TAMP Season 2 Episode 20 With Austin Vince

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
[Music] welcome to the 20th and final episode of
season two you'll have to excuse my voice I'm just recovering from covid thankfully it's not been too bad we're
off on a trip so we're going to take a few weeks out but we'll we'll be back with season three we've still got loads
of great people lined up to to be on the podcast so we will be back in a few weeks time so we decided to go out with
a bang we're joined by the motorcycle legend that is Austin Vince you all know
him right everybody knows him surely he wouldn't be here otherwise but just in case here is his entry from Wikipedia
Austin Vince is best known for his long distance Adventure motorcycle Expeditions twice around the world as
part of Mondo Enduro and Terra Circa which were both produced as TV
documentaries as well as presenting the Mondo Enduro and co-presenting the terror Circa TV programs Vince has also
written and presented The Roots series on the Discovery Channel latterly he played the math teacher in the first two
seasons of channel 4's that'll teach him and has in the past taught us and John's
Northwood as a maths teacher he also served in the Royal Engineers Vince
attended the private Mill Hill School in North London then was sponsored through University by the Army but became a
pacifist while there and had to pay them to get out after University he returned to Mill Hill as a teacher and used to
teach at St John's in Northwood he is married to long-distance female motorcyclist Lois price who has
completed several notable Expeditions on her own he returned for a second School
in Northwood before leaving in 2016 to pursue his passion for mini motorcycle
Adventure trips brackets mini Mondos in the Pyrenees [Music]
before we start then is there a chance that this is too noisy and we should
reschedule rather than you gamely go ahead and then we get something that you
can't use or people complain about it we're not that fussy to be honest we're very much like yourself DIY ethos
no it's I think it'll be fine we'll see if it gets too bad we'll um we'd welcome that kind of interaction anyway wouldn't
we we'd like that I think so that's character and yeah something to talk about okay you're wrong on all of those
it's just because your Charming doesn't mean that your shock could be out of focus Hey listen we've seen the baskets
you've put on the front of your motorcycle
well you should yeah that's nice as you've obviously guessed already we'd
like to keep it fairly light-hearted and fun we normally go through people's just to get people to introduce themselves
tell us a little bit about their biking history and then we're going to move on I've got a number of quite a few
questions too far away questions there yeah and then we've got a
10 section either or type scenario and then we've actually got some listener
questions as well so we've got some trusted listeners have you advertised the fact that I was going to be on only
to about six people okay to say if you've got any questions you'd like to uh to send in so we've got why and why
only six who are these six people oh it doesn't matter people have been on people have been on it mainly they're
the only people that listen I don't think that's the spirit of the podcast uh to to vet the
questions they're all they're all age eight and under that's all right imagine pressure time running like that we
actually vet the listeners let alone the people that are on the questions that are on the podcast it's a very select
audience you see it's funny for me this Austin because most people come on this blooming podcast and cite Charlie and
what's his face or Ewan and what's his face as their main inspiration for getting into traveling by motorcycle
whereas I think most people got into traveling by motorcycle because of you and because of the whole Mondo Enduro
thing and that's certainly how I got into it because um Long Way Around is a remake of 100
euro and Tara Circa yeah and was where they got the idea from
I suppose we're both right yeah I'd never considered before I read Mondo Endura which I stumbled across through a
strange promotion in a magazine I think that I had a dr350 at the time I never rode it more than 30 miles from home
I really didn't and I never considered that I could travel on it until I read that and I've been riding motorcycles for probably nearly 40 years at that
stage wow everybody that said that and then if I
had another nickel for the extraordinary [Music]
inertia or lack of inertia or obstructive forces that the motorcycle
industry has launched against
normal sized bike as a long distance um vehicle
I mean it's quite mad it really really when 100 years from now when we're all
dead and somebody kind of like write some kind of retrospective history they will ask
like those books about um I've got I've got a book at home called keep keeping it light keeping it
we want to keep this thing no don't ignore that ignore that advice I've got a book called the Gestapo Jews and ordinary Germans
and and it's a massive serious study of
kind of like how do they get away with it that kind of how do they do how do they do how do the Nazis do what they did without somebody you know how much
uh without somebody hang on yeah yeah yeah you know without uh and um and I
think it's going to be like that people are going to look back at this kind of enormous
Adventure by Madness thing and just say it was like was everybody asleep or or I
mean how but there and there is and there's this really serious lesson from history to to keep it to frivolous and
frothy a bit more if you could get a load of middle-aged men to do something
incredibly nonsensical uh and and then get them to think that it's a good idea then then anything is
possible yeah of course anything is possible well I spend five grand when you can spend 18 Grand on a bike with
much bigger margins I mean it's one of our pet things isn't it we talk constantly about getting smaller bikes because I mean where we ride you just
couldn't ride a 990 or a 1200 around the lake District you could if you were Christian Pfeiffer or bless his soul but
I think I've heard you say last evening or the perfect adventure bike is a bike that you can pick up carry around that has as little sort of
maintenance free as possible and it's essentially a bicycle of course yeah or
the perfect adventure bike is the smallest motorbike you're prepared to be seen on yeah so and I always think it's funny when the CRF came out all the
journalists I remember reading lots and lots of Articles saying who's going to buy this bike what is this bike for it completely baffled them didn't it that
hospital had made a 250 trail bike who's going to buy it I read every journalist saying who's going to buy this bike and
they just did not see it coming at all today I don't think well that's a there's another another extraordinary
thing that I've learned in the last 20 years that I didn't know let's say 30 years ago when I passed my
motorbike test it never occurred to me that it's like the music press actually
if you if you if you do an actual academic study of the music press and the music industry it's quite
extraordinary how out of touch it is given that that's the thing that they're
meant to be in touch with yeah the one thing that they're meant to know a bit about
um and and I re and I've seen so many my best friend uh from University you know we're in a band to go to university he
went on to become the editor of Quran and then he became the editor of Mojo
uh and remained an editor-in-chief of karang and Q magazine so I've kind of through him I've always had a kind of
funny little finger on the parts of these industry certainly since let's say the mid-80s I first met him in 1984. and
and we you know we talk all the time and it's and I've really really been fascinated in the parallels between the
music press and the Motorcycle press in terms of the way that the price of
the industry exists only to sell you something yeah it doesn't exist
to promote what is good now no definitely not anyway that's a very
broad issue we can now take this podcast in a very very different direction I can imagine the people the keyboard Warriors
are already hitting their their complain Now shortcut button they haven't
mentioned nobody ties once and what is these just like talking rubbish about it but it was going to go on about the CD
next the CD is not as good as the yeah
Greg might have told me this story that you'd once gone to a trf meeting to give a talk on track well what everybody
thought was going to be took on trail riding and anything to do with the with the trf and I think instead you gave a
very interesting talk on I think either steam or Railways or was it safety field
safety films or something like that it was Andy Hill um that was that was um I know what you're
talking about that was one night where I was booked to compare a night of 1950s and 60s
British property information films at the uh at the something uh which are
called the the something Festival in the Yorkshire Dales yeah apple tree week
yeah yeah uh and the grassington festival is that it
possibly that's around that way yeah yeah right I was booked to talk at the
Western festival and I said can I do my specialist subject of 1950s and 60s
public information films they said yeah sure somebody found out I was speaking and assumed yeah tell me about
motorbikes of course I lived by bread alone
and didn't and that and that I wasn't unfortunately for them one-dimensional and imagine how disappointed they were
of course the irony being that that I'll never forget that now because it was the first time I'd met somebody who left
after the trip and came out to me and said I'm not staying because you're not talking about motorbikes and then all I could think was
what on Earth is it like being married to you
so I wanted to get back to Ewan and Charlie oh great what why because you know I love I love them
you know that I didn't say why I didn't know I'll say why I said no said well
yeah do you know and you know why because basically I it was coming up to my 40th birthday when when the long way
round came on and my wife is a big Ewan McGregor fan I've told this story before
I know earlier well it's great it's great well people from like Star Wars
films they don't particularly like him but that's another story and she loved him and she we watched the long way around and we really enjoyed it and she
said to me you've you know you've always wanted to get your motorbike license why don't you get it sorted and basically I
went yeah booked it the next day and uh you know haven't worked back since so I've got a certain soft spot for him
were you involved in the long way around before what I mean are you happy to talk about that
uh I'm bored of talking about it I've never heard you talk about it before I want to know what you did and then what
went wrong in one in one sentence in one sentence then we'll move on I want to talk about
it at length for the next hour I would more I'd rather talk about it talk about it with you
in another setting when we weren't recording conversation yeah absolutely you know and I'd like what I'd rather do
is write you a list of 15 questions
yeah he does he doesn't normally get asked yeah yeah we could do that and that
could be that could be how we handled it but it's too it's too depressing for me
really it'd be like getting stronger talking about a bereavement or something yeah that would actually rather talk
about my dad dying wow we use my free time to be talking about
you McGregor and Charlie Brown yeah I've got better things to do I always will say that's fine we'll edit this bit out
but I'm gonna leave that biting because I like that bit do you still have I know you had
terrible luck with 350s getting stolen do you have any DRS left no they were all stoned
I found um I'd say about eight dr350s and every
single one was stolen it's heartbreaking to think that they're out there and people don't know the Providence of them
anymore that's terrible isn't it yeah it's highly unlikely that somebody's looking at it at like a piece of art and
saying that's the point and the tanks yeah the tanks were handmade for us that's I mean that's that is another
I've said that to me is a great a great um you're McGregor parallel they you
know they they get paid to do a trip yeah they make more money than anybody has ever seen in their life
just from the book advance for a book they didn't write they then become
basically the pension Saints of motorcycling for a trip that it that probably will be analyzed as being
possibly the least adventurous thing that any man has ever done in terms of a step into the unknown yeah
and then at the end of it they're I think one of their bikes was sold you know and and notionally money was given
to charity or something like that you know and then our story is like the exact opposite of that although these losers go off on this trip that
financially cripples them for the rest of their lives really and then they spend years trying to get the film made
which is so difficult to do when you remember the public to get you to get it on television back in those days it was
incredibly difficult and a massive effort to get that film on television
and and then why we were doing that within weeks of
getting back to England three of the bikes were stolen no never to be seen again it's just you know you couldn't
ask for two two stories that were more utterly you know the glory the the way
around the glory the The Prestige the the everything's amazing about it everything's right and then now I kind
of like pathetic that ironically preceded it you know and
do you feel sort of did you feel quite satiated in terms of long distance travel have you ever wanted to do
another trip as big I've done the least bit interested in Long Distance motorcycling but I would
if you know if I was um dictator I would insist everybody uh motorcycle around the world uh before
they were before they were allowed to get married that would be my um my Syria does everyone from the trip still ride a
motorcycle or really no though that's interesting you know why got married had
kids yeah let's let's go back a step and so how did you get into biking were you because
I sense you may have been some kind of an adventurer before you were a biker yeah I've never been an adventurer I'm a
member of the public absolutely not adventurous nor am I an adventurer no I
just like normal people my other brother wrote a motorbike it was the 70s he looked cool it just seemed obvious when
you had a sat on the back of his bike and he gave me a trip to school once and that was like this is amazing
and then you know my parents had were obviously anti-motor cycle like so many
people's I did but I didn't have you know I'm so jealous of the people who grew up on farms and and got put on
motorbikes by their dads yeah some of that I think I was very um I like I was an early BMX person in let's say between
about 1972 and 1976 when you there was interesting there's a BMX bike but my
dad got me a bicycle from America that had big profile tires uh not as big as
of what we'd Now call a fat bike but what we what we'd Now call BMX tires compared to in Britain obviously all
basketball tires were normal sized yeah and he got me this bicycle and I turned it into a I used it to do only jumps and
I was obsessed with Evel Knievel I had the toy and everything but really obsessed you've been able I went to um
Wembley I saw the jumper Wembley from it was my birthday present treat me and a couple of mates from school I love that
story because he came over and they hadn't done the calculations right and he knew that jump that he was trying to
do was impossible so he knew he was going to crash I disagree Clyde is that not the right jump I might not have the
information that you've got but but if you watch it if you watch the film of it again and again and again it was I just put it
down to being a slightly awkward landing and his perennial problem of the ramp being
you know not the right not at the right angle he did the distance but he did he
landed on the flat because they knew they weren't going to do it so he put an extra bit of flat bit across across the last couple of buses I believe yeah so
he knew he wasn't going to make the down ramp so they extended the ramp over the buses and I think because he landed on
the flat he crashed anyway yeah that you know bouncing and suspension just threw him straight back in the air didn't he how old were you then Austin when you
went to see that oh I can't well I I think it was actually about what 77 something like that so let's say I was
10. but how was it for all the sort of people around me so quickly yeah and the
other thing that's not clear unless you were there is that there was two hours of relatively
uninteresting support acts how did they make it into a show what else did they do there was a an old man who did that
thing where he dives off a tower and does a Betty flop Landing in a child's paddling pool and that was uh because it
was at Wembley you were by definition far away from everything but
but the old man do the belly flop stunt was right in front of us that was insane
I couldn't believe my armies and he was wearing a pair of old cowboy film style
long johns and uh you know um a combination undergarments yeah what
would what we'd call long johns and a thermal vest white ones but they didn't look like they were special stunt
clothes they looked like his actual underwear so and then
um then there was somebody else who did I can't remember what it was them juggling or something like that maybe someone was doing some tumbling a
different time different times like circus stuff and then it could either came out and it did the wheelies he just
wheelied up and down the side of the of the of what we what would be like the Athletics track or the or the Speedway
track and that was great and then the and then when the jump came he did like something mad you know like six dry runs
to build tension you know and then turned around at the end uh and then really finally I would I mean I wouldn't
remember any of it if I hadn't been able to watch on YouTube you the footage of the yeah but it's almost it's almost
akin to being on the grassy knoll isn't it in terms of history for a motorcyclist for men of our age anyway
yes and it was and you know of course if we're going to talk about authenticity
it's yeah it's the real thing yeah it was if I went to Nitro Circus and
watched them doing what they do it I just don't feel aroused yeah even when
you see something groundbreaking let's say like a double back somersault on a dirt bike you know they were able to
train for it yeah the jeopard is not there is it really no no I I I reckon I
could do a double black backflip on a dirt bike with with the with the with the training and the expertise that's
available yeah yeah I think you know if I had something I said somebody who knew
who could help me do it but what can evil did was just was was just it's it was was was truly irresponsible but then
on the night so but the crash happens and then all the all the you all Shuffle out crying
well when he said he's never going to jump again and also I think I'd never forget about that talk that that show
was he um uh before the before the uh the jump he
came up and he said right I want to talk to you about um narcotics and I remembered what what a nerve not
knowing what that meant at all and from the context I couldn't work it out either I was sufficiently clean living
from a drug-free home that I didn't know what he was talking
about and and he had this do you know what do you know what his analogy is do you guys know this story yeah because I think he
used to do it at a lot of shows given that he was like essentially an alcoholic that's just so brilliant
um but he had this he said he said you know you might get uh especially he says there's a lot of youngsters in the audience
and it's great to see you here today but you might get off with narcotics because let me tell you something every year I
go to the Indy 500. I love going to the Indy 500. every year there's somebody there who tricks out their car fits it
out with nitrous and they put illegal substances in their gasoline to give them the extra to give them the extra um
for the extra power and it does it gives them the extra ohm for the extra power and they go faster
than ever lap of the lap of the lap to go faster than ever but then just towards the end of the race they blow
all to hell that's what will happen when you take narcotics feels good you're at the front
you're ahead of everyone but then you blow all to Hell stay away from narcotics even when he said I still
didn't because I wasn't sure because I didn't understand the racing fuel analogy either I was too young for that yeah too young for everything too young
for the message I love this idea this guy's about to do
this really badly thought through jump and let's say Clive's right and that they had one bus too many yeah and then
he's lecturing you on safety ride Safe Kids [Music]
yeah so that was you know it was the 70s my older brother had a motorbike I wanted to get one I wasn't allowed to
without waiting to go to university and then secretly bought an MZ ts125 which I
think under EU law would not be allowed to be described as a motorbike it was so
awful uselessly in um inefficient that'll be a two-stroke
motorcycle yeah yeah yeah it was a weirdo we only ran about a quarter of the time I owned it yeah it was hopeless
hopeless I I really it's kind of building of course the seeds of the long-distance traveling really came from
my brother Gerald who Who as a matter of course during the 80s let's say from the mid
80s because he's nine years older than me he was always obviously nine years ahead of me he
he's a bit of a lone wolf and a natural Iron Butt person only
needs um cigarettes and coffee and then and alcohol to keep going doesn't need
rest or Creature Comforts like the rest of us and he uh through the 80s he would
get he he would get out his motorbike and he would drive as far as he could in his three weeks of holidays from the
railways sorry sometimes you do that in America he'd fly to America get hold of a
motorbike from somewhere and do these insane he'd be riding 600 miles a day every day on tarmac not really even
doing anything just one of those people who was who who the act of motorcycle himself was that was the catharsis yeah
and so I didn't want to do that at all but he
was just there and so because he was the older brother everything kind of like he was the filter that everything went
through and eventually he said come on let's go to uh let's go to Morocco and
back so I did that he kind of kidnapped me um the day after I left my course at
soundtest I had two weeks of of leave and I went to my mum and Dad's house obviously and um and he said and he and
he told me we're gonna I'm gonna take it away on the motorbike and we went two up on his FJ 1200 around down through
France and Spain Ram Morocco came back just time out the whole way and um was
Gerald working on the railways at this point yeah he was working at Bournemouth then yeah boardman's railway station and
um so that was two up that was quite boring but I think but he uh we took turns riding to take
two times driving sort of thing we um calmed out a bit every now and then we had no catering equipment so we didn't
eat we never we know we never off camped properly which would have been great fun but just I'm just amazed at how all the
things that I now take as a given in my dare I call it on the tours that I run in the Pyrenees everything we do on
these tours I didn't do myself it took me decades to work out what I would
suggest is a really good template for a great week of of trail riding and rough camping and stuff like that it was not
obvious it was a massive process of iteration trip after trip after trip I
would even say a monorange Euro we were I was six months into Mondo Enduro 180
days living on the road rough camping South Carolina and still hadn't quite worked out what
what the template was what the formula was if we'd stayed with Gerald template
it would have just been like these we'd have gone we'd have emigrated to America and done iron rallies that's why that's
where he wanted it to end up sort of thing and then we did this trip around Eastern Europe in 1990 or 1991. that's
and then that changed everything once we'd seen once we did a long trip and in the on
the trip we discovered let's call it you know other cultures that were different
from our own and then that was the light bulb moment we thought wait a minute the places we are are far more interesting
than the active motorcycling itself and that's when Mondo regiro was born I
think anyone who hasn't read it I would urge them to buy it and read it it's a wonderful it's a it's a sort of a diary
format isn't it it is um miniature a miniature along around story
long around happened came out and Bonnie complete coincidence or chance not
coincidence is like a big chance I was at a party with a friend of mine who was a big noise in journalism in London he
was the former editor of the Guardian guide you know the little A5 color uh you know what's on guide that came with
the guided on at the weekend and a friend of his was the head of
Acquisitions at a big Publishing Company who I won't name to avoid embarrassing anyone and my friend introduced me to
this other guy to his friend the uh the head of Acquisitions and with the line oh here's Austin he this is Austin he
rides a motorbike and this other guy said oh yeah oh I've got some I've got a a treatment for a book by this actor Ian
McGregor who's just who's um done this this trip yeah we pulled out of the uh
the bidding war for it when we got to one of ounce of 600 000 pounds so the advance that was they did get was
obviously definitely more than six hundred thousand quid yeah and they hadn't
you know they not only did they not write it you know they weren't even going to write it and
um so that was a bit uh I had that kind of totally by chance I had that experience in other words I was the only
person in that party in that room in Camden Town who owned who had a motorbike license I wasn't in a
motorbike motorbike Community I was in a dare I say a London metrosexual uh media community
and then the thing that happened then was that I got an email from a guy saying hi I run a publishing company in
Scotland is there a Mondo Enduro book and I said no strange enough we
the guy who was the actual journalist the actual writer on the trip Charlie pente chass penty he was gonna he tried
to get the book published back in um you know uh 96. nobody would touch it you know had you all set out writing Diaries
we wanted diary writers or do you set out with the intention of coming up with a journal at the end of all the Diaries
Amalgamated together Gerald's idea again Gerald was obsessed with the idea of recording the hard data of how many
miles we went each day and where we started and where we finished so he wanted diary entries that were sent
essentially a sentence for each day and then we start then
people started kind of like kidnapping the diary and writing a bit more yeah and then and then because actually
everybody on the crew except Gerald could string a sentence together
it then became a thing right in the diary became actually of course our therapy yeah and you went all for your
own and you got a beer and you sat you went away from the rest of the other Sandra tree and started running the diary so that very quickly within within
two weeks the diary was was a had took on a life of its own yeah the seven of
us we each wrote um the same day of the week you know I was writing Tuesdays there was never a point where you got to
the end of two or three days and we realized oh no one's written the diary oh no no and and also very quickly
because there was because there were seven of us the other jobs that we had to take care of community the other six
would do and would and would leave the diary writer at every moment in the day we'd stop for a morning coffee somewhere
make a you know make it Brew ourselves on the stove the die writer would go and sit on his own and start writing up what
had happened in that first three hours the discipline was extraordinary yeah and so the last bit of that story is
this bloke found me emailed me he said Do You Wanna is there a Monday Gerber I said now we've tried to publish one but
failed and uh we were chatting and he said I've seen the TV show and I've just watched
this long way around thing and he said the difference between module and Long Way Around is is chalk and cheese yet
they're the same thing but they're not the same thing and I said yeah I said
tell me about it but I said I definitely know that and he said he said well I've
got a published company do you think you could write it but I said oh God no way you know I'm a full-time teacher I'm working to pay off the debts from Terror
Circa by this stage you know I was only been back from that trip about three years I was still paying for Terror Circa because there's no way I'm I'm
writing a book and I think Chaz who was the proper author he lives in Madrid now he's got two small children he you know
he doesn't want to be writing a book and so that was it I said um and I can't
remember exactly what happened but he's I said yeah we just got the Diaries and that's it and that's when this guy this
guy is here because would you mean the Diaries somebody wrote a diary every day he goes on how much like I said a couple of seven decisions no we wrote about a
thousand words every day because what I said yes sorry I said I should have
mentioned this yeah there's there's a quarter of a million words already written
he goes can you send me these Diaries and I said yeah either no and I think we're just in a cup you know a shoebox
under my bed so I sent him the Diaries and he but a few days ago later he emailed me back he
says he says this is it this is the book which is printing like this no change anything so it wasn't really it wasn't
heavily edited or edited at all um only to remove spelling mistakes and a few factual errors where we got the
names of towns We spelled the names of towns wrong and stuff like that so the of all this I think there's a lot of interesting things about madrature but
one of them is that when you read that book you're reading a book that was never meant to be read by anyone we just
wrote it there was a small contract whereby we said to our parents we're not going to
write letters home it's going to be too difficult but what we will do is we'll write the diary and
we'll send that home and then we said it to my mum and dad in Bournemouth and then they sent it to the next set of
parents and there was it like a chain letter and then the parents got it and they read like 30 40 days of of what we've
been up to and then they waited like another three months for the next volume of the Diary to arrive they were they were that thick you know they were 85
100 pages and so it was it was just Britain for our parents so that's why there was no bad language in it and
there was no references to sex or or there was no references to any excessive
Behavior now my both my parents have died in the last um five years so now I could
write the real the real story you know but now that I'm married I can't do that
but he was of course just a load of guys on the road
it's an amazing reason a few books I've read where I was
getting towards the end I was kind of panicking it's going to end I don't want this book to end I was gutted when I'd
finished it is it still in print can people still buy it Austin no so I've just had a quick search on Amazon and
you can get it for 38 quid on Amazon I wonder if you can if you try and buy that they might that might not even exist and somebody somebody investigated
this for me it gets posted there somebody's but somebody's sort of for sale the other day for like 150 quid a
secondhand one it was mad I keep meaning it's on my list of things to do is to is to re- publish it especially now that
you can do that so easily with you know but it's I'm just I'm too busy doing other things and I'd like to put it I'd
like to put it out again I think it I I read bits of it every now and then actually I haven't even got a copy of it
I've only got the originals I haven't got a copy of the book what do you believe and but but when I read the
Diaries especially in the light of what's happened really since long way around and the adventure bike explosion
I really I just think oh you know this is amazing I cannot believe it was
I was one of these guys doing this I can't you know it it I think it's incredible I'll sign my copy and send it
to you I'll keep in mind 38 quid for it well I was going to ask
about you're obviously quite busy with with all the various events that that you have going on we will talk about
those in a bit but do you get a chance to to ride now for pleasure I don't I'm not one of these people who would like
Drive their motorbike on a sunny day to a tea wagon and have a cup of tea and
then drive home I would never do that I haven't got enough time for that but because I do so much motorcycling on my
trips in Spain and so much motorcycling preparing the Vince navigation event
which is like that takes like three weeks of incredibly intense aggressive
trail riding I'd have been like get out of my way really long busy days in the saddle over
new fresh territory with the maps constantly working the maps working an area trying to find every single trail
that exists in a given 800 square mile air you know part of the Pyrenees that's by the end of that you know I don't have
to pay twice a year to do that you know so I'm doing eight and nine ten weeks of non-stop trail riding so a lot of the
rest of the year uh I'm often not trail riding not because I'm sick of it but I've got there's other things I really
want to do and I can't I can't spend I can't I can't make trail running my only Hobby
what first Drew what first Drew you to the Pyrenees I was a very specifically an article in
trail bike magazine in about oh hang on let me just think uh in about
1999 that uh where they sent their or slime elbow or whoever it was they sent
the correspondent out to moto Venturas who were based in Andorra and they went trail riding for a day and the pictures
were mind-blowing and me and my brother had been taking groups of mates out to
Almeria to ride around where they meet the westerns I was obviously obsessed with spaghetti wrestling so it was a
double whammy to go trail riding around down a valley that Clint Eastwood had ridden down on a horse you know Western
was like it was I was just like covered in semen by the end of it or somebody else's it was a team
building trip so so that's where we used to go for our for our trail riding and also we hadn't
really discovered trail riding in the UK I wasn't then I think 19
1997 we did our first run of these trips I wasn't in the trf I didn't know the trf existed I didn't know trail riding
existed and I honestly thought if you wanted to ride a motorbike across some Rough
Country you probably had to go to a desert in Spain to do it did I didn't know that you could do that in England
so we were we were already going as far as our Maria to go trail riding and then
when I found out that you could go to the Pyrenees and we saw these incredible pictures and travel around because that was that was the moment absolutely that
exact article was when we used to drive through the Pyrenees cursing at the tunnels and the weekly roads and like
that it never occurred to us that the area was CR the most bloody obvious thing of all was that Spain is
crisscrossed with with like 10 times as many trails as it has miles of tarmac
that ratio that level of network and we didn't realize
we were driving past this network driving through this network on timeout roads to get to an actual desert we
thought it never we didn't realize that you could ride along an Old Farmers Trail we thought you had to go to a dry River Valley was used in a West that's
so stupid I needed a mentor I needed a mentor so much tell us about the trips that you've got
coming up because we're getting into riding season presumably for your stuff
yeah I do three weeks in May June and then we do about four weeks in September
so now after let's say let's say 20 24 years of going to the brownies every
year has made me an expert on the area I know
every single Hotel gas station supermarket I know more trails in the Pyrenees than
anybody in the uh in the world I think I know more than a Spanish people do because my experience out there is that
Spanish dirt bikers work their own area but they don't do what I do which is go
to different areas hundreds of miles apart move in to a building and then
spend the next three weeks aggressively riding every single Trail that's on the map and then try and then using and now
they go you know that's what we used to do in the old days now that we've got Google Earth and GPS's we can find
trails that aren't on the map which is of course the great dream so yeah I started I started the the bat reading
thing the vents about 17 years ago the variable intensity navigation challenge event and I just wanted to it's a school
teacher in me I once I'd discovered how extraordinary the the Catalan Pyrenees are
I uh and I was thoroughly enjoying the map reading that was the whole thing all
the motorcycle trips around the world you never have to map read at all not properly you know you just go you just retirement the whole time
but and the Pyrenees we got these old crappy um Spanish Army maps from uh
Stanford's in uh Cobble Garden hooray for them and still going go get your match from them and we got these maps
Martin and would mark them up looking looking for Trails just we'd just stare at the map trying to find a little black
line that went from one place to another and that was it and we would spend hours and hours me and my brother Gerald and a
few other mates would just sit there with these maps for hours on end in the spring and then and then we'd we'd have like
six or seven or ten of these Maps make a little schematic do a little hand drawn thing and then we drive out in the van
with the bikes on the trailers uh park the van and then we'd try and ride the first Trail it was on the map and most
of the time it worked sometimes it was it was a disaster because the map was wrong but when it worked the combination
of trail riding and map Reading was a new high for me and I had by then
started trail riding in the UK I've become a member of the trf let's remember the CRF
and so I was doing my English Trail right when I put my British trail riding and loving it but invariably was Guided
by a local uh expert who would who would just take me and my mates off on a trip we had a brilliant time obviously we
love it love the trail riding everything's great but the real the class A stuff was to self navigation in
the Pyrenees trail riding plus the Maori and that's so that's uh I was loving that so much had this idea of an
audience hearing event and I couldn't I couldn't think how to do it and I thought well there's no such thing as motorcycle volunteering how's that going
to work uh there's no organization that does something like this I can't I can't go and offer to help somebody else
organize something like this for them did I say it like a look if you look at the story about I have to do it myself
there was there was no one to turn to so I created my own map Reading event and
wrote a letter Lois wrote a paper letter to every single person that we knew with
a motorbike license in the spring of uh of like 200 uh four or 2005. one of
those years and we said we've we've got this idea for a
for a map Reading event we've set up a load of checkpoints in Spain and they're
just sitting there and would you like to do it and all those we said the letter to 82 people and 64 of them turned up
from and they're all friends about us they were all that you know you some some people went out and bought dirt
bikes just to do it yeah and instead it's weird because instead of it being like seven people
12 people the response from our mates was astonishing and it and so we
marketed it as uh you know this is uh we dubbed the first reconnaissance on honeymoon so we marketed it as a
honeymoon our first anniversary honeymoon party and all these people came out we were the hotel in Spain and and when they come and did this thing
and uh there were 32 checkpoints and don't forget that now there's 88 over a much bigger area it's just you know it's
a much more it's much more difficult now than it used to be and um and everyone loved it and me and Lois just sat at the
hotel it's kind of literally like not so much waiting for the phone to room but just waiting for them to come back and hoping
that they'd come back and say that was insane that was like such one of the best things I've ever done and
without blowing my property too much that that is exactly the reaction we got they loved it and so we said we've all
got pissed that night and then I said something like I did a speech at the end so that's coming everyone this is great uh my marriage has lasted a year thank
you Lois for being my trail riding companion I would never done this without her I'd never had the time off
you know away from my wife to do on my own set it all up on my own thank you so much we are and then I sort of said had
too much booze and I said should we do this again next year and everyone cheered and that was it otherwise I was like oh my God so we had to kind of
it's a lot it was a long story I had to like create another one of these events in a different place in time for next
year and then that was it and it's that was that was pretty much what 18 years ago I haven't been captivated by the
sort of eight millimeter promotional films you did of it yeah they just looked absolutely dreamy before I'd even
been to the prunes I just thought that looks amazing we shot a lot of Super Eight I was in the in the in the 90s uh
in the 90s and the early 90s I was shooting I was shooting my entire life on Super 8 I've got tons of super eight
of those years and everything uh Barbecue's parties school days Sports days it's um it's a bit mad really it's
completed it's completely it's already a format that's 40 years behind the times but with those bikes and open face
helmets it really looked great in there yeah it was it was great it was great fun so how does it work then so people stay
at a hotel and then you just head out and back in a day to find as many of the of the GPS points as you can but without
GPS they're spread over about 800 square
miles we all stay in a hotel kind of in the middle of the map you get sent the maps and the checkpoint booklet that
says where all the checkpoints are eight weeks before the event and the idea is that in the normally
it's a two-day event but this year it's a three-day event because the um there's so many more Trails this year the experience has shown that uh it's
the only motorcycle event that I know of where the organizers set it up so that there's no possibility of
you completing the project so a big part of the game is for you to decide well
what can we do and what should we do uh what route should we choose to make it the most effective so I set up that all
of the the trails are a big spaghetti jumble you know it looks a bit the trail
Network's meant to look like a London Underground map that was always my inspiration and you know that that thing where
people try and go to Every London Underground Station in a day that was that was always at the front of my mind
of I want to replicate that but on motorbikes in the Pyrenees and um and so
when you get the map you are overwhelmed by the by what's on offer but you have to sit down with your teammates and say
well look what actually are we going to do then throw into the mix that there's obviously a new Petrol in certain places
obviously it's not that far away but you need to legislate for that and also the
map is wrong a lot of the time so when you get there amongst the things that you just send before the amount of the
event is all of the mistakes on the map and I and I create correct versions of
all the little bits of the map that are wrong and I show you what it is now at the moment and I share what it should be
so all the places that I get lost because the map's wrong you get given all of them so you never
get lost that's the idea and that is a massive amount of information once again
you don't need all of it but you've got to work out what route you're going to do maybe so as to minimize the number of
places where the map's wrong on your particular itinerary the people navigating completely by macro they're
making a road book from it or so last year or no two years ago was the first time
that we allowed GPS my business partner died Jones had been bending my ear about this and
he he virtually begged to have a GPS category for the people who
just didn't they wanted to do the trail riding but they didn't they weren't interested in the map Reading I of course couldn't believe that there was
such a person that that there was a person who didn't relish the map Reading as actually
that's the real that's the difficult thing the trailer is the easy bit the map readings the the um you know the
real Crux of it anyway so we created the GPS version uh two years ago and that
and but you still have to program their own routes into your GPS yeah we don't give you the GPS plots
your writing line is that only about one in ten one in 20 one into only about one
in 20 of the teams opt for GPS uh interesting 19 out of the 20 teams
obviously they've got some self-respect so they don't know the first year we did it there was only
one team entered the GPS section and everybody else was map only yeah and like and I've you know they got they
came up they got the guy bought the wine or something winning it and all they had to do was of course get to the end of
the day and they'd won but then you know then they were just like booed off the stage so
um but of course you know we were I mean I wanted people to go out there and enjoy it and you know I'm just obsessed
with sharing it and there's enough room out there there's enough there's enough room there's enough space to share it and not
and it not be a problem at all are you still doing a twin shock version then yeah absolutely yeah and that's you know
with the people who do that that's a huge thing and they or always have the maddest bikes yeah what do you use on
that event well I don't think I don't I create it but I don't ah right I thought you're in
it as well no I I did it one year there was a team from gloucestershire who I thought were cheating uh and I thought
they were coming out early and pre-riding the trails and picking up the answers for the from the checkpoints
early and then submitting points total at the end of the of the event that was
inflated and just not possible so I entered one year with Nick Plum the parastar racer he was my partner and um
he crashed I didn't um and uh his chain snapped and I had to
repair it with my stuff and what's like riding with Nick Plumb and he crashed and I didn't yeah oh you never crashed
so do you know November crashes 1986. right I might add that Plum is most
definitely a thousand times the rider I am and he'll he'll be the first to agree with that
so when do these events take place and how do people book onto them well you go to austinvince.com and it's all there
everything my whole motorcycle world dogs there so the navigation event the Vince and Twitter trailfinder they have
the same entry form type thing the event takes place once a year and this year it's 12 13 the 14th of September it's
and that's Tuesday Wednesday Thursday I've booked this enormous Resort thing which used to be a medieval village fell
into uh disrepair when the local Valley was damned and flooded everyone lost their fields The Village was abandoned
and then the government stepped in and restored it and turn it into a kind of like four Hotel complex it's part of it
used to be a monastery as well it's an amazing place also the Vince moves around the Pyrenees every year on a nine
year rotation so if you did it every year um consecutively in the 10th year you'd
be doing the one that you did in the first year so I think yeah so it's uh it happens in um in mid-september there's
112 people entered free at the moment teams I'm very proud to say from Denmark
Holland Germany obviously UK one USA team and one Italian team so that's my
um my dream was to kind of like help to try and turn it into like a kind of Festival of Tet get
I wanted them to take their way to the vins do the Vince and then take their way home it was like just like having a
big and of course it's a massive piss-up you know it's it's meant to be he was always always meant to be a huge party
with a map reading an event in the middle of it sort of thing you know I love the fact that tets now become a
verb
how do you get down to Spain do you ever ride down or doors I sometimes I go with
my um business partner die Jones in his van it works out that way other times I go I need I need to go before him or I
need to go after him and so I just ride out on the CRF250L with my luggage it's a joy I love writing it on the bwa wrote
it down or do you take the tolls or a voice if it's not raining if it's raining I'll go on the motorway and just
sit there like yeah like a courier just sit there and just grind it out it's awful there's no there's no way you can
sugarcoat that but if it's not raining I'm on the smallest roads I'll glare my hands on yeah and I kind of and I've got this old spiral bound Atlas and I Mark
with a you know a highlights of pain in my route and I kind of every year I do a different route do you ever ride with a
Sat Nav on the bike I did once last like two years ago I did my first ever
Crossing of France for the GPS I only got I owned only bought my first GPS two years ago so I'd never ever ever and
I've never used my phone as GPS so that was a big step for me to kind of load a
route into the Garmin and follow it I quite enjoyed it yeah because I didn't you know you don't know but I didn't
like not know where I was yeah I like the I like the paper I like the map I like this bike I like turning the pages
over as we work our way across France and I like the train spotter in me I like coloring in the bit that I've just done
an elderly relative that lived in the Pyrenees and he had an elderly friend lived in Northumberland and he talked to
me to going to visit him driving down and his elderly friend in Northumberland bought a little compass and glued it to
the dash of his car oh yeah and just headed south in France yeah but from Northampton into
the Pyrenees just using the compass glued to the dash of his car that's cool I thoroughly I hardly approve I had a
map from Stamford for the first time I went to Morocco and I did exactly the same thing marked out the route and all
the towns were visited and then I lent it to somebody I have no idea who I lent it to but I never got it back gutting
can we talk about can we talk about the film festival yeah sure because they did
Adventure travel Film Festival correct Mel's a big fan I've been to many film festivals of your film festivals oh
great yes I don't know how I talked you into that
but I've always found it hey listeners just be clear no did not talk me into showing his film because
like when I watched that film I didn't know it had been made by you Noel I watched it I loved it and I thought this
is just what we need and then I looked up on my little list who'd made it and it was your name and I recognized that
name as a mutual friend of we having Gregory Lobos and I thought oh that's funny I kind of know this guy but this
is the Iceland film yeah yeah it was very exciting very exciting to be included it's very good though we've
talked about it before it's an incredibly inclusive Festival that's what I've Loved about it I'm the least Festival sort of person I like to think
but I've always felt really at home at that Festival oh great well I was gonna say one of my favorite parts of the
festival we and this might sound a little bit strangely is just to walk around the camping grounds and just see
everybody's different outfits and just chat with people that are there that's one of the best bits get it really early in the morning or make a cup of tea and
just wander up and down and I've met loads of people I'm still in touch with now just from doing that little a little
tour of the campsite well it's nice I haven't been to very many rock and roll
festivals music festivals and I went through a phase of about two years of going to Enduros then I used to go to
the draw to dusk Nick Plum's event down at Walters arena in South Wales for a for I went to like eight of them in a
row in the naughties and I didn't like the atmosphere it was too uh too white
van Manish too competitive there was no sense of hey look at all of us people
here doing the same thing yeah we we kind of like we should be friends shouldn't we really we've all got the same hobby but but that atmosphere
didn't exist and I kind of wanted to with the Vince as well I wanted to create a motorcycle event that felt like
a party and didn't feel like some kind of rollerball adversarial event where
people were trying to outdo each other yeah I want people to make friends at my
events yeah well you've really succeeded in that and I think from the moment you arrived
there and you met by what was quite obviously a volunteer you know that really is the that's just an excellent start isn't it
as opposed to somebody from hmrc it's just a very homely feel to it yeah
absolutely instead of some kid with a tabard who doesn't know what's going on yeah or at the um ABR rally they have
had last summer they had 125 security guards I was told by one of the security guards
how many security guards are there is there 125 security guards here at our Festival which is of course smaller is zero security guards yeah and I am very
very proud to report that how are we doing for time are you all right to carry on a little bit longer yeah sure sure yeah because this I mean I haven't
asked any of my questions but I never I've been doing maybe I can get a repeat
booking okay you've answered a lot of them anyway so they're irrelevant and Noel's far better at asking off the cuff
questions because he has to be because he never does any preparations let's try this um these quick fire
questions either or questions see how we get on you don't have to just do either or you can expand or do what you want
really so so the first one I think you've answered this already biker or traveler neither I'm not trying to be
difficult you could say what you want I would never call myself a biker because in my mind a biker is those guys from
everywhere but Loose you know leather waist yeah yeah all that stuff and I
would never call myself a traveler because I'm not sure even what that means somebody who's traveling well that
means somebody who's commuting to work is probably a traveler so if there's connotations of what the word
traveler means I'm not sure if I would I'd much rather I'd rather much rather call myself a member of the public than
either a biker or a traveler right they're not going to get any easier by the way they're all contentious they're
not difficult questions let's just get the answer okay CRF or Dr
I'm afraid that's not once again it's not a robust question because now if you
offered me now a brand new barn find dr350 that's obviously by definition 30
years old never been written and a brand new CRF250L there's no competition it's the it's the Honda CRF250L it's a
superior bike but in its day if you if you'd offered me a brand new let's say
or xr250 or a Suzuki dr350 back in 1990 if you'd offered me that choice then
actually it would have been churlish to choose between them yeah if it's Japanese yeah you'd be surf a great bike
there yeah you know it's it's the people who don't make many motorbikes that you need to worry about I won't start a
Bushfire on the internet but you know somebody who's making a thousand motorbikes a year is not something I want to buy a motorbike from it's as
simple as that well we've both got crfs in fact one of us has got two I have two and we didn't quite ever get to the
bottom of that reason but there we go there's another one documentary or feature film oh like um I'm about to
watch something what do I choose is that the question yeah maybe or which type would I rather make yeah which would you
rather watch documentary or feature film once again I my answer is unhelpful
because Monday to Friday I tend to work documentaries and at the weekend to treat myself with fiction and fictional
feature films so once again you need both you need all the four main food groups you can't you can't stick fair
enough this one might be a body armor or stiff upper lip oh I would have said if
I believe until I'd done a series of pretty serious crashes back in sort of like 2012 and I was hurting myself a lot
uh and part of the reason for that was not wearing body armor so now I wear body armor I haven't really badly hurt
myself for a long time see no even Austin Vince wears body armor I mean I
didn't used to and I kind of got away with it for a long time you still fall off yeah every now and then yeah yeah but
also I I'm you know I ride a low motorbike I don't go very fast but I do ride in a very rocky place in the
Pyrenees where the stakes are quite high if you come off the chance of you you know is we have a lot of broken bones at
the Vince far more than like well I've never been trail riding ever in the UK and ended up with one of the group in
casualty at the Vince we have somebody in hospital with a broken leg every year
it's all rock and the smallest I watched a guy um come off in front of me the other day he was doing five miles an
hour at the most Hospital massive massive complicated smashed up tibia and
if you've seen it if I showed you the film of what caused this one of this this awful injury to his leg you'd say
there's no way that there's no way that injury and that crash did the same thing and they were but because it's rock yeah
no there's no it's unforgiving okay there's another one punk rock or rock and roll when you say rock and roll
originally Punk world you mean 70s punk rock yeah okay well then I'm not I'm not interested in that I'm only interested
I'm only interested in pot Rock 66 yeah like so like let's say December 65 to
early 67 that punk rock Sonic's Whalers standells remains Stooges fit in there
somewhere no that's too late for me the reasons I obviously decisions are great
MC5 great but they were late to the party and name and I'm much more interested in the guys that were kind of
freaking out the monks yeah the monks would be the band that I'd hold up and say look at what these guys were doing
in 1966 and then and then look at John Lyden Johnny Rotten and Sir vicious he
looked like the largest a couple of cry boys compared to the mugs you know and then of course really we need to say
well let's look at what um hazel Atkins look at Johnny but what was Julie Burnett doing in 1956 he was so or even
you know good Jerry Lewis I mean they're like they were so so out there and
because they've become famous we think oh yeah they were mainstream no they weren't they were absolute and Elvis
absolute Outsiders Outsiders so yeah 70s punk rock I was there and I didn't
notice anything of any interest frankly but but of course the punk rock ethic I'm right behind but when you say rock
and roll of course I I think of I to me that Sun rock and roll son Elvis Joey
Lee Johnny Cash Carl Perkins then if you're talking about that rock and roll listen to that all day yeah yeah yeah
and all of that I did a Sun Studios tour once because uh it's amazing it's three rooms and you
can't even go into the last room because that's that's where the big mixing desk you see you're only allowed in these two rooms but it was like a nearly religious
experience yeah absolutely brilliant one of my friends got married there I got married in Vegas by by an Elvis
really yeah yeah he said hey you guys know uh Noel from uh it's like no no not
you the other Noel that was in that famous yeah but yeah it's the same one that married him but it was like it was
like a gay Nick Cave more than more than more slightly disappointing but funnier
just because of that good and do you do you do music now don't you yeah I'm in the studio all the time you know like a
lot of people I was in bands when I was young in my 20s that was great we never
got signed I was you know I was a full-time teacher I didn't do the thing of giving up my job and being in the
band as my job or try trying to make being in the band was my job I was always too cautious for that and I
regret that enormously and the other guys I was in the band with Phil Alexander who was the you know who at
that time was working at karang and was then would then go on to become the eligible crying so he was he was in the
music industry already but he was there's no way he was going to like give up his career to to to work in our band
and um so that was all great great fun but then you kind of like fitted away but then a funny thing happened when I
did when I when we did modern Enduro I was in a band called the Quakers and we used to dress up as as uh you know that
played the Arthur Miller played The Crucible so you know say in the 1660s Witch Hunt
obviously it's all about the McCarthy all right right so we used to dress up
as Quakers and then because you do then play uh the set was basically Kinks
b-sides Rolling Stones instrumentals stuff like that but the whole set came from between 64 and 66. we took a lot of
uh of kind of standard 60s punk songs and rewrote hard right imagine if Isis
had a Christian Wing who who were in a band that's what the Quakers yeah
and so the original Quaker's gig it was you you got Hector by me because the
lead singer you got hectured for not being Pious enough anybody with flamboyant clothing on or or hair
products something like that you know they were pilloried but if not for not for deviating from the path of plain
living that was the whole idea and the plane living extended itself into the into the music which was of course had a
heavy you know three four chord line up but the entire gig was delivered as a
service as a church it was good Quakers were good band and then yeah and so when we got when we
when I got back from so the Quakers actually at the top of their game when I went on Modern Euro in 95. I'll tell you
uh my a brush with celebrity who directed the film of Trainspotting not who wrote Danny Boyle Danny Boyle yes
Danny Boyle was at one of our gigs by chance because it was a very cool club called the Frat Shack and it was
happening in Tottenham it was totally underground completely invitation only packed down like 700 people in in the
three floors of this kind of converted Hotel it was mental absolutely mental we were playing up on the top floor all in
the costumes it cost a fortune to rent all the costumes for the you know the hats and these incredible wigs and the
funny you know chin beard and all the doublets and these massive thick you know Danny Boyle saw the band and he
asked us to be he came out he came he said I'm Danny Boyle and that back this is like in 94 so it's totally train
spotting or whatever and he did shallow grave didn't he isn't that the whole thing he also did an episode of
Inspector Morse which I was in and met him yeah
he asked us to be in his next film we said yeah totally but then I went off on Modern Euro that's the end of that but
my point is that when we got back from Mongoose on my we I got the Quakers together and we wrote
all of the music for the modern Jerry film which was 48 separate tracks including the Sun theme and it was sung
by Michael parsley he was one he was he was the organ player in in the Quakers so it was once again it's all to make
the long way around comparison there's I read somewhere where uh one of them said that uh they were texting lyric ideas
from their tent to that band some band that was going to do the theme tune for
them I can't remember I'm not even going to Google it yeah this is this was this is like you know when you're a famous
actor you know people in famous rock bands You know so that's how the lonely
round theme happened and the Giro theme is we wrote the song you know
and brought to studio time and let's play it wasn't recorded them yeah I
didn't get someone else to do it [Music]
another question these are oh I like these these are working out quite well I wasn't sure whether they'd work or not but I don't
want you to think that I'm that I'm a difficult uh customer no no no no no no no I can't you know if you give me a
straight choice where I know that where I know when I know which one I choose I'll tell you I'll tell you and I don't want you to do that I want you to talk
Sushi versus yeah yeah and fish fingers yeah okay yeah all right 50 50s
or noblies oh noblies the whole time well it's certainly while I'm riding a
CRF250L If I Was A Street biker I would have street tires yeah good that's what
we all say no please forget 50 50s and and also the the fraction idea you know
this when people say 80 20 50 50. what they don't understand or I'll rephrase that of course they understand but what
I think is important to point out is that um if you're on a road trip a long a long road trip but you intend
to rough Camp only one percent of your day will be off-road but that's the one percent when you need 100 knobblies and
so it's because the nobody Tower can be ridden on tarmac all day and it still works especially modern you
know modern jeweled purpose tires yeah like like I use the the
um uh the Michelin tracker I used to be the Michelin ac-10 those those tires when you go around corners on them don't
let you down there's no sensation oh my God I want to dirt bike tire not at all so they're like fantastic road tires all
day certainly on a on a 250 for me and then the second you get to the trailhead and you think let's go up here and find
someone to camp they're kicking ass and taking names yeah yeah I agree it's so important to be
able to get to that spot isn't it at night and if it facilitates that it's definitely worth it I could write a book of or I could fill a book with stories
of co-writers who've had the wrong tires on and we go off at the end of the day
trying to get to the trying to find a camp spot don't know where we're going I don't know where we are and we can't go
any further because of that guy's choice of Tire we have to turn around and go back and come somewhere crap when when
there was somewhere amazing waiting for us up that trail uh but just because a
selfish person would say oh no I don't want to have nobody tires you know
we did a couple of uh beginners guides to trail riding and that's what we said forget 50 50 tires just getting obvious
just don't no argument just do it and when you wear out change them people always go on about oh my God my tires
will wear out that's no good or what do you think it's gonna happen to them [Laughter]
it's wearing out there door your tires okay I often have this argument with no because he's all
it's all about miles per gallon and I'm saying well if you don't want to use petrol I can sell all your motorbikes
that's not what motorbikes are about what's your best um MPG on the CRF I'm
getting about 80 on mine both of you it's your all-time best I well I don't know I've never calculated it you liar
you're obsessed with it that's all you talk about ever I don't calculated because I'm I'm just more amazed at how
little it takes to fill up each time that I just think I can't believe I've been riding two days and it's cost me 12 pounds you don't even have to disturb
the cobwebs in your pocket do you so I mean you've got a you've got a miles per gallon on your dash haven't you I don't
have that on a two I think I think the most I've ever got is about 82 on mine I've got a new 300 um but I've only done
400 miles on mine so it's all that's amazed to find with some pretty aggressive uh and thorough you know data
number crunching that my trail riding MPG was the same as my rotary cruising
MPG 85 on both occasions well I spoke to Greg Greg today and he said he did a
trip up into Scotland on his own and camped out for the night and came back and he said he was getting 100 miles per
gallon incredible that's good but the highest I've ever heard of that is
validified or credible is 92. I'm sure your listeners will phone in with their
outrageous stories of 250 miles Greg's absolutely tiny so he'd just been
able to hide behind the clocks or something all right last one two-piece or all in
one well I I tend to be an all-in-one person at the moment that's the question why how did this happen how did you
start how did you get into the uh overalls in Turkey on Terra Circa when
we used to wear full Leathers you know I mean you know separates leather jeans and leather jacket but it was getting
too hot and it was too uncomfortable and we'd be in Dave greenhouse on Terrace Ergo we saw a shop selling overalls so
we so we bought a pair of cotton overalls each I'd never owned my own pair of overalls but we put one then we
saw a haberdasher with a man sitting in the window doing alterations so we bought some stripes and asked him to sew
the stripes on basically thinking of that you know the famous um yeah between Le Mans picture oh I think when I said
the seeds was Zone at Wembley no not at all yeah and it's leather and it's
applique or it's um aperture you know he does he has he has um star-shaped holes
cut in the side of the jeans with white leather behind them so it's different different technique really and um we had
these overalls with these Stripes stuck on them and then we saw some patches for sale we got them so as well we walked around the two of us these matching
overalls and we and I and I've never I've never I just felt like a million dollars I've never felt so alive and uh
and I thought this is a great this is a great look and people will start looking at us in the street you know which they
never used to do wearing my really expensive leather jacket and really expensive tailored leather trousers yeah
my trousers and my jacket had been were hundreds and hundreds of pounds each
expensively tailored and these these 20 pound overalls were head Turners and
then I got set in um in Tokyo on Terra soccer in in 2001. I got when I got to
uh then we got to Hawaii on the way to America had some more stripes sewn onto them and then it went mad people people
were coming up to me in the street saying where did you get those overalls and I'd say I did them myself and they're like what what you know can't I
buy them anyway that's that's another story so yeah one piece that's where it came from do you have like an Elton John
wardrobe of the full spectrum of colors of yeah yeah I have about 40 pairs wow
normally we send people that have been guests on the podcast we normally send them a a t-shirt but I don't suppose you
actually you've ever worn a t-shirt no I don't wear t-shirts no so I've had specially made just for you
a patch to sew onto your overalls which I'll send you yeah it's not the only one in the world no I've got 10 of them
you've got 10 patches done yeah would you mind answering the question as to
how much they cost I think they're about a fiver each so wow that's great is that is that I will
absolutely guarantee that I will put that um patch on my on my overalls and one set of overalls that I'd wear look
it might even be I think it's even iron on possibly fantastic
I'll over sow the iron on glue quickly tell me whereabouts are you guys
exactly as one of you near Campbell we're both near Kendall I'm west of Kendall near a place called sedba yeah
and Knowles you're just north of Kendall aren't you know wait a minute said there's not west of Kendall east east
sorry east of Kendall absolutely your story doesn't check out he always yeah he always gets those two mixed up I have
to go west to get into Kendall that's what it is as a child as a keen train spotter I was obsessed with the subtle
color Railway so I had Manny Manny holidays before I was even 13 basically
shuttling myself and my dad up between settled and Carlisle and uh and then weirdly when I went to Mill Hill school
they had their own field study center in the village of Dent they used to take us
little North London oiks up there to go caving and uh and walk the Three Peaks
and stuff like that and go to Ingleton and look at Thornton force and everything so I had a kind of incredibly
massive Yorkshire Dales part of my life as a youngster and it uh and of course I
I fell in love with it enormously and and then when I went to work at Mill
Hill as an adult teacher we were still doing those trips so then I got the privilege going being paid to go back
there every year walking uh I was I was I was a top rope and absolutely instructor by then so I was I was
teaching kids um to climb uh on the on the Crag opposite uh White Scar caves is
that what they're called yeah the one on the road on that straight road yeah between Ingleton and uh rulehead yeah so
that's that's a big big part of my life you're so don't think of me as just a Towny from the south
[Music] so a couple more questions then and
these are from uh listeners uh one of the questions was are you pleased with the impact and the success of the trans
Euro Trail uh yeah you know what I'm gonna say you must know what I'm gonna say if I'm because you know that I'm
dare I say a trail riding industry professional so I want everyone to go trail riding
obviously and I want to share the love I love the it's the it's the international
eurocentric element of the of the tech which excites me the most and of course the dream you know once
once the tech extends into Central Asia and Russia that will be I don't know if
that will happen in our lifetime but I think it will happen and I don't know if it'll be under the Tet Banner but
that'll be fantastic really fantastic um so I'm yeah I'm a massive Ridge detect
what of course I'm I can't bear seeing is people getting into a pickle on the Tet
when it it would appear to a Layman that they they were out of their depth when
it's obvious what we don't want is like trail riding in Britain we don't want sections of the day being over over
trafficked by people who then get stuck I'd have to are having to call Mountain Rescue or annoying a certain a certain
farmer in a certain place you know we want we want that is that we're back to the trf code of conduct aren't we some
people uh some people don't realize how delicate the house of cards this is and
we mustn't knock it down and with the what and what stops us from knocking down is our excellent and exemplary
behavior and I was used to it as it's the school teacher in music people that people are not used to being told how to
behave and they don't like it or not a lot of people really resent being given
a code of conduct they think it's incredibly insulting and I would humbly
suggest of course it's not meant to insult anybody it's meant to keep the house of cards standing up and there's
no point in letting the house of cards fall down and then after saying I didn't realize it would fall down that's what
the Guardians of the debt and the Guardians of the trf need to do what it takes to stop somebody through their uh
let's say good natured ignorance knocking down the house of cards I think we should do an episode null of talking
about code of conduct and behavior on Trails I think that's I think there's a subject there it's a compilation ask
everybody that question and then make an anthology of good answers I'm sort of one of the administrators well I'm sort
of one of two people that sort of run the Instagram page for the tech I didn't know that and one of the things we try
to do is just to sort of include as subtly as we can points from the code of conduct with
each Post in a way or just reinforce it the whole time yeah right it's really hard to do Austin isn't it in a way that
doesn't come over completely in a way that turns people off or makes them feel lectured too it's really difficult we're
going to keep trying right I think we'll do one more question and then we'll call it a night it's been brilliant are you
looking forward to Electric motorbikes but as a as an older man now well you
know as a 56 year old it's going to be a day eventually when I can't when I'm going to be finding it harder to trail
ride or I'm more creaky or I'm more scared of crashing and I'll probably be
retiring to some kind of either electric mountain bike thing or
or something they're not the the uh the
punk rocker inside me wants an electric mountain bike electric motorbike to ride
on public footballs and Bridal ways which I don't would not feel was an
unethical act I think it's all about the noise it's as simple as that and
um so uh I I can't imagine I can I can
afford one for the time being but uh yes I've got no problem with it and also the wind is blowing that way now it wasn't
that long ago when people normal people would have just gone mental if you told
them they couldn't drink alcohol and then drive their car they would have
just said were you out of your mind of course I can do that you know it's and it's like smoking indoors in our lives
we've seen the wheel turn and then we never we're all old enough to imagine the time you know when everybody smokes
everybody smoked all the time I teach you to smoke in lessons and it changes and 100 years from now
there won't be dirt biking hopefully it'll be all electric yeah and then of course people will be saying can you
believe it they used to be like roaring across this Prairie begging you know loaded by
making a huge Racket and they got away with it but uh yeah so I mean it's gonna
happen whether we like it or not we have to obviously try and be one step ahead of the curve and we you know embrace the
inevitable change it takes I think it takes older people dare I say like us
to realize that things can't be the same the whole time that's you know that's
the brexit that's the brexit Nostalgia thing it's it's not it's not the country
it used to be there is no British Empire you know things have changed and we've got to work with that or or being real
it'll be in a real pickle yeah foreign
thanks for having me um really uh really uh flattered to have
been asked to be on your on your show and um be very good at letting me Witter on okey dokey right bye
[Music] what did you think of that that was
quite special wasn't it yeah I really enjoyed it I was quite apprehensive about it because I bumped into Austin at sort of NEC bike shows I happen to be on
the same Ferry as him doing when he was going out to Spain to do a film in 2012 but it's always been a long time to sort
of sit down and have a chat with him you know it's always been busy doing something else it was great to just be voice to voice with him like that but
I've bumped into him a couple of times as well and he's very opened he will just talk to anybody that whole thing about you know I'm just a citizen I've
made a couple of films I do this but that's me he is very very approachable but what a rack on tour is rackete the
right word I think it is yeah somebody that's really good and amusing uh at speaking well he's all of that
definitely all of that isn't he he's very good God it was such good value I can't listen to it the link you sent me
today and I thought oh this is just this this is why I said you're putting out as a two-parter it's too good to give away
in one go well I don't know I couldn't there was no it has to be it's good in
its entirety though yeah people can pick and choose whether they've well they'd have listened to it by now but solar and
Aaron 19 minutes of just sheer talking fun yeah and passion is so passionate
about it I can't believe you brought up you and Charlie that was outrageous that's what everybody wants to know I'm
just doing it for the people I was genuinely going to I thought today I think I am going to send in my copy of
Mondo Enduro because it seems terrible he doesn't have a copy of it himself anymore well I just picked it off the
shelf and I looked in the cover and there's a lovely little message from Ashley with the deck 2007 when she gave it to
me but yeah it was great I loved it and I thought he was really easy to talk to very candid about stuff but it was great
yeah you kind of feel that what you see is what you get there's no other side to him is there really it was an easy edit
then it was just the easiest idea I've ever done it was just like those whole sections of five and ten minutes I
didn't need to take anything out it was literally instead of taking me an hour and a half well it's we nearly recorded
for two hours and normally that's probably like three days work almost and it took me three hours in total I think
which is good so he's got a couple of events coming up that people should definitely try and get to one is the
adventure travelfilmfestival.com as well in the Cotswolds in England in August
and uh August the 12th and 14th and one in Scotland in Perth in July the 8th to
the 10th and then what's the event in what's the event in Scotland well it's the Trap Adventure travel Film Festival
oh the film festivals put on up there I don't think we've talked to you about the film festival but I was going to say
people are thinking about the film festival it does always sell out pretty quickly I think the other thing was the
the Vince which is the trail biking orienteering fun thing in the Pyrenees
that's in September and I think that's something like 180 places for that for
accommodation and he said there's 112 tickets already sold and if you're getting early it's 260 quid I just read
it a bit on the um on his website Motocross Spaceman clothes are forbidden wear armor yes but under your crocheted
poncho [Music]
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