Lone Rider by Elspeth Beard: motorcycle adventure book review
Adventure, heartbreak, and the nagging feeling that no one will ever understand what you've been through – why every petrolhead needs to read this
Returning from a long road trip is always a comedown. Usually it's the back-to-work, not-in-the-sun blues that stabs at your guts when you realise the hardest choice you'll make today is what you'll have for lunch.
Masochist that I am, I try to get away for a few weeks every year, exploring Europe on two wheels with a couple of friends. Being on a bike gives you misbehaviour opportunities, and sights and smells that you just don't get in a car. That said, when you spend five minutes riding past Austria's largest collection of manure you do occasionally wish you were in an air-conditioned box.
Returning to work after a fortnight on a bike leaves your mind in contortion. You know that you had an incredible time and you want friends back home to latch on to your enthusiasm, but anyone who wasn't with you can't grasp the minutiae of moments that clump together to form a petrol-soaked, scenery-blurring, food-munching memory of freedom and joy.
And that's precisely the feeling that Elspeth Beard gets towards the end of Lone Rider – her story of travelling around the world by bike back in 1982 at the age of just 23. Only her battle isn't solely against the soul-crushingly disinterested response of her family when she returns two years later having become the first British woman to circumnavigate the globe on bike.
She writes about the physical and mental hardships she endured over the 35,000 miles of her trip, the relationships she forms and the discovery of a world that just wasn't ready to be decent towards female travellers. Lone Rider's also a gentle reminder that globetrotting was possible before the internet – it was just a bit trickier than it is today.
Peeping Toms (and worse)
Lone Rider's a book that carries you around the globe on a fast-moving wave of sights and struggles – the pace alone makes it unputdownable. As Beard crosses America and Australia she begins to run out of money. She spends a year in Australia saving up and completing work experience at an architect's firm in Sydney, before striking out into Asia.
I shan't spoil anything, but along the way Elspeth suffers a deeply personal loss that would send most travellers straight back home for familial love and convalescence, yet somehow she finds the fire to tackle the rest of her trip.
In Thailand Elspeth collides with a dog and is thrown from her bike. A family takes her in while she mends herself and her bike. When she leaves after a few days she realises her hosts were the owners of the dog – and she had been eating it at evening meals.
India forms the a significant chunk of the story, and not always for the best of reasons. Seemingly everywhere she and her travelling companion venture, they're smothered by people who have never seen a large capacity motorcycle before – let alone one that has an electric start or the BMW R60/6's horizontally opposed twin cylinders. Every puncture repair or breakdown ends up with swarms of people around her chanting "double engine, selfie start". She ends up fighting back suffocating curious crowds with her tank bag.
Elspeth, her BMW and homemade panniers: just about intact after covering 35,000 miles around the world – often on unpaved roads
The woes of being a female traveller also come to the fore with terrifying regularity.
Male hosts frequently attempt to force themselves onto Elspeth, and even the friendlier hostels have locals peeping through holes in the walls and ceilings as she undresses for the night. Desperation and tiredness often force her to stay in her lodgings, only to leave at first light so as not to bump into her lecherous hosts.
Elspeth's journey home takes her through countries that were largely closed to westerners, and more than once she has to resort to creative methods to cross borders – rarely does she find officials willing to help her by turning a blind eye to some light document forgery.
Along the way she maintains her bike as best she can given the scant resources available. Broken circuitry is soldered using heated coins, for example, and she ends up hospitalised on more than one occasion.
The homecoming struggle
However it's only once you hit the final few chapters that you realise the journey isn't what you'll remember about Lone Rider. Once Elspeth has ridden back to her London family home, a series of events begins to unfurl over the subsequent decades that'll have you – as her companion on her adventure – with a lump firmly in your throat.
Elspeth's journey is a stunning read, but it's the companionship and sense she will never be able to fully convey those years of her early 20s that hits you hardest. She eventually settles down in Surrey and converts a water tower into her home, only to find herself standing on the roof about to hurl herself to her death several years after giving birth to her son.
The disconnection she feels after the trip – combined with a travelling love story as heartbreaking as it is real – means this is essential reading if you've ever been on, or have planned, a road trip.
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Comments (6)
Sounds like a really good read. Might save it until the summer though, as I'm sure reading it will give me wanderlust
Yeah - good shout. It's just a lovely book. Made me a bit weepy, but also makes the idea of travelling the world seem possible.
I just imagined a Tim Rodie on the sofa, balling his eyes out.
Sorry. Sounds like a very powerful story. A guy I know has just come back from cycling across much of Asia on his trusty bike, which I thought was epic, but this is something else...
Read moreIt was a great read and compelling story
Sounds like I should decide very carefully when to read this book.
The title is the story of my life