Day 5

Past midnight, and the SatNav tells us that we still have 1 hour and 45 minutes remaining of our journey. Straight roads with nothing coming, all okay, but corners, cars on full beam, and white lines reflecting back the glare of my headlights, not so good.

Exiting another town, we’ve pulled into a sort of lay-by. The speed restriction for most towns is 50 km/hr but it seems that these cars want to do double that. When we can we pull over to allow speeding tailgaters to pass. I place myself down on a large boulder-like rock in the lay-by, which seems to border someone’s front garden. The ground is sandy and a line of these boulders fringe the length of it. Behind those, a row of bollards have been placed, and then there’s the old house glimmering pale grey in the low light.

I’ve pulled on a hoodie under my air jacket, the temperature has dropped significantly. Above, my tired eyes stare out at a cloudless night and its vast canopy of stars. I lean back on my boulder and contemplate sleep. Then, from out of town bright headlights appear in the distance. The car approaches at speed, then slows upon detecting our unusual presence. Its headlights make the bollards’ forms shift across the dirt in long casting shadows.

This is stupid, we need rest. But after checking for a local campsite, we find none, and the one we optimistically booked during lunch is over 200 km away. Wild camping is an option, but in the dark, every place we consider seems less and less inviting. In slow motion, I remount Maloo to continue our night ride on broken steeds.

The problem started about 10 minutes after leaving our lunch stop. Over comms, Wiggy says, “one of my cylinders has gone”. And no doubt, his old girl is chugging and moving erratically compared to her usual smooth handling. I use my brakes, put some distance between us and watch out for traffic catching us up. But, after the next corner, Queenie cuts out completely. This is how the conversation went.

“We need to find a mechanic”, I say.

“No, we need to get to camp”, Wiggy replies.

Queenie fires up but her engines are not firing on all cylinders, and a few minutes down the road she conks out again, so we waddle into a nearby shaded track. We spend the next 4 hours here. I watch the sun move across the grasses and move Wiggy’s solar panel charger along with it. The tank comes off, and our hands get covered in grease before I consider unpacking the mechanics’ gloves. Wiggy changes 4 spark plugs and checks his fuel filters, while I change into my flip-flops and add a thunderbox to power his front dash cam.

We’re almost ready to reattach the tank when three BMW GS riders pull up and ask if we’re okay. Sign language and a few words are exchanged. They watch us reattach the tank and we all celebrate when Queenie finally turns over. Thanks and goodbyes are exchanged, and they leave us to it.

Probably at this point, we should have thought, yeah, it’s a bit far, especially only using minor roads. But no, we continue until our hunger, my period, my blood sugars fluctuating and my whining become too much. We are in Nantes, a town we were warned to avoid, and dusk is setting in. We eventually find a McDonald’s and park next to some youths with a blacked-out Golf. They are impressed by our travel plans and start a video call with a friend to share the news. Two Mc Chicken sandwiches later, we return to the road.

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It’s late now, the stars are out, the crickets pull on their creaky wind-up cords, the red, green, yellow, and blue bulbs shine pleasantly in the campsite bar and colourful bunting floats overhead. It was early in the morning before we were finally ready for bed. Bizarrely, even at that time, we could hear the rhythmic thud of trance-clubbing music in the distance. Lucky really, it masked the sound of our pitch up. Yet some ears are not perturbed by trance, a scruffy little dog came out from one of the tents and surprised me. I was carrying a heavy bag and hadn’t noticed him watching me, and when he barked, my instinct was to throw my bad at him! Luckily, I quickly realised he was a pet, and both the little dog and I were unharmed.