Wales at Easter

The ride across was spectacular to say the least. It’s our first big run of the year on the yellow perils in spite of the mixed weather forecast for the weekend. We left home on Good Friday morning, delaying our departure until around 9am to let the bright sun burn off a nasty overnight frost. Our route for today was pure back-roads, deliberately avoiding any suggestion of motorway. We left Stevenage on some twisties over to Barton, then on to Ampthill followed by a clatter of country lanes that dropped us into the deer-park of Woburn Abbey where majestic herds of deer flanked the road, their hides glowing gold in the early morning sun; could there be a better way to start your first run of the year? Having circumvented Milton Keynes and Buckingham we spilled into the glorious Cotswolds, chasing lanes through golden villages in this often overlooked treasure of England, garden walls ablaze with rashes of purple aubrietia.

A mid-morning brunch in the quaint little tea-room at ‘Foodies’ deli in the beautiful little village of Deddington and then on to the Forest of Dean on snaking roads that thread over the Severn and into the mountains of South Wales. Beyond Carmarthen the GPS directs me up a country track where we have fun fording a fast flowing river to gain our new home for the weekend and this spectacular solitude that, even in the now cloudy weather, is nothing short of inspiring.

Easter Saturday in Waterstones, Carmarthen. Young Darren was mad-keen to have us when Maggie mentioned over the phone that we could put a bike in the store for a book signing. This has been the latest of our 2012 signings, having so far sampled the delights of places as diverse as Watford and Bath, Nottingham and Kettering. The format is usually the same; we turn up at the bookstore, preferably with the bike, and set to chatting with customers, telling them our story and offering the opportunity to buy a signed copy of the books.

When I was first asked to sign a copy of one of my books, I found myself at a bit of a dilemma as I hadn’t really thought out what one should write as a fitting inscription. OK you can jot down the persons name but what then? I realised I had to include some brief statement, something that captured the spirit of ‘Adventures in Yellow’ without being too wordy. My favourite inscription, the one I use most often, is therefore simply “Be Inspired!” I settled on this as it really is what the books are all about and what I want most for readers to take away from them. So there you have it… “Be Inspired!”

Yet this has proven to be a two way statement in that, far from our wander story being the source of inspiration, we have found ourselves in return constantly inspired by some of the people we meet at the signings. What is amazing too is that these contacts cover all ranges of age and sex from the 74-year old lady in Watford who had just returned from a trip to Africa and was planning her next foray to India to the crowd of kids yesterday in Carmarthen; four of them who mobbed us and the bike in the shop, suddenly demanding to know if we were famous. Despite our protests to the contrary, my name on the cover of the book said it all for them. One of them had a smart-phone and before we could say any more he had unearthed a series of photographs of me from our website. This notched up the whole game and we were inundated by a quadraphonic barrage of queries as young minds grasped the magnitude of our journey and the events that had led us to this Saturday on Carmarthen. Whilst they may have left us inspired by our story, I think we were even more inspired. Kids these days get a lot of bad press but if the country is full of kids like these then, trust me, there is hope for us all.

Kettering yielded another duo of these magnificent encounters. First we had a trio of young photography students who were drawn to our new banner which features a collage of some of the most stunning pictures from our journey. It was based on a poster I remembered from years ago showing a picture postcard collection of Georgian doorways in Dublin. For these students our photographs made an instant connection between that wonderful world out there and the fact that taking it all in from the saddle is one of the best experiences in life. Alex was already into his motocross and planning a raid into Morocco… If the country is full of youths like these then, trust me, there is hope for us all.

Most inspiring of all was the second of those Kettering encounters, Johnny Morrison, a septuagenarian from the Isle of Man. A heavy set man with a healthy ruddy complexion that took maybe 15 years off his true age, he wandered into the store on the look for something different when we stopped to chat about our Latin American book. At the mere mention of South America his eyes lit up and he regaled us with tales of mountaineering, of how he climbed Cotopaxi in Peru, Kilimanjaro in Africa and numerous other peaks all over the world.

Three weeks ago, Johnny suffered a massive heart-attack. In the back of the ambulance, on the way to hospital, the young medic told him not to worry, that he’d be all right. He knew from the look on her face that this might not be the case and she was deeply concerned. So he smiled and said to the lass “Listen girl. It’s all right. I’ve had a fantastic life and if my time is up now so be it. I have lived to travel all over this planet and see some of its most wondrous sights. I have no regrets, so if this is it then they’ll be burying me with a great big smile on my face.”

Meeting Johnny Morrison was one of the highlights of our entire Adventure in Yellow. This time, we were the ones who had truly been inspired!

12th April 1912 saw the loss of the RMS Titanic, built in Belfast, our home town. Exactly two weeks earlier, on 29th March 1912 and unknown at the time, the last remnant of a group of five men perished in an Antarctic wilderness when Scott, Wilson and Bowers died in a tent from starvation and exhaustion. They were 17 miles short of a life-saving supply depot.

Scott was and remains in the pantheon of my childhood heroes, up there with the British Greats such as Nelson and Drake, and like them he died out in the field of action. I well remember reading the little Ladybird book on Scott, watching John Mills in his epic portrayal of the man in the Ealing classic “Scott of Antarctic”. I always hoped the ending would somehow be different, that they would maybe make it to the depot this time, always knowing that their eternal ending is one of doom.

Sadly Scott’s reputation has taken a battering in recent times with revisionist histories portraying him as some sort of vain-glorious incompetent, an officer of mediocre abilities, who ultimately led his men to their deaths. The expedition was flawed, selecting motor vehicles, horses, dogs and man-hauling to reach the goal over Amundsen’s single strategy of using just dogs.

He also changed plans at the last minute selecting five men for the dash to the pole by including P.O. Taff Evans from the four man support party. The other three (Teddy Evans, William Lashly and Tom Crean) almost perished on their return, Irishman Tom Crean abandoning his two weakened comrades to perform an epic solo march to secure their successful rescue.

Taking five men slowed the polar party. They were now cramped; five in a four-man tent living on ration packs design for four. Mealtimes took longer and the great polar killer, malnutrition, began to take its effect. The men were expending fantastic amounts of energy and simply not replacing it. They had budgeted around 4500 calories of food a day; modern analysis shows man-hauling a sledge burns something in the region of 7000 calories a day. Add to this the effects of high altitude on the Antarctic plateau over 10,000 feet and some days the men could each have been expending as much as 11,000 calories! Under such conditions the body begins to eat itself.

There were other contributors; Evans, not yet knowing he was in the polar party, had stashed his skis at one of the depots on the way out, which slowed progress. Worse, he had suffered a bad cut from a sledge-runner and not told anyone. The wound refused to heal and he lost condition rapidly becoming the first of the party to die up on the Beardmore Glacier.

Scott had reached the Pole on 17th January 1912, only to find that Amundsen had beaten him by five weeks. Amundsen’s sole reason for being on the continent was to claim the South Pole. Leaving Norway in his ship the Fram, he had told everyone he was headed north to the Arctic, only revealing the true destination when he was well out to sea. He pursued his goal with ruthless determination using weaker dogs as feed for the stronger dogs that pulled him to the Pole and back.

Scott however was head of a bigger scientific mission and reaching the South Pole was but one of their objectives. He truly led a band of heroes. I already mentioned Tom Crean and his heroic rescue of Evans and Lashly. He had been south with both Scott and Shackleton on the 1902 polar attempt and later he would be part of Shackleton’s group when their ship Endurance was lost in the ice. This involved another epic journey hauling one of the ship’s boats to open sea and then sailing to South Georgia, and crossing that island on foot to find rescue at the whaling station there.

Then there was the youngster Apsley Cherry-Garrard or plain ‘Cherry’ as he was known. One of the 1912 science missions was to send a party of men out to collect some eggs from the emperor penguin colony at Cape Crozier. There was a current notion to look for a link between birds and dinosaurs and it was thought that penguin eggs might hold the key. The eggs could only be collected in the mid-Antarctic winter, requiring an arduous journey in almost total darkness. With Wilson and Bowers (both of whom died soon after with Scott), Cherry accomplished a round trip of some 120 miles in horrific conditions with the temperature dropping to -60°C. It was so cold that their very teeth split. On arrival they were pinned down by a blizzard and at one point the gale took their tent away. Without it they were doomed and readied themselves for the end. However the wind dropped and miraculously they found the tent caught on some rocks.

Later Cherry was part of a scouting party sent out to look for Scott on his return from the Pole. The press got hold of the story and by the time he arrived back in England there was some suggestion that he had abandoned Scott or at least could have gone on that little bit further to effect a successful rescue. It ruined Cherry mentally and he spent the rest of life suffering from depression and anxiety over the polar bereavement and haunting thoughts that maybe he could have done more.

In 1922 Cherry published his book “The Worst Journey in the World”. It is an amazing story; one of the greatest adventure-travel books ever written. It ends with the haunting sentence “If you march your Winter Journeys you will have your reward, so long as all you want is a penguin’s egg.” By the time the penguin eggs were delivered to the Natural History Museum the theory they were meant to prove had been discarded.

Finally there was the story of five-man ‘Northern Party’ led by Lt.Campbell out for the winter of 1911 at Cape Adare, where they were performing geological work. They were due to be collected by Scott’s expedition ship, the Terra Nova, in February 1912 but the ship was unable to reach them due to heavy pack ice. The group, supplemented their meagre rations with seal meat as they were forced to spend the winter months of 1912 in a snow cave which they excavated on the aptly named Inexpressible Island. Here they suffered horribly from frostbite, hunger, scurvy and dysentery. At one point they killed a seal and were delighted to find 36 undigested fish in its stomach, providing a much needed intake of vitamins.

An attempt by those left at Cape Evans, Scott’s base camp, to march out to relieve this party in April 1912 was beaten back by the weather. This Northern Party finally set out for the base camp at the end of September, staggering back into camp on 7th November.

The bodies of Scott and his companions were finally discovered by a search party five days later on 12th November 1912. Their bodies were left at this final camp and a high cairn of snow was erected, topped by a roughly fashioned cross. Over the succeeding decades the cairn and tent have been gradually encased in the Ross Ice Shelf as it inches towards the Ross Sea. In 2001 glaciologist Charles R. Bentley estimated that the tent with the bodies was under about 75 feet of ice that had drifted about 30 miles from the point where they died; he further speculated that eventually, in maybe 275 years from now, the bodies would reach the Ross Sea and perhaps float away inside an iceberg.

In January 1913, Terra Nova parted for home with the survivors. A large wooden cross was erected over Cape Evans, inscribed with the line from Tennyson’s poem Ulysses: “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield”,

And so to “These Rough Notes”… Last Saturday, Maggie and I paid a visit to the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge to visit an exhibition under this name. The ‘rough notes’ referred to in the exhibition title are the diaries and journals kept by the men who were there and it is borrowed from a phrase used in one of Scott’s last writings where he pencilled “These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale, but surely, surely, a great rich country like ours will see that those who are dependant on us are properly provided for.”

The exhibition is not to be missed for anyone who has felt the slightest stirring from a great adventure story, never mind these epics of human endurance. The actual diaries are there in glass cases with the writing all legible and so very, very moving in their content. They cover tales of the mundane such as life in the camps before setting out through to epic moments such as when Cherry and Wilson relate the tent blowing away at Cape Crozier. There is also one of Scott’s final letters, titled “for my widow”.

These men are all heroes and to read documents that were written under such duress and adversity, one cannot but fail to be moved. The exhibition is on from now until 5th May 2012. The Polar Museum is open from 10am-4pm from Tuesday to Saturday. Admission to the Museum is free and all are welcome. They are closed on Sundays and Mondays, Bank Holiday weekends and other public and University holidays so please check beforehand by contacting the Museum at http://www.spri.cam.ac.uk/museum

Recommended reading:

Captain Scott – Ranulph Fiennes
Scott And Amundsen: The Last Place on Earth – Roland Huntford
The Worst Journey In The World (Vintage Classics) – Apsley Cherry-Garrard
Cherry: A Life of Apsley Cherry-Garrard – Sara Wheeler
An Unsung Hero: Tom Crean – Antarctic Survivor – Michael Smith

Other Polar places of interest in the British Isles:
Discovery – Scott’s first ship in Dundee, Scotland
The South Pole Inn, Anascaul, Co. Kerry – the pub run by Tom Crean after his wandering days were over in the village where he is also buried.

In the charts at Waterstone's

The bright light that had been our journey was starting to extinguish. The best stories had all been passed around to those with a ready ear and were fading to fossils, buried under strata of more modern experiences mostly to do with the daily tedium of house and home, career and work. Then the breakthrough; a weekday afternoon phone-call to Grace at Indepenpress, a lovely lady who finally granted me some of her time to explain the story and then kindly offered to have the manuscript reviewed: six weeks later an offer to publish. The release of the two books has been a volcanic eruption. The fossils are free and I’m glad to report they are running amok in our life once again.

Having the books published was only the start of this new adventure and significant challenges lay ahead. Our heady elation at getting the books into print was deservedly deflated by Steve Chilton at Waterstone’s, St Albans, who injected us with a dose of healthy realism: it was unlikely that any bookstore would stock our books for the same reason that we’d had difficulty in attracting a publisher. We were not famous; nobody knew who we were or what we had done. In business terms we had to address the old law of supply and demand. We were primed and ready to supply but as yet there was no demand.

This is where Maggie stepped in, becoming a full-time literary agent on a mission to get ‘Adventures in Yellow’ into bookstores the length and breadth of the country. As part of this campaign we decided to organise a series of Saturday book-signings. Steve at St Albans rewarded Maggie’s enthusiasm by granting us our first date and it proved such a runaway success that doors were sprung for subsequent signings at other bookstores.

Our reception in the stores has been superb, from the shock effect on people’s faces as they wander in to their local bookstore to see a monster motorcycle, then their patience in listening to our short synopsis followed by a usual willingness to read the adventure for themselves and hopefully find some inspiration from our tale.

One definition of ‘travel’ is to take yourself to strange places you wouldn’t normally go and interact with strangers you’d normally never come across in a routine life. We have had this every weekend for the past fourteen weeks, happily exchanging Peru for Peterborough, Bolivia for Bedford and Nicaragua for Northampton.

We’d both like to send our heartfelt thanks to the good citizens, bookstore managers and staff of St Albans, Stevenage, Hitchin, Letchworth, Milton Keynes, Bedford, Northampton, Bury St Edmunds, Peterborough, Manchester (Trafford Centre), Finchley Road, Hatfield and Enfield for having us and for the enthusiastic support you’ve given us throughout this stage of our journey.

An other important element of Adventures in Yellow is our website and for this we owe a great big thanks to Iain Harper at Heartwood Digital for all his patience and magnificent effort in rejuvenating and maintaining panamericanadventure.com through the year.

No. 2 in the Charts

Watch this space for our future progress in 2012 as the journey continues…

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

Norman & Maggie

David's Bookshop

Established in 1963 David’s Bookshop is quite simply a wonder emporium, worth a peruse for that fact alone, even if you’re not particularly interested in books. One of the customers today told me it was the largest independent bookstore in the country outside London and Cambridge, which is quite an achievement for Letchworth when you think of it.

The interior of the shop seems to emit a wonderful soft golden glow, even on a sunny day like today and I swear I could feel the books on the walls positively hum with expectation as I entered the labyrinth of bookcases and tables all decked out with delectable reads. There is a pleasant assault on the nose too, a deliciously rich blend of newly pressed paper with overlays of ancient tome wafting from the 15,000 second-hand and antiquarian volumes scattered about the place, all cut through with just a hint of fresh-ground-coffee and spiced cakes emanating from the in-store coffee shop.

I was on the point of giving up on the mission for today and surrendering to the temptation to linger and loiter in this cavernous world of books when I noted that one of the fore-mentioned tables, near the door and backed by a shelf display of various globes of the world, was laid out with an array of our ‘Adventures in Yellow’ books… and so a jolt back to today’s business as we met with the good people of Letchworth.

Proposing your book to a complete stranger can be quite a challenge. First you have to stop the stranger and introduce yourself and the book. At this point you need to make an assessment if the person is really interested or not. If they are clearly in a hurry or look bored or disinterested then give up as it’s a waste of both your time and theirs. However if they show some willingness to continue then I offer a quick summary of the trip with some of the highlights, usually one or two of the more dramatic moments to pique their interest further and from there you can hopefully proceed to a new home for the books and a happy customer.

Outside David's Bookshop

Sometimes however, these encounters yield unusual responses such as the lady today who loved to read adventure-travel stories but was intrigued why on earth we ever set out to do such ‘crazy’ things in the first place? “Why put yourself in the path of robbing cops and all these lynch mobs? Why not just stay at home where it’s safer?” The timing of her questioning threw me a bit as she’d already bought both books.

It was clear that we both feared opposite things. Where she feared the unknown and imagined myriad of dangers of a life on the open road, I feared a groundhog stale and stagnant existence of a secure life commuting between a box with a bed in it and a workplace full of the same thing every day. Whilst we did come to encounter some of her anticipated dangers on our Pan-American journey for the most part they remained imaginary and our overall experience was life changing and beneficial in every way. As I said at the end of book 1: “If truth be known, the worst day on the road had proven, by several orders of magnitude, to be better than the best day at the office.”

On the way home I reflected that in many ways I have returned to that mundane existence of a working life yet it is now spiced with these weekend forays to market and sell our story. They allow our Pan-American journey to continue right here in England through these discourses on the two books.

At the end of today it was hard to prise ourselves away from David’s Bookshop. Outside the sun was gone and it had grown cold and dark. Inside the shop, that glowing amber light persisted, its strength now magnified by the darkness outside. All around, a comforting warmth beckoned from the books at bedtime. Maybe if I sat quietly in a corner nobody would notice as they closed up the shop. I’m sure there was some carrot cake left and it’d be easy to brew up some coffee so I wouldn’t starve. They could always let me out in the morning…

(A really massive thanks to manager Paul Wallace and all the staff who looked after us today. For more details of David’s check out www.davids-bookshops.co.uk)

Book signing at Finchley

I ride out into the beautiful crisp blue-sky morning for the 30 mile run down the A1 and into the city. As my eyes squint against the autumn sun, low in the sky, these cold bright mornings trigger other travel memories sending me mentally back to the Altiplano and high roads in the Andes as I feel the mild scorch of cool air on hot lungs.

Setting up the bike in the bookstore provides further fantastic flashbacks of riding the bike straight through the front doors of the Hotel Residencia ‘El Viejo Covadonga’ in Rio Mayo, Argentina. Riding a bike through the welcoming doors of a hotel is great fun in a childish sort of way. It’s one of those things that you’re generally ‘not allowed to do’ back home yet it would be a common occurrence on the trip as kind hosts obligingly offered their reception / lobby for safe parking for the bikes.

Riding through the open doors of a welcoming bookstore gives just the same buzz. It’s something naughty you ought not to be able to do, yet here we are doing it! Today has an added spice as I can’t get in through the front doors. Waterstone’s, Finchley Road is located inside the O2 Shopping Mall and the large rotating front doors were already in public use when I arrived so I clearly couldn’t gain access that way.

James the manager sent me round the back of the centre to try the goods access. A large steel gate opened remotely to permit access to a line of deserted, dimly lit loading bays, you know the sort with a back-up area for trucks to a high concrete step so the goods can be rolled straight off the vehicle. I rode along the line, unable to see how I could get the bike up the steps, until right at the end I was met by James.

This final loading bay had an ‘L’-shaped concrete ramp at one end of the step which ran up a steep incline of about 45°. Each leg of the ramp was only slightly longer than the bike so I couldn’t take it in a single run. I had nowhere to put my foot down if I stalled on the way up, only the opportunity to fall from a fairly great height with the bike crashing down on top of me.

Another flashback rapidly formed, this time of the scary ferry at Tiquina up on Lake Titicaca in Peru, the one that had us both screaming all the way across and my mouth filled instantly with the metal mouthwash of adrenaline. Action prevailed over thought and I took the ramp in two; riding up the first leg, then letting the rear of the bike slide down whilst I re-positioned the front for the final assault to the top. A small reward awaited in the form of another motorcycling first when I got to ride the bike into a large stainless-steel elevator, which took us without further incident up into the store.

The ultimate reward for both of us at all of these events is the great people we get to meet and today was no exception. Our first customer was a lady called Christine, originally from Jordanstown back home in Northern Ireland. She had been sent to boarding school in England and lived most of her seventy odd years in London. Christine had travelled a bit herself and fully understood the lure of the world seen from the saddle (her most recent mount had been a BMW C1 scooter, the one with the roof). She had beautiful blue eyes that sparkled with life and a smile to match whether she was listening to our tall tales from the road or responding with stories of her own.

Fast forward now to the end the gig with tired feet from standing all day and a sore jaw from nattering when two of the most beautiful women I ever laid eyes on accepted a book-mark from me, our standard means of introduction, in the store. I ran through my spiel on the books and the bike, explaining in a few sentences how we had come to be here. I had no problem engaging these delightful Saudi princesses (for surely they were) who immediately set on interrogating me into the why’s and wherefore’s of the trip. This time I was caught in the cross-fire of two pairs of flashing dark-brown eyes, come fully to life, with more beautiful laughs and smiles as they walked off with a set of our books for one of their husbands.

On the ride home I pondered these and many other beautiful eyes and smiles that have flashed my way in the past few months at our book-signing events. Today it was Christine and the Saudi Princesses, in Northampton we had the lovely June and the gap-year kids. It struck me that I was observing one of the major the effects of talking about adventure travel with the fairer sex; it seems to turn them all into princesses

With Ted Simon

I first read the book when I was in my late teens. Back then I had never read any travel books, my usual literary diet being war stories and westerns, but I remember a trip into town on a rainy Saturday afternoon and a mooch round Easons, our local Belfast bookstore. I was scanning the vast array of paperbacks on the shelves when my eye caught the glint of something unusual; a garish purple-covered title with this moustachioed guy straddling the motorcycle on its sidestand on an apple-crumbled desert road. The guy looked like a gunslinger in a spaghetti western minus the poncho. The title itself held further intrigue; “Jupiter’s Travels”, what was all that about? I purchased a copy on impulse to find out…

At around the same time, my girl Maggie and I had just pooled our ‘life’ savings to buy a little Kawasaki Z200. We eagerly digested this new volume and our young minds were inflamed with possibilities like no book has ever done before or since. Our next trip to Easons was to the map section where we purchased a map of Europe and spent the next few weeks pouring over it to see how far we could go. A couple of ferry tickets and we left our island home to begin a journey of discovery and began learning that there are many more jewels than emeralds in this world.

38 years later, on the anniversary of Ted’s departure, we have joined a hardcore element of motorcycle travellers in the Coventry Transport Museum for the launch of the ‘Ted Simon Foundation’ and to recognise the impact that “Jupiter’s Travels” has had on our collective lives. Mingling with the crowd I hear a few nervous Hobbits questioning why we are all here as it hasn’t been made too clear around the Shire what this is all about…

There is a generation gathered in Coventry tonight, a generation where teenage spots and endless enthusiasm have been replaced by grey beards and hard-drawn experience. The ‘Ted Simon Foundation’ aims to utilise this maturing process and direct it to encourage and promote future travellers, not by funding new trips but by providing assistance to voyagers seeking to record and publish their experiences. These experiences are all unique (there is no boilerplate for this sort of stuff) and it is important to try and capture them.

In our own case, we well understand the complexities of trying to get ‘Adventures in Yellow’ published. We returned from Alaska in 2006 yet it took five frustrating years to release our title, five years as unknown prospects treading the torturous maze that is the publishing mine-field. Persistence and a touch of good fortune led us to success but we both realise how close it was at times to never happening and shudder to think that our journey could have easily faded to just a memory and our experience diminished.

Publishing was important to us too, not just to record the story, but to carry on the torch lit by “Jupiter’s Travels” and inspire others to do the same. The Foundation has access to a veteran hardcore of experienced and successful travel writers and film producers and therefore aims to unite future prospects with grizzled mentors to guide them through these twisting paths and successfully capture their stories.

Successful prospects will be known as “Jupiter’s Travellers” and we were introduced to the first batch tonight. A few of the dozen were known to us already. Bernard Smith and Cathy Birchall at http://worldtour.org.uk/ recently completed a round the world trip on their 18-year-old BMW R100RT. What is incredible is that Cathy is blind so what must the world seem like to someone with this impairment? Henry Nottage has ridden a Cagiva Elephant to the ‘Stans and back and is currently planning to ride a Domino’s Pizza delivery bike across the Sahara for charity (see www.bamokoorbust.com). With the other “Jupiter’s Travellers” they all have great tales to tell and now the Foundation is here to help.

The inauguration event in Coventry was a great evening out, although I guess any event meeting your hero and inspiration is bound to be. Ted is in his eighties now and still doing what he’s always done best: inspiring us all, this time with the hope that we can be as active and sprightly when we reach that age. I hope that the “Jupiter’s Travellers” will benefit for years to come from this ‘Ted Simon Foundation’, but let us never forget for one minute that Ted is the Foundation.

We are going to places we never thought we’d be, meeting complete strangers and engaging in fascinating discourse allowing them some insight into our past and hopefully encouraging one or two along the way to maybe have a go themselves. So who are these ‘strangers’?

The first Saturday on October took us to Waterstone’s in Northampton. I had a glorious ride up on the bike; nothing like 50 miles of twisty back-roads to set you up for any day! In town, pushed the bike up the pedestrian precinct in Abingdon Street and arrived outside the store just as store manager Emma opened the doors for the busy day ahead.

Emma had eagerly anticipated our arrival with a full window display of the books and some bill-board pre-amble about our journey and the bikes – what a welcome! Inside, the shop felt warm and welcoming; just the right ambience to beckon you in for a book… A space was cleared for the bike and we were soon ready to meet and greet today’s ‘strangers’…

I had no sooner set up stall when I was met by a beaming lady called June, named after the month of her birth. June had spent many years of her life riding pillion and loved everything about life on two wheels. She spoke sadly of the day when the family got their first car. She hated it and yearned for the open road on the back of a bike. June had spied Emma’s window display the day before and came in to town especially this morning to meet the author and get the book. One of the loveliest signings to date!

And so began the steady trickle of business throughout the day. Meet and greet, pass round the bookmarks and engage in some pleasant discourse on the journey, the bike and the book.

I acquired two of my youngest readers today following a charming chat with Tania and Amy, two sparkling teenage girls already plotting their gap-year escape with an enthusiasm unmatched since Columbus asked round the bar if anyone fancied seeing what’s over the water!

At the end of the day, the icing on the cake… Whilst engaged in a chat around the bike with a fellow grey-beard, I noticed there was something wrong with my pitch as he seemed awfully familiar with the bike and the places we’d been and was especially adept at anticipating one or two of my anecdotes. The gentleman in question was a surgeon from Liverpool who had already read the first book, procured from Waterstone’s in Merseyside, a store we’ve had no contact with. This was our first indication of the books spreading without our active involvement; a fantastic piece of news!

So I’ll ask again, who are these strangers? And I’ll answer it this time with the old adage that there are no strangers, only friends you’ve yet to meet!

Our first ‘Mall’ then was Milton Keynes, set in the heart of that modern suburban sprawl of look-alike tree-lined roads and roundabouts, so easy to get lost in. Waterstone’s at Midsummer Boulevard was also the largest outlet we’ve appeared in to date and they had set up the usual table in the shop for the books. For the bike, she was wheeled in through the main door of the Mall and parked right outside the store. Immediately from set-up she was drawing attention.

It was a normal busy day in the bookshop with lively sales and a lot of attention but what struck me as different in MK was the number of youngsters we came across. Malls are a great hang-out for kids on a Saturday, a place to socialise with school-friends, maybe spend a bit of pocket money on a treat. But I was delighted by the numbers frequenting the bookstore and even more pleased when they stopped for a chat either with Maggie outside with the bike or me in-store with the books.

I say a chat; in some cases it was more of an interrogation as young minds asked probing questions about every aspect of the trip, the bike and the book, absorbing our responses and taking it all in. What struck me was their eagerness to grasp that we were two people who had done something out of the ordinary, non-mainstream, and they were enraptured by the whole idea of our Pan-American adventure.

In these encounters, sales were never likely (nor sought for: these are not kids books) but then again that’s not why we have taken to the road with the books; it has been more about getting out there with our story and encouraging others to look at what we have accomplished, the impact the journey has had (and is still having) on our lives and hopefully make one or two take inspiration and think about doing something positive with their own existence.

A big thanks to everyone who stopped for a natter and of course the staff at Waterstone’s Milton Keynes for their hospitality and making us welcome!

Finally Stevenage, our home-town and home-branch of Waterstone’s on Saturday 10th; a brilliant venue that once again kept us busy all day.

Taking the books to the public in these promotions is a lot of fun and a very rewarding experience. In fact it is another journey, an extension of the Pan-American trip, right here in the Home Counties.