Introduction

My Triumph saga begins

Sometime in mid-2017, I came across a book in a charity stall by Nick Sanders called Parallel Coast. 

Published in 2009, he attempts to describe his 4000-mile journey around the coast of mainland UK ‘and in the process attempt a different way in which a motorcycle journey is described.’ In it he describes not necessarily the journey he took on two Yamaha R1s, but some history of the locations together with photographs. The book is also accompanied by a DVD. 

My 2006 Triumph Tiger 955i

This brought back memories of an aborted attempt a couple of friends, Dan and Simon, and me to organise a charity ride around the coast of mainland UK back in the early 2000s, an idea born in the pub Simon used to manage where the three of us would regularly prop up the bar talking all things bike. At that time, we all had Yamahas, a Fazer 600, XS1100 and XTZ750 respectively although Simon and I also had a Honda Fireblade and I a Kawasaki ZX6r. Sadly, nothing ever came of it and a few years later, we all moved away from Milton Keynes where we lived at the time.

Taking a long ride on my bike never really went away and I was always looking for an idea and an excuse to jump on my bike and head off somewhere. I took my ZX6r, an Aprilia RSV Millie R and my 1998 Honda Blackbird down to North Devon and Southend. The Aprilia also took me to North Wales. 

In 2014 hit upon the idea of visiting every county town across England on my trusty Blackbird which I had at the time. I even got as far as making a list of all the counties in England, together with the county towns. The idea was to visit each one and take a photo of me and my bike outside the County Hall, not necessarily a non-stop trip, but something I could do over time.

 Then it was ‘let's visit every RNLI station & raise funds for the RNLI. Followed by ‘I could visit every Honda dealer in the UK’ or ‘I could ride from the furthest point west, to the furthest point east’, mistakenly thinking that Lands End was the furthest point west (until I realised Clarkson did west to east in a car on an episode of Top Gear). Nothing really came from any of those ideas except a brief flight of fantasy. I could blame it on time, money, the wrong type of bike, or just couldn’t be bothered to do anything about it. I even thought about visiting every place I’ve ever lived, except there’s not that many so it would be a short trip time wise although it would have stretched from the West Country to East Anglia.

 Now I’m again thinking of taking a long journey on my bike. It may not come to anything but at least the idea is still alive somewhere in my mind.

Many things happened over the years that meant I never got around to making any long trips on my Blackbird, including poor health and a stay in hospital due to Sepsis. By the time I recovered from that, I found I couldn’t ride for more than about 30 minutes before I had to stop because of aches & pains in my back, shoulders and arms. Possibly a legacy of the Sepsis or just getting old, I'm not sure which but I was thinking about selling the Blackbird & getting something else.

Any thought of going for long rides was out, it was getting to the point where I was no longer enjoying my rides.

In August 2018, the decision to change bikes was taken out of my hands when I was involved in a road traffic collision & wrote the Blackbird off. 12 years of ownership and 14,000 miles finished in seconds. I wasn’t injured other than a few bruises as I was only travelling at 25mph, but the damage was done, I was bike less for the first time in 20 years.

A Blackbird no more

What next?

A seed was forming in the back of my mind – if I want to be able to ride any distance, I need a more upright riding style and a more upright bike. I considered Honda’ s VFR800, Pan European, Transalp and Africa Twin but my budget was quite tight so whatever I had was going to be quite old.

I looked at BMW, both touring and Adventure options, I considered a Varadero and even another Yamaha XTZ750. Then while away on holiday in Crete, I saw a 2006 Triumph Tiger 955i for auction on eBay. The starting price was £1600 so despite knowing very little about Tigers and having never even seen one in the flesh, let alone ridden one, I decided that as the auction ended two days after we got back home, I would place a bid if the price was still below £1800. Two days after I got home & placed my bid.

I won the auction. I was the only bidder so got it for the starting price of £1600. It was 160 miles away from home, I hadn’t seen the bike or even talked to the owner about its condition. It really was bought unseen with only the auction description to go by. But a week later having ridden it 160 miles home in torrential downpours, thunderstorms and howling wind (yes it was September), I got home in one piece, together with Jean in the support vehicle, loaded with two tank bags, a top box, two factory panniers and a spare engine, only stopping twice for coffee & pee breaks, and despite being bought unseen, the Tiger performed well It got me thinking again, if I could ride 160 miles in that kind of weather without any aches and pains, why couldn’t I ride further and longer and with a bit of planning why couldn’t I just go somewhere, anywhere for a week.

Sadly, health again got in the way. So here I am today, 12 months after buying the Tiger (Jean named her #Tallulah), this time a trapped nerve. I can still ride, but only around 60 miles at a time before I need to stop, get off the bike & walk around for 15 – 20 minutes.

 The seed grows

This is where #Parallel Coast comes in. I confess to having not read it when I first got it. Growing up in North Devon, I immediately turned to the notes that dealt with that area, only to be disappointed that it really wasn’t covered in any detail and I get why having recently re-read the forward. There are lots of places he skips over in his book, places that would either interest me or has some significance to my life.

The question I ask myself is, could I do any different? I not great at writing, or filming, I don’t have a budget, I don’t have sponsors, I can’t say I'm great with a still camera either. Could I make use of social media, linking my YouTube channel to Facebook, and some kind of blog or web site?

In his book, Nick Sanders starts his journey at Hunstanton and sets out clockwise. Hunstanton is not too far for me so potentially could also be my starting point but I don’t really want to just follow his journey. I’m not even sure I could. After all Nick has been doing this sort of thing for years and all over the globe, I rode my bike to North Devon and back, three times and I stayed with friends. I didn’t exactly have a lot of planning to do and I didn’t even have to worry about where I was going to stay. As a complete novice, where do you start, and how do you plan for an extended journey? If I was going to do this for charity, who do I need to talk to & how do I go about raising awareness.

This is where I’m at now, 12 August 2019. There's a small seed in my head, maybe it’ll grow, maybe it won’t. Either way, this is either going to be a diary of 12 months living with a Tiger or it’s going to be a diary of how to plan for then take a journey around the coast of mainland UK. Time will tell.