TAMP Season 5 Episode 8 Nye Davis The Wandering Nye

0:00:00 - Speaker 1
Hello and welcome to the Trail and Adventure Motorbike Podcast with me, clive Barber and my good mate Noel Tom. For the days when you can't ride your bike, there's always the Trail and Adventure Motorbike Podcast. Welcome back, chaps. Here we go again. This week we are delighted to welcome Nye Davis, the wandering Nye, and Nye has literally just got back from a trip all the way down the west coast of Africa, from the UK to Cape Town. He's got over his sickness and diarrhea and we've now got him on the podcast. I probably didn't need to share that information, did I? Let's do it. 

0:00:48 - Speaker 2
In all honesty, despite the sort of allure of Africa, more interesting things happened on the Europe trip. Maybe I was just more young and innocent and stupid then. 

0:00:57 - Speaker 1
Africa to me just seems a bit fucking mental and scary. 

0:01:01 - Speaker 2
Yeah, still does, in all honesty. West Africa, anyway. Southern Africa is beautiful, it's fantastic, and Central Africa is not so bad, but West Africa is just a freaking wild place. 

0:01:11 - Speaker 3
Don't tell Tom. Sitting off week out on Tuesday. 

0:01:14 - Speaker 2
I like my house. I spoke to him a little bit that unusual choice of bike. 

0:01:17 - Speaker 3
What do you think about that choice? Do you not think that's I didn't seem that crazy, Is it that crazy? 

0:01:22 - Speaker 2
Well, no, in all honesty, the locals are all riding around on Chinese 125s. You're going to blend in, if nothing else. I know an Australian guy who's just led a tour from Senegal down to Cape Town, and they were all on scooters. Anything will do it. I suppose Anything will do it. 

0:01:36 - Speaker 1
Tom's from Coventry as well, so it'll be as hard as nails. Nothing will scare him, because he's been through all of the most harrying experiences you've ever experienced in your life, just living there for a few years. We're delighted to welcome Nye Davis, alternatively known as the Wandering Nye, and he's literally just wandered all the way down the West Coast of Africa, and before that he did a trip from the UK over to Azerbaijan, and we'll talk about both of those trips in due course. That's good, isn't it? I've got nothing to say now. Normally, the podcast has rusted off. Maybe just a brief introduction of who you are, where you're from. 

0:02:21 - Speaker 2
OK, my name is Nye Davis. As you said, I've just completed my UK to Cape Town trip. I'm from deepest, darkest works of. To be honest, otherwise I'm a fairly fucking boring person. There's not a lot else to say. 

0:02:34 - Speaker 1
That's all right. Nold does a podcast every week, seems to get away with it. How did you get into motorcycling and what made you become a motorcycle? 

0:02:43 - Speaker 2
traveller From a biking family. Biking is kind of in the blood. I grew up on bikes. Like earliest memories from being four years old I was on a little PW50 and then I moved into Trials on a little TY80. And kind of all the childhood was riding bikes, regardless of the travelling. I don't fucking know. To be honest, I watched Long Way Around, like everybody else, and thought that looked pretty cool, had a go at racing and wasn't very good at that, so travelling was the next best thing really. 

0:03:11 - Speaker 1
You don't look very old now. What age are you? That's my youthful good looks. I'm 25. 

0:03:16 - Speaker 3
How old were you when you saw Long Way Around? You must have had to sort of search it out online or something then, did you? 

0:03:22 - Speaker 1
When did it come out About 20? 

0:03:23 - Speaker 2
years ago, Early 2000s, I think yeah, I probably would have been 10, 11, or something like that. 

0:03:29 - Speaker 3
When you say a biking family, what do you mean? 

0:03:31 - Speaker 2
That your dad was just heavily into bikes, or yeah, mom and dad, everybody's kind of grown up on bikes here, my sister being the exception. My sister's only 4A into bikes as she passed a CBT. She had a little scooter and then the one and only time she rode it she crashed it into the pond and that was kind of some total of her riding. 

0:03:55 - Speaker 1
The journey from the Pee Wee through to the trials. 

0:03:57 - Speaker 2
you obviously got your licence I'm guessing at a fairly young age, when I was 16, I did my CBT, had a little Prileyer RS50, which was the coolest thing, coolest thing on two wheels. I went everywhere on that thing, did 55 miles an hour flat out and it did 55 miles an hour everywhere. I had a little dabble into racing when I was 17, but very quickly found that racing is pretty expensive. Circuit racing, yeah. Short circuits. With Thunder Sport I was on a GSXR600. Very quickly learned that I couldn't afford to go short circuit racing with my measly part-time job in a bike job. So then moved into hill climbing, did a little bit of hill climbing Oliver's Mount, dalby Forest. And then when I was 19, did my road licence, had a Kawasaki ER6. 

That ended fairly disastrously. That ended up in the back of a van, somebody else's van, not in terms of theft, in terms of I came around a corner and there happened to be a van stopped. Can't park there, mate. Imprinted myself on the back of the guy's van, oh that kind of thing. But it did lie to Spark. 

Because when I was 19, I did the North Coast 500. Up to then that was just like the best week ever. I absolutely loved it and I wanted to go again the next year. So I thought about Europe and I looked at Europe and I looked on a map and then I wanted to go to the Alps. But then Eastern Europe looked interesting, and then Takia looked interesting, and eventually just came up with this idea to go pretty much as far east as I could without having to get on a ferry across the Caspian or go through Russia. So then that's where the UK to Azerbaijan idea came about. So I did that one. It was 20. What bike did you do that on? So that was on my Triumph Tiger 800, which I managed not to crash into a van. 

0:05:45 - Speaker 3
Is that a good bike to do it on? Did you like it? 

0:05:47 - Speaker 2
Oh yeah, it was brilliant. 

0:05:48 - Speaker 3
It's fantastic. 

0:05:49 - Speaker 2
Again being 20, money was a little bit limited. So I had a dodgy starter motor which meant the bike would start when it was cold but not when it was hot. Essentially I had to bump start the bike, kind of most of the way across Europe from France to Hungary. So I went into a Triumph dealership in Austria, tried to get a starter motor from them, but then when they told me it was a thousand euros I sort of politely told them to fuck off and decided I would bump start the bike, or as I could, and then just ordered a starter motor and fitted it in a guy's driveway in Budapest. That was much cheaper, that fitted my Stingy budget. 

0:06:26 - Speaker 3
When you say Triumph Tiger, I always think of the first one, the big ugly ones with the size. The 955. The metal tank and the stripes on the Mine was the 800. 

0:06:35 - Speaker 2
It was a 2011 model. 

0:06:38 - Speaker 1
Jeff we don't name motorbikes and if we do, we don't admit to it on this podcast. It's a new rule, I think. 

0:06:45 - Speaker 2
I don't know I had a name. It was Jeff. Oh Jesus, I didn't name it at the time. My girlfriend at the time named it, probably because she didn't want me to be riding. Another girl was happy for me to be riding a man. 

0:06:56 - Speaker 1
So how long was the trip to Azerbaijan and did you have to get visas, or was it planned on the basis that it was a relatively easy trip through? 

0:07:05 - Speaker 2
Europe. The Azerbaijan was pretty easy. 

The original plan was to go out through Europe and then come back through North Africa. So I was gonna go down through Italy to Tunisia, algeria, morocco, but then when I was coming back through Albania, I managed to crash into a Dutch couple in the car, which put a bit of a spanner in the works. Actually ended up being one of the best parts of the trip because I ended up staying with Albanian families for two weeks Last. We kind of fixed the bike and fixed my knee and and whatever. Then I had to ride the bike home, then set off again, had a month at home to Recover and then start off again. Did the did the North African leg. No visa's really, other than the, the easy visa for Turkey and the visa for Azerbaijan, but they're pretty easy. You know European visas are walking the park really compared to, compared to Africa. 

0:07:50 - Speaker 1
Tell us about this Albanian family. How did you come across them and how did you end up staying with them? 

0:07:55 - Speaker 2
I came across them by laying on the floor and on the road injured. I had this crash, with this, with this Dutch family. 

0:08:02 - Speaker 3
Can I just throw a complete spanner in the whole story now and just say can you just give me the size of the huge one, no, medium-sized one, and just give us the circumstances of the crash? I'm always intrigued as to what leads somebody to crashing the crash was basically me being a dickhead. 

0:08:16 - Speaker 2
I just see that is usually the answer to be yeah. I just seen a car with a British number plate and I got a little bit excited. 

0:08:25 - Speaker 3
You did a villa low boss. 

0:08:27 - Speaker 2
Yeah, I was waving at the car and then didn't notice the Dutch family had their indicator on and were turning into a side road and Promptly T-boned the car. However, I did write the car off, so I think I won that one. 

0:08:43 - Speaker 1
I'd say the Dutch family did a villa low boss and he did the barber into the back of the car. 

0:08:48 - Speaker 3
Yeah, the tough one innit. 

0:08:49 - Speaker 1
Mind, you hang on a minute now. Didn't you crash into Will as well? 

0:08:53 - Speaker 3
Yeah, another podcast. So what did you do to go right over the front of the bike? 

0:08:57 - Speaker 2
I kind of skimmed along the side of the car and Promptly damaged every panel as I did so what went through your mind in those moments? 

0:09:07 - Speaker 3
Were you thinking this is this, is it the trips over? Or I think I got away with it, or mainly just pain. 

0:09:14 - Speaker 2
Mainly just pain. Last I was laying on the floor feeling feeling pretty sorry for myself. Along came this very nice Albanian man who Said that his friend was a mechanic and we could take the bike to him. Once I kind of got over the crash a little bit, we took the front caliper off because the disc was kind of bent and rode the bike to this guy's house. The idea was that I was gonna then find a hotel, but the family basically invited me into the home and End up being part of the family for a couple of weeks. So pretty shit. Circumstances turned out to be one of the best parts of the trip because I had this fantastic time living with this Albanian family. None of them spoke any English. In Surprise, surprise, I don't speak any Albanian, but we may do a little bit of Google translate and yeah, it's fantastic, it's great. 

0:10:00 - Speaker 3
I bet the Dutch people were absolutely lovely about it. 

0:10:03 - Speaker 1
They're always lovely and we've discussed why Dutch people. 

0:10:06 - Speaker 2
Before. Well, to be honest, no, they were, they were. I had a bit in a slightly better state. I think I'd have Dished a backhand out to the woman. Maybe I found the only yeah, probably sure they were Dutch. 

0:10:23 - Speaker 3
It's not quite right. 

0:10:24 - Speaker 2
They were unhappy because I crashed into them and they had the child in the car. Yeah, they didn't seem so bothered about me. Laid on the floor, little Timmy in the back. 

0:10:41 - Speaker 1
There's been a five-year gap, then between that trip and the big trip to Africa. What sort of riding have you been doing in the meantime? Because I've looked on your Instagram account and there's a number of bikes on there hire, boozer, a tiger, triumph, scrambler, all kinds of things on there. 

0:10:56 - Speaker 2
Once I'd done that trip I instantly wanted to go again and do something bigger. So the idea was to do the long way around route through Russia. But then I looked into the shaping cost of getting from Magadan to Alaska and that was just way off the cards. So then the idea was just to do Europe and then Russia and Mongolia. Obviously there was a delay because of cove it, and then, as soon as cove it kind of cleared up and had the green light to go, the whole Ukraine war kicked off, which pretty much scuppered the plans to go to Russia. That's where the idea for Africa came about. It was pretty much on a whim of well, I can't go to Russia, so let's go to Africa instead shipping costs are a huge cost and they're getting far worse. 

0:11:39 - Speaker 1
Choosing a continent to ride through, you can actually ride pretty much all the way from the UK to South Africa. You've obviously got a couple of ferries on the way, but I guess you know the cost of those ferries is relatively small, right? 

0:11:53 - Speaker 2
Yeah, so there's obviously UK to France, which is nothing. There's Spain to Morocco, which is practically nothing. I did take a boat from Nigeria to Cameroon because the main board was closed, which was pretty expensive, and then I took the boat from Kabinda to Angola, which was pretty cheap. So then the only other shipping is is the shipping back from South Africa. That's about 700 pounds, which is not bad really. Is that on a boat? Or yeah, that's on a boat? So the bytes going to Rotterdam and it'll be there in about six weeks and then just need to go and pick it up. The boat from Nigeria to Cameroon Was about 300 odd pounds, which is fairly ridiculous because it's like about a 10 hour crossing, and it's the most Fucking awful boat. It's a little tiny, tiny boat and you spend most of the time crammed in a little 4 meter square space with a load of Nigerians being sick on each other. You travel without a film crew. 

0:12:51 - Speaker 1
Yes, you must be the only person that does that. I'm joking, obviously, is it a deliberate thing? 

0:12:55 - Speaker 2
No, it's just because I'm lazy. Basically, I would love to film things, I'd love to take a drone and document things, but I am the laziest person and, yeah, I just can't be asked. 

0:13:07 - Speaker 1
I'm a bit like that. So on every trip I'll take a recording device with me. It's your microphone, and the first two days I'll religiously record something. 

0:13:15 - Speaker 3
Yeah, you have some sort of gimbaly gizmo that comes out on day one and we never see it again. 

0:13:20 - Speaker 1
By about the third day. I just can't be asked. 

0:13:22 - Speaker 2
I did do a blog. I was religiously doing them every single day and then thought Fuck this, I can't be bothered. And then it kind of shifted to once a week and that was the best that I was offering really. 

0:13:32 - Speaker 3
Once you miss one one day, one day behind you, just it's very hard to catch up again, isn't it? On that kind of thing. But it's no less of a trip for it, is it? You must have found that. 

0:13:40 - Speaker 2
I still have the memories. I traveled fairly quickly as well. I did the whole thing in three months. Taking time to edit videos would have really eaten into that. So a lot of the days were sort of 12-hour days riding, and after that you can't really be bothered to edit videos. Why can't I anyway? 

0:13:54 - Speaker 1
There is also something about being in the moment as well, isn't there, Rather than photographing it being there and letting it soak in Nulls thinking, Clive, you don't even stay up and watch the bloody sunset. 

0:14:06 - Speaker 3
When you said that, I was thinking I think you can do both, but it's a fine art. Probably it just comes down to whether you enjoy photography. I think if you like taking pictures, you like taking pictures. If you don't, you don't. 

0:14:15 - Speaker 2
But I do, and I took a camera, An actual camera, A genuine camera, yeah, in the tank bag and everything. I had grand ideas to document everything but it just didn't really happen that much and this is probably going to ruffle some feathers, but to be honest, there's not that much to take photos of in West Africa Until you get to kind of Angola. It's not actually that scenic. 

0:14:35 - Speaker 1
You have got some amazing pictures on your Instagram, though under the v underscore wandering underscore nigh n-y-e. Elephants rhinoceros. 

0:14:44 - Speaker 2
That's all in Southern Africa. As soon as you get to Southern Africa, it's all over the world and it's absolutely beautiful and there's wildlife everywhere, but there's fucking nothing in West Africa. I was very lucky to see a gorilla in Gabon, which was very, very fortunate, but otherwise it's like it's just donkeys and street dogs. Nobody needs to see pictures of emaciated donkeys, really, do they? So? 

0:15:05 - Speaker 3
There was no mechanical jeopardy on this trip. Everything went smoothly. 

0:15:08 - Speaker 2
Almost boringly so, to be honest, the only You're not on the tiger anymore, are you that I sold that years ago on a little Yamaha WR250R now, which will be for sale if anybody is interested, I'll do an extra special deal. No mechanical issues, really. The only small problem I had was in Nigeria. See, I was pretty stupid with when I went, and I went during the West African rain season. I had terrible, terrible weather, which again probably contributed to not taking a lot of pictures because it was just rain and mud pretty much from Senegal to Gabon. So I had a little bit of water in the engine in Nigeria which caused a plug to rust and develop a little bit of a misfire. 

0:15:51 - Speaker 1
But that was it when we talked to Jade, I think, at the Lightweight Adventurous Festival. She said some of it. You weren't having a particularly great time of it either. 

0:15:58 - Speaker 2
The phrase that got thrown around a lot to me was was Type 1 fun and Type 2 fun? Have you heard that? 

0:16:04 - Speaker 1
before. There's some idiots listening to this podcast. They won't know what it is. You'll have to explain it. 

0:16:08 - Speaker 2
For the idiots that don't know what it is, because that wasn't me a couple of months ago. So Type 1 fun is instant gratification. It's pizza and sex Stuff that's instantly good. 

0:16:17 - Speaker 1
That's me definitely. 

0:16:18 - Speaker 2
Type 2 fun is climbing up a mountain. It's fairly unpleasant at the time, but then afterwards it's better. It's a greater high, if you like, and I think that's what West Africa was. It was a bit of an uphill struggle, but then the achievement of doing it was the reward in itself. So there wasn't a huge amount of fun times, but the challenge was the kind of the achievement really. 

0:16:45 - Speaker 1
When me and Noel travel together, we normally end up trying to find a pizza restaurant at the foot of a mountain, because I can sit in the restaurant and eat pizza while Noel goes up the mountain. Did you meet many? 

0:16:54 - Speaker 3
other people traveling on bikes? No. 

0:16:56 - Speaker 2
No, did you not. 

0:16:57 - Speaker 3
You just assumed that if you wait six hours, another Dutchman will bypass. 

0:17:01 - Speaker 2
I actually counted the Europeans that I met and from kind of real Africa, so Senegal down to Namibia, I met six Europeans in the whole time. It's not the touristy part of the world. I mean again. I think if you went in the right season, when everybody else does, you might meet people and have a wonderful time. If you're stupid enough to go in the rain season, you just spend all day being wet and miserable, contemplating your life decisions. Up to that point. 

0:17:32 - Speaker 1
So how did you manage to get three months out of the real life? 

0:17:36 - Speaker 2
I quit my job, tied the dogs off on Jade and that was that. So Jade did her trip last year and the agreement was basically that she could do her trip last year so I can do my trip this year. So we can't travel together because the dogs and the freaking lunatics, so we can't really trust them with anyone else. 

0:17:52 - Speaker 3
Bloody dogs. 

0:17:53 - Speaker 2
Bloody dogs, yeah. 

0:17:54 - Speaker 1
She actually said in a video that she made with Mark from the lightweight losers that you said that she couldn't come with you. 

0:18:01 - Speaker 2
Originally again, I wanted to do the long way round route and when I came back from that first trip is when I met Jade. She kind of piggybacked on my idea, my trip idea, which I went along with a little bit at first and then just couldn't face the idea of sharing my trip because my miserable bastard didn't like tying it to myself. Essentially, banda from coming with me and then out of spy she did her own trip to Georgia and back, which worked out well because she had a great time. 

0:18:30 - Speaker 1
Do you prefer traveling on your own, then, or would you rather go with a few people? 

0:18:34 - Speaker 2
I think for Africa. In hindsight I probably would have rather gone in a group, but I don't know, because I've never really travelled in a group. 

0:18:40 - Speaker 3
Yeah, but why do you think you might have preferred to go in a group? Just to have someone to? 

0:18:44 - Speaker 2
talk to. My French is fricking, useless and most of the way down you speak in French. The majority of the conversations I had with people was either police asking you for money or asking for petrol station attendants to fill the bike up. So it's pretty limited really, whereas traveling in Europe you have a lot more scope for conversation. I'm selling it very pessimistically, because I actually had a wonderful time. To be honest, I met some fantastic, incredible people. Yeah, I think for Africa, it would have been nice to do it in a group, just have a little bit of company, a little bit of somebody else to rely on, because you don't have the safety net that you do in Europe. 

0:19:22 - Speaker 3
In Africa, Did the excitement of that wear off pretty quickly? 

0:19:25 - Speaker 2
I think it just became very normal, because after the X number of days that just becomes normal life, doesn't it? And you get on your bike and you ride so far and that's what your day is. I don't know if it was ever particularly exciting, it was just life. 

0:19:41 - Speaker 3
What did you do to your bike to prepare it for this arduous trip? 

0:19:45 - Speaker 2
I love tinkering. I love a tinker cell Mainly mainly make it slightly less uncomfortable and have a much bigger fuel range. 

0:19:55 - Speaker 3
Is this you hacking into the seat and putting different pegs on, or? 

0:19:58 - Speaker 2
It's got a pretty bougie seat, concept seat which, in all fairness to them, did some pretty long days, did some sort of 450 mile days, and it was fine. Comfy seat, big 18 litre tank and not a lot else. To be honest, I had a little bit of a fairing on the front, a little windscreen although I had a crash in Nigeria, so that's by the side of the road in a million pieces in Nigeria at the moment Chuck some panniers over the back and not really anything else done. Oh, actually, suspension. I did upgrade the suspension, so shout out to HyperPro what paniers were you using? Adventure Spec Magadan's. 

0:20:35 - Speaker 1
Did you know that before you asked him? Because we're going to get slagged off pushing Adventure Spec again. 

0:20:39 - Speaker 2
It can be part of the slagging off, because Adventure Spec actually gave me the paniers for the trip. Big ups Adventure Spec. I've got to say, though they were very good, and I had the Adventure Spec mini fairing on the dogs block. I had the Adventure Spec mini fairing on the front as well, which survived the crash in Nigeria, absolutely fine. So props to Adventure Spec. They make good stuff. 

0:21:02 - Speaker 1
Yeah, I like the paniers because they're just very simple, aren't they? What were the? What were some of the highlights of the trip for you? 

0:21:12 - Speaker 2
In terms of countries, botswana, absolutely. I freaking. I love Botswana. I could move there tomorrow. It's fantastic. The wildlife's incredible, the riding's incredible. And then the other highlight would probably be people. 

That met a lot of very interesting characters on the trip. Some pretty sad stories, some pretty inspirational stories. But yeah, people definitely and oddly Nigerian people are my favorite of all and there's lots of horror stories about Nigeria has quite a bad rap for travelers, but I actually loved it. I thought it was fantastic. Everyone was so incredibly friendly. Even the police were very nice. Again, you hear a million horror stories about Nigerian police trying to extort money from tourists, but all they ever wanted from me was selfies. You know, you get stopped. You get stopped constantly because they don't see a lot of white people on motorbikes. You're an interesting catch to them, but then, yeah, they just want to talk to you about football and take selfies and not like else. So football was my saving grace, really. Obviously, I'm from Sheffield, but if anyone asks I'm from Manchester, and if you stop anywhere in Africa and say you're from Manchester, you instantly become everybody's best friend. They stop and say, oh, where are you from? And you say I'm from Manchester and they go ah, manchester. 

0:22:31 - Speaker 3
My daughter. 

0:22:33 - Speaker 2
I know nothing about football but I just nod and smile and kind of agree as much as I can. And these people know every intricate detail about the whole entire history of football and the bang on about how Alex Ferguson leaving Manchester United was the worst thing that ever happened and I nod and go yeah, yeah, yeah, Absolutely awful Football. Saving grace is two religions in Africa. There's this football and this God, in that order. 

0:23:00 - Speaker 1
What's your average day on the road? Like in Africa, then You're traveling on a combination of tarmac and dirt roads. Are you camping or are you staying in cheap accommodation? How does it work? 

0:23:12 - Speaker 2
The roads varied kind of country to country. Probably the worst roads were Guinea and eastern Nigeria, so some countries certainly. Once you get into southern Africa, angola and maybe a Botswana South Africa, you can be on tarmac all day and it's good tarmac. But West Africa and Central Africa is kind of a mix. So you'd have tarmac that might be okay and then you'd have maybe 100 miles of bad tarmac and then maybe 100 miles of dirt. And the problem with the dirt is in the dry season the dirt's absolutely fine, but in the rain season the dirt is hideous. What? 

just really sticky and flaggy and yes, it's that kind of red mud. I'm going to plug itchy boots now, but everybody's probably seen her video. Sorry, being growled up by a dog. Everybody's probably seen itchy boots as videos from West Africa and a pretty good, accurate representation. So the road conditions aren't great and the traffic pretty interesting as well. See, that's the thing I didn't expect, because I planned to go to Russia and had this idea of a trip in my head that would be remote and there'd be no people, and I didn't really research Africa before I went and got to West Africa and it's just the most busy, crazy, vibrant place you can go to. It's like India. It's just people everywhere and traffic's manic, shut up, growling. 

Yeah no, so I didn't really expect that. It was a surprise, to say the least. So yeah, so on average days riding mixed roads, camping, I only actually camped in churches. So most villages that you would come to would have a church and you just kind of turn up and ask whoever's there if you can camp in the grounds and they bring you and say you said you can camp inside the church. 

No no no, you just camp next to the church, next to the graveyard, and that was generally the safest place to camp, because you're away from the road and they'd probably bring you water as well, because most of West Africa you don't have running water outside of the cities Font water Probably well, probably not the best thing to drink. You could wash the sweat and misery away. You could tell us from. 

0:25:21 - Speaker 1
Yorkshire can't you. Camping in churches, and is that an accepted thing to do, then? I'd never heard that before. 

0:25:26 - Speaker 2
Yeah, that is the done thing in West Africa. There's not a huge amount of wild camping available, mainly because it's so busy. You never get any time to yourself If you stop anywhere. You kind of swarmed my children, which means camping isn't always the best or safest option. But churches are pretty, pretty safe. Bet really. You still end up being the evening's entertainment for the local kids. You get a little bit of peace at least. 

0:25:50 - Speaker 3
I wanted to ask whether you'd camp much, but the answer is quite often no. I took a tent and never used it. I used it once but you did camp quite a lot. I've got the tent out quite a lot. 

0:25:58 - Speaker 2
Camping was really weather dependent, because I had such a lot of rain, it made camping not so easy. But when I had dry days, and certainly in Central Africa, because it was dry season in Central Africa I camped a hell of a lot, Again mainly constrained by budget, because again I had this idea in my head that hotels would be cheap in Africa. But they're really not. They're pretty, they're pretty pricey. Kind of money for a night in a reasonable amount, Probably about 20 to 30 pounds, which doesn't sound a lot. 

0:26:27 - Speaker 3
No, but not after night. 

0:26:29 - Speaker 2
But that's sort of 20 to 30 pounds for somewhere that doesn't have running water, quite often didn't have electricity, so then it becomes a lot. I mean you wouldn't pay 20, 30 pounds a night in the UK to have a shower out of the bucket. It became pretty familiar with bucket showers. 

0:26:45 - Speaker 1
So what about food? Where are you getting your food from? 

0:26:48 - Speaker 2
Well, again I'd love to tell you some heroic stories of going off hunting in the jungle, but no, mainly just supermarkets. I pretty much lived off baked beans for most of the trip. 

0:26:58 - Speaker 1
That's a very disappointing answer. I thought we were going to talk about food shacks and farmers markets and amazing chicken barbecues yeah choose your chicken, kill it yourself and then eat it. 

0:27:09 - Speaker 2
I'm a veggie, so I'm far too soft for that. I think I was the only veggie in Africa. 

0:27:14 - Speaker 1
I think you'll find chickens are vegetables. It's okay, chickens are not vegetables. 

0:27:19 - Speaker 3
Every day's a school day. Can we move on to budget then? Can you tell us what the whole trip cost in the region of so I think it was in the region of about £7,000. Was it. Maybe a touch more, even a baked bean trip across Africa, a baked bean brand. 

0:27:37 - Speaker 2
Well see, the problem is is the carna, for the bike is about £1,500. There's probably about £1,500 of visas Well, at least £1,000 of visas. The carna comes back doesn't it. No, you get about. I think I get £250 back from it. 

0:27:55 - Speaker 3
Oh, I thought it was like a deposit kind of thing. You put it all back when you prove it. 

0:27:59 - Speaker 2
See there's two ways of doing the carna. You can pay the full amount and then you get pretty much the whole thing back, or you can buy the carna insurance I opted for the cheaper one, which is like £1,500, or you could pay the full amount, which would be like £8,000, and then you get most of it back, but I didn't have £8,000 to deposit. So, oh, I'm being howled. I love it. 

0:28:23 - Speaker 1
Let's pause for a moment. Five dogs, absolute madness. Five, yeah, there's five. 

0:28:28 - Speaker 3
I thought there was just the two Cossavans. 

0:28:30 - Speaker 2
See, this is the dog that you said was well behaved. 

0:28:33 - Speaker 3
Oh yeah, the Cossavans were great. What are the dogs either? 

0:28:36 - Speaker 2
So there's a Belgian Malinois from Romania, there's a Belgian Malinois from Sheffield and there's a Carpathian Shepherd from Romania. 

0:28:46 - Speaker 3
So none of these dogs speak English. 

0:28:48 - Speaker 2
Either does, either is from Sheffield. She speaks English, all right. 

0:28:56 - Speaker 3
These big numbers. I don't know if I can see that now. 

0:28:58 - Speaker 2
Yeah, it was pretty pricey. It was quite surprising because, again, I didn't quite expect it to cost that much. But yeah, it's not a cheap place to be. It's probably cheaper to travel in Europe. To be honest, I was going to say. 

0:29:09 - Speaker 3
How does that compare to the trip heading east? 

0:29:12 - Speaker 2
The trip heading east. I mean it's a while ago now, so things have gone up. The trip head in east. I pretty much did the whole thing in hostels. I did camp occasionally but I was predominantly in hostels in that and probably spent half of what I did on the Africa trip. Yeah, africa's expensive. The poorer the country, the more expensive it was to visit typically. 

0:29:34 - Speaker 3
So, again. 

0:29:35 - Speaker 2
Southern Africa sort of Namibia, Botswana, south Africa kind of wealthy countries, were pretty cheap the more exotic the country is. Yeah, let's go with more exotic. 

0:29:44 - Speaker 1
So what's next then? You're selling the Yamaha, you're going to get another bike and then you're going to plan another trip for another five years time. 

0:29:51 - Speaker 3
When you sell this Yamaha. I think you have a dilemma here, don't you? Because the temptation is to say this bike's brilliant, this bike got me across Africa, or you just say nothing about Africa and just say this is a brilliant bike. 

0:30:02 - Speaker 1
One careful owner, full service history. There are a few trails on it. 

0:30:05 - Speaker 2
I mean it's got a graphics kit on it that says UK to Cape Town, so that would scupper those plans to be honest, so adventure ready yeah it's adventure proven. 

0:30:17 - Speaker 1
There we go. 

0:30:18 - Speaker 2
So when the WR goes, the WR is called Donkey. By the way, I know we're not allowed to talk about it. For fuck's sake, I don't care For Donkey and she's a good girl. We can never be friends. Yeah, when Donkey goes, I think there will probably be a KTM 500 to replace it. 

0:30:39 - Speaker 3
KTM 500. Is there such a thing as a KTM 500? Oh, for fuck's sake, I thought they were all something 90s 500s in EXC still, and it's not 590, it's not 490, it's 500. Yeah. 

0:30:50 - Speaker 2
Yeah, so there's not really any big trips on the horizon for a while, which again is a totally boring answer. And it's going to get even more boring because Jade and I kind of need to be adults and sort of looking to buy a house. I think we're going to be trapped by that for a little while, which is not very good for your podcast. Stand by it. It might take 10 years or 20 years, but Russia will happen at some point. 

0:31:12 - Speaker 3
In between these big trips. What kind of trips do you think you'll head out and do? Because you're going to carry on going out, aren't you? 

0:31:18 - Speaker 2
Yeah, I mean. I don't think it's gonna get much more exotic than Wales for a while, though, to be honest, not to slag off Wales lovely place. 

0:31:26 - Speaker 3
Do you ride much at home between these things on big? 

0:31:28 - Speaker 2
trip. Oh yeah, yeah, all the time I'm. To be honest, I'm a I'm quite an avid bicyclist, so I actually probably do more mountain biking than I see. You got an e bike. 

0:31:37 - Speaker 3
Yeah, yeah. 

0:31:38 - Speaker 2
Yes, I probably spend more time on the mountain bike than on the motorbike. I think that's probably a reflection of UK trail riding nowadays. But we won't go down that rabbit hole. Yeah, I think for the foreseeable it's gonna be Wales. I would like to get into a little bit of enduro in. So, yeah, I think a bit of a change, of change of scenery really, from a riding that's where you get in the 500 with a view to doing that. Yeah, a little bit of everything their trail riding, bit of enduro. 

0:32:04 - Speaker 3
I want to do the dawn till dawn till dusk, dusk till dawn dusk till dusk, till about 4 pm, and then you have a bit of a nap turns out for a couple of hours, and then you carry on again. 

0:32:14 - Speaker 2
No, so that's, that's on. That's on the plan for next year. I would quite like to do the whole 24 hours solo. I'll probably regret it and think it's fucking awful at the time, but I've got this kind of it. Maybe if I do it for charity, it will be. I'm more really motivated and I can't back out of it. 

0:32:31 - Speaker 3
Do you find, after you've done like a big trip, like you've just done, that, do you feel quite? I always use this word, but do you feel quite satiated by it, as it really satisfied that young, combatry thinking. I'm desperate to go on another thing. You're happy for a while now, just to scale things back a bit? No, I'm bored, you're bored, are you? Yeah, are you suffering from a bit of post-trip? 

0:32:50 - Speaker 2
Yeah, I get, I get. I get the post-trip blues because you go from being the most interesting person in the world To being every other dickhead, basically. So I you know. Everywhere you turn up in South Africa with a British number plate, it's like you're a celebrity and now a drive around in my transit van and like just every other idiot, presumably you're gonna have to find another job at some point. That's more thrilling. Activities that I've been on with is is job searching, having to return to being an adult. 

0:33:18 - Speaker 3
Which is when you said you worked in a bike shop. Is this a motorcycle shop or a bicycle shop? 

0:33:22 - Speaker 2
This was a motorbike shop. So I did work in a couple and did a, did my Suzuki training with two-wheel center in Mansfield, but I've flopped that off. In the last three years I've been doing a degree and then working, working in a school, which is alright, but I don't know. I just need to be an adult and get a job. 

0:33:39 - Speaker 3
Basically, if anybody listening would like to employ me. We have an amazing Independent bike mechanic here and I just dread him packing up doing it, because I think those kind of bike shops are so rare. Now I don't know what they're like around where you live in the workshop area, but here I think those kind of independent little motorbike repair shops are just getting rare and rarer. 

0:33:57 - Speaker 2
Yeah, I mean I suppose everything's going towards main dealers now yeah, yeah, which some of us do not like because they're fucking Expensive for one thing, aren't they? I can imagine that you don't like paying 70 pounds an hour for someone to change your oil. 

0:34:10 - Speaker 3
And you're not fancy doing that not, really no. Why not come? 

0:34:14 - Speaker 2
on. See, the problem is is when you, when you work on bikes for a living, you end up hating bikes. And when I did work with bikes, the last thing I wanted to do at the weekend was go and go and ride my own. 

0:34:25 - Speaker 3
I wanted to kick the fucking things over, because you really do really start hate bikes, because I always had a little bit of a fantasy About being a bike mechanic, but that was always in the back of my mind that it might kill it for me. 

0:34:42 - Speaker 1
Probably gonna wrap this up actually, because we've got an hour in the can. As they say, it's not a can, it's actually a computer recorded digitally. 

0:34:49 - Speaker 2
I think the majority of the hours me shouting at dogs. So a huge thanks to Nye for doing that. 

0:34:57 - Speaker 1
That was a very fun hour. He's got a very good, very dry sense of humor. And thank you to fucking dogs as well. Noisy boogers right. See you next time. 

Sorry, there was one more thing, would all of you mind going to YouTube Searching for the trail and adventure motorbike podcast, where we have our first video. If you haven't already Watch it, like it and then please subscribe to our channel. There's gonna be lots more fun and entertaining videos coming soon. Hopefully we're gonna go and record another one this weekend in Knowles Honda Museum you lucky people.