woe. In fact, the area was one regularly visited by the poet and probably his most famous work, Kubla Khan, was written after apparently being awoken from an opium influenced dream by ‘a person from Porlock’. And that was where I headed next, riding Cleeve Hill to Blue Anchor before joining the A39 on its journey westward.

Little progress would be made if I dropped into every little town along the coast and with short days (It was dark by 5 pm) a certain amount of restraint was needed. I ended up scooting along the A39, a nice winding road that climbs and falls along the North Devon coast, while choosing which places to visit. It was wonderfully quiet and all I had to do was keep an eye on the white direction signs displaying the names of nearby towns and villages. I bypassed Minehead but took the lane to Porlock Wier, dipping down to the sea with the intention of continuing close to the cliffs and on to Lynton and Lynmouth. But it wasn’t to be.

A stone built arch and closed picket gate stood across the way just west of the little village, with a sign that told me a toll was needed. There was no one about, so I cut back up to the A39 and climbed Porlock Hill. The Enfield took the steep gradients and switch backs in its stride, but I was happy to be on our own.  The tight turns and ramps had us down to second gear at one point, with the engine thumping away and me sitting upright and relaxed in the knowledge that nothing was coming up behind. Big climbs lead to big views and the top gave a magnificent look back to the bay below Porlock, the hills beyond and an ice blue sea that stretched to the horizon under a cold, clear sky. The A39 drops into Lynmouth on Countisbury Hill, with views down into the village all the way in, and it was here that I left the A-road and made my way through Lynton to the Valley of the Rocks.

Lynton and Lynmouth are typical West Country tourist spots, but they weren’t for me, not today. I had miles to do and there were other places to see. Riding was the thing, especially with such limited time. The Valley of the Rocks runs parallel with the coast and was once described by fellow poet and friend of Coleridge, Robert Southey, as ‘the very bones and skeletons of the earth’. It’s not only a place of giant rock formations, as impressive as they are distracting, but also one of feral goats, which taken together made for a slow run through. Eventually, another small toll gate greeted me, so once again I turned back and returned to the A39.

Next on my mental list of places to visit was Ilfracombe. I turned off onto the A399 and rode down towards Combe Martin, famous for having one of the longest village streets in Britain and the Pack o’ Cards Inn (four floors, one for each suit; 13 doors on each floor, representing each card in a suit; and sitting on a plot measuring 52 by 53 feet, one for every card in a pack plus the joker). Ilfracombe came soon after, with a short leg stretch next to Verity, Damien Hirst's 20 metre tall statue of a pregnant lady holding a sword aloft. Hirst describes his work as, ‘a modern allegory of truth and justice'. Others use different words. It has got to be seen to be fully appreciated and I have to admit that I left trying not to think whether it had any meaning; riding in winter was hard enough.

The  A360 carried me west from Ilfracombe before the B3341 took me down to Woolacombe, from where I simply followed signs for Croyde and then Braunton.  Looking down onto Saunton Sands, I passed close to the coast before heading inland in order to get around the vast Tor and Torridge estuaries. It started to get dark and busy with traffic being funnelled over one river and then the other. I pushed on, the Enfield hammering along the A39 at 60 mph. I think we were both pleased to reach The Hoops Inn at Bucks Mills, just short of Hartland and the Cornish border. It was a comfortable place, where I had armchairs in my room and a big TV on the wall. An excellent dinner was later served in the bar.

I enjoyed an equally excellent full English in the morning, before heading out to the carpark at the rear of the pub only to find the bike white with frost. The temperature had gone below zero overnight. I made the decision to stay on the A39 for most of the morning, to allow the backroads to de-ice and for me to make some progress. I wanted to ride the coast between Hayle and Lands End, so sacrifices had to be made. Many places were bypassed – Bude, Boscastle, Port Isaac, Newquay. Even Morwenstow, where the reverend Hawker (1803 – 1875) would bury the bodies of shipwrecked sailors washed up on the shore, and smoke opium while writing poetry in Hawker’s Hut, his lookout on the clifftops and now the smallest property owned by the National Trust.

The A39 was perfect. Perfectly quiet; perfectly winding. If a car came up behind, I simply moved over, but one rarely did. The Enfield loves 50 mph; it smooths out and finds a sweet spot between thump and hammer. So, that’s what we stuck to, all the while gliding along alone, looking at the sea, rolling hills and wind turbines. But nothing lasts and by late morning we found ourselves on the A30 running through Redruth and onto Hayle. I stopped at Asda in Hayle for a warm up and coffee in their café. With the bike doing about 80 mpg and with a 3 gallon tank (13.5 litres), fuel stops weren’t an issue and I filled up in the knowledge that a full tank would carry me well into the following day. Hayle has a great industrial heritage and in the 19^th Century the largest steam pumping engine ever built was made at a local foundry before being shipped to Holland. There was plenty to stop and see – on any normal day.

With too few hours of daylight left, I continued onto St Ives, doing a round of its narrow streets before heading off on the B3306 towards Zennor. The road climbed and dropped; there were tight bits, straight bits and sharp bends. The land around became moor-like but the sea was always with me. Passing between farm buildings, I noticed slurry on the road and from there on took it easy through corners, where hedgerows shielded any view of the road ahead and where it was obvious farm traffic had passed. Old ventilation shafts from the tin mines this area was once famous for came along - and at Pendeen, a museum of mining. And then a very nice café that provided another warm-up along with coffee, a toastie and cake.

I reached Lands End and simply rode around the near empty car park before making my way in the direction of Falmouth for the night. The B3315 took me to Newlyn and Penzance, the A394 to Helston and then some minor roads to Gweek and a nearby B&B. It was dark by the time I arrived and the lanes that finally delivered me to my bed  were wet and slippery. I was ready to chill with the room picnic I had bought in Asda earlier.

The following day passed in a similar manner – the morning spent making some miles while the temperatures increased and the afternoon enjoying the coast. It suited me fine because I really wanted to ride the A379 through South Devon and knew there wouldn’t be enough time to hug the whole coast back to Dorset. The A390 and A38 took me to Plymouth and the Tamar toll bridge (free for motorcycles, just stop at the barrier and wait to be waved through). From there I made my way down the eastern edge of the city on the A374 before picking up signs to Brixton and the road that would take me all the way to Exeter.

The A379 is simply a road to be enjoyed in itself, but it’s also one that you can dive off from and into any one of the many small villages that line the coast. I made my way to Slapton Sands and then Dartmouth, where I stopped for a late coffee, before taking the lower ferry (contactless accepted) to Kingswear. Paignton and Torquay came and went, as did Teignmouth, but not without a stop at the station café (bike friendly and with toilets on the platform). Soon, I was heading East on the A3052 back to Lyme Regis, where a trip distance of 491 miles was completed and another chain adjustment became  due. It seemed that the side stand cut-out switch was the only thing not in tune with the alternative to Summer Sunday afternoon riding. It now resides in the bin; the lanes won’t miss it.  

 

Letter to Bike magazine - Oct 2020

 

This is the Z1000ST (FLA 476T) I bought direct from Kawasaki, Slough, a few months after it was tested by Bike back in 1979. It was simply wonderful, and from the sweet spot in bike history between awful and silly; tiny and Tupperware. Comfortable but not unwieldy, uncluttered and with a bulletproof motor – and believe me, like most 23 year-olds, I knew how to fire bullets at an engine – it did everything you could possibly want a bike to do. I can’t deny that motorcycle ABS has probably been the most significant safety feature since the introduction of the front brake but there was nothing like riding one of these uncomplicated superbikes, just you, the road, and the perfect machine.

 

Bike is still as good, though.  Fewer dolly birds advertising nylon over suits or draped over a Ducati 900 and the writing’s still very entertaining and informative.  However, the silencers on the ST were shot within a year and, of course, as an ex-demo there was no warranty. Did you wash it properly when you had it?

 

Rogue Male in Lockdown

        

The Royal Enfield Classic 500 I bought last October is sitting in the garage and I’m indoors fantasising about a bygone age.  I’ve just finished reading Rogue Male, a Boys Own adventure with an illustrated cover designed to spark the imagination, like the ones they had on motorcycle magazines back in the 1950s. The book’s protagonist is pursued by a deadly foreign agent across pre-war Europe before going to ground in Dorset, not too far from where I live. In the mother of all lockdowns, he digs in and hides in a burrow somewhere between Beaminster and Lyme Regis. And I intend, once this present situation is over, to take the Enfield and go look for him.

I’ll start by going East down the A3052 into Lyme Regis, where our hero risked leaving his hideaway to collect mail forwarded from London. It’s a beautiful town with views along the coast all the way in. It’s also a place to stop for coffee. Just pop into the carpark at the bottom of the main street by the little clock tower and slip through the barrier on the left - you’ll often see plenty of other bikes there. But I won’t stop, not today, I’ll continue east out of town, climbing through the long sweeping bends until I come to the A35. The Enfield likes something a bit more sedate, so I’ll go through Charmouth coming out on the A road further along. A quick right and first left will see me on the lanes towards Whitechurch Canonicorum. I use this route quite a bit and I know the bike will come into its own thumping along in 2nd or 3rd gear, the wonderful sound of its Hitchcocks exhaust ricocheting off stone buildings along the narrow lane.  There’s always grass and loose stuff up the middle, so I’ll stick to one side and take it easy through the blind turns.

From Whitechurch I’m following Sustrans cycle route 2, a road section that’s narrow and slow, ideal for the Enfield, which will need few gear changes and just chug down to bang bang and back up again. At Shave Cross I’ll go on to Broadoak. That’s where I’ll leave the cycle route and drop down to Symonsbury on Broadoak Road. It’s hereabouts that many people think the author described the hideaway's location but it’s down a hollow way track, so I’ll give it a miss and pop into West Bay for a cuppa. There’s plenty of places to choose from and ample bike parking, and a kiosk where tea is 50p a cup for bikers. From West Bay I often head out towards Weymouth on the B3157, and if you haven’t ridden it, it’s a must. The speed limit’s an ideal Royal Enfield Bullet 50 mph; the views before Abbotsbury down to The Fleet and Portland are breath-taking. 

Today though, I’d be heading north, bypassing Bridport towards Beaminster on the A3066. The Enfield will ride well on it, taking the bends at 50-55 mph in top, hitting its sweet spot and actually feeling quite smooth for a big single. Turning right onto North Street it all starts to get a bit tricky and the lanes become anonymous with few signs. The idea is to head for the Fox Inn near Corscombe to the east of the A356. In 1976, Peter O’Toole starred in a television film adaptation of Rogue Male (I got the DVD off Amazon as soon as I’d finished reading the book) and several scenes were filmed in the area, including one outside The Fox Inn. We’ve been there before, the Enfield and me, so hopefully I’ll find it again. Then it’s south and a short hop via the A356 to Rampisham, another location used in the film and one we’ve also been to on our runs through the lanes. Like at the Fox Inn, I’ll stop a while and try to work out if the place has changed much since the film was made.

There are other villages mentioned in the book within easy reach but by then, if I haven’t already stopped for a stretch, I’ll probably be getting to the stage where I’ve had enough of the Enfield’s single saddle for a bit and head back to Beaminster on the B3163. Rogue Male can wait for another day. Beaminster’s not the easiest place to find somewhere to park up in, so I’m going on to Axminster just over the border in Devon via Broadwindsor, the B3164 and then the B3165, eventually cutting across to the town on one or two of the maze of little lanes that run off the B road. Motorcycles are not charged in the South Street car park, so it’s here that I’ll stop for another cuppa at one of the many cafes - there’s even the River Cottage Kitchen, for the more discerning palette.

I’m nearly home now but I’ll make a short excursion to join up with one of Peter O’Toole’s other characters, T.E Lawrence, who he played in the 1962 film, Lawrence of Arabia.  Coming out of Axminster I’ll head west and after a short, unavoidable stint on the A35,  I’ll go south from Kilmington through Whitford to Colyton. Shortly, I’ll be back on the A3052 in Colyford not far from where I started. There’s an old garage near the tramway crossing that’s now a cycle shop and café with the most beautiful set of 1950s Avery Hardoll fuel pumps you’ll see anywhere. It’s said that Lawrence often filled up his Brough here and although these pumps are from a later decade. If you can get to them when there’s not too many cars about, they make for a great photo. 

At the end of Rogue Male our hero skinned a dead cat and made a catapult out of its pelt. When the nasty foreign agent tried to get to him, he let him have it, straight between the eyes. I’ll ride back up the hill towards home, lockdown a thing of the past.    

   

  

  

  

The Mother Road. Part 7, Nevada and California

We only popped into the state of Nevada. EagleRider had booked us a night in Loughlin, from where we would ride on to California and the final leg of our 2700 mile journey along The Mother Road. Temperatures in the Mojave desert had reached 100 degrees Fahrenheit by the time we made our way from the old gold mining town of Oatman in Arizona - now a new tourist mining town - and into Nevada. Signs along the side of the road reminded us that we were still in the real world, despite having just ridden from a place that looked straight out of a cowboy film. And like almost everything else on Route 66, these poetic versions of the modern gantry’s, watch your speed, hinted of an age where the individual contributed more than the corporation. 

If daisies are your favourite flower – keep piling on the miles-an-hour. 

He carried on driving, as the train neared – death didn’t draft him, he volunteered.

A world without you in it? – carry on at a mile a minute.

Whereas Oatman's brazen attempt to extract money from the visitor was hidden behind history – something practised the world over, from Sydney to Sidmouth – Loughlin was hiding nothing. Our hotel, a large multi-storey thing with multi-storey parking, had a foyer that squeezed in a reception desk amongst rows of slot machines and a restaurant between casinos. The whole ground floor flashed, rang, clanked and chinked… and stank of cigarette smoke.

The next day again saw the temperature rise to over 100 degrees F. The route followed the line of interstate 40, deviating now and again to pass through small settlements and towns, as the desert seemed to go on and on. The land became more scrub than sand and low hills appeared in the distance. Trains, miles long and with containers stacked two high, crossed an otherwise empty landscape. Not for the first time on this trip, we started watching the Harley’s fuel gauge. A gas station with a sign on the door telling customers that complaining about the price was futile, had petrol at twice what we’d payed elsewhere, and there was even a $10 parking fee. We rode on. To be fair, the sign also told of the high cost of maintaining such a service (toilets for customers only), the only one in 100 miles of desert. The road continued straight but the surface was broken in places and we were often down to 20 mph. In fact, for a few miles it was so bad I considered riding on the verge.

Soon we came to Roy’s Café, yet another Route 66 landmark. Although no longer a proper working café, there were cold drinks for sale and, of course, souvenirs. The owner sat by the door brandishing a pistol on his belt and only left his perch to fuel up a truck that had pulled in. The Bagdad Café was next, another place with a connection to the movies, in this case a 1987 film of the same name and one it was understandably determined to cash in on. Two coach loads and several cars arrived, so we didn’t linger.

 The night was to be spent in Victorville, one of the driest places in North America, apparently, and home to some aircraft boneyards. The route had taken us away from the interstate by now and as we continued through the Mojave, a nose cone appeared on someone’s plot. The desert, a backdrop of scrub and sand and a remote bungalow with a bit of a jet airliner out front. 

Bizarre? Well, I thought so. Until we arrived at Almer’s Bottle Ranch, that is, the most bizarre sight of them all. An area of coloured bottles mounted on posts made to look like trees blazing reflected light in the California sunshine, interspersed with various other bits of… erm, old stuff. An old army assault rifle, an old vice, an old till, old hub caps, a few old metal boxes, old metal advertising signs and a decomposing jeep that looked pretty old, all stood behind a low fence at the side of the road. A lot of it, apparently, abandoned when gold mining in the area became untenable and the miners left.  We wandered through, the only people there apart from Almer himself. Every bit the ageing hippy, Almer was a quietly spoken, seemingly self-depreciating man in his 60s by the look of it, who gave the impression there was something more to the bottle collection than he let on. As a kid, his father would take him off to the desert to collect bits of debris, bottles included, so maybe it was all part of happy childhood memories. “There’s still gold out there”, Almer said, as we walked to our bikes.

Everything changed the following day. We intended to take Highway 2 across the mountains of the Angels National Forest, leaving the desert behind and dropping in to the north of Los Angeles, before reaching EagleRider by the afternoon. The weather became cool and increasingly damp. At a fuel stop before we started on the high route, anything that could be zipped up was. The liner went into my Triumph leather jacket and Sue put a fleece on below her gortex. Cloud and mist closed in as we climbed and we saw nothing of the views which must have been there. A tanker truck appeared ahead in the grey, lumbering up the slope through continual bends, its speed at times down to 15mph. Like something out of the film Duel, the rusty heap, with its long bonnet and huge wheel nuts, looked menacing in the gloom. When we eventually managed an overtake, I looked up at the driver and saw the faint outline of a face staring straight ahead. 

We climbed and dropped, weaving through the mountains but still seeing little of them. For a short while the weather broke and blue skies returned. We stopped at a viewpoint and looked down on the wooded valleys below, conifers and scrub as far as the eye could see. It was a short respite and soon we were back in the damp, low cloud, shivering after days spent in the heat of the desert. The road became slippery and bends became things to be treated with extra care. The heated grips went on. Outside Los Angeles, coming again out of the cloud, we stopped at another viewpoint and saw the city in the distance, towering out of a fog that seemed to surround it.

After a coffee stop and warm up on the outskirts of the city, we made our way in on its busy streets. It took an age to get through the slow traffic to Santa Monica. Gone were the open roads, the empty desert, the misty mountains; here were queueing cars, crowded pavements and continual traffic lights. We said farewell to Andy at the pier (and the official end of Route 66) as he had another day before he was due to return his bike, and made our way to EagleRider.

It was a sad goodbye to the Harley; I’d grown to like the motorcycle, appreciating it for being exactly what it claimed to be: a good touring companion – spacious, trusty and strong. It threw up no surprises, delivering a steady, responsive ride. It was comfortable. But, above all, I suppose, it was iconic – the American motorcycle for an American dream road. We thanked EagleRider for a seamless journey, drank their beer – I handed them the keys, they passed a couple of cans over the counter, as if some sort of anaesthetic was needed to soften the blow of journey’s end – and walked out on to the street. I'd loved every minute, every second of the trip and it was only then, standing by the side of the road, that I felt the muscles in my face relax from the smile they’d maintained for almost two weeks.