This is not a travel book … not a biography, nor a book of social or historical commentary.  This is a reflective record of a boisterous adventure of substance.  Deep down, most young people want to jump on a motorbike and ride off into the sunset, to places unknown.  Sadly, for most, these aspirations remain only dreams.  Our protagonists lived out that dream.  We all have pasts, just some are bigger and more excessive than others.

This was an outrageous sortie on a pre-war BSA and two obscure, obsolete Yorkshire-made, single-cylinder Panther motorbikes. Poorly funded, with little planning, the ride depends on good luck, blind loyalty and terminal optimism.  The struggle is managed with a youthful naivety.

This is a recollection of a youth well-spent.  Love and adventure are in the air with every chapter.  

“I was parched and scarcely able to breathe but I pushed and shoved and swore, screamed, yelled and cried and somehow I got Penelope up that bloody hill and struggled on until I could see the brick outpost over a sand dune.  In the last 20 yards I bogged down again, and so leaving Penelope upright in the sand I staggered in, to the amazement of the soldiers.  I beg for water”