T he W ell O f L ife ...
As Seen From The Sidecar
I
t’s the 11th of July 2018. The clock
in the top left-hand corner of the
screen shows 5 minutes played.
England’s Right Back, Kieran Trip-
pier, stands with the ball, ready
to take the biggest free kick of his
life. He coolly places the ball down,
takes a few steps back, runs up and
smashes it in to the top right-hand
corner of goal. The English bar that
we’re in erupts with cheers. Beer flies
everywhere as we all sing “It’s coming
home, it’s coming, football’s coming
home”.
Of course, it didn’t come home.
– Mandžukić, the Croatian Centre
Forward, ended England’s dreams
with a 109th minute winner. We were
gutted but, in all honesty, we were
quite pleased football wasn’t going
home because we weren’t going to
be there to greet it. The English bar
we were in was in Mexico City and
we were still some way off returning
home to the UK.
Before we could get home, we had
TRAVERSE 71
to finish what we had set out to do –
circumnavigate the globe on a scooter
with a sidecar. I had set out from
the UK in October 2017, with my old
school pal Reece Gilkes, on our Hon-
da SH300i scooter and home-made
sidecar. Our goal, to be the first peo-
ple to ever ride around the world on
this kind of vehicle. We drove south
first and scooted from London to
Cape Town. From there we shipped
our rig on to Santiago, Chile, before
driving it to Cartagena, Colombia. We
then chucked it in a container and
sent it north to Mexico. It was going
to be 3 weeks at sea, and we knew by
now that when a shipping agent tells
you three weeks, they really mean six
to eight, so we decided to head on to
Mexico and wait for the bike there.
This is where you find us ...
Sobbing pathetically in to a dodgy
pint of Guinness with a load of other
brits abroad – all wondering whether
to drown our sorrows in a £10 fish
and chips that will blow a few days