People often ask me if I get lonely when touring alone on my summer holidays, it’s by choice and not circumstance that I ride my high-powered BMW motorcycle without a visible pillion passenger. People think I may be lonely and

therefore approach me and ask such thing as ‘where am I heading? Am I camping, and if so is the trailer that I pull behind the bike a Trailer Tent? How does it affect the handling of the bike? Many times, I’ve been given visiting cards and been asked to keep them informed of my journey.

Back to my statement that I ride without a visible pillion: at the start of each day’s journey I talk with my invisible pillion – The Lord. He is with me every day and I always start my journey by asking Him to keep me safe and I promise to keep alert and ride to the high standard I was trained to. Sometimes we may have a wee ‘glitch’, but I always manage to keep calm as I know The Lord is with me.

This summer I was in France near Besançon and experienced a glitch’. Oh boy, was it a big one! My bike weighs in at just under half a ton, not including the trailer. It was a very hot day – 34oC. The sign said ‘Detour’ so after following it for half an hour I decided to take a unclassified road, and after a few kilometres the road surface changed to newly laid chippings. Within minutes the rear wheel was wobbling on the loose gravel; I stopped and placed the bike on its stand. But as I stepped off the bike and stood beside it the machine fell over on top of me. I was trapped by the legs and unable to free myself. I lay and called out to my invisible pillion for help, and it came in the form of a strong young man that pulled at the machine. But it wasn’t enough

to free me, so I cried out: “Please LORD free me!” My surge of strength shocked me at the time but now, when I think about it, it was my pillion that pulled my legs out and took the pain away.

We are always on a journey together, and every minute it’s another journey.