country away from the coast , I ’ ve stopped at petrol stations out there that serve beer on tap !
John put me up at the villa complex he was building when we got down to the Costa Blanca and we went out for dinner at an English place where he knew the crowd . It was funny when some old East London lag came to join us for the after-dinner conversation , and after bragging a bit about how he was making his money he turned to me and said ‘ You an ’ t old bill are you ?’ I said ‘ Yes , I was last week ’ and we fell about laughing .
Dénia was nice enough but I didn ’ t hang around the next day . I was gone – off on my own journey . I won ’ t forget that couple of days though , and what I ’ d got from John was a little bit of unexpected humanity from somewhere I wasn ’ t anticipating .
On my way back up from Gibraltar , heading for the British winter , I met a couple of ‘ adventure bikers ’ on BMWs while I waited to board my ferry . Mick and Al had just come from the Bardenas Reales , a genuine bit of desert in Navarra Province . I don ’ t know how I ’ d kept missing that place ; I ’ d bypassed the area several times while riding Northern Spain over the years .
I met Mick a year later at the National Motorcycle Museum outside Birmingham , and ended up buying a load of Yamaha XT660 extras , that would turn my newly acquired Ténéré into a machine better suited to do a desert trail .
The story hasn ’ t ended yet , and I won ’ t let it .
In 2018 Kawasaki brought out the Z900RS , a retro modern version of the original 1970s superbike . I came close to buying one and haven ’ t ruled it out yet – the Café version is really appealing and , for my money , beats Triumph ’ s own retro entry : the new 1200cc Thruxton R . I watched the Kwak demolish all competitors at the Café Cup , held at the end of that year at Lydden near Dover . Charlie Boorman was riding the Thruxton , he did alright I thought , but the picture I wanted in the pits after the race was bright green with a white stripe .
2019 brought together the Mad Max 40th anniversary meeting at Maryborough race track in the state of Victoria , Australia … I just had to go .
It was a bit of an odd do , just a one day event with ( mostly replica ) cars and bikes from the films , lots of people in costume too . Maryborough is outside Clunes where the original film was made – there and on those long sweeping roads surround by dry farmlands and emptiness .
I knew that a great friend of mine and old Ashford girl , Susan Parker , was living close to Melbourne – although I hadn ’ t seen her since the early ‘ 90s . We drove out to the race track and camped at the event . It was a 40 degree heat-wave and everyone was in black T-shirts . A small can of ice cold beer cost $ 7- $ 9 and we were on it for ten hours – while the V8 engines throbbed and roared out on the track . Wasteland warriors partied in the dust and the Great Humongous goaded the free world to ruin .
I even got to meet Jim Goose ( Steve Bisley ). A few of the original actors and stuntmen were there and a pair of them drove a pursuit special through two empty caravans , to replicate a scene from the first film . I had , at first , wanted to turn up to the event on a Kawasaki Z900 , and I brought my riding gear for that purpose . Sue hadn ’ t been on a bike for an age and didn ’ t have any stuff anyway , as it happened the three hour drive was just what we needed to catch up on how each of us had been striding through life , since we ’ d both left Sellindge behind .
I couldn ’ t be there on that coast without riding the Great Ocean Road before I left the country , so I hired
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