Texas – Graham Field (issue 5)
“They kill babies and fill them full of drugs to get them across the border.” …A thousand miles after leaving a snowy December Colorado, I…
Extract: Frederic Jorge – Austria (issue 5)
The road that led us here was already a treat, winding high, overlooking dense forests, impressive waterfalls and cute villages drowned in flowers, where some…
Illuminating South Africa
‘The Rainbow Nation’, a term first used to describe post-apartheid South Africa, symbolised the different races unified in a newly democratic nation. Two decades on…
Australia – Sheila McQueen (issue 4)
“Emu!” shouts Muffy, pointing somewhere behind me. The emu crashes through the undergrowth and, wisely, legs it for the horizon. …It is my fourth day…
Encounter: Sam Manicom
“Confront your prejudices and you’ll see that’s exactly what they are.” Sam Manicom is the archetypal adventurer, blessed with the good fortune that accompanies those…
Indonesia – Jacqui Furneaux (issue 3)
I began sleeping with a knife under my pillow when the skipper said, “I could cut you up into little pieces and throw you into the sea. I’d say you fell overboard on your night watch.”
Chile – Sjaak Lucassen (issue 3)
From Tierra del Fuego I ride, cold and with wet feet, wrestling with the strong wind, towards Punta Arenas in Chile, which is a little further away from the South Pole.
Morocco – Neil Pidduck (issue 3)
The view out of the window is a belter. I’m sat looking over the lush green palmerie, at the shifting colours, with shadows dancing across the folded ridges on the Djebel Sarhro Mountains filling the horizon.
Encounter: Elspeth Beard
Anyone who’s had the pleasure of visiting Elspeth Beard’s Victorian water tower will leave with no doubt in their mind that she is a determined…
How To Survive A Border
Many travellers worry about border crossings and approach them with trepidation, but borders shouldn’t be feared – quite the opposite. Crossings are usually a buzz…
Feature Extract: Ian Mutch – The Road to Middle Earth (issue 1)
A winding road speckled with gravel washed from the roadside, led through more damp forest to the wonderfully named Puké Inn, which was shut, but across the road was a general store selling Possum pies….
Ethiopia – Tiffany Coates (issue 4)
A landscape consisting of dry stone, rocks and dust, with small shrubs and bushes dotted around, the arid surroundings were interspersed with deep mud where…
Illuminating Indonesia
A busy street in the university town of Jogjakarta and I’m struggling to get a borrowed moped through the layers of tangled traffic. There is…
Mexico – Simon Gandolfi (issue 2)
I am seventy-five years old and have ridden my Honda 125 from Mexico to Mexico via Tierra del Fuego, 46,000 kilometres. I cross the border, dismount and kiss the road. Kindly Mexican Customs officers send out for a celebratory case of Corona beer.
Morocco – Frédéric Jeorge (issue 2)
It’s already a whole new world, of white houses, maze-like markets, beautiful mosques, traditionally-clothed men and women, heavily-loaded donkeys.
Iceland – Paddy Tyson (issue 2)
The temperature and the fog may have been particularly low, but the expectation was high as Peggy my ever-faithful Aprilia and I, rolled down the gangway to start exploring the most volcanically active country on the planet.
Illuminating Iran
Iran has been an Islamic Republic since the revolution in 1979 and the observance of the Muslim religion is strongly encouraged (some might say enforced)…
Feature Extract: Lois Pryce – 120 Hours and Counting (issue 1)
I was eventually granted a transit visa, which gave me just five-days to ride the length of Angola. It was a 1200 mile journey through a country littered with landmines and with no ‘proper’ roads…
Feature Extract: Sam Manicom – Expect the Unexpected (issue 1)
The days on the road in Vietnam were full of fun, and they challenged us wonderfully. It’s a land where just about every corner holds a new surprise….
Feature Extract: Norman Magowan – Ecuador (issue 3)
On every journey you’ll come, now and again, to a special place, a nodal point where a crop of fresh encounters will cause your trip to ricochet off in some wonderful, new and completely unanticipated direction.