Motorcycle Explorer November 2016 Issue 14 | Page 20

Travel Story: paul pitchfork and pau
When the penny finally dropped, it felt like a ‘road
to Damascus’ moment. As I asked myself the
question, “How have we become so obsessed with
big bikes?”, I was genuinely confused for a few
minutes. Having ridden maybe 700 miles on the
Scrambler at this point, I was enjoying it so much
that the idea of touring on a small bike felt so
intuitively obvious; conversely, the idea of riding a
230kg beast, loaded even heavier with gear, felt
absurd. How long would it take me to u-turn a fully-
loaded 1200GS on a descending single track?
Actually, I probably wouldn’t be faced with this
challenge very often, since the size and weight of
the bike would have dissuaded me from exploring
these unpredictable tracks in the first place.
For sure, the Scrambler wasn’t proving to be the
perfect ‘adventure bike’, but then again no
motorbike is. The suspension is rudimentary and
would be the first thing I’d change, and the limited
ground clearance would be restrictive when the off-
road gets really rough. But for most mortals, 250
kilograms would be equally restrictive in the same
situation.
As we meandered our way ever northwards, the
landscapes became progressively more dramatic
and lonely and the further ‘the rest of the world’
felt. Perplexingly, the most stunning section of road
we encountered - the coastal road south of
Lochinver - is not part of the NC 500. We had it
mostly to ourselves. I think we managed about 70
miles that day; reminding me of Patagonia, it was so
enchanting that it demanded a leisurely pace and
numerous halts to soak it all in.
Days long in time but short in distance were in fact
the norm once we reached the Highlands. Some
enjoy the exceptional riding itself so much they
choose not to linger, but we were there to seek out
the wilderness and immerse ourselves in it. Whilst
Britain does not possess the scale of a place like
Patagonia, it beats it hands down in variety. In South
America, a change in the scenery usually occurs over
a timescale measured in days, or distances
measured in a hundred miles or more. In the UK,
landscapes and vistas change hourly. Here again we
experience a different perspective; a journey of a
few hundred miles along the west coast of Scotland
can feel like a journey ten times longer across one
of the great continents. We just have to take a little
more time and not rush.