Passport & Panniers - Honda C90 to the Sahara

Most people attempt to ride around world on a big BMW or another style of Adventure bike. But 23 year-old ex-soldier Joel Burdall gave it a go on a 10 year-old C90. All you need is youthful exuberance and a full tank of gas...

A bike, a full tank of fuel, and the sun high in a foreign sky: does it get any better? This is what aftershave adverts are made of. I had less than 600 kilometres to Sierra Leone. With the will of God and a good breeze behind me, I could make it in well under a week. Men plan: the Lord laughs.

Two months before this I’d left the Army, and didn’t know what to do. No more pretending to be a soldier, no more tanks and helicopters. No more combat trousers and rifles. Back to leathers, back to fast bikes and slow days. Back from sandy countries where people didn’t much care for my presence, back into green and pleasant lands where people didn’t much care for my existence.

A plan is formed...

I had to go on a big adventure, I didn’t know exactly where, or how, but I just knew I needed to go. Stick a pin in a map. How about Cape Town? France, Spain, Morocco, and then roll down the African West Coast all the way to Cape Town. It sounded like a good plan, and sounds easy enough when you say it quickly.

Route sorted, I now needed a bike. It had to be cheap, and it had to be reliable. There was only one obvious choice in my eyes and it was the Honda Cub – with 60 million sold it’s the most popular small bike in the history of wheels. From an idea on one day, to a search on eBay, and finally picking up my new love. To anyone else a dog, but to me she was a hot bitch. The engine was strong (well, you know, it worked) her tyres held air and her bars waggled; all the C90 needed was for me to bring her some glory and give her new life. Pre-purchase checks were completed, a monkey changed hands, and this smiling monkey jumped on the back of his Cub.

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The rain in Spain falls mainly on...me

With my old army duffle bag as luggage I was ready to go. Slow and steady, cheap and cheerful. Early January 2009 saw me on the ferry to St Malo, with the Cub sat safely in the hold, surrounded by a herd of monstrous BMW Adventures, looking like a shrew laid down with elephants. It all seemed unreal; was I actually riding to Cape Town on a scooter? Reality hit me when I rode off the ferry and into France. Apparently reality is cold, really cold. Within two miles I was bloody freezing and regretting my decision.

With the determination of a migrating salmon, all I could think about was southwards momentum. While the ice welded my beard to my scarf the desperate mantra kept rolling on my lips, 'it will get warmer in the South, it must get warmer in the South.' But with an optimistic top speed of just 40mph, getting south isn’t fast. Sometimes overtaking trucks had twice my momentum, each one sucking and blowing me back and forth over the icy black streak of road. It took three days to get through the torture of France and into Spain. Surely Spain would be warmer?

The rain in Spain falls mainly on...me

I was wrong and the storms didn’t stop from Andorra to Algeciras. On the plus side the roads were incredible; picturesque grey squiggles scratched out of the mountain sides, no more than dotted lines on my large scale map, but I chose them because anything had to be better than sitting down and switching off on autoroute autopilot. Dodging sleepy sheep and suicidal Sainz wannabes on the backtrail boondocks was far better than dicing with supersonic Porches and comatose lorry drivers on the autoroute. In the rare dry moments I even scratched the C90s stubby pegs.

What could take a day on the motorway took me a week on backroads, as hours melted into days in a succession of never ending switchbacks and corkscrew spirals. Still the roads were perfect; swinging, swooping apexes with bowling alley smooth surfaces and views to die for. It was almost a pity to be mounted on a Cub; the moment I get another sportsbike, I will be coming back.

Despite the weather and slow progress travelling through Europe was fantastic with the predictable tourist stuff and the unpredictable craziness. Drinking champers in Champagne and riding through Rioja. Being propositioned by a one-armed streetwalker (who sadly didn't offer me a handjob, cruelly ruining a raft of punchlines.)

Even having my beard stroked over a decent dinner in Pamplona by a gay German, who invited me back to his, after telling me 'it's ok, I vill no rape you, ja?' Watching a Spanish football match with the sun going down on the Med. Riding in the dark, on a road like greased glass, to Trevelez, the highest town in Spain, which welcomes you with the sign 'Welcome, enjoy our ham and hospitality.' I enjoyed both, while clumsy bats flitted in the crystal air above me.

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Road through Morocco

Road through Morocco

13 days of travelling saw me on another ferry, this time on my way to Tangier, and Africa. Some people say Morocco isn’t really Africa, but my Michelin map says otherwise. Besides, even if the people are an eclectic European influenced hodgepodge of Afro-Arabs, the roads are most definitely 100% African. I speak Arabic well, and French acceptably, so reading the rules of the road was not a problem. The problem was that nobody else seems to. The traffic manners in this part of the world are absolutely appalling, and it’s a vertical learning curve where the penalties for slow learners are high.

While the Cub was hopeless on the open roads of Europe, nothing could have been better in these snarled up streets. No gap too small for the scoot and no road too rough, the hot bitch was finally at home. Obviously, it was still raining. Morocco was in the teeth of their worst winter in 30 years, and the mud tracks of the Rif had turned into rivers. More than once I found myself in puddles deep enough to kill the engine, and had to get off and push the bike. Lesson – always check the depth of a puddle before riding into it.

I was into my rhythm, waking up, packing, riding for as long as I felt like before stopping and finding a hotel or a quiet pitch to camp, then sleeping and repeating. Bimbling down the coast all day, sleeping out under Saharan skies while listening to the Atlantic eating away at Africa all night; Morocco soon became Western Sahara, with its endless roads across nowhere. A misanthropists’ wet dream, I went for days without speaking to a soul.

On a powerful bike, you could dispatch the long straight road to Mauri in a couple of days, but I was in no hurry. On my last night in Morocco, I pulled off the road to camp, and after some bread and olives, I fell asleep on the back of the bike.

At 3am I was awakened by lights in the pitch black night, and for over an hour I watched smugglers, no more than a hundred metres away, unload huge numbers of parcels from a boat that had been waiting in the inky dark offshore. I kept absolutely silent and still. If they’d seen me, it could have been bad.

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Ganja smoke and The Boss

Ganja smoke and The Boss

I had been warned by almost everyone I had spoken to that Mauritania was unsettled, and that I would definitely be a victim of corruption at best, kidnap at worst. But this was complete nonsense and the Mauritanians could not have been friendlier. Yes, there were numerous police checkpoints, but most stopped me to chat about my journey and drink and eat with them. It is impossible to stop at the side of the road without some passerby offering assistance.

I was invited to the wedding of a guy who I had met only minutes earlier, and throughout the entire ceremony he insisted I sit with him as his guest of honour. Huge steaming plates of mansaf and lamb did the rounds, and the biggest joints I had ever seen followed them, filling the room with dense swirling smoke.

When the food was finished, the women brought an oil drum in, which was beaten and all the guests took turns to sing. Then they looked at me, they expected me to sing? Put on the spot I ended up singing 'Thunder Road,' by Bruce Springsteen at an Islamic wedding ceremony. The groom loved it, and told me I must take one of his relatives as my girlfriend. I was given a flower, and directed to give it to the woman who most took my fancy.

Mauritanian women are stunning in a most cute and feminine way, and choosing was no easy task, so I gave it to the girl who had been friendliest to me. She took it and blushed, before pulling the leaves off in turn, while her friends sang, 'yuhibiny, la yuhibiny,' 'he loves me, he loves me not.' I did love her apparently, and we danced together.

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Out on your own

Out on your own

Senegal beckoned and it offered what I wanted from my Africa travels. Skinny kids with heads too large for their bodies playing football in the street, topless women washing their bright clothes in dark waters, sharing the road with clumsy doe eyed cows under a sun high in the thirty degree sky. Idyllic.

I was bouncing along, enjoying the solitude and the scenery, when out of nowhere, in the middle of nothing, a snarling rabid mongrel leaped out of the bush at me. It snapped at my feet, and got a flip flop in the face for its efforts. I tried to accelerate away, but in my shock I had throttled off and the chain was loose so I could feel the sprockets click-clacking as they slid around their teeth. I stamped into second gear and luckily the chain stayed and my speed increased. I could see the dog receding in my cracked mirrors, until he finally stopped, puffing and drooling his disease flecked saliva into the bone dry sand.

I filled up with petrol at the last village marked on my map for a few dozen kilometres. I didn't want to be running out miles from civilisation, but the back water middle of nowhere roads to clay and rush shanty shacks are so worth the risk.

There was no petrol station, but locals pointed me to a shack with several rusting drums sat outside it. It was staffed by a surly crew cut kid; too young to shave, but old enough to wear a rotting green uniform, and have a rusting WW1 rifle propped up the side of his shack – poignant reminder of what white men brought to Africa.

I insisted on using a bit of rag to filter the petrol, despite his assurances that it was fine. When we had decanted 5 litres into my tanks, I showed him the previously white cloth, now coated in sand and rust flakes. He just shrugged.

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Suddenly, it all goes wrong...

Suddenly, it all goes wrong...

Miles from anywhere, I crashed. I may be the first person to highside a 90cc Cub. Going round a corner at 40mph, the front slipped on loose gravel and then gripped again. Forwards momentum threw me violently upwards, and I flipped in the air, and rolling I hit the ground right shoulder first. I skidded on the loose dirt, then bounced to a halt in the thorny bushes beside the road.

The ground was as hard as I anticipated it would be. My poor C90 creaked to a halt 20 feet past me, the now still engine making no noise except for cooling metallic ticks. I wiggled my various extremities, and to my surprise, could feel nothing seriously hurt. My knee was slightly twisted, and I was undoubtedly bruised, but essentially in one piece.

Immediate inspection revealed cracked and broken plastics. All my indicators hung unblinking from the fairing, dangling on their wires like sightless eyeballs. The mirrors had both gone and my footpegs were at crazy angles. The gear and brake levers had been forcefully readjusted, and the bars no longer lined up with the front wheel, instead choosing to sit at a jaunty angle, as if permanently in a right hand turn.

Nothing that a good battering with a hammer wouldn’t sort, all I had to do was get the bike to the next village. Then I saw the engine casing. I had put a crack in it as long as my middle finger, and dark arterial oil was pumping out. The Cub was dead. My journey was at an end...