Lone Rider: The First British Woman to Ride a Motorcycle Around the World

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Lone Rider: The First British Woman to Ride a Motorcycle Around the World

Lone Rider: The First British Woman to Ride a Motorcycle Around the World

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The second leg of her ride took her across Australia, where she had a nasty fall and ended up in hospital for two weeks, up through Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Nepal, India and Pakistan before reaching Iran and then making her way to Europe, finishing in the city where it all began, London.

People just didn’t want to talk about it, even my friends didn’t because they couldn’t actually relate to it. Now people can because people travel a lot more, but in those days people didn’t really travel a lot, especially doing these kinds of trips. In the early 1980s, at just age 23, Elspeth Beard decided to hit the road for a 35,000-mile, round-the-world adventure — going solo, on sabbatical from architecture school, and riding a 1974 BMW R60/6.R motorcycle. Her new travel memoir, Lone Rider: The First British Woman to Motorcycle Around the World, is about that incredible, epic experience. In this exclusive excerpt for Outpost, Beard takes a serious wipe-out in rural India, and discovers the power of the human community. Excerpt: Story and and Photos by (and courtesy of) Elspeth BeardIn the mid-eighties Elspeth Beard became the second British woman to ride a motorcycle around the world (the first being Mary Sievier). Her trip started in the US after she had shipped her bike over from the UK. Her narrative is moving, concise and engaging as she takes the reader along on the entire 35,000-mile journey. Fact is, there is a lot more to the story than one might expect. While the detail and clarity of her descriptions of the people, places, hazards, problems and solutions would do any journalist proud, it is as much about her personal journey and struggles as it is about exotic locales, treacherous roads and hostile conditions.

It was also in Australia that Elspeth made her own aluminium top box and panniers, taking three months to build them. Travelling as a lone woman Having been on every continent except Antartica (as long as Cuba kind-of qualifies as South America) he is a big fan of travelling. However, to his deep but hopefully not eternal shame, he's only ever explored Europe on two-wheels and only started doing this a few years ago.

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I first rode a motorbike at the age of sixteen, when I was taught to ride a friend’s Husqvarna on Salisbury Plain. Shortly after this, in 1977, I bought my first bike, a Yamaha YB100, as a cheap and efficient way of getting around London. A year later I upgraded to a Honda CB 250 and shortly after, in 1979, bought my BMW R60/6. My first solo rides included a trip around Scotland, then Ireland, then to mainland Europe and Corsica. In the summer of 1981 I flew out to Los Angeles to meet my brother where we bought a BMW R75/5 and rode it across the USA to Detroit. Elspeth Beard (born 28 April 1959) is an architect and motorcyclist, noted for being one of the first English women to ride a motorcycle around the world. [2] [a] She later redesigned the historic Munstead Tower in Godalming, winning the 1994 Royal Institute of British Architects award for South East England. She now owns an architectural firm based in a converted stable in Godalming. [4] Personal life [ edit ] As a fellow twenty-three year old woman on a long distance, solo motorcycle trip (albeit significantly less than 35,000 miles), it was unlikely that I wouldn't enjoy this book. However, I didn't expect to enjoy it quite as much as I did. It was the intimacy, vulnerability, and rawness of her memoir that engaged me, and I really identified with Elspeth's character in a way that I hadn't expected to. I often find it difficult to stumble upon women like her, and I think that part of the reason I was so enthralled with her story was the headstrong and unapologetic way she responded to what were often devastating and incalculable challenges. Certainly in the last three or four years, there's been a big change and I think women have realised they have a voice. I feel that they have a presence and they can do things, and they are taking on many more challenges and pushing themselves more and more.

On a gloomy Sunday in November I took a ride down to Munstead Water Tower in Guildford to have a cup of tea and chat about her incredible ride that took place over 30 years ago. You just had these people in their BMWs, their Porches, being really aggressive and angry. Really miserable.Broken-hearted, she wasn't doing well in school and decided to embark on this trip to prove herself. Ridiculed by the editor and his "chauvinist colleagues"at a popular motorcycle magazine in London, she was only all that more determined to achieve her goal.



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