From the Library

[Biggles]

Tent erected (25 minutes), I walked up a nearby slope. From there, there was a view over the entire campsite.
All I could see for miles was canvas and motorbikes, each bike stationed outside its tent like a guard dog. There must have been a few thousand bikers milling round, stopping to admire the machines and draw on the bottles they produced from their pockets.
Nearly all the bikers were men, mostly corpulent middle-aged, wearing leather caps and waistcoats, studded wristbands and extraordinary configurations of facial hair. It was like a huge open-air gay bar where everybody had let themselves go a bit - although that was an observation I kept to myself. The air was suffused with beery breath and the fug of farts.
Uneasy Rider  Mike Carter  p69

[Biggles]

Then the tunnels started. On the road to Bergen there were 45 in all, drilled through the mountains. The first went sharply uphill and then corkscrewed, like a Disney ride, shooting me out high above a fjord with waterfalls tumbling down the massive bluffs and minuscule white cruise ships humbled below. Then, plunging back into another, over 15 miles long, this time the road falling away from me steeply down into a diesel fug, like a descent into hell.
I took in the clutch and (look away Kevin Sanders) let myself roll, bottling it when the speedo glowed 60 mph and I was still accelerating. After an eternity in the gloom, I was fired back blinking into the bright light again and flying, leaning sharply into the bends, buttocks clenched, the tyres slipping slightly. Inside my helmet I was screaming at the top of my lungs. For this was the landscape I had imagined when I first dreamed of hitting the road: majestic and vast, wild and remote.
And whether it was because I'd got a few thousand miles under my belt or something else, I didn't know, but for the first time it was difficult to feel where the bike ended and I began.
Uneasy Rider  Mike Carter  p81

[Biggles]

I logged on to the Internet again. It had been over 45 minutes since I'd last checked. There were dozens of messages from the motorbike site inviting me to come and stay in countries on my route. This only confirmed my growing conviction that motorcyclists, along with gardeners, are the nicest people on earth. Put motorcycling gardener on your CV and I guarantee St Peter will have you down on the VIP list.
One Aussie couple, Joe and Sue, emailed me to say they were riding around Europe and were currently heading for Poland. After that, they'd be going to Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey. If our paths crossed, they said, it would be great to tour around together for a few weeks. I emailed them back.
'Would love to,' I wrote. 'Hopefully see you in a few days.'
Uneasy Rider  Mike Carter  p155