Wild Dogs And Nutters Part 1 - England to Iran copyright 2013 by Joie de Vivre World Joie de Vivre Edition

Also by Joie de Vivre World Adventuring For The Common Man Travel Series: The Dog's Rollocks Feel Good Revolution Series: Are You F***ed In The Head?

This book is free - you can use it in anyway you see fit - post excerpts (or the whole thing if you want) on your website, blog, message board, or anywhere else - send it to anyone you feel would love to read it or print it out and stick it all over your naked body and run around [insert your home town] as a human bill board, so long as you do not alter the content or claim it as your own work. It isn't essential but if you have time it would be great if you could let us know where you have used it by emailing us Oh and we keep the rights to bind and sell it in book form as well as the film rights (well, you've got to think positive...) Thanks - Mark & Laura

Table Of Contents

Thanks and Preface Chapter 1 - England - Guiness and World Records Chapter 2 - France - Falling at the First Hurdle Chapter 3 - Germany - Tandeming in the Teutonics Chapter 4 - Austria & Slovakia - Sleeping with the Dead Chapter 5 - Hungary - A Rifle Butt in the Spokes Chapter 6 - Romania - Old Gits and Vampires Chapter 7 - Bulgaria - World Cup Stops Play Chapter 8 - Turkey - A Weasel in the Works Joie de Vivre World

Thanks Thanks to the all the great unwashed who had the pleasure of meeting us and playing a part in our Quixotic Exploits, however small and insignificant that part may have been. Without you all. The trip would never have been possible if you hadn’t made up in numbers what we lacked in the trouser department, having only the one pair between us. In case you’re wondering, Mark was the pie. ** Preface This journey was undertaken in a time without mobile phones, without the Internet, without digital cameras and wireless connections. Without blue tooth and denture whitening, skype, hype and lipo-suction. In a time when a blackberry was a fruit, an Apple a vegetable and a nasty rash and boils, incurable. Indeed without the aid of most of the critical inventions of the past 15 years. That such a monumental odyssey was possible at all in such primitive times may be the cause of disbelief in some younger readers still trapped in the excessive masturbation years - but it has to be remembered that we were purveyors of Old Skool Adventuring where ,when teetering on the edge of a 3000ft precipice pursued by yetis and the inland revenue, you had to rely on your own metal rather than call up Buck Rogers or the Mountain rescue on your iPhone. Steel belted underpants were the order of the day. True, we still regularly soiled ourselves (in fear mostly) but at least there was no unseemly seepage to betray us.

****

Chapter 1 England - Guiness & World Records A wave of a hundred years of fags, chip grease and bullshit stung the nostrils as the door swung back hard, taking another bit of the wall with it. Inside, the vomit-inducing carpet swirled its way among the arse-numbing chairs, stopping short of the bar by about three feet, just enough to ensure that a full runway of sticky beer could encircle the tongue and groove barrier between punter and barman. The Slug & Leotard, our local, (well, one of several ‘locals’) stood for everything we intended to escape from over the next year and a half: crap beer, crap food, crap conversation and crap Friday nights (and even crapper Saturday mornings). Tonight however, was our official leaving do and if we were to succumb to one last Great British, (sorry Irish) Pub drubbing then we were going to go down heroically, drinking way more than we could handle and reducing ourselves from the fine, upstanding, homosapheads that we were to a dribbling human slurry with the coordination and conversational skills of a Mongol jellyfish operating a bandsaw. “And have one yourself, Bill.” A tenner floated onto the soggy bar towel. Bill the Barman, or 'Sweaty Bill' as he was fondly known, put down the cloth he’d been wiping the pickle jars with and picked it up. The row of pickles now stood no less disarranged and no cleaner either, as Bill’s fingerprints covered the glass and obscured their already greying labels. “No thanks, Laura, touch of dodgy guts. I think it’s the all Bismarck herrings and sauerkraut.” “Why are you eating all that Teutonic toss anyway, you’re not German are you? Not with a name like Bill Mandy, that doesn’t sound a bit German to me.” “’Appen that sounds a bit gay does that.” Murph offered. A Mexican wave of wanking actions ran through the pub. It was an old joke and only raised a titter really, and the odd eyebrow, and the even odder letter to the brewery by a mad old bag in the corner eeking out half a stout and a packet of pork scratchings. But it was tradition and that’s what The Slug & Leotard stood for – traditional Anglo-Irish pub culture. “A Northerner down South - now that's a bit gay!” Murphy, our best friend and cycling buddy of many a year took his face out of his Guinness long enough to reply, “’Mebe, but I comes from t’ Peoples Republic of Yorkshire. You lot down here need passport t’ visit.” “Piss off, Murphy, your dad was born in Lancaster!” Mark reminded him. “Ay, but we don’t talk about it now we lives over border in Bentham, took twenty year to be accepted as was. You'se would never be accepted - half Irish, half, what was it - Basket?” "Basque, you duffer!" I joined this riveting conversation “So what does that make me seeing as I'm half Irish as well - in fact we must be...” “The shortest wankers in history?” John hazarded a guess. John was in the same age bracket as us, 24-29, but had been educated at public school and it showed. To be fair we had too, but Mark had been asked to leave after a misunderstanding with a box of matches and the school chapel, and had then spent the rest of his education oscillating between comprehensives and pseduo-grammar schools, while I oscillated between morose and dyspeptically comatose. “Maybe, but we’ll soon be the shortest wankers in the Guinness Book of Records.” "How are you going to fund this poor man's Grand Tour anyway? It must be costing a few quid?" "True, we're not exactly flush with cash, but we've been saving up on the QT and we've resigned ourselves to selling Coati Mundi." "You mean that rotting hulk you two spent three years pissing about with in that boatyard?" Mark had indeed bought me a 'rotting hulk' as John described it three years ago as a 'surprise' birthday present and we had rebuilt it from the ground up into a 30 ft Broads Cruiser cum luxury houseboat - or that's how we saw it. Now however, needs must and all that - we were forced to sell it to part fund the trip - and in truth we were bored with it being modern kids with the attention span of a cocker spaniel. John took a sip of Campari, “ I reckon you two should form yourself into a company, ‘London to Sydney Tandems’, you could list yourselves on the markets – I’d invest in you, after all, my other investments are all hopeless causes.” “But this one wouldn’t be,” I butted in, “because we are going to get there. 'Team Sydney' will whip across Europe…” “West and East.*” Mark interjected. “Yep, West and East, then through Iran and Pakistan…or India and one of the ‘Stans’…” “Get real! You are going to DIE!” This time it was John interrupting. “Piss off! Then China, Malaysia, Thailand…” Mark coughed, “Thailand then Malaysia.” “Whatever! Details, details!” I was on a roll, “Then Indonesia, fly across to Australia, cycle down the centre and hey presto, eighteen months later we roll into Sydney for my birthday. Job done!” *Europe at that time was divided into West Europe (Germany & France) and East Europe (Everyone else) “Ay, mebe” (Murphy’s bosses had once had a secret bet to see how many times he said ‘’appen’ and ‘mebe’ in a meeting, but they had lost count and interest long before the coffee arrived). “Might have a tad o’ bother in Himalayas like, tandems aren’t much designed to go uphill and they’re quite high, int they?” “What training have you actually done for this then?” John asked. “Well, we did that Audax last month.” Mark defended. “What’s that then?” Bill’s stomach lent across the bar, ears flapping “an Audax - Isn't that some kind of goat-thing. I'm sure Richard Atenborough did a program on...hang on now I think of it, I think it was actually some kind of pigeon, or tree?” I tutted at his ignorance of all things sporting “An Audax, It’s a non-stop long distance kind of cycle race…but you’re not allowed to go above a certain speed and there’s er, no real winner, you just have to finish the distance in a set time.” “And did they have a special category for midgets?” John enquired, “Because it’d be unfair otherwise, what with your stumpy little legs.” I ignored him, for the moment. “The thing was they’d purposely made the route go over as many hills as they could and they were all really steep bastards.” “And really high, like the Alps or Himalayas?” John inquired innocently “Well not quite.” Mark confessed, “but Murphy’s right, tandems struggle up hills, it puts huge amounts of strain on the chains and cranks. Murph and I managed to break a crank on t’ tandem last month, didn’t we Murph?” “’Appen!” John held up his hand, “Would someone once and for all explain to me whether that means yes or no in the strange dialect Murph speaks. “It means yes. Doesn’t it, Murphy?” “Mebe.” John threw a beer mat at him. “So you finished this Autistic thing in time?” “Well, when we finally got to the finishing line, everyone had packed up and gone home.” “Great, that sounds like you’ll have no problems over a few little mountains.” Sarcastic public school git! “Did you do anymore?” he goaded. “Not exactly but we did borrow Murphy’s tandem and do some training in Belgium…well sort of training.” John turned to Murphy, “I didn’t know you had a tandem as well. Mind you I should have guessed, being a flat cap.” “And he’s got a jack Russell and lives in a cave.” I added helpfully. “Ah, dat’ll be yer man Murphy, you’re tarkin’ about der.” The new arrival was Dermott*, a genuine leprechaun, through and through, content to be the stereotypical, drunken paddy of folklore and to be fair, he did a good job, almost being indistinguishable from the real thing (he even had a pig under his arm). We shared a flat with him and most of Ireland round the corner. *pronounced dermott, rhymes with ~ott “So ye wents to Belgium to practice for getting’ over de Himalayas, did ye? Many big mountains are dere in Belgium?” “Piss off!” I greeted, “Anyway it was just as well there weren’t as Murph’s tandem was made from cast iron in the 1930’s and weighs more than Bill.” I turned to the bar “No offence” “None taken” Bill smiled, his shirt front now sodden and completely opaque from the bar top beer lake he leant in. “Aye,” Murph pulled himself out of his pint long enough to speak, “ And they failed t’ mention that they’d never ridden tandem before.” “True!” I owned up, “We did forget to mention that to you Murphy, but then you might not have lent it to us. Now shut up Dermott. Point is John, We set off in the rush hour with no idea how to ride the thing, but every idea how to fall off - mostly infront of irate drivers trying to get to work. Apart from that it was plain sailing - Laura on pain killers on day one, crashed on day two, pneumonia on day three, fucked the bike and ourselves totally by day four. Dermott stopped spilling his pint long enough to speak, “So how comes yer goin’ around de world now after such a giant cock-up?” “Oh, because we’re crazy-arsed danger merchants- that and fucking stupid! The minute we got back we started looking to buy our own tandem, preferably one that weighed less than the Forth bridge and you could actually stop downhill!” Murph laughed mid-pint, taking most of it up his nose and back out again into the glass – no wastage! “I forgot t’ mention that it don’t stop on downhill, especially in wet like.” “Well how de fuck is dat gonna work in de Himalayas den - you're going to die!?” Dermott demanded. “ Because we’ve bought one that does, Brain of Britain!” Mark retorted. “All this fuss about the Hima-bloody-layas, it’s just a bunch of sodding rocks!” John interrupted, not being one much for nature. “It’s only the tallest bloody bunch of rocks on the friggin’ planet and it’d better go uphill and stop downhill as we’re going over the highest road pass in the world.” “Dat sounds a bit hair-brained.” Dermott sniggered. “Well, when you are the King and Queen of mad-arsed plans, that probably makes sense”. Mark replied, making no sense and liberally spilling his pint of cider onto his cream chinos and striped blue shirt, worn casually as befitted a man about pub. This was partly due to being unable to hold his drink, literally, but also due to all the rabies, tetanus, yellow swamp fever and sheep tick jabs that had been introduced into our bloodstreams for the forthcoming. I took over the baton as Mark and Murph was noisily engaged in trying to suck the cider off his shirt. Waste not, want not being our credo; but then, we had a lot of credos. “Exactly, we intend to follow in the footsteps of the great explorers, such as … such as…” I elbowed Mark “Oh yeah, Phileus Fogg and that other geezer with the silly name.” Even though I had been with Mark since before I could remember, sometimes I mostly had no clue what he was on about. “Phileus Fogg? Wasn’t he a fictional character?” Mark’s grasp of the difference between fiction and reality was always tenuous at best. “Could be, but those curly things that look like prawn crackers with lemon grass go down a treat with cider. I wonder if Bill’s got any?” Mark stood up and turned to the bar, leaving me in an exposed position, conversationally speaking - the bastard! John parried first “What bloke with a silly name? Gordon Zola?” Murphy, uncharacteristically, stirred into life, “ Rick Shaw?” This scintillating repartee was too much for them as they disintegrated into fits of alcohol- induced merriment, followed by high-fives; but they can be tricky to master with five pints of rancid hops sloshing around your escutcheon canals as John and Murphy found, missing palms a few times and looking like right twats. “What a pair of right twats!” said Mark returning minus his desired snack, “He only had three flavours of crisps and one of them was out of date. That old bird in the corner has eaten all the scratchings, greedy cow.” “I was just telling them about the great explorers we are going to emulate.” I lied just a little, “Who are they again, you know the guy with the silly name and, and the other one?” “Lawrence of Arabia and Clive of India” Mark obliged, obviously the trip to the bar having refreshed his memory. “That’s not really a silly bloody name is it?” John complained, “I mean, Sodol Hexetol, that’s a stupid name.” “Well if you were called John of Hounslow, or Murphy was called Murphy of Maidenhead…” The thought of Murphy’s maidenhead was too much for John and he collapsed into another fit of giggles. “Have Friday nights always been this crap?” I asked Bill as he crunched his way past. “No!” he replied with unexpected vigour, “They used to be a lot worse before Dermott had that great idea of bring-your-own music nights.” As if on cue the entire remaining ex-pat Irish community shambled through the doors, distressingly, most of them were afflicted with some sort of Gaelic instrument of musical torture. My pithy and frankly hilarious reply was drowned out as the 'band' lost no time in tuning up - a complete waste of time as what usually followed was indistinguishable and less musical. After a shaky start, they congealed into an amorphous lump of strumming, hitting, blowing and scraping. The formula was always the same: one of them would tentatively start off murdering a well-known Irish ballad and slowly the others would join in once they’d worked out which of the five it was and help kick it to death. By the time more dripping pints were set down among the empties with no attempt made to clear them away, Fields of Athenry was being dutifully butchered, which is what it deserved, in our opinion. Taking a sip of his sixth Guinness and trying to make it look like it was his eighth, Murphy shouted above the cacophony, “Fucking great song int it!” “Amazing!” Bill volunteered from the bar. “Fucking depressing” Mark yelled back, “What the fuck is it?” John swayed imperceptibly before half stepping from his stool, “Sounds like the sort of thing you’d sing at the funeral of someone you’d murdered.” One thing Mark, John and I were united on was that folk music is a merciless virus, Irish folk being a particularly virulent strain. “ Pleb!” Murphy’s eyes didn’t move from the musicians. I lobbed a handful of peanuts at him, a poor substitute for Phileus Fogg’s finest. “Are you concentrating Murphy? We’re supposed to be talking about the trip. You’re our link- man, the lynch-pin! We need you to send on any emergency spares we might not be able to find outside of Europe. It’s a big responsibility; the whole success of the adventure could be down to you! You’ll just have to give up booze and ritual self-abuse until we return; what’s the point of us being in a dire emergency ten-thousand miles away and all you can do is dribble down the phone and say, ‘’appen, mebe, someone crapped in me mouth’?” John shook his head “What do you want to go through Asia for anyway? What do you expect to discover? The same shit as we’ve got here, that’s what: jobs, rain, taxation, suicidally depressing day time TV.” “Don’t be forgettin’ the fucked-up infrastructure.” Dermott added, returning for a slurp of peat. “Ah, no Dermott” John corrected him, “that’s where you’re wrong actually! There is no infrastructure in most of Asia, everyone knows that.*” *They're probably making the same joke about Europe nowadays. Dermott finished pouring most of his pint down his front and looked up. “Ah, ye can’t go, I just remembered they’re having a jelly wrestling contest in two weeks time*, are you up for it, although hang on, maybe you’ll be in Mongolia!” *The jelly invariably won “Might be!” I retorted “No girls" Dermott continued "except you of course Laura, you’re more of an honorary bloke really.” I took this as the compliment it was meant to be. (I’d set fire to him to him back at the flat later.) The cider and Guinness flowed, mostly all over the floor, the bar and Mark’s chinos again, but this was Friday night and the night was young yet with plenty of time for another half dozen renditions of Whisky in the bastard jar and Bleedin’ Christmas in New York – it was only bloody May! However the playing and singing that had seemed so unmelodic initially was now a jangling mess of drunken one-upmusicianship. With all the musicality of a paddy of penguins on sprouts, the pub rang with clapping, stomping and Irish fucking jigs, reels and Riverdance moves all up and down the room, “Get dat fuckin’ dart out of Sean’s eye will ye, Dermott.” someone shouted from the other side of the pub during one of the merciful intervals when the players pissed out the beer they had ingested to get pissed in the first place. The lads were on a mission now. Friday night had become Saturday morning. The non- regulars shoo-ed out and the door bolted, Bill set about removing glass and peanuts from his face with a plastic fork, while Dermott continued helping to remove his darts from various people. Things were starting to swim and sway. The truth was, neither Mark nor I could hold our drink. Despite our Irish roots neither of us could get a pint of Guinness down for all the untreated sewage in the Liffy. Dermott tacked back over as the peanuts flew, smacking him like a shower of peanuts thrown by a drunken moron. “Are you sure Friday nights haven’t always been this crap?” I asked Bill again as he kicked his way through the debris littering the floor. “Absolutely!” “Fuck! There must be more!” Bill paused, “Well, Laura, that’s why you’re off on this adventure, isn’t it?” “Absolutely Bill, thanks for reminding us!” Bill ambled back to the bar to pull some more pints, while Murphy, now near paralytic as he was at this stage every Friday night, started wailing Dirty Old Town ‘I met my girl by the factory wall Dirty Old Town, Dirty Old Town’ Whatever unspeakable dangers, whatever life-threatening situations awaited us in the next year and a half, life really could only improve... * The following morning we woke up - Me, Mark and Murph - all fully clothed (thank god!) in Murph's bed with a large cooking pot full of the remains of last night's chilli. Murph, unphased, helped himself to some as, already dressed for work, he dragged himself to the door, “Best o’ luck folks, send us postcard from t’other side o’ world. Jammy bastards! Let yerselves out and take chilli will yer!” and he was gone. Mark and I, already dressed for coffee, lost no time in dragging ourselves to the nearest bean joint for we had one pressing matter to sort before we left these shores - well two actually - we had no sponsorship and no wheels, the latter being a little more pressing. The trip as a whole had suffered a severe body blow dangerously late in the day, due to a chicken-livered stab in the balls from the WWF. We had originally managed to mix up the WWF (World Wildlife Fund) and WWWF (World Wide Wrestling Federation) who organise tag matches where endangered species fight it out in the ring: the Undertaker giving Yang Yang the panda the smackdown in The Cage is an experience not easily wiped from the memory or clothes. The WWF however had turned turncoat: as we planned to machete our way through areas choked full of endangered critters, they had originally deemed it a one-off opportunity to jump in bed with Team Sydney and ride the coat tails of the inevitable media maelstrom that would follow us across the world. With panache and a Guatemalan camera crew, we put together a short video promo kindly narrated by the late Richard Briers while many other star celebrities of the time were crushed in the rush not to endorse our endeavour. Unfortunately whereas we perceived our Pan-Global Panda-Kicking International profiles as a positive asset, at 11.23am on the Friday before we were due to leave and after we had made all our promo videos, etc, the entire WWF staff had a psychotic episode and decided that we were in truth the notorious Tamel Tiger Tandem Terroist Twins* intent on putting the 'endangered' back into endangered-species and comprehensively announced that if we used their name in conjunction with our now apparently infamous attempt to cross the world on a bicycle made entirely from the bones and horns of endangered species, they would sue us to buggery, which seemed a slight overreaction. *All terroist names illiterate - it's a psychological game winner. We had put a huge amount of time and effort, (and a fair bit of our already stretched cash) into this area of the trip and their lame-arse reason that given the sensitive areas we were going through, they feared with such human powder kegs as us on the loose, an International Incident was only a bear skin rug away. I mean, what exactly were they worried about – that we’d get to the Wolong Reserve in China and barbecue a Panda? Or pass the Orang-utan Sanctuary in Sumatra and run up a fetching orang-utan quilt? Mind you… Truth was, we were having trouble with our image in other quarters as well. Dawes, the makers of our tandem, had curtly informed us that they were not keen to get involved with ‘round the world types’, which amazed us. Perhaps they had less confidence in their products than we did? Which was a rather worrying thought as we were about to literally entrust our lives to it in the next year and a half. But a pattern had been emerging. Even before the Dawes / WWF incidents similar Machiavellian machinations had been afoot. The mountain bike people (not named for their own shame*), had agreed to give us bikes, or not, or a tandem, or not, or come to our factory and help yourselves, or maybe..not?. Then the guy we were ‘arranging’ things with mysteriously ‘left’ the company in a body bag and we were informed by the suited gorilla who replaced him that the deal was off. We began to wonder if we were the victims of a tandem slur campaign on the part of envious rivals: when you are at the top of your game, the old green-eyed what-do-you-call-it of professional jealousy is never far away. At this rate, before approaching anyone else for sponsorship, we’d have to get hold of a bell to warn them we were coming. *Muddy Fox Thankfully two companies were capable of thinking outside of the box* and bucked the trend: Nokia and Karrimor. Nokia offered us tyres, and as, in our opinion, they made the best natural rubber products for road and bedroom use, we accepted with only one proviso: if they were vulcanised, Mark wouldn’t have to wear those stupid pointy ears except for publicity shots. * A meaningless expression, but nevertheless handy to drop into business meetings to look like a knob. Karrimor came up trumps with two sets of base layer clothing, each with built in climactic control, and a unisex opening allowing Eskimo-style copulation. On top of this, as they were trying to get into the cycle market, they begged us to road test their set of top secret, prototype panniers – the cutting edge of carrier technology! These capacious beauties (in, by chance, the same purple as the tandem!) were heat welded together at the seams at temperatures approaching that of the surface of the sun, thereby removing the need for stitching and making them entirely waterproof, to the extent Karrimor boldly boasted, with the onbaord canoe-bag closure system, we could fill them full of air and paddle the whole bastard shabang to Sydney. Even though one could hide Lord Lucan, Bismarck* and Orson Wells in just one of the ginormous rear panniers, it was still a tight squeeze cramming in a year and a half’s worth of gear for two people along with the shed load of associated tools and spares for the tandem, into the two. This left the front panniers to carry out the dual roles of housing enough food and water to see us across vast areas of uninhabited deserts, swamps, polar ice caps and B roads. Therefore, reducing unnecessary weight and bulk was as crucial to the success of the Mission and our survival as Elvis’ Comeback Tour was crucial to the future of modern marquetry. To this end, our tent, an old Saunders Jetpacker was pressed into service. Capable of accommodating one adult or an unspecified number of midgets not exceeding the whole integer, this was no problem for a weekend’s bar mitzvah but a year and a half would either weld us together; or we’d buy a bigger one. On the plus side, it only weighed 1.5 kg and we both figured we’d slim down after a month in Asia what with the constant diahorrea and dysentery so enjoyed by Brits abroad. *The battleship, not the politician The other rather minor problem was that the indestructible, iron rimmed, monster wheels we had ordered had failed to arrive despite repeated promises from the company building them for us. Bespoke tandem wheels were not something one just picked up in Woolworths*, the problem being off-road tandems really didn't exist at this stage - we were as ever, pioneers - and with the extra weight of two people on two wheels over the kind of rough, never-seen-tarmac-before trails we were going to be cruising on, normal wheels would crumble in a matter of days. "Sod that! When the going gets tough and all that..." Mark rose magnificiently to the occasion "Well, we haven't really got going yet, have we?" I corrected "Listen wench, if we don't get on that bloody bike and get going right now, right this minute, we'll never get this adventure of the ground - we've been planning and provaricating for a year now!" "Hang on, Captain Codface, that's my line! " "Agreed then, bugger getting any more sponsorship and bugger the wheels - we'll go with the ones we've got and sort it out as we roll." We 'yeeehaaaed' and made tracks. *A now defunct department store that stocked indicriminate shite that invariably broke before you got it home for less than a penny - shopping heaven! * Having methodically packed four times and just as methodically unpacked it all again, it was clear the mountain of guff and nonsense was on the road to Doesn’treallyfitsville. I made an executive decision: “Right, shove the crap in anyhow and we’ll sort it out down in Portsmouth tonight!” “Why didn’t you say that an hour ago?” Mark demanded. A crank extractor glanced off his helmet in reply – Mark had put in on just to prove that one bit of kit fitted somewhere. We stood back to admire our handy work. It wasn’t quite as sleek and professional as might have been desired, those billowing black bin bags on the rear rack smacked of amateurism, but the chemical toilet strapped on top gave off all the wrong vibes. Mark ran his hand along the top tube. “We built you, you sexy bitch, better, stronger, faster and now we’re going to take you on the trip of our dreams.” He turned to me, “What are we going to call her? I mean, she’s got to have a name now were taking her on such a trip.” “I know, let’s call her the bike and if you refer to it as 'her' again, I will be forced to kill you.” “Fair enough. Let’s ride!” Never had a man been so manly as he slung a leg over the seat and onto the waiting pedal; John Wayne would have looked a right Shirley next to Mark as he curled his lip, narrowed his eyes, re-arranged his bollocks against the cool of the top tube and shouted “Now!” I kicked down with all my strength. We were off! The pedal kicked back smartly into my calf with a greater than equal force of intent. “Buggery Fuck!” “Sodomy, that hurt!” * “The one on the back’s not pedalling, mate!” came the cry for the third time. This could get nauseatingly dull, except soon they would be saying it in any number of bizarre languages so they could shout “The one on the back’s on fucking fire mate!” for all the notice we’d take. Two thirds of the way to Portsmouth Team Sydney crumbled and abandoned the mis-matched fight with excessive luggage and murderous traffic and with the resolve of a nematode, took the train from Rowlands Castle. How the fuck were we ever going to make Sydney!? ****

Chapter 2 France - Falling at the First Hurdle “Fuck!” A length of wet khaki nylon slapped me spitefully on the top of the head. “Where the hell are we?” Face down, I tried to ease myself up, leaving a long string of drool on a strange quilted substance that engulfed me, threatening suffocation. Mark spluttered into life. “Canvas? Sleeping bag? Damp ache in the left bollock? We must be bloody camping!” he gasped. “Camping!” “That means we did it!” This last bit didn’t actually get articulated, it was more of an inner scream. But where? Random flashes of the last twenty four hours spermed in front of our eyes: weaving in and out of rush hour traffic, the tandem weighed down with the gross manufacturing output of a small country, the arsehole in the Range Rover shouting something about Tweedledee and Tweedledum and the mortification of Expedition Sydney collapsing on Day One without even making Portsmouth save for the crutch of British Rail. Unable to go any further, we had boarded the train, having cunningly disguised ourselves as itinerant urinary cake tasters to avoid being exposed by the world’s press as the charlatans we were. We comforted ourselves with the knowledge that even though we could continue to fuck things up just as badly from now on, it would be hard to go back and screw up any worse. The glut of luggage that had been responsible for us making only thirty of the fifty kilometres was packed off and sent home in disgrace after more hours of insane deliberation about whose pants to keep -Mark’s or mine? We settled on mine as we’d soon be sharing synovial fluid and saliva anyway, so what was a little bit of cross-dressing? After all this was no time to play the Methodist hand. Our long time friends from the boatyard where we had 'built' our 30 ft Broads Cruiser cum houseboat which we were now unsentimentaly flogging, happily put us up on their swish yacht in Portsmouth Marina and swapped rooting through our stuff and discarding a random selection, for us spending the evening, thirty foot up their wildly swaying mast, trying desperately to attach the halyards without vomiting into each other’s hair. These hazy revelations however, left us none the wiser as to how we had ended up in a tenuously erect tent somewhere outside of …Le Havre? As we made to sit up, our heads knocked against something hard hanging from the precariously low front pole of the tent - a wine box, silver bladder hanging out, tap ripped off. “Ooops! That probably did it!” “Hang on a minute, backtrack, Le Havre? Oh shit, we’re in fucking France!” “Well there’s always a downside to any adventure” Mark conceded, “We’ll just get through this bit and move on to better things.” * More images from the previous day met with those already remembered to form a kaleidoscope in the mind’s eiderdown. Yeah, it was flooding back now: a lack of dinner, we remembered. No food at all in fact. No food because... this was France and France was fucking well shut despite our rolling into town at only 5.30pm. Closed blinds and shut cafés had given us a riotous welcome as we rode every inch of the town aching for something to eat. And then the slight altercation at the last supermarché, nobody left but cleaning staff and a dodgy looking guy with a limp who had sold us a box of booze for a handful of francs. Well that explained a lot. Forced to walk the long route back to the field-cum-slurry pit that was the campsite, the wine box felt annoyingly heavy and the ponsy bloody handle snapped and oh clearly we’d been forced to start in on it, sucking on the long black nipple of a tap. It was shortly after this that we stumbled across a woman having a piss in a bush. Freakish! Back at the tent frustration, alcohol and an uneven balance of stomach acid had overridden all pretence of social etiquette. “Donnay moi a fucking kebab!” Mark yelled at the near darkness. * Stumbling around in the semi-darkness, to take our mind off the lack of dinner, we'd thought, (if thinking is what happens when the goldfish inside your head slosh about in booze and make fart noises against your temples) that we would turn the night’s disappointment into the following morning’s coup d’etat and rather than ‘maintenance, matin’, it would be ‘maintenance, maintenant’. As we had fitted new cables before exiting Blighty, they had stretched leaving the gears as maladjusted as a Japanese teenager and the brakes with all the stopping power of sushi. While congratulating ourselves on having had the foresight to carry out this preventative maintenance, the other half of our brains had mumbled something about ‘ Don’t fix what isn’t broke’. Even though it was true everything was running fine before the cabling was stripped out, we had consoled ourselves with just how super fine they would work afterwards. On the same fuckwit principle, we had replaced both the drive and crossover chains*. As ever with new components, things needed adjustment 'til they settled down, basically, they needed a tweak. Now in a booze-fuelled fit of enthusiasm, Mark had decided that now was the time for that tweak and thus greasy tool in hand, he'd advanced upon the unsuspecting tandem and eyes straining in the gloom, tweaked it good and proper, precision engineering at its drunken finest: *Tandem design is far too dull to go into here; for a detailed explanation see a nerd. Tweeeeeeeek! Keen to steal a march on the world and set off just as soon as our veins were coursing with fine French roast coffee (rather than with cheap French red plonk), we'd come to the conclusion again that this definitely wasn’t going to leave time for checking any adjustments in the morning; it would just have to be overdone now. Tweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek! “That ought to do it! Let’s give it a whirl.” Round the campsite we'd charged with all the gusto of Pavarotti on a wine-induced operatic bender. “We are the one and only”, we'd improvised, until without warning the perfectly adjusted derailleur had slipped into the spokes, taking the chain with it. The resultant instant jamming of all things spinning, including our legs, momentarily distracted our attention from the path* and taking unfair advantage, a tree stepped out in front of us and the world went strangely dark and silent. * Never stray from the path! * “Fuck”. A length of wet khaki nylon slapped me spitefully in the face bringing me back to the present. Crawling through the flap of the tent, we surveyed the full extent of the damage wilfully inflicted on our trusted steed: mashed derailleur, snapped chain, bent chainring! Blimey, you could bend a chainring? We almost felt proud… almost. The real result of the evening’s excess was that far from the crack of dawn start intended, Team Screw Up were now likely to be stuck here for at least half the day trying to correct their moronic attempt at maintenance. For starters the mangled chainring would have to be hammered back to mirror flat and the acres of gouged metal filed smooth. The remains of the chain would have to be pieced together, leaving it two links short of useful and resulting in the top and bottom gears being out of bounds until we found a replacement. Having gone against our policy of throwing out anything not easily replaceable abroad, we had kept the Shimano ultra-thin chain and the seven-speed block, (the last word in sophistication at the time). Nevertheless, all those 21 gears* and more would be ground through long before the air thinned and we crested the stratosphere to become a new comet in the firmament. Besides chains are fairly lightweight spares to carry and rarely snap; unless one rams them into the wheel in a drunken spree and then mashes them into a convenient tree of course, and then it seems they snap at will - ingrates! *nowdays a bike with stabalisers has at least 28 gears “But hang on Mrs MacKenzie, this doesn’t add up.” Mark interrupted, “We were so keen, focused, like focused things. And then what?” “Fucked it all up on day one by succumbing to cheap booze and cheese enemas?” “These French are wily bastards!” Mark tutted as he fished out the roll of tools from the bottom of one of the panniers and ran his eye along its contents. An impressive array: chain link remover, allen keys, crank puller, sockets, screwdriver attachments, torque wrench, pliers, spanners - full set, metric and imperial - gasket cutter, magneto flywheel extractor, radiator key, few bent screws, rawplugs, plastic sheath thing that used to house drill bits, windlass and a hammer handle but nothing hard and heavy enough. A toolkit of a more sophisticated nature was obviously required. Pulling on my pants (it was my turn), we stumbled out into the day proper, squinting like myopic pigs. The campsite, so populated with motorhomes of incredible size and tents of chateaux proportions, was however, strangely and unhelpfully devoid of people. “Typical!” Mark tutted ever on “When you’re looking for a helping hand, all you can find is a false leg!” * This wasn’t rain; it was the evil spite of the Gods, pissing down on us for starting out on this ludicrous adventure. It was already late evening and the overcast morning had turned quickly to unrelenting torrents of icy rain, filling our shoes and soaking our pants (although as Mark was wearing them now, it didn't really bother me). Our only real job had been to avoid Rouen and we had done it so well, we had ended up in the middle of fuck-knows-where. A stab of lightning brought us out of our mental grump and back into the here and now. Rain all day and now a full on bloody storm! This was too much and the Gods knew it. Possibly by way of apology, a sign swung into our water-filled view. Set back from the road, inset in one half of a huge pair of rusty, wrought iron gates, it read 'Chambre d’hote'. What exactly a Chambre d’hote was neither of us were sure, the French being such a precise nation – Chambre d’hôte, Gite d’etap, Gite rural, Stupid Gite - but a sign is a sign, and a sign must mean people are expected to knock, otherwise why have a sign in the first place? Swinging through the impressive gates that looked as if they hadn’t been shut since the day they were installed, we splashed up to the equally imposing and decaying entrance, observed by the grinning gargoyles on the roofline, and dismounted. More lightning saw Mark hammering hard on the door, the bronzed knocker churlishly coming away in his hand. If a bloke in a butler outfit with a bolt through his neck answered the door, we would be out of there quicker than a jackrabbit*. *which is actually a hare, but this isn’t a bloody zoological treatise. After what seemed like an age, a vague shadow could be made out behind the leaden glass. The door creaked open to reveal a tiny woman in a shapeless robe affair. She seemed surprised and not a little sorry to see us, but indicated with a nod of the head that we should leave the tandem in one of the door-less outhouses opposite and step in. Stepping across the threshold, the inner gloom was little brighter than the night outside but the lack of rain made it absolutely welcoming. As our eyes adjusted, we could see the heavy wood panelling, the chaise longue stuffed with dust and a perfect Scarlet O’Hara double width staircase leading to a galleried landing overlooking this great hall of a reception room. From the open dining room on our left came the sound of snuffling which we identified as the nasal emanations of the shortest female dwarf on the continent. She stared through with disinterest, chewing deliberately on a hunk of grizzled meat. Madame of the door, called to us “You are wanting a room for ze night I suppose, Monsieur et Madame?” “Wee Madame, un room et un ’ot bath”. “Well, zere is a room ’ere, suivez-moi!” This bi-lingual banter’s a piece of piss I decided as we followed our hostess past the heavy drapes and suit of armour up the sweeping stairs and on to the landing which opened out into a space larger than the average house. A worn crimson runner led the way to the end of a tunnel of a corridor where Madame paused at the last door. “Zis is your room, good night.” For the umpteenth time since arriving in France, we were forced to wonder how our continental cousins could be so polite whilst being so rude, However, it was warm, dry and the morning promised breakfast with lashings of coffee; what did we care if she had smacked us in the mouth on her way out? * After an hour of sitting on the brown bedspread, looking at nothing through the dim light obscured by the brown lampshade throwing brown shadows onto the brown flock that covered the walls, we were restless. The shower had had all the charm of a Japanese endurance test and we were still hungry. There must be something to eat down there, we’d go and ask. Something hot, now that sounded good. On the landing, the previously dim glow had been replaced by inky blackness, all lights extinguished, all signs of life gone. “What the fuck?” Mark muttered, feeling along the walls for one of those ridiculous switches that puts the light on just long enough not to reach the next ridiculous switch, all the time harassing one with the ticking of a Geiger counter. Finally the bottom of the stairs. Thank God! “ Where the hell has everyone gone?” “Where the fuck have all the light switches gone?” “What the fuck is that noise!?” A wheezing, rasping sound reverberated through the night. My hair stood on end, pulling at my skin with all its force. A flesh-eating lunatic was obviously poised just yards away, ready to rip out our throats and yank out our kidneys with a single swipe of its clawed hand and then make us eat them in a nice devilled sauce in front of ourselves. The noise stopped. Frozen where I was, I could hear nothing but my heart pounding through the walls of my chest. Laying flat against the panelling, eyes darting left and right, the desire to crawl back to our room was overwhelming. But Mark was made of sterner stuff.* As the lunatic resumed its rasping progress towards our inner organs, with a cry Mark grabbed the nearest pointy thing to hand and launched himself on the… …. asthmatic cat!” *largely blancmange Dead asthmatic cat, as it happened now. Dead asthmatic cat on the end of a still, unidentified pointy thing. "Shit!" Remorse was brief however as being a practical couple, our mind jumped into action mode working out how to remove ourselves from this potentially awkward situation. Plan one, leave it on the table for them to find and escape now, make a run for it. Peering out into the wretched night, this plan was dismissed instantly as complete ballwipe. “Anyway, fuck that, we’ve paid for breakfast.” Mark whispered. “It’s not our fault this one- lunged mog expired.” “You did impale it!” I hissed. “It must have been on its way out anyway! The noise it was making!” “Look, what about doing it the adult way and coming clean?” “Behave! Think about it girl! Most people are well over-sentimental about their pets.” “Oh yeah. And it’s bound to be reflected in the portions dished out at brekkie – the bastards! “Right that means hiding the bloody thing somewhere” “But where?” The need for some light had never been greater but our actions needed to be cloaked in the anonymity of darkness. Ninja stealth was the key word here. “But that’s two words” “Focus woman!” We tiptoed round the room with our cat on a stick companion, peering past the shadows for a solution. “Aha!” Mark slotted the ex-pussy spine outwards between 'Les Trois Muskateers' and 'Les Miserables' on the bookshelves. Having stepped back to admire his handiwork, even he had to admit that it stuck out like… a dead cat. “Stick it on a plate stand on the sideboard?” I suggested, “Or what about flushing it down the loo?” “No, it’ll never clear the ‘U’ bend.” “But people flush all sorts: goldfish, anacondas, alligators.” “Yeah but French plumbing isn’t designed for solids.” “That’s why they have bidets.” Mark added mysteriously and not a little worryingly. I’d remember to tackle this one later. Slumping on the hard backed piece of French art masquerading as a sofa, Mark raised the cat aloft and mouthed the cry of a man caught in an impossible situation. We needed to put the cat in something. “The bolster! Perfect! It even zips up!” Pushing the now cooling kitty into the zippered holder proved more fiddly than we’d anticipated, pussy legs sticking out at awkward legs, its tongue catching in the zip. With the finished result passable as a lumpy bolster, we retired, semi-confident that our slight faux pas would go undetected. * As the coffee swirled up into our nostrils and assaulted the fog in our brains, the lady of the house seemed rather agitated. Gabbling in irate monologues with wild gesticulations, she marched from room to room, pulling at chairs and peering into cupboards. We were more ice man than any arctic roll had ever been and calmly supped on our coffee, Mark dunking his croissant (filthy beast) despite its liberal smearing of confiture. Granny let fall a plate of cold eggs onto the table before shuffling over to the sofa and falling backwards, legs stuck out in front as she tried to get comfortable on the seemingly rather lumpy bolster. “Maman, ou est le chat?” 'Things were hotting up, so pocketing the remains of the breakfast table, we swished down the last of the coffee, made our goodbyes and scarpered. Even though we were genuinely troubled at the feline fatality we had played a small and unwitting part in, we were more troubled by the still raging hunger that the foreshortened breakfast rations had done little to reduce. Riding rather unsteadily out of the gite gates, Mark half turned to me, "Right, let's put some distance between us and ..." he cocked his head in the direction of the receeding building "...and then find ourselves some serious nosh 'cos even full helpings back there would have left us hungry for less - no wonder the French Empire only lasted a week! "

* “That’s sounds a bit bloody rich.” Mark turned the menu over. “What is the closest thing they have to Chicken Dippers, do you think?” We were treating ourselves to a slap up lunch to make up for missing most of breakfast and an early twenty-thousand-kilometres cycled celebration – although we may only have covered just two hundred, we had already learnt motivation was the most important thing in this game! “They don’t eat that kind of processed shit. Everything is hand made, crafted, artesanal.” “Arsesanal, more like but okay, I’ll have artesanal chicken dippers then. What are you having?” “Can I have peas instead of petit pois, see voo play?” Mark asked, adding as the waiter left, “And if my meal has been touched by any part of your anatomy, I’ll want a full refund.” He popped to the loo while I tried to figure out what they were eating on the table opposite because if it was the same thing I had chosen, could I change my order, or was it too late? Mark reappeared. “I ask you, bidets, what’s that about? He was off on one again! The French wiping problem, it’s more serious than I realised. When a nation can’t deal with its own faecality, they are really in trouble.” “Hang on, there are no bidets in the gents! Where have you just been?” Fortunately, the arrival of the food provided the perfect reason for Mark not to reply. “Uggh! I’m going to be sick!” Mark’s frantic scrabbling for a napkin merely added to the amusement of nearby diners. Noting this I felt moved to play the part of the adventurous English palette. And to be fair, my offering looked less offensive than Mark’s, dressed as it was in a shining, golden crust. From the centre, a gentle pipe of steam wafted a strange aroma towards me. “And what is this?” I asked reaching for the salt. “I think the waiter said it was arse pie” Mark offered helpfully. Plunging my fork into the pastry, my pie farted long and hard, rippling the sauce beneath with the force. “My pie just fucking well farted. What kind of people are these?”

****

Chapter 3 -Germany - Tandeming in the Teutonics With eyes shut tight against the wave of inexorable drivel being spouted in our ears from the TV on the wall, we sipped at a coffee that would have raised a dead man from the deepest pit. We hadn’t set out on some amazing life changing adventure to find that people the world over were talking the same old crap. Mind you, in a road side café at 6am what the hell did we expect? Any self-respecting human being would be tucked up with their loving spouse in a three bed semi, dreaming of a safe and secure future, not lounging about, bleary eyed in a crumpled suit drinking creosote from a plastic cup. Also, to be fair, we understood almost nothing actually being said as it was strangely all in German. The images and the reporter's tone, however said it all - we had escaped Blighty but we would have to go a lot further before we escaped depressing news stories - - - probably the moon. We had made it over the Alps starting at Colmar and long before we had straggled up yet one more col de something or other, we had proved ourselves correct, all the available gears had been used up and our legs were aching for some new ones. This mountain climbing business was proving anything but a piece of gateau and the mountain's hadn't really begun yet! Perhaps a brief outing to Milton Keynes hadn't been sufficient preparation? The doozy of a drum brake, which Mark reckoned on it's own weighed more than the tandem and everything on it, including the drum brake, was already proving a mixed salad: the weight of an average black hole and cumbersome to adjust or remove, it did nevertheless provide some essential extra braking on the otherwise nerve-shredding downhills. As the normal brakes were positioned on the front bars and the lever for the drum brake on the rear, it was my only means of control. However, as I was the speed freak, I rarely put it on, just squeezing it when Mark screamed murder a third time on a particularly sharp corner. However an obsession with weight was already growing for both of us and the thought of dragging several extra kilos across the world chaffed unbearably, so it was decided to send it home at the first available post office. The only downside would be that the tandem would now have the stopping distance of an oil tanker. Coasting out of the Alps, from cross-country cyclists we became pan-European gods as we entered our second country (third if you include England- and why wouldn't you? It's a proper country just like Licenstein and Hawaii - back off Brussels!). With less time than it took to recount the tales of daring exploits to date, we arrived in Freiburg, Germany or ‘Das ist Verbotenland’ as Mark hysterically insisted on calling it. On a previous cycling trip Mark had incurred the wrath of the Teutonic Temperament by infringing various rules and regulations such as walking across an empty road (‘jaywalking’ is forbidden), camping in the forest (‘wild’ camping is forbidden), snoozing on a park bench (sleeping in a park is forbidden), wheeling a bicycle across the main tracks in the rush hour at Stuttgart railway station (wheeling a bicycle across the main blah, blah, verboten – honestly!) and fornicating in a public place with an unlicensed wild boar (fornicating, blah blah - you get the idea). However, having left the warmest town in France for the driest town in Germany, it now seemed a shame to leave too quickly as despite our very best efforts, we had yet to incurr the authorities wrath by doing anything even vaguely verboten - shame! After stuffing our faces, wandering through the inevitable 'old quarter' and posting the drum brake back to Blighty, we headed through the Black Forest or 'Schwarzwald' as the locals insisted on calling it for some odd reason. On all sides thick pine forest ran in perfect rows, tightly packed, cutting out any light to the forest floor. A carpet of yellowing needles could just be made out in the permanent gloom.* The plan was to skirt around Ulm, Stuttgart and any other inconsiderately over populus centres as with the relentlessly fierce traffic, we weren’t feeling as comfortable as we would have liked, sitting astride as we were, rather than, encased within; the security of being surrounded by a steel cage with extra crumple zones would have been quite welcome. Perhaps we’d cross the world in a armoured personnel carrier or monster truck next time. Though if we didn’t concentrate there probably wouldn’t be a next time we thought as another porsche howled past us at at least 300km/hour. *For a more detailed description buy a guide book. This isn't one. * Our answer to the Teutonic love of aggressive cars* and even more aggressive driving was to be found in our ultimate destination, Passau. Here we intended to leap joyously onto the Donnauradweg, a long-distance cycleway that runs along the Danube to Vienna, Budapest, and finally the Black Sea 1350km (844 miles) later. Given the recent gollywogging our legs had received over the Alps and the now constant fear of becoming a smear of human remains on some un-named road, the thought of a traffic–free and relatively flat route kept us pounding the pedals and, in-between, pounding the pastries. *In a survey we read before leaving, the majority of German men put their car before their wife as their most treasured posession. Mark agreed with me that this was all wrong - the only thing German men should put before their wives was their tackle - but only for geo-positioning purposes. The way was enlivened by stops at small villages and towns with the cry of “Sausage time!” coming from the front end of the tandem. Sausage-tastic meals laid the basis for Mark’s summing up of a place for the next few days. Considering himself something of a recently appointed connoisseur, hypothetical marks out of ten were granted on a sliding scale of one, to “I think I'm in love!” This proved to be true for most of the varieties sampled with the exception of the Bung Fritz as in effect it is not a sausage at all but a former German Chancellor, most of them being named after food - the Germans love their nosh and wily politicians realised that if they named their party leaders after the more popular items, this popularity would extend to them. And in truth, many political leaders have a lot in common with cabbage. Biting into the succulent, pink, penis of a sausage that lay sluttish in its sauce drenched paradise, Mark would lovingly offer to share some with me, but I failed to appreciate his enthusiastic conclusions of a town by the quality of the sausage wagons and he found little other audience for his findings. Now finally having arrived in Passau itself, we intended to waste no more time on phallic snacks, but get straight on with the business of ticking country number two off our list by jumping on the Danube path and hot-pedalling it into Austria, our next destination – oh what it is to be International Sportspeople, with the wind in your hair. “ And still way too much bloody weight in your panniers” Mark rudely brought us back to reality. No trouble, as it had become apparent there had been a certain amount of duplication in the packing, (I knew for a fact Mark had selfishly packed both his lungs), we would simply leave a few things that were too good to throw away but we could do without, on this convenient park bench and jump on… The second time we were called back (philanthropically leaving miscellaneous items on a park bench for the benefit of others is also apparently ver-bloody-boten), we stuffed them into the nearby bin, jumped onto the path, and we were off. The only worry we had is that we would arrive in Budapest, having shot straight past Vienna without noticing. This would be a cultural disaster, as Mark, who was already missing his sausage fix*, had heard rumours that the besten weiner in all of Austria were to be found on the streets of the capital..and he wasn't too proud to pick them up. *Not a double entendre “And for once traffic won’t be a problem. The Danube path cuts straight to the centre.” Mark promised.

****

Chapter 4 - Austria & Slovakia - Sleeping with the Dead No problem indeed, but also no fun in the duck-wet weather that insisted on accompanying us past Linz and onwards, despite our heavy hints that we would be fine without it thanks, if it could just bugger off - surely there were some other, less important bastards to be rained on somewhere? Also no problem if the chain hadn’t taken upon itself to break again, this time blaming an ill- straightened set of filed down, mutilated teeth on a hammered-flat (ish) chain ring as it did so – bloody cheek! With yet another link removed, the chain ran so tight it practically squeaked as we wound our way towards Vienna and a replacement. Mind you to be fair, it was only following the lead of the heat-welded 100% monsoon proof panniers we were testing for Karrimor of which the front set had already fallen apart, literally at the seams. We had been forced the night before to sew them up and then smear an entire tube of tent seam sealant on them - well that had been our story when we had been discovered with the giant lube tube. Not that the tent would miss it, as it was watertight enough already, We could only wonder why the fuck we bothered with all this camping crap, hours of pissing about every night for the pleasure of huddling under damp canvas just to take it all down again in the morning- surely there was a better way? Ah, now that would be hotels or B&Bs, but they usually wanted untenuable amounts of wonga and rarely in our experience accepted sexual favours in lieu of payment. That was decided then, tonight the tent could leak like a machine-gunned seal for all we cared – for there was to be no wet campsite, no taking on the tent in hand to hand combat and fucking about with damp nylon sheeting while trying and failing to create any kind of sensible form of human habitation out of it. No, none of that, for this evening we were going to fall into the lap of luxury and sod the cost...if we could find it and it wasn't too expensive. The raucous sound of an inebriated oompah band blared out of a beerkeller as we sploshed into a small village on the lookout for our rich man’s camping and if the budget allowed after such an unwarranted expense, anything edible. The great fat drops of rain that fell and splashed up from the ground, turning the world an instant shade of dismal, eased up as we dismounted in the deserted high street. Something in the adjacent shop window had caught my eye and further investigation was clearly necessary. My brain hadn’t been fooled. In the hunting and fishing shop, there was indeed the waistcoated body of a stuffed rabbit with the head of a fox, dressed in full hunting costume, smoking a pipe! ! But then again! What the! Who the hell were these people? Dressed in full shooting gear an otter stared back at me with the glassy eyed stare of the squirrel’s face it wore. A magpie with, no it couldn’t be a boar’s head and a boar’s body with the head of a….boar! It was all getting far too sick, so we hastily remounted and moved on, searching, ever searching… * The town had turned up nowhere to stay unless we had wanted to bed down with our Frankenstein-inspired forest friends which we didn't, so we continued riding through the pissing rain that had considerately started up again until the light faded. Then we rode a bit more because unlike the movies, handy B&B signs had not made a habit of popping up where and whenever we fancied them. Through every village our eyes strained past the rain for any hint of a friendly invite to stay, and yet it was on the least likely junction of three roads that led to nowhere that a sign appeared. Good job too, given that by now, having left the Path (we never take our own advice) we were way beyond lost and not far from pneumonia. The sign followed, the 'gasthaus' found, we hammered on the door, simultaneously employing a trick of the mind to create a positive belief that we were going to get what we sought. We had been finding this more and more useful as things progressed and gave full credit to its success by the fact that we would lower our standards to whatever level was required to get what we wanted. A second hammering from Mark’s fists brought with it the sound of movement behind the door. A woman of absolutely no distinguishing features peered out into the rain. With our very best Austrian charades we made clear our desperate need for a bed and our offer of sexual gratification* as well as vast over-remuneration to secure ourselves some crispy sheets. The second part of this communication seemed to hold more weight and Mrs Frauline disappeared, leaving the door open a crack so as to be polite. *You never know As we stood, lashed by the rain, this act of courtesy lost all weight. After a full light year had passed, our potential hostess reappeared and motioned us into the dimly lit hallway. She seemed somewhat ill at ease, looking at her watch several times, but gestured that we should make our way upstairs. From the halfway landing, we looked directly down into the dining room and onto the sight of someone laying on the table. What the hell were they doing laying on the table? Were they short of beds? Maybe that was why she had seemed hesitant. Perhaps we would be consigned to sleeping in the bath for the night. (It wouldn't have been the first time). Peering over the banisters we were drawn up short by the realisation that it was in reality, the corpse of a dead person. Now all corpses are dead people, we knew that but we’d never seen a real life dead person (except in films, which Mark often insisted was real life, just more realistic) and never before on our breakfast table under the roof in which we were to spend the night. Indecision struck; spend the night with Mr Rigor Mortis or find a campsite in the now biblical storm that shook the windows. Sod that! We pressed on up the stairs, pausing only to consider whether it might be impolite to ask for breakfast in our room, on account of the fact that there was a dead bloke stinking up the place where we would be eating. Figuring these things would wait until morning, we accepted the woman’s shrugging of the fact that someone had carked it and that dinner (there had been a chance of dinner!?) was off and we would be left to our own devices. A hot shower thawed out a fair proportion of our body parts and a welcome pair of towelling robes wrapped liberally about our naked persons, set about warming those remaining. This was certainly the answer to the fucking stupid idea that is camping. In fact it was as far from this ridiculous pursuit as, well, we were from Sydney. There just remained the mysterious matter of the tabled stiff. A knock at the door brought the news in sign language that the family would be departing for a short time. The house fell silent and we were left alone with just the TV for company. Poor company we concluded given that the three channels were complete cock, one showing relentless clips of churches with bastardly dull choirs, the second showing relentless fuzz and the last, featuring a game show in which ugly contestants fought for even uglier prizes, and all in German, for God’s sake! There was no getting away from it, we would simply have to make our own entertainment. Pulling back the covers on the bed, checking for signs of other people’s pubes, we were content that this was a clean establishment but shuddered at the icy chill of the sheets. A man could die in there. Maybe a man had died in there! We hadn’t thought about where the stiff had carked it, maybe in this very room? Maybe its spirit had watched us unpack, undress, shower? “Freaking pervert”. Mark spluttered. “Ok, let’s get a grip. It’s just a dead bloke.” I reassured unconvincingly. Perched against the luke warm radiator, an idea tapped me on the head and whispered in my ear. That couldn’t be a good idea, surely? Go down and see if the stiff looked like he might have been a pervert while he was alive? Look for clues that he might not have died in this bed, possibly tyre mark up the face, that kind of thing? Mark had to admit there was something in it. After all we’d paid for the room and wouldn't be able to sleep the sleep of the just and knackered until we had ascertained beyond doubt whether Uncle Fester downstairs had actually carked it in our bed, we had a right to know...well, a morbid interest anyway. Tightening the belt of my robe (no pervert, dead or otherwise, was going to get in there), I slipped on my shoes and we stepped gingerly down the stairs, hitting every light switch we could find for added comfort. On the half way landing, we paused and looked above the banisters to the dining room. He was still there, hadn’t thought better of it and snapped out of it, power of the mind and all that. No, definitely dead. With growing morbid interest, we stepped forward desperately trying for no good reason to be silent, “The family have all pissed off and Herr Stiff there is hardly likely to hear us, is he?” In the hallway, we held the door-less frame and peeped in. Stretching from the neck, we craned forward for a better view: a peaceful face, a quiet soul, body in comfortable repose, dressed in a finely tailored suit and silk waistcoat. We ventured further. No coffin: this bloke was early for his own funeral! Judging by the lack of lines on his face, he may have been early leaving this world too. A silver fob poked from the waistcoat pocket and a chunky watch adorned his left wrist. This guy had been a stickler for time keeping. We noted he wore an engraved signet ring, a club tie, shiny, shiny shoes and a belt buckle of an age long before this one. Sherlock Holmes, stand aside, this one was a doozy, I had him sussed: A stiff but kindly type who was upstanding in the community but lived alone, unmarried due to a mismatched love affair, something medium rank in the army, undecorated for bravery, so possibly a bit of a cowardly bastard but a staunch admirer of his father’s strict but fair parenting, (hence the belt buckle), a hobby physicist and a secret Marxist. When pressed by Mark, I admitted I had added the last few by way of apology for summing this bloke as a bit of a dull git. Content that there was nothing in the face to suggest a pervert, we subconsciously relaxed. “You first!” “First what?” I whispered “ Touch him, go on!” “Hang on, that can’t be a good idea can it? Supposing he died of something fatal!” “ Or contagious…” “Something like the plague? Maybe he came face to face with an angry rat!” “ Bet he wishes he had chosen rodent wrestling as one of his options at school now then!” “Bet he doesn’t! Anyway it was your idea, you touch him first.” Having beaten Mark at his own game of dares, he had nowhere left to go. First a stabbed tap at a shoe, hand recoiled at lightening speed. Bolder now, but somehow still rooted to the spot, we wondered about the engraving on that ring. There might be clues in there, a symbol, a word, a secret sign to unravel the mystery that I had completely imagined might exist. Leaning forward, I tried to peer more closely at the inscription, too far away; I’d have to shuffle round the table. As I turned to move, the sound of a key in the back door almost led to two more stiffs as our hearts stopped simultaneously. Grabbing me by my hair, Mark shot out of the room and up the stairs faster than either of us knew we could. The bedroom met us with all the charm of a confession box as we fell in. A moment later a gentle tap at the door caused our hearts to cease again, possibly never to be re-started. The sound of a tray being placed outside the door, with the tell-tale sound of an aluminium plate cover popped onto what was obviously a takeaway offering, given their very recent return. Retreating footsteps and then silence. Mark brought in the tray. “Cool, food! I’m dead hungry.” * Vienna had lived up to all its promises: Mark had a Weiner with mustard to die for, I had my picture taken outside the Opera House for evidence to Guinness, the tandem had a new chain and the three of us had the pleasure of meeting Brad, a Yankee bible-basher and fellow cyclist staying with the Vienna Boy's Choir, as he informed us – we didn’t pry. The weather even chose to improve for a few hours and the sun popped out for a guest appearance. The only blemish on the spotless day was getting the front wheel stuck in the numerous tram lines that criss-crossed the roads and going down hard like a whale down a mineshaft on the still slippery, sodden surface - but that's what being Devil-May-Care International Tandemists is all about. * Sixty kilometres on the weather had settled into a totally uniform, communist grey*, "Why would you live in a climate like this?” we whined to ourselves, in denial. Leaving the delights of Vienna, we found ourselves in the middle of some distressingly grim countryside, enlivened only by the vast conglomerate of high rises, fashionably dressed in slate grey concrete, stagnating in the near distance and...a border crossing? *More brain washing from our childhood-communist countries were probably multi-coloured affairs with myriads of rainbow-clad children constantly releasing pristine white doves into cloudless brilliant azure skies - at least, that's how Hollywood always portrayed them... The muddling thing was, was that it definitely wasn’t Hungary; Mark was sure of that and given that Mark and himself were of the same opinion, conversation on that point had ceased. Where he had cause to disagree with himself though, sparks were really flying. “It’s definitely not Hungary, I’ve already said that! But I don’t think it’s, well maybe it is, no …” “No one’s arguing mapman, but if it isn’t Hungary, where is it?” I stuck my tongue in his ear to emphasise my point. He chewed on it thoughtfully for a while. “Well, it definitely isn’t Hungary, though it could be Yugoslavia…maybe we’ve been going faster than we think and rather than about sixty-four kilometres, we’ve actually done six hundred and forty! Perhaps its Australia, maybe we’ve already broken the record!” “Mmm, maybe you’ve been out in the rain too long.” “Well, basically,” Mark confessed, “ I’ve obviously fucked up.” “Well fuck up man, let’s go find out where this is” “Well, we’re united on one thing” he nodded in the direction of the high rises, “That is one ugly motherfucker of a town.” At the tiny barrier attached to the tiny shed, two soldiers lounged. As we approached, one of them hailed us in a language incomprehensible to even a native speaker and definitely to us. It never ceased to amaze us that people in positions of meaningless authority failed to bother with the most basic of needs, that of being able to converse in English. Thus we were left to deduce their drift from the universal language of uniform: they wanted our passports and they wanted them now. Despite their being, in our humble opinion, nothing more than jumped up punks barely out of the boy scouts, their automatic rifles carried sufficient weight to have us fumble around inside the panniers looking for them. “I say, you there, what in the wide, wide world of International Relations is this itinerant border doing in the middle of a field?” Mark asked with what he hoped was an imperious air, something of the tone our Victorian founding fathers might have employed with starched upper mouth parts and even stiffer underpants while talking to Johnny Foreigner. He gesticulated emphatically at the ground: “ I say chaps, WHERE…IN ARSE’S NAME…IS…THIS?” he repeated, confusing First World War chumminess and the possibility that English might be understood at increased decibels. The soldier who hadn’t spoken, pointed curtly to the sign we had spectacularly failed to notice above their heads.We weren’t quite sure of the details but the general gist seemed to be that this was “Slo-va-kia?” Mark read, “What the fucking hell is that when it’s at home* *At the time, new countries were popping up with the monotonous regularity of foot and mouth outbreaks. This was surely the height of bad manners. How the hell was one supposed to navigate in foreign parts if they were going to open up new countries at the drop of a Kalashnikov and shut them down just as readily? We had been far too busy before we left to keep abreast of unimportant things like that. And in our defence, it wasn’t on any map we’d looked at*. It seemed rather rude of Governments to start creating new countries as we were going along – clearly we were never going to reach Australia like that! And would it even be Australia where we got there? Perhaps it would have split into Austra and Lia or Abbo dabbo land. What had happened to the good old days when chicken tasted like chicken and when you walked out the bloody door, it was still the same country as the one you had pissed in the night before? *Mostly Noddy's World map Series for Schools Either way, we had had no bloody idea we were going to pass anything between Austria and Hungary (except that dodgy second Pferd-Wurst from lunchtime) and were in grave danger of looking like a couple of Muppets “Hey Muppets, where you going to?” It spoke! It spoke in English! The snidey little worm! Rattling off the next couple of stop-off countries on our grand tour, I hoped to reduce them to gibbering wrecks of wonderment and awe and regain some of our fast-fading cred. To give them their due, for their age they did a passable job of hiding their wonderment and awe and let us through without further hindrance; which was as well for them, Mark informed me further down the road, as he was about to ‘assert his natural authority’ – blimey!

****

Chapter 5 - Hungary - A Rifle Butt in the Spokes We had left Slovakia almost before we’d unwittingly entered it and were already tearing our way through Hungary with the momentum of a runaway tram. Well, we thought it was Hungary. Indeed, it didn’t really matter, because we were sitting in Györ ,we supposed, in a fast food restaurant that looked suspiciously like a McDonalds. Mark had adventurously ordered the most ethnic sounding dish and it had turned out to be burger and chips – result! Though what Mark had expected in a burger restaurant, Hungarian or otherwise, I wasn’t sure; goulash thermidor? In Esztergom we called it a day, because we fancied a night of it. Booking into a cheap but acceptable hotel*, we hit the streets and let our noses lead us to a pizza joint that would have given any Italian mama dyspepsia. But we were in Hungary and made allowances to the point where the pizza tasted mighty fine. So fine in fact that we had another, though what exactly the main ingredient of the topping was, we never knew: carpet tiles Mark hazarded. *It had walls. Mostly. The body fed and watered, it was time to provide some food for the mind and spirit, so we hoofed it to the magnificent basilica we had seen earlier. Using this dull block of stone as a navigation aid, we found our way to the tiny cinema nearby. Judging by the posters advertising the bizarre collection of recent screenings, we were in for a real treat and to this end we now repaired inside for our spiritual repast: 'Cjukferjuk'. A film about people with pointy heads, apparently; pointy heads and the ability to sleep standing up as far as we could decipher. Being dubbed entirely in Hungarian we could actually decipher very little, except that Tom Hanks had obviously fallen on hard times and was now working in Hungarian Cinema. Hardly a Times review but that lowering of our standards hadn’t actually reduced our enjoyment of life since leaving home, rather it had enhanced it on many occasions and this was clearly going to be another one of them. * “Cerfuckcerfuck that might have to be the worst film I have ever, ever seen!” Mark said to the world in general as we left. It was an irrelevant truth, which was lost on him, that the world in general didn’t give a flying fuck what he thought, and went about its business of being almost midnight. Dramatic edifices lined every road down which we turned, lit by dim spotlights. Okay so maybe when we had looked at the architecture with mild interest on our way in, this hadn’t actually translated into observation of any particular features as we soon realised that one colonnade and another looked distressingly similar, two cupolas were indistinguishable and iron work bridges over drainage ditches had clearly been breeding like the Welsh since we had walked this way. If indeed we had actually walked this way for it was looking more and more dubious with every few paces. Mark consoled that at least we had only misplaced a hotel this time and not an entire country. I suggested that a passing pedestrian or jolly local copper could probably help us, but Mark pointed out that this was unlikely, not because of the language barrier but because we had spectacularly omitted to note the position, or name of our matchbox hotel. As we slapped our pockets in the vain hope that the keys we’d handed into the outrageously fat bloke on the armchair of a reception might somehow have appeared Uri Gellar style in our jackets, we felt a slight sense of foreboding. Like lost souls in Hades, we were obviously doomed to walk the planet for all eternity, if that’s what lost souls in places like Hades did. What really fucked us off however, was that we’d paid for the bloody room! It has been statistically proven that it drizzles more at 1am than at any other time, and it’s true the world over. It was true here and it was still true at 2am as we stumbled along more damp, deserted streets. Learning from one’s own mistakes is surely one of those aspects of life that some clever arse with stupid ears has made up a ridiculous maxim for, making one wish he were still alive to facilitate the mashing off his face into something hard and unyielding. We thought so. We had long since tired of marvelling at the lack of a mugging we had received, and as for following the olde bloody worlde historic, bastard town map, frankly Mark remarked, he wouldn’t wipe his arse on it (although he had come pretty close to it, finding no public toilets in over two and a half hours). Oh joyous hallelujah to the heavens above, fate finally smiled on us and saw fit to bring forth our wayward hotel with at least a few hours left before check out. Although we almost had to spend these asleep standing up at the door as outrageously fat man took an unseemly amount of time to clothe his pasty body, waddle downstairs and huffily pull back the bolts. * Stuck in the centre of Budapest, sucking on diesel fumes was seriously affecting our ability to act rationally and we found ourselves weaving through the traffic with little regard for the fact that if we kept it up, we were about to become offal. Added to this, the low-grade petrol was far from lung-friendly and Mark, who is highly allergic to fumes, fettucini & farmers obviously needed to get out of the capital ASAP. * *pretty much anything starting with an 'f' - it's a psycho-semantic condition Having left the traffic-free womb of the Donnauradweg in order to cut across country, finding the right road was proving harder than a needle in a haywain, whatever the fuck that was. ‘Point and squirt’ had been the plan: point the tandem on the right road and squirt us like a hypodermic of liquefied speed across the Great Hungarian Plain to the Yugoslavian border, thus avoiding hugger- mugger Romania. The dictator Ceausescu had been overthrown only a while before and things were still a little 'dodgy' by all accounts. Further reports of ex-secret police roaming around, generally causing aggro had followed us across Europe which sounded about as much fun as an anchovy enema. Mark had had several run ins with the secret police when Ceausescu was still in power and didn't really relish getting back together. Even though there were similar problems in some of Yugoslavia, (well ok, a war in parts), we had to get through to Turkey somehow so given the choice between civil-strife torn Romanian and war-torn Yugoslavian, we plumped for Yugolslavia as we hoped to be able to skirt around the edge of the country out of harm’s way and on in to Bulgaria before anyone even noticed an oversized purple tandem ridden by two undersized midgets. Or not. * Sightseeing or burgers? Burgers or sightseeing? The dilemma was always the same and yet somehow, the burgers had won every time, as we truly didn’t give a rat’s cock about the overrated and inexplicably dull, masquearding as must-see sites. What was so great about herding around like a retarded sheep, bleating with boredom and burdening one’s overpacked luggage with absolute, touristic cack? Well that was how we saw it from the comfort of another burger bar as we gave our lungs and legs a rest from fighting with Budapest’s fumes and traffic in a small café-cum-restaurant. Moving on from something stringy and burnt in the burger stakes to something strong and black in the coffee stakes, we were joined by the living dead, dressed uniformly in unflattering tracksuits of very inappropriate colours given their age, (the wearers, not the tracksuits). A tour party, they looked bewildered and “Shagged?” Mark sympathised “Aye, lad, that’s cos bloody schedule would kill a pit pony! Can’t be done. Seven days for Christ’s sake!” “You have to be winding me up?” Mark’s disbelief burst forth. “No son, twenty-seven capitals in seven ruddy days!” “Well, my absolute respect, for that is professional sightseeing. Would that be like a Guinness World record?” The Nike jogging bottoms across the table joined in “No, P.C. Cooperman tours, Lancashire.” “So...” I tried to choose my words carefully, “how’s it going?” “Hell on earth!” “Living nightmare!” “Worse than Leeds!” “Fucking shite! You were never in Leeds!” Tempers were ragged, goodwill long worn down but united in solidarity, a mutiny was afoot. “Hiding out in a cafe?” I queried, “What, all fifty-nine of you?” “Those punks need to know we mean business!” “How many more do we have to lose before they’ll take note!” A pink shell suit gurned. “How many have you lost?” Mark asked. “Three!” The chorus was fifty-nine strong. “Left behind by the bus?” I ventured. “Not likely! First one carked it in t’ Louvre after three art galleries straight in one morning, t’ tour o’ bridges o’er Seine in afternoon an' bloody ballet 'n evening! Number two had a heart attack when handed the itinerary for first three hours o’ second day.” “And number three?” “Fishbone.” “Well that’s hardly the company’s fault now is it?” “’Appen it were! You ever tried to eat twelve fish courses in eighteen bloody minutes in a fuckin’ gondola ’ave you?” “So how are you going to mutiny, then?” Mark asked changing the subject. “We’re going t’ ’ide out in here, miss t’ rendezvous, then issue our demands by fax!” The jogging bottoms jumped in again “ We’re prepared to get violent, you know.” “Great plan.” I offered. “Yeah, good luck with it.” Mark added. “If you’ll excuse us.” We rose and left them making makeshift weapons from walking sticks, dentures and someone’s false leg. Outside we unlocked the tandem and prepared to dice with death and bad clichés once again. “Sixty five years of hard graft in order to piss away the last few years in pointless pursuits and ill-fitting nylon clothing? There is surely greater meaning to be wrested from life than that!” Mark, distracted in his metaphysical funk, failed to notice an oncoming truck as we rode off and almost found the answer to his own question. * With the Great Hungarian Plain proving as flat as our mood wasn’t, at our current rate, we’d be out of this country in less than four hot meals and three cheap hotels - because hotels here were so cheap what was the point of camping?* A lucky guess leaving the city of Kecskemet in the morning had allowed us to make it onto the right road and thus it was only at a ridiculous junction of five roads with no signs, that we were forced to make enquiry. Sadly, our chosen informant turned out to be a numbskull who had no comprehension of map or direction. No amount of patient pointing out our destination could illicit anything other than Johhny Weirdpants trying to climb onto my seat, while dribbling onto Mark's while violent head shaking and gabbling in what we took to be some kind of pidgin Hungarian. We should have known, we should have guessed by the hat, it screamed ‘nutter’ from a hundred yards. But herein lies one of the serious difficulties of adventuring. It can be hard to tell when unaccustomed to appropriate local dress. The squared-off, flap-down ears and ludicrous length peak would have had us crossing the road in England, shouting abuse and hurling rocks, but here, how the hell could we know? *This ill-thought out monetary philosophy would come back to haunt us! So instead, trusting to Mark’s unerring mental compass, we made another guess and were supremely smug at the sight of a TIR some twenty or so kilometres further on. A TIR meant the right road for TIR stood for 'Trans International Routier' and also for 'Tandem International Rudeboys' and lorries meant we were finally back on the main highway to Yugoslavia and approaching the border. Lorries were everwhere, the road, the laybys and the verges – and all of them seeming as if they had been parked up since before borders began. A cross between a very disorganised refugee camp and an even more disorganised camping site, temporary washing and cooking facilities had been set up on and around the lorries, while barrels and crates had been produced from somewhere as the unshaven drivers sat despondently playing a disinterested hand of cards or sucking on their 100th fag, the remains of several days food, cigarette butts and litter around their feet. Our appearance caused a minor ripple of interest, but not as much as the wave of interest the appearance of a Wimpy sign caused in us. A Wimpy? Here? In the middle of a field in nowheresville! It couldn’t be! Mark had been born and raised above Richmond’s finest example of this English version of the classic American diner and with a primal cry, he rode the tandem through the door. From the outside, it looked like a dilapidated wooden hut but inside… inside it was a dilapidated wooden hut with a couple of tatty Wimpy menus stapled to the planks. But it did have benches and benders (or their version of Wimpy’s legendary smoked arselips in cat gut – Mmm! Delish!). Smatherings of grease, low-grade meat and a fast-food childhood revisited, we emerged to do battle royale with the unifomed border monkeys. Whizzing up the outside of the stationary snaking caravan of lorries, we smugly presented ourselves, passports in hand to the lounging straggle of soldiers. It was probably the complete refusal to acknowledge our presence that really incensed Mark. “Helloooooooooooo, mein Capitanes!” but even this effervescent greeting combined with gratuitous passport waving still failed to elicit a response. Drawing heavily on the end of his cigarette, one of the soldiers flicked the butt into a puddle with his index finger. The resultant hiss seemed to capture his attention far more than Mark had managed. “Look, here are our passports”. Might as well have been here are my hairy balls, would you like to suck on them for a short while, for all it mattered. After several minutes of abusive heckling, we were finally rewarded with a raised eyebrow. Wearing uniform had obviously warped this guy’s sense of self-importance and we figured we might just be the ones to knock him back down to earth. But there again, that was quite a rifle he had hanging from his shoulder. The voice was as gravelled as a stately home drive, “go home”. “Go home?!” “GO HOME!” “Or what sonny?” It must have been something to do with where I was standing but it looked like Mark was really starting to skate on thin ice. The youngest of the six, leant forward mockingly, “There is a war on, the border is closed, if you were to cross you would be shot, either by us…or the rebels. It is your choice. Make it and leave.” Obviously their command of the English language was surprisingly more advanced than we had thought. We decided that it would be a good idea not to find out how advanced their command of firearms was and in the interests of international relations, let this one go. We didn’t want an international incident this early on in the trip after all. It couldn't be denied however, that this was a serious blow to progress! The choice had been Yugoslavia or Romania, and we'd plumped for Yugoslavia. And now Yugoslavia was plumping for 'piss off!' Our irrevocable decision only made bloody yesterday and thwarted within twelve hours now lay weeping before us! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuckety Fuck! Hollywood had a lot to answer for. James Bond never had this sort of crap happen: poison dripped down a string, exploding motorbikes, vicious assassins but no one ever told him to go home! “There’s a war on, like I didn’t know! Arse!” Mark grumbled away to himself, missing the point that we might very well have ended up laying face down in a pool of each others’ guts had the uniformed Arse let us through. * We have never been known to regurgitate stupid phrases, bandied about like “well it would happen to us” or “just our luck!” or “having removed the crankshaft ...” because they are for stupid people. And we, in our humble opinion, are far from stupid. It’s just that we are on occasions unlucky, Mark noted, ill-fated, jinxed, more often than not cursed, in short doomed by predestination to always get the bum’s rush, written in the heavens that fate… Mark’s soliloquy was interrupted by my seat bolt snapping in disgust at having to listen to so much drivel - it had never agreed to support the weight of stupid people across the world. Consequently I went tits up and slid gracefully into the gutter, In unison we chorused ‘Just our luck!’ Mark helped me up and examined the remains of the renegade seat bolt “In my capacity as chief mechanic to this expedition, in my professional opinion…it’s buggered!” That much was obvious, what wasn’t so obvious was where we were going to find another one in this ridiculously backward, third world cousin of a European country (Hungary that is, not Belgium). Even though in essence, it was just a bolt, it was no standard bit of hardware and given the stresses involved, no ordinary two-bit commie substitute was likely to last, even if we could get it to fit. The one thing in our favour was that having been so rudely turned back at the Yugoslavian border, having no plan with much wailing and gnashing of teeth, we had ridden back to the last town we had passed, Szged, which was where the bastard bolt now chose to make its do-or-die protest. The onus for coming up with our next move was removed from our shoulders by the arrival of a gangly youth, answering to the name of Geza to his friends and…Geza to everyone else. Seeing our plight, he felt moved to come over, examine the problem and give his amateur advice: “It is bugger!” Pleased though Mark was to have his initial diagnosis confirmed, he felt that this pronouncement didn’t really leave us any closer to solving it. Pointing out the non-standard nature of the seat assembly, he was interrupted “That is no problem, we get new one.” “A new one? You happen to have such an item upon your person?” Mark inquired pompously. “No, but there is shop, near here, I take you, and” he bent down and ran his finger along the damaged chainring, “maybe, I think you need new one of this also.” At this pronouncement Mark raised an eyebrow. Not to be outdone, Geza raised him a finger. I couldn’t match that just having the one nose, so I threw in my cards. That just left the two of them. Mark raised the stakes and another eyebrow, but he was on a hiding to nothing – Geza had plenty of fingers in reserve. “OK, lead the way” Mark capitulated. As we set off he whispered to me, “Have you seen the bikes around here? I don’t think they have gears, they haven’t even got tyres!” I couldn’t disagree, but I had no other plan and neither did he, so Geza led and we followed. Set under a block of residential flats, from the outside, the shop looked more derelict than open, but inside! Inside there was more fancy cycle hardware than any shop in England outside of the capital and even then it would have given most of them a cycle for their money: sleek racing bikes, composite aero wheels, freewheels galore and seven-speed blocks! Back then top of the range cyclists like us regularly sold a lung (obviously not one of their own - usually a close relative) on the black market to get hold of 7 speed blocks. Geza explained that this shop supplied many of the professional cyclists in Hungary. Mark picked up an A-headset and waved it in my direction. Geza showed Mark how it worked. “These are very good, better than old type shit like you have on your bike.” We thought we’d let this one go and with Geza as interpreter, we soon had a new seatbolt, chainring and, taking the opportunity, multifarious other spares we had found as hard to find as a gregarious whale on a Japanese exchange trip. The other not so welcome similarity to the London bike shops was the price, doubly expensive, as Hungary was doubly cheap. But no longer at the mercy of treacherous componentry, we were too pleased to care and after the bike shop staff had admired* the tandem, we all three set off for Geza’s flat for the night. Such timely life-saving assistance topped off with an offer of accommodation could not go unrewarded, so on the way we piled into any and every shop we could find and bought enough food to feed the cast of Zulu Dawn. *euphemism for taking the piss The door Geza eventually stopped at could have been the one where we first met, save for the fact that it still had some glass in its panes. It did flit through my mind that he might have walked us round in a complete four-sided circle for all the attention I was paying. So at ease did we feel however, that even though the tenement blocks around us were the sort where no one had a lock-up because it would get broken into, but it was the kind of area where everyone had a lock-up because nobody had anything worth breaking in for and everyone knew it, we didn’t hesitate to enter. Once inside, Geza led us to the lift which, being of the service variety easily fitted the three of us and the tandem. Only that morning our hopes had been dashed at the border of broken dreams and then to add anal insult to injury, my posterioral support mechanism seditiously rent in two, but now with lard- inducing amounts of food and vital spares in hand, we were made welcome to our night’s accommodation. In the event, buying food for six thousand turned out to be a good move, as Geza and various friends of his who popped in and out to gawp under the guise of helping with the repairs, all seemed not to have eaten for the last six weeks and all of it swiftly went. During bouts of feasting and tandem tussling, we told Geza of our adventure and he told us of his: actually Yugoslavian, even though only nineteen he had deserted from the army as he had no belief in, and no desire to take part in, the criminally stupid war that had proved such a thorn in the bollocks of our trip. His family were still in Yugoslavia but he obviously couldn’t return there until the stupidity finished, and maybe not even then. Hungary, however, was welcomely neutral and with the help of his new-found friends he had managed to get a real Partridge family vibe going. Fortunately between them they had been around a bit and along with our maps, were amazingly able to help us piece together an alternative route so soon after Expedition Sydney had been dealt a seemingly terminal slap in the face. Even though the original idea had been to avoid Romania in the first place, we were on a mission and if we couldn’t get through Yugoslavia, then fuck them it was their loss and the Romania border and on to Bulgaria it would be. Geza allayed some of our concerns as well: “ I think most of Romanian trouble is in large cities and East, if you take this route you stay away from danger... I think.” he added with more hope than confidence. As he knew all about staying out of harm’s way, we decided that in the morning we would leave on our new, risk-reduced Romanian route and toasted its success with something that had all the attributes of bleach. * Dull and early the following morning we were accompanied by Geza and his entourage on a flotilla of bikes to the outskirts of town and waved off for Mako and the border. A bit of us almost wished we might be turned back again for an excuse to spend some more time with our new friends. We did however still have a few kilometres to do to break that record (well, a few tens of thousands actually) and ridiculously helpful as Geza and his chums were, they drew the line at finishing the trip for us while we lounged around Geza's flat guzzling another gargantuan pile of comfort food. Meeting people like this was the main reason we had wanted to do something so stupid in the first place. We truly believe that people the world over are fabulous, give or take a few bastards*. Even though the odd individual may be evil, smelly and have pointy ears, the average person is inexplicably helpful, usually washed and, well some have pointy ears but you get the drift. Only a few hours before it had seemed Team Sydney were alone in the world with fate against them and then people stepped out of nowhere, people who had much bigger problems than we did (ours were, after all, self-inflicted) and jumped, unbidden at the chance to lend a hand and get a couple of nutty strangers they would probably never see again, back on course. We had little idea at this early stage of the trip how much a theme this would become as we lurched further and further into the unknown. *Granted a large proportion seem to inhabit positions of power and border crossings. For now, it was stage two, (maybe it was three as there had been that sticky out bit that wasn’t a real country) as back in International Tandem-setter mode, we sped like a guided Rottweiler towards the Romanian border and our date with destiny.

****

Chapter 6 Romania - Old Gits and Vampires “Hashish? Narcotics?” “Are you buying or selling?” It was flippant and given that this was the most highly decorated weebil in history, and he was backed up with two rifle-toting monkeys, it was a pretty dumb remark. But isn't dumb heroics what International Adventuring is all about? Fortunately, the fat that slowed his body to a crawl had somehow had a similar effect on his brain and my remark went unnoticed. “Chocolate? Lego? Bibles?” I subconsciously looked around for a hidden camera. “Guns? Rifles? Bullets?” The weebil shifted his bulky arse to the other cheek, and leant heavily on the arm of the bench from whence he conducted his business. “Is this like Bingo, do we carry on until we shout house?” I asked innocently. “Petrol? Batteries?” “Petrol! It’s a flippin’ bicycle, not a motorbike!” “Bombs?” the Weebil was in full flow now. “Hell yeah, we are the bad boy gangstas of tandeming!” Mark smartarsed. Weebil must have mistaken our reply or maybe it was the effects of foreshortening, but the barrel of the rifle loomed large enough to partially obscure the view of two soldiers ripping the bike apart. Soon bags lay open with stuff strewn randomly in the dirt. I hoped Mark wasn’t thinking of pulling that ‘asserting his natural authority’ shit; that barrel was awfully close; one slip and we’d be picking bits of Romanian issue gun metal from our faces for a week. Before the search had started, the Weebil had legged it with all the speed his piggy trotters could muster to the safety of the low bunker of the building he called his office; clearly not as brave as his be-medalled chest would have suggested. “They probably came in a cereal packet.” Mark hazarded. While the search progressed, Weebil used his full military weight from the comfort of his bureau, calling for things to be brought to him, barking orders until he was satisfied that we weren’t hiding a scud missile in our sleeping bags or an exocet in our toolkit (mind you, it was about the only thing we didn’t have in there) and then beckoned to two soldiers to escort us to his lair. Inside the makeshift office, we marvelled at the lack of anything official looking. Weebil presided over the proceedings from his wooden table of a desk, whilst a rubber stamp was wielded in our direction with all the menace of a stuffed badger. “How many days for visa will you be in our beautiful country?” Given that this had been a complete change of plan, and we had fully intended to skip his beautiful country altogether, the honest answer was that we didn’t have a clue. “Six days”, I said arbitrarily. “Six days, sixty dollars” the Weebil replied arbitrarily. We could see where this was going. “Also you must make exchange for Romanian Lei for each day in beautiful country.” “Okay, how much must we exchange?” Mark sighed. “Sixty dollars”. “Like I didn’t know” Mark mumbled to himself, counting out the precious notes. $120! Fuck that for a game of extortion! That was a pretty big hole in our budget, but then again we hadn’t actually allocated any funds to this kind of thing, so any amount would have blown it out of the water, in truth. Weebil slapped a handful of tatty notes and a selection of toy town coins on the counter in exchange. As I picked them up, Mark asked innocently “ Which way do we go for Disney Land?” “You go straight to tourist hotel!” The Weebil was bored now. It must have been minutes since he’d eaten and his vital signs were fading fast. Tetchy with the hunger, he barked for us to be dismissed and we went out to pick up the scattered pieces of our expedition. * Taking the Weebil’s advice, we headed for Timisoara, and the first available tourist hotel. Inside, a waistcoated stick insect appeared behind the desk “Passaportze”. The internationally recognised word. The rest of the transaction however, was completed without a word, numerous papers filled in, all with random bits of information, as we had no idea what they were looking for being as it was all written in Romanian, or Hebrew for all we could tell. After volunteering our name, address and country of origin, we lost interest and completed the rest with a random selection of lies and lyrics from the bigger numbers from South Pacific. “That ought to do it” I smiled. The price for the room was frankly quite embarrassing, until we saw it and then it seemed a tad pricey. The stuff dumped in the room, we were set to investigate the haute cuisine of the local hostelries and were thus pulled up short by the notice handed to us on our way back past the reception: Curfew tonight 10pm. “Curfew?” Mark queried. “There’s still a curfew?” The one and only time he had been here before, Ceausescu had still been in charge and a curfew was par for the course, but Ceausescu had gone in ’89, so what the fuck was all this about? Our host had seen this reaction before we suspected for the subsequent charade of doors being locked and us sleeping in the street was all too clear. “Right, 9.30pm it is then”. We’d walked the streets far too recently while our bed lay empty to do it all again and besides the only thing that interested us at this moment was something to eat and then a quick fumble under the sheets. * In the streets of Timisoara the signs were really starting to piss us off. None of them suggested a place to eat and by now we were hungry as only an unsuspecting British stomach can be caught unawares in an Eastern block state. Part of the problem may have been that we were keeping to the lit main streets; natural caution isn’t often that evident in us, but given the bands of troublesome muppets making a sporadic nuisance of themselves and the fact that we had only just got going on our adventure, we were keen to avoid any early catastrophes. A few setbacks had already beset us, but then again that was what adventuring was all about, I cheerily told Mark what he already knew. He agreed, adding however that it was more likely to be about going to bed hungry if we didn’t find somewhere to eat soon; the curfew was only an hour away. But an hour was to prove plenty as we practically fell into a bright, but empty café a few minutes later. The plain tables and benches were matched by the plain food – there plainly wasn’t any. Well, nothing we could stomach despite the hunger and impending lock-in till morning. The agreement had been that once we crossed the Bosphorous into Asia we would have to eat anything and everything that came our way, identifiable or not, but we hadn’t expected to be doing so this early on and frankly the stomachs weren’t ready for it. The Weebil had given me an idea however. It seemed they were keen to get their hands on dollars in this part of the world, so I thought why not try it here? Pulling one out I put it on the grimy conter top and asked in sign language if there was anything else to eat? The guy behind the counter whipped the note away without a word and motioned for us to sit down. In less time than it took to skin a cat, we were tucking into what looked like an entire kilo of frankfurters, made from, we imagined, that very moggie and even though back home we probably would have gagged at the low-grade pet meat, when in Rome-ania and all that. While Mark tried to secure a bottle of fizzy liquid not entirely petrol based, I was tripped up by a dire lack of local knowledge and reluctantly played eeny-meeny-miney-mo with the loo doors. What sadist puts rudimentary stick figures both wearing skirts on either door! God, were we back back in Scotland! Hadn't these people even heard of trousers, I mean, how backward were they? Then again, Mark confided, he'd always fancied himself in a skirt- of the manly kilt variety obviously he hastily added. Well, I suppose it would lend added authenticity to his Celine Dion impressions. so legendary at the Slug & Leotard Friday night lock-ins which now seemed a lifetime away - thank the Lord! Outside in the street it was already dark and the few streetlamps left plenty of dark corners for undesirables to lurk. Had they leapt out however and demanded all we had, after the kilo of suspect frankfurters we could happily have obliged and volunteered a full set of inner organs between us in two short bursts. Aided by our paranoia and commando-style rolls, belly-crawls and ‘hup-hups’, we made it back to the hotel, disappointingly without the need to blacken our faces. * Cycling through rural Romania we couldn’t shake the feeling that with every hundred or so kilometres east we travelled, time was regressing at an alarming rate. The villages were inhabited by wrinkly peasants, bare-footed children and domestic animals, the last two of these littered in herds on the roads. In-between, the countryside was peppered by potholes, gypsies and spare bare- footed children. The gypsies seemed less than interested in passing chit-chat, so we let them be and they returned the compliment. Another constant in this kaleidoscope of mud were the storks, who showed an embarrassing lack of originality in migrating along the very same route we were travelling. These lanky bird brains obviously suffered delusions of grandeur for their nests were palatial. Almost every telegraph pole, or disused factory or house chimney had a giant pile of untidy sticks forming a circle, some 6 ft deep and up to 5 ft wide - easily big enough for vertically challenged midgets like ourselves to bed down in (and we had thought about it). Now, even though we loved anything furry, we have never been drawn into the seedy underbelly that is 'twitching', seeing this as more of a medical affliction passed on by insanitary bird watchers. Indeed, “Fuck ’em” we’d often told David Attenborough many a night, when channel hopping through someone else's TV (we never owned one ourselves on moral grounds, but could always be persuaded to yell abuse at a stranger's). The worrying thing now was that we found ourselves not only entranced by these wonderful birds but we were starting to sound like 'twitchers' ourselves. Mark however, pulled us back from the abyss with some more realistic observations - "In all honestly, having a gargantuan bloody bird, crushing the roof of your house and doofing down your chimney doesn’t really seem that lucky?" * Being more Cosmo Café Courtesans than scenery dullards, (despite our recent bird nerdery) we rode on oblivious to anything pertaining to undulating hills or wooded copses. Pulling into a village of little distinction, we failed to appreciate the full, Rousseau-esque rural charm of the decaying rustic timbered frame houses and manky collection of domesticated animals occupying a perfectly good spot for a hotel. Using the International sign for “where the hell can we get a bed please?” we lampooned ourselves round the village until we were at the point where we would have asked a lame duck in a pickle jar to shuffle up and make space for the night. Lame ducks were unfortunately conspicuously absent, whereas lame old gits unfortunately weren’t. “Just fuck off, will you”. “Please” Mark added as an afterthought, after all this freak must have been close to a hundred and fifty years old and anything less respectful might have caused offence. But we were far from impressed by his constant haranguing and would happily have pushed him under a bus, had there been one handy. There wasn’t. The tugging at Mark’s shirt was really pissing him off now and what the hell was that sucking action the old bastard kept doing? Hand to his mouth as if holding a banana, Grandad kept pursing his wrinkled lips and moving his jaw as if sucking on a baby’s bottle, or teat or cock, depending on how you looked at it. It was ridiculous to be overpowered by a bag of bones with no teeth and weedy arms, but somehow we found ourselves being led on a trip through the village. Clearly, the unappetising truth was that behind our hard-bitten, don't-give-a-fuck, every-man-for-himself, burnt-out-itchy-trigger- finger exterior lay a heart of well, marshmallow and as we were obviously the singly most exciting thing to have happened in his otherwise squalid existence, we were loath to disappoint our public. The dirt streets had turned to mud and splashed liberally up the walls of the whitewashed stone buildings that were indistinguishable from the animal shelters save for a few tiny, giveaway windows. I eyed up our guide: the flattened cap, string for a belt, shirtsleeves rolled way beyond the elbow - chuck in some braces and he was surely about to break into “chim-chiminey, chim- chiminey chim-chim-chiroo”. Mark obviously had roughly the same idea. “Any minute now Mary Poppins, he’s going to try and clean your tubes with his brush!” Given the hand actions earlier, I couldn’t disagree. And yet somehow, we were drawn ever onwards into a small, walled farm, which looked slightly more substantial than any other we had passed. Through the chicken shed, birds scattering at our feet the three of us journeyed on, until our Transylvanian Troll paused at a sheet of rusted, crinkly tin. Pulled aside and motioned through, it was at times like this that I honestly began to question our sanity. Visions of returning to a bike stripped of all that we owned, having struggled free from the ropes that cut into our wrists in a locked away shed, surviving only on each other and the occasional takeaway, were all too clear. Add to that the indignity of being sucked off by an octogenarian shirt lifter, Mark added, and you have the kind of scenario that could really damage a man’s reputation. Good point! Not having had the sense to come tooled up, we would have to rely solely on our natural guile and cunning. If this doddery old git tried to pull a fast one, we would show him just how much respect we had for the elderly, by judo flipping him into a pile of chicken shit. “And then giving him the smackdown!” Mark added. After the WWF ditching us, we had switched our loyalties back to the WWWF and fully intended to video a tag match with the first endangered species we came across, feathered or otherwise, and post* it back to the WWF headquarters. *Yes, post! This was pre-YouTube days. Bracing himself, Mark was pulled up short by the offer of a length of dirty, clear plastic tubing. “What the fuck! No thanks mate!” The old git grinned. I had never seen such discoloured gums before but as Grandad placed his mouth around the pipe, they were displayed to their horrendous full. Between the patches of grime and green algae that covered the inside of the tube, it was just possible to make out the creeping movement of a semi clear liquid. “Ah, it’s a homemade still!” “Thank the Lord!” Our relief was loud and heartfelt and was mistakenly assumed to be enthusiasm. Before we knew it and in no way could it be explained, Team Sydney were once again beaten by the insistence of this old git and found ourselves sucking on the pipe, much to our absolute disgust. It was patently obvious to the meanest of intellects that we had approximately three minutes before the multitude of microbes festering in the pipe ate us from the inside out and had to decide whether to spit or swallow. Strangely enough though, despite its cloudy appearance and odd bouquet, it actually tasted ok. Not bad. In fact we’d have another shot. After all, it wasn’t often you were offered a shot in the mouth by a toothless geriatric in a far away country, Mark said. * In the Transylvanian forest, an eerie light filtered through the close knit trees and cast long shadows onto the cratered road. There was no traffic except for the occasional TIR that would announce its presence with a heart-stopping blast of its double air horns before overtaking us and speeding on out of sight. Up ‘til entering Romania they had always been courtesy itself, obviously recognising us as fellow Trans International Roadsters, but here they seemed to have no desire to swap tales of the open road, or even slow down, for some peculiar reason seeing us more as tyre fodder than homies. For not the first time we dusted ourselves off and dragged the tandem back onto what passed as a road and carried on with our diet of forest and vampire bats. Alone since passing the last sign of habitation back in 1841, we laboured through the miasmal landscape that is Transylvania. In a mud filled lay-by, in the last wisps of day, a TIR lay slashed open like a cut-price heart transplant patient: canvas curtain ripped back, carcass laid bare, doors hanging off. We peered inside. Totally looted. This was obviously bandit country. We would have to keep vigilant, expect attack, be prepared, trust no one or no thing. We’d seen the films. Maybe it was vampires? Now everyone knows the only way to kill a vampire or werethingy or anything with sharp pointy teeth, a bad attitude and an insatiable appetite for human blood, is to leg it squealing like a girl and let someone else deal with it. What many people don’t know is blowing its brains out at close range with a Magnum 44, Eastwood Style, also works a treat. However, beware! You will be picking bits of vampwolf out of your face for weeks. But we were past masters at this wildly overactive imagination lark; this was definitely just the start of things to come. We spun away in a 'don’t fuck with us' kind of way. After another long hour, the dark had taken over and we found ourselves peering into the gloom, with nothing more than a pisshole of a torch beam, trying to find the signs to anywhere. Our only and thus best option had been a tiny eating place with a handful of wooden sheds for accommodation in its dank, dark forest of a garden. We had hesitated, wavered for a moment, then rode on with no idea for an alternative. The foolhardiness of this had been preying on our mind for the last kilometre and thus it was in an unprecedented step, we turned around and retraced our tracks to the dimly lit veranda. A light inside suggested we hadn’t missed the boat, although the lack of punters didn’t provide much reassurance as to the quality of the establishment. It wasn’t going to be the bright, lively bustle of a cafe that we craved, but figuring that the inside of a hollowed out badger would be pretty welcome, we parked, locked up and climbed the steps. The door closed eerily behind us. The bar was completely unmanned. Our footsteps echoed along the worn, wooden boards to the counter. Tinkling sounds of music, wafted through from the kitchen, sounding suspiciously like 'I see a new moon arising, I see...' Too late! We’d already strayed from the path. On reaching the bar an inhuman screech howled through the hatch. “Yoooaaaoaoaoaowowoaoaowowowaoaooh!” Someone was being eaten by something, and eaten alive! Limb ripped from limb, flesh rent from bone. Turning to flee, we were paralysed with fear as the swing doors flew open and an apparition in white appeared. Seeing us, the barman stopped screaming and held up a bloodied stump where a finger should have been. “Ouchamoloka” “So I see”, I volunteered with what I hoped was a sympathetic look, somewhat tricky as my facial muscles were still locked in fear. “If he starts to turn into a bat or grows hair on the palms of his hand, I’m outta here!” Mark muttered “Ah Inglissh”, the guy said knowingly and without enthusiasm. Mark took control with all the aplomb of one who normally chooses to spend his vacation in a vampire-infested swamp and spelled out our request with moronically exaggerated hand gestures. “We...stay…in…wooden…shed thing? Sleepy…sleepy? You…hire…to us? Cheap?” Boris the barman sighed “Am I to understand from your pronouncement that you require the use of one our luxuriously appointed chalets for the duration of the night without too onerous an outlay?” or something like that. This bloke was pulling off the ‘I do this all the time’ routine with some conviction although our senses were less convinced. How many loony English speaking people chose to holiday in a place like this and just happened across his threshold in the hope that they could spend the night in a rotting potting shed. It wasn’t happening in the real world but we had left that far behind, along with chips and enemas and were learning to run with whatever came along. “Err.. that would be the general idea.” Mark confirmed adding ‘smart arse!’ between the lines. Our ‘host’ continued to bleed disinterestedly over the counter. “Wait moment.” Boris ran his bloodied finger along a line of keys, hanging from brass hooks above the bar and then put it back in his pocket. “I think thirteen is free”. “Lucky for us.” I took the offered key gingerly. Through the restaurant’s adjoining garden, we picked our way through the overgrowth, stumbling over a rotten bench hidden by the grass and brambles. A rusting barbecue paid testament to the truth that there had been no punters staying here since, well, since never. A peeping flash of the moon lit up the doors and illuminated the once brass numbers. “Thirteen”, Mark grabbed the handrail which promptly disintegrated in disinterest. Key in hand, he scrabbled about the door searching for the lock. A fruitless task without the aid of the moon, which took a full minute to reappear from behind a particularly thoughtless cloud. Mark stepped back in confusion, there was no lock; and never had been. “What the hell?” Trying and failing to dismiss superstition from our minds, we pulled at the door. Stubborn resistance met our frustrated yankings on the handle. The all-pervading damp had worked its mojo on the door and frame and nothing short of the idea of spending the night out was going to defeat it. “Take that you fucker!” Mark cried, both hands on the handle, chest muscles straining. The door flew open, depositing him into the hole where the top two steps had been. “Fuck!” Fortunately no personal injury was sustained except to his ego and we both leant forward into the room looking for a light switch. “No power!” This type of Neanderthal camping really wasn’t working for us. A cracked window allowed the now unobscured moon to illuminate the wooden bunk, (devoid of mattress) and the network of cobwebs that covered every inch of every surface. It took serious thrashings with a stick from the safety of the doorway for Mark to dispense with these noxious creatures and their disgusting arse weavings sufficiently for me to enter. The need to remove all trace of sticky gossamer and green algae from my hands, led me back into the wasteland of a garden. By the remains of the barbecue I had spotted a ceramic, butler-style sink and as the restaurant lights were now well and truly off, it seemed the only likely place for water. The tap was surprisingly unrusty and turned without difficulty. A rush of air preceded a rumble from the bowels of the earth and a single drop of brown water sat in my palm. Cock! The whole affair was too dull to continue with and we retired to our sleeping bags, spread out along the wooden boards of the supposed bed. As we got uncomfortable, a cloud of bats flew across the moon. “Fucking insects,” we muttered, which technically we knew they weren’t. * The ups and downs of the Transylvanian mountains had dwindled to mere pimples of their former selves as we rejoined the Danube along the stretch known as the ‘Irongates’. Here the river narrowed dramatically with cliffs flanking either side as we rolled into the haven of Orsova. This was a fact that delighted us as the narrow mountain roads and lack of purveyors of fine caffeine had started to piss us off. A ramshackle selection of cowsheds populated with peasants, did not a village make, nor in our recent experience, a decent cup of coffee. In Orsova, having filled up with caffeine of dubious quality, we set out to track down accommodation, quality or otherwise, in the larger, nearby town of Drobeta-Turnu Severin. Finding hotels, tourist or otherwise rather thin on the ground, (as in bugger all) and consequently soon finding ourselves at the opposite end of town roomless, Mark half-nelsoned a Severinian. Grudgingly he led us to a large building set several streets back. From the outside it was indistinguishable from a large grey stone building, we couldn’t guess its function, but on entering, it screamed hospital: bodies composting quietly, organs and spare limbs piled in corners and butch blokes in fishnets and aprons. We began to think that our guide had mixed up ‘hotel’ with ‘hospital’ (an easy mistake as we are often looking for a night’s sleep and end up with a vasectomy). It seemed there was no mistake on this occasion however, as the Head Honcho greeted us warmly, hands were shaken then gingerly placed back on the pile by the door. Sign language indicated the offer of accommodation for the night as we were shown to a room, empty save for bare walls and an even barer metal bed. It seemed churlish to turn down such comfort and hospitality, them having gone out on such a limb but even the inside of J. Edgar Hoover would surely have been more agreeable. Nevertheless, this was an adventure and who knew where we would end up sleeping later on – this would be good practice. Having locked the tandem to something solid round the back and put our panniers in the room, we set off to find whatever food was available in town and to have a nose around. In the event this took very little time as having eaten we lost our stomachs for sightseeing and thus were back all too soon, to find half the inmates in our sleeping bags, wearing our clothes and drinking our 3:1 oil, but making no attempt to hide it. The Head Honcho guy apologised and explained in charades that most of his staff had the IQ of a fridge magnet and he would be happy to get our possessions back off them with unwarranted violence. Having retrieved most of our belongings (the oil was long gone) he seemed perplexed at our insistence that we would push on for the night but directed us to a nearby campsite whose existence we had failed to discover on our earlier investigations. Everyone turned out to wave us off and having waved the tandem off, we realised maybe we should be the ones riding it, pulled the inmates off and made our excuses and escape. That night whilst laying in our ridiculously cramped tent, the sound of lugubrious singing floated across the Danube. We had originally intended to be in fucking Yugoslavia but now we weren’t and we didn’t care. Romania was turning out to be, if not the ideal holiday destination, certainly nothing like it had been predicted in the press before we left. Making another mental note to trust more to our own judgment, we lay for what seemed like hours listening to the drone of voices wash over us until Mark’s heartfelt “Do you know, shut the hell uppa ya faces?” summed up our desire to get the fuck to sleep. * As we sped towards the border that would take us into Bulgaria, it was once more into the countryside and the1800’s. It was a morning for road kill and we amused ourselves with the business of mentally recording the full range of wildlife that we might have seen had we been just a few hours earlier. In order to have something to while away the long evenings, what was needed here was a portable road kill press, similar in design to a portable flower press, but rather more agriculturally built to cope with the larger specimens we noted as we passed. It was hard to contain one’s excitement at the thought of what one would find by the side of the road by the time we hit Asia proper! * Having stopped for a snack that could very well have been mechanically-recovered arse, we remounted and rounding the corner saw in the distance a large river blocking our way. What in the wide, wide world of fried chicken was this uninvited slurry of disease and dysentery? Mark had made no mention of a river crossing, largely he explained staring at our outdated school atlas of a map, because he didn’t frickin’ well know there was one. This, it seemed, was Romania’s amateurish attempt at a border with Bulgaria. Figuring they must at least have had the decency to provide a bridge, or a ferry or a mechanical penguin, we put the map away and rolled on until deja vu struck and before us sat the most highly decorated weebil in history. “Hashish, narcotics?” Weebil’s double intoned. “We are definitely not bad boy gangstas!” Mark muttered.

****

Chapter 7 Bulgaria - World Cup Stops Play “Goooooooooaaaaaaaaaalllllll!” Our hopes were dashed. This was the second goal in ten minutes! Having run the gauntlet of Weebil number two, Team Sydney had narrowly escaped another exhaustive trio of cavity searches and were finally on Bulgarian soil and had been for several hours. Back at the Romanian border with Weebil number two, our request to exchange our remaining Romanian Lei had met with amusement on his side and resignation on ours. Being modern day urban warriors with vending machine mentality, we decided to see if any of it fitted into the slots in Bulgaria, assuming civilisation had advanced far enough for these mobile bastions of haute cuisine to have penetrated this far. Meanwhile we had spotted the ‘ferry’ that would finally allow us onto Bulgar soil. A floating metal platform pulled along a chain across the river might simply have been described as a ‘chain ferry’ in shoddy travel writing, but we always are prepared to go that extra millimetre. After standing holding the tandem for a good hour, the platform had filled up with a couple of trucks and cars and we were off at the speed of a deceased greyhound. The ‘ferry’ had docked, if bumping up against a rotting landing stage can be called ‘docking’ several hours ago and since then we had all stood outside the Bulgarian border building waiting for the customs officers to appear and welcome us to their ‘beautiful country’. The hold up, apart from them being ‘a bunch of gunts’ in Mark’s opinion, was the Football World Cup. Bulgaria were playing Turkey or Samoa or The New York Jets or someone… “It’s Romania actually” Mark butted into my monologue. …and until the game ended, they were supremely disinterested in whether or not a bunch of foreigners were dying to visit their beautiful country and return with tales of how they’d fallen in love with the place and been made to wait half their adult life at the bloody border. “Theengs arrre not looking good my friends.” the guy lounging against the wall opposite informed us. It wasn’t making any sense to my brain, totally taken up as it was, with being frustrated. This guy was Romanian, his team were apparently thrashing the nuts off their neighbouring rivals and yet he seemed as disappointed as a football widow on Cup Final Day. “I love my country...” “A meaningless phrase” I was desperate to retort. “Yes?” I said instead “But if Bulgarians lose, I promise you, we don’t get through tonight”. “Bollocks!!” “Excuse me, my English is limited” “SHIT!” “Shit indeed! I have business meeting in Sofia.” “Well, we’re on a fucking mission and no bloody lame-arse, bastard Bulgar World Cup losers are going to stop us!” Mark growled “Again, I have no understanding of what you says.” But Mark was too deep in muttering nonsense thoughts to respond. “No Romanian visa, that was cancelled on leaving. No Bulgarian visa as we hadn't been able to obtain one in London, and no chance of getting one this year if the bunch of muppets they call a football team carry on losing. Brilliant! So we can’t go forward, can’t go back. Condemned to float around forever, living on that barge, begging for sperm and luncheon meat in no-man’s-land. What about when we get old!!” Penalty! Word came back... “Penalty? For whom?” I demanded. “Romania.” What are the chances of them missing? I asked. “With that Bulgarian yoghurt in goal, Nil!” This was far from encouraging and frankly we were losing patience with the whole thing. “Gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooaaaaaaaaaalllllll!” We slumped on the wall. “We are doomed, my friends. Tonight, I fear we sleep like dogs, curled in the mud, without home or hope”. Not for the first time, we wondered why so many people we had met spoke like characters from a pretentious travel book. “Bollocks! We’ll never get across now!” I whined. But Mark was off on one and no one was going to intervene. Whistling quietly and not in the least bit inconspicuously, he sidled past the lone soldier on guard duty to the fence, his mind checking out the banks of barbed wire and searchlights. Undaunted by the scale of the task before him, he informed me, he figured he could clear the height with enough run up and an iron determination, Herein lay the first hurdle, getting sufficient run up wasn’t going to be easy. That kind of thing could get a man noticed, spotted, shot down. There was also the small matter of the tandem. “Details, details” Mark muttered A filing cabinet crashed through one of the windows of the border hut, landing at the feet of a small huddle of disheartened would-be travellers. Mark pointed out their headless chimpanzee reaction and gave thanks for having the sense to make our attempted escape alone. One weak link could blow the whole plan out of the water. “Water! That’s it!” To our left, ran a small canal of mud brown sludge, populated with vague shadows of reeds and other assorted bog dwelling plants. The light from the moon just allowed one to pick out its course to the tributary which joined the main river. All we had to do, I was informed was… “Was sit your arse back down and wait!” I interrupted. With a sigh, Mark agreed, admitting that he didn’t really think that riding the tandem underwater would have quite worked anyway “ It would have churned the water up too much, someone was bound to have noticed it” “Could be, or our demented thrashings as we drowned might have been spotted first” I suggested “Possibly, possibly” Our fellow comrades in waiting had long stopped fretting and now sat despondent on anything to hand or arse. Inside the hut, the screaming had reached biblical proportions, silenced momentarily by the sound of the TV being shot. “Final score - three : nil” Our informant had wandered over and resumed his self-appointed commentary duties. Behind him, the sounds of a full-scale battle broke out inside the hut. The waiting crowd grabbed their scattered baggage from the vicinity for fear that the flames protruding through the broken windows would take hold. The lone guard who had shown no interest in the game inside now stepped forward and gesticulated to everyone before him. Pulling a rubber stamp from his pocket, he motioned the nearest punter forward. “I hate football,” he volunteered by way of explanation. Passports were pulled forth with unmitigated relief. With every stamp, dollars were pocketed, insufficient offerings receiving a pointed withholding of the magic mark until the insult had been made good. As the crowd dispersed, the guard turned to no one in particular and tapped his pocket “I love football”. * In Belogradcik the peeling wallpaper in the state run hotel offset the flaking plaster nicely. However the view of the town’s very own mini Grand Canyon from the window more than made up for the hotel’s shortcomings. And down in the town, Belogradcik just kept piling on the pressure to be Bulgaria’s answer to Monte Carlo: an open-air café with pumping rock music and halfway drinkable drinks. Maybe Bulgaria was going to turn out to be the pearl among the gallstones, the jewel in the Communist Crown after all. Unfortunately in the aisles of somewhere that had all the hallmarks of a supermarket save for the lack of anything to actually buy, we walked up and down despondently revising our hasty surmise. The checkouts stood empty. Rows of jars stretched into the distance, all filled with cherries. In the next row, pickled vegetables and in the third something that looked like dogs’ innards floating in indiscriminate shite. A loaf of bread crumbled into dust as Mark went to pick it up. Any lack of choice that presented itself was more than made up for by the ample quantities of the limited choice available, if, and it was a big if, you wanted what was available. On the food front at least, Bulgaria was already embarrassing itself. But then over the next few days we discovered the yoghurt. It looked, and to some degree tasted, like snot but mix it with the plentiful cherries available and it was really quite good, if you ate it quickly. Once more Bulgaria had pulled itself back from the tourist abyss in our estimation. But the roller coaster ride was to continue. As we rolled on through the Balkan mountains, beautiful wooded hillsides fought with buses and lorries chuffing out foul fumes into our lungs and crazed insects parachuting down our backs, stabbing us with dozens of tiny poison umbrellas.* *Google Bulgarian Secret Service & Poison Umbrellas! “ Get that f-ing insect off me!” Mark yelped, leaping off the bike and tearing his shirt off his back. “Well if you’d stand still rather than break-dancing around the place, I will.” And the campsites proved just as variable, varying from poor to diaboloical. It seemed to be one long succession of expensive ‘sites’ with either no facilities, or ones in a similar state of disrepair to the economy. As we stumbled from yet another damp and rotting office to yet another damp and rotting pitch we also reflected that there was a fine line between being unfriendly and not being friendly and the Bulgarians seemed to have got it down to a fine art. Their insistence on putting all their signs, including road signs, in cyrillic was also unhelpful to Tommy Tourist as was their custom to shake their heads to signify ‘yes’ and nod them for ‘no’. The farcical scenes that followed were more suitable to a Laurel and Hardy show than an International cyclists’ scrapbook. With the hills finally easing off we thought perhaps Bulgaria would show a softer side once through the wooded curtain, but it remained an iron one, if somewhat rusty. Indeed almost immediately signs of habitation were coming thick and fast. First the bleak industrial quarter and then further on into the bleak residential quarter we rode, not knowing what town we were in -Vratsa? Dimitrovgrad? Svilengrad? Gradgrad? Scouring the map (which wasn’t in Cyrillic) helped little and the general population seemed unwilling or unable to assist us in our search for a place for the night. Nevertheless, rewards come to those who are willing to cycle kilometre after kilometre for what they are looking for and don’t stop until they get it. And what we were looking for was a safe, secure bolt holt for the night where we had a sporting schance of checking out with at least of most of what we checked in with. Romania had made us a little paranoid and Bulgaria to date hadn't proved a welcome bosom* to lay one's weary head on. We knew that if had we'd travelled the Black Sea coast rather than our chosen inland route, touristic places of the sort we sought would have been easier to find, but the coastal route was a pile of cock. Added to this, the only time Mark had ventured there on his only previous trip to the then Eastern Bloc, he'd had everything stolen, including his bike and been arrested - neither experience of which we fancied repeating. Eventually we came upon a ‘tourist resort’ of possibly sufficient size to warrant it actually still being in operation. Double bonus, it was surrounded by a large fuck-off fence. However, it then played the joker, this hid the fact that our 'tourist resort' had all the hallmarks of a rat infested borstal of a correction house. *No matter, Mark had grown an honorary pair. Having completed the usual formalities with the usual surliness on one side and civility on the other, marking the box with a huge imbecilic cross, we affirmed our complete incomprehension of and agreement to comply with the rules. The only job remaining was to shove up the tent, detach and sling the panniers into it and piss off. In effect removing the bags was now a rather laborious job as the ‘special patented quick release’ catches that held the panniers to the rack had all broken and our bungees had been pressed into service as temporary replacements. Nevertheless, rewards also come to those who have no real plan except to straggle the few yards into town to the first eating establishment regardless of merit. On entering the small roadside restaurant on the edge of town, we found it full of men and women with big hairy tashes, and kids without, tucking in to mounds of what looked suspiciously like… decent food! The manager, we assumed, hurried up and with the best charades made it clear that this was a private do and the restaurant was closed. This was serious, the only tasty-looking food we had seen since entering this country was being snatched from our grasp. In emergency situations such as this, our intellect expands to something like the level of Einstein’s when he came up with that wonderful theory everyone knows but no one understands or really gives a toss about. Mark was sure he heard a few words of Turkish at the table and quick as a flash of light (22212m/s according to him of the crazy hair) sprinkled the few phrases of Turkish he could still remember in the air and let them do their magic. The result of which was us embraced by all and sundry and a place made at the table for us to pass the afternoon and be merry. For they were Bulgarian Turks, of which there were many in this part of the country. Discouraged from speaking Turkish and often refused passports to leave, they tended to stick together and when allowed, do the Turkish thing. And one thing the Turks do well is celebrating (in this case a birthday) and being ultra-hospitable to guests who knew how to say ‘Hello, are you Turkish?’, ‘I like kebab.’, ‘Attaturk was a great man.’, ‘Where does this dolmus go to?’ and ‘I love you please.’ Several hours later as we staggered back to the campsite wondering if we would burst before we arrived, we found ourselves of but one mind (sometimes one mind is better than two) “Let’s get the hell out of this busted arse country ASAP and into Turkey!”

****

Chapter 8 Turkey - a Weasel in the Works Into Turkey of course meant across the border and into the country proper, not let’s go spend another couple of hours entertaining the border guards and this time we didn’t have to. Apart from a brief interrogation when our tent was mistaken for a listening device and Mark’s brand of heavy- handed humour went unnoticed, ‘Ok, ok, you got me, it’s a satellite receiver dish and the poles stick up my arse; these bits make the dish and I beam secret information about what you put in your kebabs back to England’, the border crossing passed off without major incident and we were soon spinning our way towards Edirne and nirvana: we could stay where we liked, do what we liked and more importantly eat what we liked and did we intend to eat! * Having made short work of the distance to Edirne and even shorter work of finding a hotel where the owners were welcoming and happy to lock the tandem away safely, we set off on our culinary trail. Adana kebab and kofte with side orders of lentil soup (tercumek) and green beans (fasulie) were washed down with litres of thirst-quenching ayran: a salted yoghurt drink that was equally orgasmic administered externally or internally. Double fisting on Lamachuns, a poor man’s ground beef pizza which cost nothing and tasted sumblime, we ambled around the square by the hotel and on to Edirne’s most famous landmark, a wrestling ring, the contests held there attracting perverts from all over the Balkans. The ‘sport’ in question is of the Turkish variety where with grand ceremony, dozens of blokes, burly as carthorses with arms of boiled ham, strut into the ring in their pants, oil each other up and then squirm around trying to get a grip on each other’s tackle. A cross between sumo and the WWWF, the victor is declared only when all other opponents have been upended onto the greasy pile of human body parts and only he is standing. We continued our cultural and culinary tour by knocking in to a couple more lamachun before investigating the main mosque. Thoughtfully waiting until we had finished our food before entering a house of Allah and all that, we discovered we really needn’t have bothered. Inside, people prayed undisturbed by the ladies hoovering the acres of hand woven carpets covering the floor and the kids running up and down, shouting and playing. Rather different to the behaviour expected in a church back home, but then again, if everything were like home, what would be the point in leaving? (Unless you lived in Slough of course). You are rarely pestered by a pssterer either, but then “Psst – you wanna see my minaret?” a conspiratorial voice called from the shadows of a pillar. “No thanks, I’ve got one of my own!” Mark replied “Psst” This guy was insistent. “ You wanna see my minaret? Beautiful view of City, you come, yes?” It was the old git and his pipe-sucking scenario all over again, but this time we gave in easily as climbing a minaret was number 1002 on our list of 1001 things to do before we died. In our afternoon off mode, even though graciously accompanied by Mr Psst!, the steep, narrow flight of stairs seemed endless. Eventually we emerged onto the balcony that ran around the top of one of the minarets and where, before the advent of mechanical speakers, the iman would three times a day call the faithful to prayer at the top of his lungs; which, given that he’d have just climbed all those bloody stairs, was quite impressive. * Another day could easily have been spent in Edirne wandering around the narrow back streets, eating and, well, eating, but we were nearing the end of Europe and Asia was calling. Calling what neither of us were quite sure. Certainly not our stomachs, they were quite happy here; maybe our imaginations then or maybe we both realised there was a hell of a long way still to go and as Mark sagely put it, “ The kebabs and lamachuns are bound to be just as good in Istanbul”. Had we thought about it during the two hundred odd kilometres that separated the two cities, the one thing that was guaranteed to be worse however, was the traffic. Before even reaching the outskirts proper, the tandem was stuck in the most traffic-rich, traffic jam any International cyclists had ever had the displeasure of coming out in a nasty rash in. Team Sydney had covered almost five thousand kilometres (three thousand miles) so far but we were seriously wondering if we would survive much further as motorbikes weaved in and out, climbing the central reservation and trucks tried to change lanes, regardless of whether it involved squashing us like a purple bluebottle under their wheels. Itching our way forward we could just make out a ‘Welcome to Istanbul’ sign further up the road. “Istanbul my arse!” Mark fumed, “Istanbollocks more like!” * We woke up very bright and very early, but annoyingly the rest of Istanbul already seemed halfway though their day. Although we were still geographically in Europe, from the noise outside our window, culturally we were definitely in Asia where making as much racket as possible, for as much of the day as possible, as early as possible is the most characteristic of Asian traits. As there was no point in laying in bed listening to everyone else not, we slipped on some cool threads given the warmth of the weather and hit the streets looking to score some serious bread. In fact, we did better than that, breakfasting à la Turk on simmet, a type of seeded beagle or bagel and borek, a flaky pastry layered with a feta-type cheese, and Turkish tea taken black in small glasses or bardaks. The man’s way to drink it was to place a large lump of sugar in the mouth and then sip the tea through it. The girl’s way was to swig it down and demand another. Dodging the shoeshine boys who enthusiastically called for us to have our scuffed cycle shoes shined, we trundled over to the Iranian Embassy, our main reason for risking life and limb by coming to Istanbul in the first place. That and the fact that geographically, it was all but impossible to circumvent. The Iranian Embassy in London hadn’t been too keen on our planned tandem trip across their country but then again neither had they said no. We had been forced to abandon the quest for a pre- emptive visa as unhelpfully with its ridiculously short use by date, had we even managed to get our sweaty paws on one, the bastard thing would have expired before we had even left Europe. So if the trip was going to continue on course, (not that it had exactly done so up to this moment) we now needed to nail that visa. Getting around Yugoslavia hadn’t been such a logistical problem, whereas Iran, given its size and position, would be an entirely different proposition. Perched on arse-numbing chairs, we chaffed at the obligatory hour or so wait that seems to be an essential feature of visa offices. How foolish as this is considerately built in to make one feel right at home straight away. One can relax knowing that if one had been dying to have a few hours to sit uncomfortably and do nothing but wait to ask for a visa off someone who has all the time in the world for anything except issuing it, then this was that chance. After the requisite number of hours wait, as we hadn’t given up, or hung ourselves or exploded, the weasel behind the counter beckoned us over with bad grace. We obliged and explained our simple request for a visa to allow us to cycle across his beautiful, if somewhat desert- like, country. “You need to have obtain this in America,” Weasel hissed 'Where you stinking Imperialist Americans come from' he added with his impressively bushy eyebrows. “Er, we could, but as we’re actually British, perhaps we could get one here, instead?” “Briteesh?” Weasel looked marginally less like someone had shoved a handful of faecal matter under his nose, “ Then you need to have obtain this in London” . I explained why this was impossible and repeated his London counterpart’s insistence that we could obtain one in Istanbul. “From here. From you.” Mark added, hoping to speed things up. “Is impossible. You must return London and get there.” It seemed a little unnecessary to point out that we were on a bicycle and London was near-on five thousand kilometres away. “The embassy in London definitely told us we could get a visa here.” “Definitely, no problem.” Mark emphasisesd, stretching the truth just a little. “Come back tomorrow.” “So… if we come back tomorrow, we can have our visa?” “You come back tomorrow.” We looked around at the dozen or so people still waiting and the other staff in the middle of enquiries. For the first time we noticed that we were the Europeans there. Rather than have a stand up row, retreat seemed the better, if less satisfying, option, so we ankled off. * The following morning we were back, first ones in the queue. Well, first Europeans anyway. When our turn came, we were in luck. Weasel was nowhere to be seen and the guy we button- holed looked a ‘pushover’ Mark informed me under his breath, though what he was basing this on, I wasn’t quite sure – I was normally the one to do an on-the-spot character assassination. Whether he was right or not never got tested, as, on seeing us, matey disappeared out back only to reappear with Weasel a moment later. “Come back tomorrow” he dismissed. Obviously he thought he wouldn’t bother with yesterday’s opening pleasantries. “Look, are you even open tomorrow?” I challenged, “It’s Sunday?” Weasel sneered “You come back…” “Yes, tomorrow, well that would be very nice to meet up again, but if we come back tomorrow, can…” He silenced me with a dismissive wave of his hand “We closed now, you go!” or in Farsi “Fuck You Briteesh!” Closed! They had only just opened! It was fairly obvious that if we didn’t come up with a different tack, this meeting was going to be even shorter than the last. Perhaps weasel had been reading the rather unflattering remarks in the English papers over the last few weeks? John Major had been complimenting Weasel’s President on his uncanny resemblance to a filthy lying toad. Whatever it was, we had the distinct impression that if we left now, we might as well not bother to return. As the only reasons most countries have visas in the first place is 1) to piss other countries off in tit-for-tat exchanges 2) to obtain revenues from people coming to their country without actually being so crass as to demand it at gunpoint (the old fashioned way) As we could do little about the first, we decided to see if we could do anything about the second, “Look,” I started, in what I hoped was a conciliatory tone, “I know normally we would have got a visa in England, but we explained why that wasn’t possible. Perhaps we could we pay extra to get one here?” But I was talking to a closed counter. In a restaurant we ran over the events at the embassy; we’d rather have run over the Weasel with the 9.15pm London to Edinburgh sleeper but que sera*. The general assessment was that as things stood, the chance of a visa was not good. * A phrase often used by people who need a good hard punch up the bracket. Nothing personal. The alternatives to going through Iran didn’t look that promising either: tango through Georgia and the Caucuses where there was some heavy political shit going down and then rumba on through Russia and Kazakhstan to North China – one hell of a detour! Routesville Number Two would have led us to samba through Syria or Iraq (neither really very cycle-friendly) and then salsa on to Saudi Arabia and Oman. That would still leave the matter of bosa nova-ing a boat across the Gulf to Karachi. Still International Tandemers are made of sterner stuff! Sterner stuff than what we weren’t sure but neither of us relished the alternatives’ alternative of taking a plane from Istanbul as this would involve missing out most of Turkey as well as Iran and landing as far into Pakistan as Islamabad. Miss out five thousand kilometres or more and leave us struggling to break that record? Fuck you Weasel and fuck your mongoose! We also new that if we started flying all over the place at the first ‘no’, we might as well book ourselves two tickets to Sydney right now. But that wasn’t about to happen, because when the chips are down, we super-size! * Later that evening, back at the same restaurant, I started to run over the events at the other embassies we had reluctantly dragged ourselves to in the hope that someone, somewhere would wave a magic wand and whisk us across their country in tandem-condition comfort thus solving the Rubics Cube of Iran. Mark interrupted “Let’s sum things up quickly: and get onto the more important business of stuffing as much kebab down our necks as is humanely feasible. Right, first off, The Russian route- a big bunch of cock; The Saudi route - a big bunch of cock. Right, chicken or regular donner?” Drowning our sorrows in ayran didn’t really seem to be helping, so we switched to the local red wine, Güzel Marmaras (literally ‘beautiful Marmaras’ – hadn’t anybody looked at the state of the water!). This was having more the desired effect until, starting in on the second bottle, the guy next to us at the table went beyond the pale*. Now we believe in laissez faire as much as the next mug who has no real idea what it means, but this was too gross: Fellow diners shluping up bowfuls of Iskembe, a type of hot tripe soup with chilli powder, or guzzling on platefuls of tas kebab, basically bull’s bollocks in a yummy bollock-based sauce and sheep’s head we could handle but sheep’s head broiled in its own grey, fatty discharge complete with juicy staring eyes, all consumed without the aid of cutlery and with much slurping and picking of teeth was too much. *A bit like going beyond 'the black stump' but without the Roos. We were about to move ourselves to one of the adjoining tables when Mr Eye-Muncher spoke, spraying us with a light spattering of aqueous fluid, “Pardon Monsieur et Madame. Excuse me, but I could not ’elp but ’ear you talk?” I did a double take: full Muslim dress? Beard? Circumcised? Eating with his hands?– not unusual for Eyüp where we were dining, it being one of the most traditional Muslim quarters in Istanbul, but the outrageous French accent? I had to ask: “I hope you don’t mind me mentioning it, but you don’t sound like any Turk I’ve ever heard!” “Turk!” he spat an eyeball across the table. “I am French!” ‘No shit’ I thought “but I was converted to Islam and now I am fundamental Muslim.” Mark interrupted “That’s a coincidence! The landlord of our local was converted to Judaism. He kept his foreskin in a pickle jar behind the bar. He’d let you have a look if you asked.” Frenchy stared hard at Mark before continuing with his unrequested life story, “My imam say to me go fight infidels with Mujahadeen brothers in Afghan against infidel Russians.* I was injured in mad dog fight.” *Afghanistan for many years has been one of the most popular tourist destinations, first attracting large numbers of Russians and later discovered by America and Britain. Mark interrupted again: “I got caught in a mad bitch fight once. Never get between two women, I’ve still got the scar.” Frenchy glared at him for a second time and then continued; “ I was smuggled out to ’ere and ’ave been ’ere ever since. “Fascinating!” Our ploy of turning our back against the constant stream of sheep’s cranial fluids and retinal shrapnel, whilst ignoring our uninvited companion did nothing to deter him. “ And now my imam say I must go back to Afghanistan and risk being ’orribly mutilated or, or. …return to La France and convert zem to Islam!” I ducked as a mouthful of scrotal debris coughed past my ear “Tough choice!” Damn! I had been suckered in! Unfortunately our companion was entirely disinterested in us and our finer sensibilities and continental enough to show it, merely wanting some poor unsuspecting muppets to pour out the constant monologue of diarrhoea that constituted his life up to this point. Perhaps if we laid into this droning muppet with our bare-knuckle best, we could insult him enough that he might fuck off and stick his nose in some other poor bastards’ evening. “Fuck Off Frenchy!” But it was as if Mark had said nothing. “ So I faxed to my imam and told ’im I go back to Afghanistan…drone, drone, drone….” This little cockmeister had more spunk left in him than we had thought. We had to lay it on thick, cut to the very quick of this lost soul’s anguish, rip him open like a dung cabinet*. * A cabinet containing largely or mostly, dung. “So you’re not returning to France, sorry, La France?” “I cannot convert ze French, my countrymen, it is madness!” Yea, now we were reeling this worm into our net. We were nearing the pressure point and one of us was going to buckle and if we didn’t raise our game, it was likely to be us. Time to stick the knife in: “So you’re going for the coward’s way, eh? Not man enough for the job! Wimping out like the empty husk of the man you have become!”. Slinking off back to Afghanistan with your tail between your legs, all on your lonesome, eh?” “I knew you were going to go in hard love, but ouch! Insulting a man’s, well, manhood!” Mark whispered “ I haven’t mentioned his penis yet.” I blurted out, “ It’s on my to do list.” But it was all in vain. It seemed that I had been too subtle, too tactful. Tripe-face hadn’t even noticed the inferences on his masculinity and just carried right on. “ No, I do not return on my own. Zis is my friend who is come to fight ze Russian infidels with me.” He indicated his neighbour, a guy in full Cossack brandishing a sabre, rearing up on a horse – Crikey! How did we miss that! “He must have been in our blind spot.” “Or that Güzel Marmaras must be stronger than we thought.” “But aren’t you Russian, yourself?” I asked him in confusion. “Isn’t Cossackland part of Russia?” “No! In my country we hate Russian! Let me show you what we do to Russian in my beautiful country!” Throwing his steak in the air, he whipped out a knife from his belt and pinned his meat to the wall with the dagger. “Ow!” Mark cringed. Leaping over the table, Cossack Charlie pulled the steak off the wall, slung it on the floor, sabre danced over it, set fire to it and slammed the now char-grilled and smouldering hunk of meat back onto his plate. There was silence as he sat back down with folded arms. After a few moments, Mark leant forward: “If you’re not going to eat that…” * “Go away! No one here!” It was hard to see where the voice was coming from, peering as we were through the letter box into the gloom, but the message was clear enough. The really irritating part was that we couldn’t think of a suitably witty repartee to leave with. Groucho Marx or Oscar Wilde would have probably come up with something a little more sparkling than ‘We didn’t want to fly with Romanian Airways anyway!’ shouted back through the letter box, but it would have to do for now. We could always return tomorrow, remind them of who we were, re-enact the conversation up to the decisive moment and then deliver the killer riposte with perfect timing. Unfortunately, once again, this was real life and re-takes and edits if you fluffed your lines were a luxury denied to us. Of course there was always the old stalwart to fall back on of shoving something noxious through the letterbox; but being above such things and being unable to find anything suitable to hand, we merely added “Fuck you lady!” and left. The Romanian Airways office had been our last ditch resort, the broken biscuit at the bottom of the barrel. Flying across Iran sucked and our efforts at finding out how to do so were desultory at best and unenthusiastic at worst. The ‘normal’ airways were way too expensive on our meagre budget and too boring, after all, this was an adventure - ‘Would you like a window seat sir?’, ‘Another cushion, madam?’, ‘A quick fumble?’ just didn’t fit the bill - while the less common ones, such as the Romanian state airways we had just left, generally seemed to think that their main job was keeping paying passengers off their planes. Why go to the trouble of setting up an airline and advertising it in the first place? “Twats” we concluded and left them to their twatery. Now bereft of any sensible ideas, we hit rock bottom and dragged ourselves kicking and scratching over to the English Consulate. There is no point in pussy-footing around, in our limited experience we simply had never found the concept of an English consulate helpful. But this time, it was different: rather than being unhelpful, they were positively falling over themselves to rub our faces into ground glass. “Let me get this right: you are intending with your wife (pause for barely disguised mirth), intending to cycle (pause for undisguised mirth) … on a tandem (spoken in a tone that suggested we had actually said kid’s tricycle) across, across Iran!” (The last word pronounced with a silent ‘cutthroats and murderers’ inferred). “There’s nothing inferred about it.” He sneered. “They are and they will. You two wouldn’t make it to Tehran!” “We don’t intent to go to Tehran. Perhaps with your assistance however, we just might be able to… “To not go at all! That’s my advice, professional and personal, end of discussion. Now if you don’t mind, I have some serious enquiries to deal with…” “Look” Mark jumped in, “ I used to know quite a few Iranians and they were excellent people… The pompous moustache laughed long and hard. We were unimpressed. Sure we knew that most sources were singing the same line - TV, newspapers, the British Government and so on, but we believed firmly that there were no such thing as 'evil nations' and the only people you needed to look out for were the two-faced jackals who told you these lies in the first place. It was however a slightly sobering thought that we might actually be risking life and limbs (whose limbs we weren't sure) in testing out are belief- especially as once we entered Iran it would be well nigh impossible to communicate with the outside world - mobiles, the internet, email, facebook being all things of the future - even international dialing was almost impossible unless in a large town - and we intended to steer clear of those. We came to and realised the consulate/embassy jackal was still droning on... “Listen, you two (deluded dwarves inferred) this is the most hare-brained idea I’ve ever heard. Do yourselves a favour and forget it!” On the steps outside, we dusted ourselves off. “Some people can’t take a joke!” Mark complained “Who was joking?” I replied, “He did look like a goat's gooch.” “Granted. Now, on to more important matters – what are we going to do, Mrs Tong?” “Well, you know the drill. When the going gets tough and all about are losing their beds, or something like that, the tough go visit the Bazaar and find something stiff to drink.” So off we went. * Frankly the bazaar had been no real help. Rather than stocked full of the answers we sought to the problems vexing us, it was instead crammed full of items of ‘touristic interest’*. All apparently near priceless or near worthless. Each whatchamacallit started off at least the price of a small country but by the time we had walked past without replying to the one-sided haggling, each salesman would successfully have browbeaten himself into selling it to no one in particular for the price of a pair of worn socks, and thrown in another one worth twice the price of the first for free. Such generosity however, failed to move us and we emerged the other end unencumbered by vast amounts of crap that one would have to have buried or burnt the minute one got home. “How about giving the spice market a once-over?” I suggested. “Why don’t you cumin this teahouse with me instead?” Mark confused me. “You what?” “Sorry I mint this coffeehouse!” *crushingly dull * In the gardens outside the bazaar, now free from the entire population of Istanbul trying to flog us miscellaneous gubbins, it was easier to concentrate on the matter of the much-needed Iranian visa. “The way I see it” I started “we’ve got no choice.” “Oh, look at the cute bunny! Oh wow, your fortune told!” “Fabulous, and how does that help?” I followed Mark’s wild pointing to a wizened old git in a fez standing next to a square box on trestles made up of rows of tiny drawers, atop of which sat the ‘cute’ white rabbit in question. A sign propped up alongside boasted ‘Fortunes told by the Great Mustapha’: though it failed to state whether Mustapha was the git or the bunny. Lira handed over, we soon found out as without a word passing between them, the rabbit strolled along the top of the box, leant over, pulled a draw open with its teeth, extracted a tiny roll of paper and held it up for us to take. Unfurling the tiny slip of paper with difficulty, I was able to make out the following: ‘Roses are red Violets are blue I’m a psycho wabbit Am I going to kill you?’ “That’s no good!” Mark complained, “It’s suppose to tell us, not leave us guessing!” Feeling that I was in danger of losing all literary direction, I dynamited the sniggering bunny and ended the scene. * Figuring the new panniers from Karrimor should be waiting for us Poste Restante, we made enquiries at the central post office and were told any such parcel would obviously need to be collected at the out of town depot. Cycling into Istanbul had been more than enough for us, so leaving the tandem behind we found a dolmus* going our way and jumped aboard. Three of these chaotic mini-buses later, we arrived at the PO in some gawd-forsaken outskirts and asked for our parcel. An hour and ten different windows later and we were the proud owners of a brand new set of no-stitch-um panniers. Perhaps these would last a little longer. Maybe even to the end of Turkey? *A type of children's dog sled - pronounced 'doll-mush' * The following morning after breakfast and a bit of domestic nonsense later, we girded our loins and two-stepped towards our moment of truth: billed as a grudge match between the Farsi Ferret and the Bint from Blighty, this one was going to go the distance. After the obligatory hour cooling our heels, the contest was on! “You need to have obtain this in London.” Weasel opened. “ They said we need to have obtain this here.” I countered. “Is impossible. You must return London and get there.” I held my ground “The embassy in London definitely told us we could get a visa here.” “You go Embassy London” Not this old tune again – it was time to change the record! “We can’t, it burnt down, someone stole it.” “You go London.” “Someone stole that as well.” “You come back tomorrow.” “Someone’s pre-emptively stolen tomorrow. Can we have our visa?” “Come back tomorrow” Weasel was tiring but still full of spunk, or some similar noxious bodily fluid. Unfortunately for him though, this was a tag match, so pulling on the tights, Mark became The Undertaker From Hounslow West (it didn’t even illiterate, but he liked the outfit). Swapping places with me, he prepared to bury this sucker. He didn’t bother with opening pleasantries. “Look, are you even open tomorrow?” He challenged, “It’s Sunday!” Weasel looked confused. Tomorrow was Tuesday! “You come back…” “Look, are you even open tomorrow? Are you even an Embassy? Are you even a real weasel?” “What I mean is …” Mark hurried on: sometimes people who seemed to have shown only a tenuous grasp of English suddenly discovered, at inconvenient moments for us, that they were actually educated at Oxford “…we’re trying to do you a favour here, we don’t want a diplomatic incident, do we?” Weasel was losing the thread, “You come back…” “Yes, tomorrow, well that would be very nice to meet up again, but tomorrow never comes, but once a never!” “We closed now, you go!” “ I discussed this point only this morning with the Ayatollah Khomeini and he reckoned you don’t close till 5.00pm.” Weasel was out of his depth, “ Ayatollah…?” As the gent in question was actually dead, Mark felt he needed to get more current: “ Sorry, I meant the Ayatollah Khamenei, or Khamel or Khamenandhaveanicecupoftea, I can’t remember, but the point is…” He turned to me and hissed “ What was the bloody point?” I jumped back in the ring before weasel had a chance to regroup, “The point is we are cycling across your country in aid of the Farsi-cal Charity supported by every major world government and organisation.” “Except America of course!” Mark was back on form. “Well obviously not America, we wouldn’t have anything to do with that papier mache tiger, that imperialistic, jean-wearing, coke-drinking, jive-talkin...” Mark poked me hard in the nether regions*, “I think Mr Weas, Mr, I’m sorry, we never did catch your name, has got the gist.” *Nether poke someone you don’t know here, as you are liable to end up in court. Weasel looked beat, ‘Get these camel shit for brains out of my office’ written all over his odious face, “You want visa. Ok, visa cost, you pay now.” We’d done it! Resisting the urge to high five, we body popped instead. Steady! my brain corrected, it’s not in your hot sticky palm yet. My hand was anything but steady though, as I hastily reached inside the handlebar bag without thinking and, feeling the shape of the passports at the bottom, yanked them out before rodent-face changed what little mind he had. Along with the passports came a flurry of sandwich crusts, rizlas and….dollars. The notes wafted as if on some hidden breeze towards the other side of the counter and came to rest in front of weasel’s popping eyes. I might as well have added “Hey boy, Uncle Sam’s here! Greenbacks! “ and then fanned them out and rubbed them on his nose while Mark flicked a fifty-cent piece across the counter with a wink and a “That’s for you, sonny, from the good ole US of A.!. Don’t you go spending it all at once now!” After a silence that probably lasted less time than it took to read this sentence, but seemed to go on longer than the Pleistocene era I coughed, “Er, how much is that in…dollars?” * It wasn’t that weasel had said no, just that he hadn’t exactly said yes either. Apparently our application had to be countersigned by his boss, his boss’ boss, his boss’… and so on ad infinitum up to and including The Iranian Parliament and the big A himself, although as Mark was talking to him only that morning, Weasel remarked caustically, he could have asked him then. And as to how long all this bollocks might take, Weasel was as vague on this point as we were on the geography of Western Azerbaijan. There really wasn’t much more to be done but keep moving, so we resolved to push on towards the Iranian border and ring everyday until sheer persistence won the day, or we arrived at the border and set fire to ourselves. A pointless protest but hey we didn’t invent the art form. We made light of the lack of visa, but we both new that if we arrived 'sans visa', the alternatives looked bleak. We also new that even if weasel did command us back to Istanbul, the liklehood was that we would get the runaround again. However, our credo is 'never, ever, give up!' We have lived and died by this credo. Well, not died obviously; if things prove a little fraught, then sometimes one credo can morph into another as in 'never, ever give up' morphing into 'well, we’ve given it go, maybe we should drop it now'…after all, credos come and go, this is a consumer society. On this occasion however, there really was no choice. So the drill would be: pester, pester, pester as we grooved on through Asia Minor until Weasel crumbled, as crumble he must, and then Resultsville! The visa verbally agreed, it would just be a matter of finding a helpful native to house the tandem while we hot-coached it back to Istanbul and Visaville . The precious piece of paper stamped in our passports, or on our foreheads, or arses for that matter, so long as we had it, we didn’t care about the details, it would be back to the tandem and on with the daily grind of International Celebrity Cycling. So with the sun shining, hope in our hearts and smog in our lungs, we set out from Istanbul and headed up towards the Black Sea and Zonguldak, roughly three hundred sweat-filled kilometres away. Our chosen route North, scooted along the Black sea as, unlike Bulgaria, Turkey boasted two coasts and the Black Sea was the Mediterranean's poor white, well black actually, cousin. Cooler than the Med and with the omnipresent black sand making the sea appear darker than a golliwog’s gooch, the Black Sea was the wet dream of choice on this occasion as most tourists (and thus traffic) stuck to the beaches in the south. This left the open road for the wild dogs of cycling that we were, or would have been if over the next few days, our stomachs hadn’t been as up and down as the roller coaster road. The pollution in Istanbul, along with some anal invader* of a bastard bug we had picked up there, had left us both with throat and chest infections and dodgy stomachs. *Much like space invaders, both being alien life forms Nevertheless, such a road had to be ridden hard and rough, rough and hard, man* and machine tested to the limit! As we flew down and round a particularly sweeping corner, the tandem obliged by reaching the limit on a scattering of gravel, thoughtfully provided by one of the overladen lorries that lumbered up and down. Not satisfied with this, it then went beyond the call of duty. Already committed, we could do nothing except watch the tyres slip on the loose surface and lose all credible contact with the tarmac. As the bike slid out from under us, I just had time to reflect that the next few seconds might hurt…quite a lot. * Get over it Germaine * As the dust cleared I could make out the bike further down the road upside down on the handlebars, front wheel still spinning. Sometimes being right is not as satisfying as it should be and this was irritatingly one of those occasions. Going down big style like one whale on another had resulted in serious gravel rash, a generous side order of cuts and bruises followed by a dessert of split, leaky head. Now we have never chosen to run with the herd and regurgitate stupid expressions that are as meaningless as the livers of those who repeat them. Having followed up failure to secure our visa in Istanbul with a double dose of illness, and now on top of it all, a wipe out, in which it seemed on first wince we had inflicted serious damage on the tandem and ourselves, we could have chosen to utter such phrases as “Just our luck!” or “Why do these things always happen to us” or “Jesus, I think I’ve split me kneecap!” but not us! Instead, Mark chose to utter a strange high-pitched sound not unlike an asthmatic albino strangling a cow. * We are in no way reinforcing the stereotype that albinos strangle domestic livestock. I struggled into an upright position and waited a seemly amount of time, “Finished now?” “Might be. You alright?” “Wonderful! We should do that more often. Not!” Having recovered our composures and most of our skin of the road, we limped over to the traumatised tandem, righted it and gave it a good hard slap. “Pull yourself together!” On first inspection, apart from there being no paint remaining and a dent in the top tube, suspiciously the size and shape of Mark’s bollocks, the frame itself had mostly survived the ordeal. Not so the ancillaries: the feeble rear rack was now a mangled mass of metal filings, the mudguards splintered plastic and one of the new only two day old rear panniers had a giant tear in it - so much for Karrimor's boast about being waterproof - we'd have a word with them about that. Neither of us were quite steady enough to get back on and standing there pissing blood seemed to be going nowhere, so we limped off down the road looking for somewhere convenient to lick each other’s wounds: but then being on a tandem together for extended periods of time can do that to people. We didn’t have far to go as a village soon popped up, which was handy as our rate of progress would have embarrassed a legless lizard and leaving the road we wheeled the tandem the short distance to the dirt square. Our appearance had attracted a crowd before we had even left the main road as word doubtless spread quickly that a major newsworthy event had just ridden, or rather limped, into the sorry back water they called home. By the time we had spotted a water pump and made our way to it, more people than could surely live in the few houses visible, were crowding around us, pointing, shouting and invading our personal space as only a born and bred Asian can. Clearly we were the most exciting thing to have happened so far in their stunted existence and they intended to make the most of it. A straggle of dunces held the tandem, while a kindergarten of ragged urchins* fought over who was going to operate the village pump, which obviously supplied the entire population with water and gave them somewhere to wash clothes or mildly haemorrhaging tourists. *the land, rather than sea variety With every gush of icy water that splashed over Mark’s cuts, he let out a squeal that had the whole crowd convulsed with laughter. This however, was nothing compared to the reaction at me helping him slap a packet of plasters on his bruised legs and ego. The mirth that followed was frankly embarrassing, given that it was all on their side. Mark was midway through strangling one of worst offenders when the crowd parted at the approach of a smartly suited stranger. Introducing himself as Murat, he glanced at Mark and offered to act as a intermediary. Mark, whose mood by now was not far short of a piranha holidaying in a colostomy bag, demanded to know what exactly our onlookers found so ‘bloody funny!’ Murat took him literally and having enquired of the crowd, did his best to translate. “Everyone here think you are like, how you say in English, wimpy girl? No, sissy maybe.” Mark interrupted and said he understood the general drift and returned to the job in hand. “But no problem” Murat laughed as he rescued the bulging-eyed kid, “I am heroine seller and have van...” “Heroine? You mean tea, surely? (This travelogue was supposed to be a 12 certificate). “Yes, tea seller and have van, and friend in next town who own hotel. Come please! Your bicycle fit like glue.” We decided to let it go. This wasn’t the time to dish out free English lessons, it was a time to load the tandem in the back of the van, sink down into a couple of comfortable contoured seats and let Murat and the wonderful invention that is the internal combustion engine ferry us in comfort to what turned out to be… Zonguldak – result! * On arriving at the ‘sea-front’ hotel, Murat’s friend was hospitality itself, plying us with chay while he steadily downed a A-Z of gut-rot liquor. Sadly, after only half-an-hour of incomprehensible chitchat, Murat had to go and sell more of the ‘tea’ we were drinking, or there wouldn’t have been any for us to drink tomorrow apparently, whilst Mark and I pottered out in to the sunshine minus tandem and luggage to ‘do’ Zonguldak. Our idea of ‘doing’ a town largely consists of sitting in a teahouse, or peep show, or equivalent and watch it go by. On the whole this was the best approach with Zonguldak, its main claim to fame being the fact that most of Istanbul’s coal is sent by ship from here. Given our enfeebled state and the now mounting heat, trudging up and down sand and asphalt seemed a stupid’s idea. Instead we reacquainted ourselves with the unfeasibly steep hotel stairs and our balcony, where had we been a giraffe-necked stag beetle we might just have glimpsed the sea, standing on each other’s shoulders (if stag beetles have shoulders). We hadn’t been back for more than an unspecified amount of time when a knock came at the door, “Meeester Mark and wife, I ’ave medicine for chestings and coughings.” We thanked him even though the medicine in question was obviously a remedy for mastitis and left him swaying dangerously back down the corridor, looking as if he might be in need of medical attention himself by the time he reached the bottom of the stairs. Half an hour later and there was another knock. “Meeester Mark and wife, I ’ave some more medicines, for bellys pain.” After handing over a crumpled box clearly found at the bottom of a dustbin, he staggered back to what was obviously a lengthy liquid dinner, this time making a complete hash of the stairs. Our enquiries from the top step as to whether he was ok met with no response, but not being trained in first aid, we felt it prudent to leave him be and retired back to the room. Alas he recovered and by 11:00pm, we were forced to hide behind the wallpaper, calling for him to leave the growing pile of ‘medicines’ outside the door lest, tired, bruised and under the weather as we were, the temptation to gather them all up and administer one giant intrusive enema to our host proved too great. By midnight, our inebriated ‘nurse’ had finally got the ‘hint’ that we weren’t going to open the door and a lurching shadowy form appeared on the balcony. “Meeeester Mark. Meester Mark….” * Outside of Zonguldak the coastal road rolled on like a great snaking ribbon of liquorice, day after day of the sea on one side and other stuff on the other. Small seaside resorts and towns were plentiful enough to supply food and drink, and our vital organs all seemed to be on the mend. Maybe it was the sea air, or the easy (ish) progress or the easy access to ayran, but we felt at peace with the world and all its assorted toss. Life was sweet until we swung into the outskirts of Sinop and felt the wheels lose all contact with the road surface. As the bike slid out from under us, I just had time to reflect that the next few seconds might hurt…. “Ooooooooooooowwwwwww!” “Fwwwwuckit!” “I fink I’ve briken me jew” “You what?” I gently sat up and moved my jaw back and forth a few times “I said I thought I’d broken my jaw!” “What’s that smell?” I added, sniffing my clothing. Mark was doing the same. “Sniff your own, pervert!” “Ok, please yourself” He took a deep breath. “Diesel! It’s diesel! Don’t panic! Move away from the tandem calmly but speedily, in fact, forget that, let’s get outta here before she goes up in a fireball!” Removing my finger from his eye, I suggested instead we get out of the bloody road before we became tarmac pate. Like ourselves, on inspection, the tandem seemed to have no more than the expected regulation scratches and dents about its person. The rear rack, however, which we had been temporarily mended with string after the last crash, was once again no more than a surly collection of uncooperative metal. With no more string to hand, the bungees were pressed into service, the result being serviceable but probably only as far as the first hotel. Practically in town, it seemed best not to risk the chance of meeting another diesel spill further along the road so a quick decision was made to veer off into the centre of Sinop, once again cutting less of an impressive figure than befitted two international tandemists on entering a new town. * Sinop proved a slick stopover, both hotel and town proving a cherry-topped bonanza. The owner of the first was happy to exchange some money for us as the banks were closed and in the nearby back streets of the second, a small garage-cum-metal works set about repairing the rack. Marvelling at the tandem, two grease monkeys scurried about the business of repair while we lauded it with tea and lamachun they'd kindly bought for us unasked from the chai shop around the corner -we mused that by the time we had finished everything they pressed upon us, half their profit would have gone. As it turned out the other half went too; refusing payment, they swapped a wobble up and down the road on the bike in lieu of that other thing. In truth the wobbling was as much to do with the state of the wheels after thousands of kilometres, as their lack of balance. Incredibly the custom made wheels had turned up at literally at the eleventh, well, twelfth hour actually but even though the Swiss-made Sun rims and forty-eight DT spokes made the wheels almost indestructible (we hoped), this would only be the case as long as each one was tensioned properly, and we didn’t crash more than once in every twenty-four hours. These brutes were a bastard even for pros to true and even being generous, Mark was not a true pro as we both found anything and everything to do with cycle maintenance arse-numbingly dull. He had of course already 'trued' the wheels on several occasions during the trip, impressively managing to make them so square that we felt like a couple of clowns on a circus bike (which we were rapidly coming to the conclusion, was how the rest of the world viewed us) or so over-tightened that we feared at any moment they would explode in a shower of pointy metal and impale us like a couple of kebabs - quite appropriate really. Nevertheless, once the smooth tarmac ran out as we hit Asian roads proper, with the punishment they were going to receive, nothing else would do. So the afternoon was spent drinking even more tea in the garden of the hotel, randomly tightening and loosening each spoke until it would have been more productive to return to the metal works and have a set of solid frickin’ wheels fabricated. They might weigh more than the bike itself and have the ride comfort and shock absorbency of a brick, but all the time saved truing the bloody things could be spent gluing our backbones back together instead. LAURA FOOD POISONING ON COACH With everything that could be adjusted on the bike, adjusted, (and this time not in a drunken haze), we sped from Sinop towards Bafra and Samsun, a purple kilometre-eater, a streak of colour and purpose as we…. just kept going. Now half way towards the Iranian border, the lack of success on the visa front was starting to prey on our minds. We had rung the Iranian embassy religiously since leaving Istanbul, but hadn’t even been able to get Weasel on the phone; only brush-offs from well-versed underlings, “You ring back tomorrow”. As we finished our late brunch in a gastronomic flea pit opposite our hotel in Samsun’s nether regions, it was, once again, ‘tomorrow’ and we headed for the phone. On autopilot, I almost hung up when the voice on the other end reached the standard reply, “You ring back….”. only it didn’t. Instead it deviated from the party line. “You wait” it muttered and after most of our available change, the rodent-esque tones of weasel himself wafted down the lines. Our visa was ready! I would have kissed him if he wasn’t the other end of the country and one of the most repulsive creatures I had ever had the displeasure to meet - the sort whom you could tell, just from his photo, smelt at school. Instead I slapped myself to make sure it was real and then Mark, so he didn’t feel left out. We had our visa! Iran was ours. No pissing about with pissy airlines or battling through battle zones in the Caucases. After a short but well earned victory parade, we informed the hotel of our plans and went in search of a coach leaving for Istanbul that very afternoon. Among Turkey’s chaotic infrastructure* is a transport system that is surprisingly effective: almost anywhere in the country one can leap on a coach heading to almost anywhere else, day or night, irrespective of whether or not anyone actually wants to, and in a town the size of Samsun, it took more time to find the bus station than it did once there to find a bus bound for Istanbul in the next hour. *See 'Asia'+'fucked up infastructure' Turkey’s failing grace however, is the distances. We had already cycled almost a thousand kilometres on the slim chance that Weasel would capitulate and now he had it was by coincidence almost a thousand kilometres by coach back to Istanbul and Turks like to drive suicidally fast, elying more on Allah than caution to arrive at their destination safely .Our driver was no exception. Scrambling off the coach at the first rest stop, we fell to our knees and thanked no one in particular that we had been allowed to keep our film star looks and not been reduced to a mixed slurry of metal filings, ground glass and human paste in that last near miss. To calm our nerves vast amounts of caffeine were needed, so we helped each other up and headed inside. For Joe Turk, coach travel equalled comfort, speed and convenience; coaches abounded and the roadside restaurants were open twenty-four hours a day to cope with the constant stream of punters. Most of them could shake a stick at a sandwich, but as with all eating establishments that cater entirely for passing trade, care had to be taken in choosing what to eat, especially when that what might have been sitting there all day with only the sweating sun and flies for company. The problem was that we had left in a hurry so eager were we for that allusive visa and I hadn’t eaten since lunch. For most people this would just mean temporary malnutrition, but I suffer sporadically with hunger narcolepsy: failure to eat can sometimes result in lapsing into a near-coma from which I can only be roused by the smelling salt of a double cheeseburger. Like all ‘medical’ conditions, it’s not clever and it’s nothing to emulate but it does bestow upon me a certain noteworthiness, particularly when passing out and losing control of my bodily functions in a crowded coach. I needed food, I needed it big and I needed it in my mouth – right now. Choosing a faceful of the most innocuous looking toasted cheese sandwiches, I ignored Mark’s concerns about their dubious hygiene and freshness and ate my weight in sweaty, opaque cheese and plaster dry bread. Half an hour after the coach had left the restaurant and we had crossed what mark informed me, was the Euphrates, it became clear that my stomach disagreed with my decision *…violently. I might have needed something, but it wasn’t those sandwiches and my guts were quite insistent on giving them back – big time! Maybe it’s just me but I feel projectile vomiting is best reserved for friends and close family and the occasional funeral wake. Having only just got going, the driver, was unwilling to pull over for some daffy tourist who should have stuck to the dish of the day, until Mark pulled on the saving the day trousers and menaced the guy into pulling off the road at whcich point I gratefully relinquished the cheese sandwich and most of my internal organs. *Eating the dodgy sandwich - not crossing the Euphrates * It felt odd to be back in Istanbul. It is a fascinating place and we had had fun there, but it belonged to yesterday’s sunset we were sweeping towards tomorrow’s new dawn – or would be once we grabbed our visas and legged it back to Samsun. For this reason our plan was to hotfoot it straight to the Iranian embassy after breakfast and then catch a coach back that same day. It surely wouldn’t take long this time, what could there be to do but pay and….and be presented with a bizarre series of requests that seemed designed solely to try and stop us getting the bloody visa they had dragged us all the bloody way back for! “Why the hell didn’t they just say no in the first place!” I hissed to Mark as Weasel disappeared for the umpteenth time for no apparent cause. “Well, they did actually.” Mark reminded me, “Quite consistently, but we wouldn’t take no for an answer.” “And we’re bloody well not going to now!” Weasel reappeared –”We closed for lunch now, you come back afternoon.” We were both starving and bored with staring at his odious fizog, so we called it a morning and fortified ourselves with chicken doner and enough ayran to drown Weasel in. Back refreshed and ready to do battle, to our fury we found Weasel still had some fight left in him. Long periods of no Weasel were followed with short periods of Weasel, during which he would ask us the same questions for the hundredth time, “What is father birth name? What is mother birth town? What is great father birthing day? What is blah, blah, blah…?” “Why you want visa? Why you want come my country? Why rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb…?” But we hung tough, until that is we noticed the office was due to close in less than an hour and tomorrow it wasn’t open at all. We both had the same thought: it was now or never! Weasel seemed to be of the same mind, except he was of the never camp: “You must give passport photograph.” “You’ve already seen our photo in our passports, why do you want a photo?” This was more bullshit, the visa was simply stamped into your passport, there was no photo. “You come back with passport photograph before close or no visa.” As he turned away he added as an afterthought, “Four each.” And then he was gone. In the general absence of photo-me booths in this part of the world, there was less than half an hour to find a professional photographer with a Polaroid Instamatic camera, make him understand, take the photos and for us to deliver them back to the embassy. It was impossible and Weasel knew it. Incensed with the injustice of it all, we dug deep for our last bit of resolve. We’d come this far. Never before had a passport photo and a weasel come between us and our dreams.* “Neither will it! It’s time to stamp on it right here, right now!” Mark suggested that we stamp on weasel instead and although I agreed it would be very satisfying, I wasn't entirely sure Team Sydney would recover from such a high-profile diplomatic incident so early on in the trip. Another tack was needed and we had one for Weasel had underestimated our determination to get that visa: we were after a World Record! We were crossing whole continents under our own steam! “We’re going to fuck up if we don’t stop gobbing off and use our trump card quick.” I pointed out. What Weasel didn’t know was that Mark used to live and work in Istanbul*. It was a long time ago but with a superhuman effort of memory, miraculously he managed to dig out of his brain the whereabouts of just that – a photographer only a few blocks away! We cursed having left the tandem behind as we pegged it faster than our legs believed they could go without the aid of pedals and gears. After a screamingly frustrating bout of breathless ‘I’m sure its this road! No! Maybe that one? Hang on! He was next to a kebab shop or something….’ (Come on! How many bloody kebab shops where there in Istanbul? Friggin’ millions!) he stopped outside an innocuous looking house and dived in. I followed behind to find myself in a small front room, surrounded by all the paraphernalia of a professional photographer. There was no time to dick around and Mark was explaining our predicament in a mixture of remembered mongrel, ten-years-before Turkish and kindergarten English to the smiling but confused looking guy with a camera round his neck. Having grasped the situation, our saviour sprang into action and amazingly we emerged clutching the precious photos with… *Mostly the docks “TEN MOTHER-FRIGGING MINUTES!” “Bugger! Shift it!” And shift it we did. Weasel couldn’t believe his piggy little eyes as we fell through the door, photos in hand. With ill-concealed anger, he snatched them from us. “Passports!” We handed them over. “We close now.” “WHAT!!! You slimy...” “Come side door one hour.” “Oh, right.” And then we were once more being escorted to the door by two don’t-fuck-with-us soldiers. Exactly an hour later we returned and found the side door, which was open, leading to a serving- type hatch. Mark rang the bell with little hope but unbelievably after a few minutes Weasel appeared and handed over our passports without a word, before, unmourned and unmissed, he disappeared out of our lives forever. Left alone, we opened them to find, stamped inside, two fresh, smudged visas for Iran. Halle-fucking-lujah! “As Whatsit said so memorably after the battle of Whatever, ‘Let’s go paaaarty, girlfriend!” We would have moonwalked, away and onwards but that was another trick we'd never mastered, so we fell back on our John Wayne swagger instead. And we were still swaggering* as we hit the first teahouse and ordered their very finest blend! While we waited for our drinks to arrive, I took another look at the fuzzy mark that had taken so much trouble to get – stupid thing was, Weasel could have stamped ‘Go fuck yourselves!’ for all I knew as most of the writing was in Farsi, or so I supposed. * Not a euphemism “How many weeks is it valid for?” Mark asked, “I reckon it’ll take at least four or more to cycle across to Pakistan.” All of the visas we had needed so far were valid for two to three months once you entered the country. I searched the smudge for enlightenment and found it in print small enough to make an insect go blind, “Three!” “Brilliant! That means we can take it easy.” “No, three days!” I spluttered. “THREE DAYS!” Mark yelled, attracting the attention of all the Turks in the near vicinity – quite an achievement. “Give it here!” He minutely examined the visa as if willing it to re-write itself before his scrutiny. “It’s a bloody transit visa! The bastards!” This stank of Weasel. He’d had a hand in this! We would remember to thank him; right after we smashed his face through the counter*, the lying, cheating, weaselling, weasel…thing! *It's not that we are naturally violent, it's just that weasel's face was made for it and we would have felt wrong not to oblige. “God, do we really have to go back?” I asked, not really as a question, more as a plea. “ What are the chances of actually getting that camel’s gooch to change it?” Mark thought for a moment, “None! Bugger it! Let’s go and try and get an extension in the first town.” “Sound idea, Maestro! And if we can’t…then…then...” “Then…I suppose…” “Then bollocks, we will get one. We got this visa didn’t we? Even if it is for three days.” “Decided! Let the partying continue!” Jumping on the coach bound for Samsun that evening, we both knew we had overcome one bedsore-sized problem only to turn over onto another: we had no idea if we could actually get an extension once in Iran. And even if we could, would that one be long enough for us to reach the other side? Most countries aren’t too keen on handing out extra grants of stay, especially to itinerant tandemists from countries not exactly at that time on their Christmas card list. Added to that, if, and we knew despite our blustering that there probably was a very big elephant-sized 'if' here, if all failed and we positively, definitely couldn’t obtain an extension in the first town, what the Ayatollah were we going to do about it? There simply wouldn’t be time to get across an unknown, politically uncongenial, largely uninhabited country seven times the size of the UK in the remaining two days. And if we didn’t, what would be the head-severing arse-buggering public-flogging rot-in-jail fined-a-fiver consequences? But then again, trying to work that lot out on the coach back, would have indubitably resulted in us exploding - rather inconsiderate really, given that the other passengers would have been forced to spend the rest of the journey picking our entrails out of their hair. * We had survived the coach trip back to Samsun without food poisoning or exploding and it was now a dim and distant memory of the day before yesterday as we swept into Ordu early evening. The town was heaving with Russian sailors, many of whom were heaving in the streets already; what state they would be in by the time they ended their shore leave was too undignified to think of, so we stepped over them and continued our search for some starched sheets for the night. The fundamental truth was however, that it wasn’t just a few sailors that had docked but the entire bloody Russian Navy*. Added to this ‘Ordu’ obviously means brothel in Turkish as every place to stay was a Black Sea Bordello of Rampant Ruskies and Turkish Tarts. Now, we are cool cats, deeply into free-love and all that (although strictly speaking this wasn’t love of the free variety) but not if the filthy buggers are going to take up every available room. I mean, why did they need a room anyway? Two minutes copulating in the street while disgorging their liquid dinner into the gutter they would then lay in ‘until morning, was surely more their style. This would also free up the local hostleries for good, clean folk like ourselves who actually wanted to sleep, to do so. *not to be confused with navy, as in a nice navy jumper. Until this human slurry was rounded up in a riot of police vans and subjected to painful and undignified cavity searches, we could only wait and hope while stuffing ourselves with the doyen of all pides*, a sensual mating of a pizza and a pasty that you would happily sell your own children’s kidneys for. *pronounced peeday The pide turned out to be well worth the price of an average internal organ, Mark declaring a single mouthful of his sucuklu pide worth a whole rack of other people’s essential innards. “The only bloody drawback is that half of it never gets to your stomach. Most of it’s still lodged in my teeth.” “Lovely! Use a toothpick.” I passed the small plastic container across the table. “You see,” Mark mumbled almost incoherently between mouthfuls of splintered matchwood, “All this bloody brushing your teeth eight times a day with enough fluoride to sink a Russian battleship, it’s just dental propoganda. Most of the world has never even heard of toothpaste or toothbrushes. They think it’s some kind of sex aid and lubricant.” “Then what do they think of flossing?” “Fucking ridiculous! It’s just oral masturbation. I wouldn’t part with good money for some waxed cat gut!” “Well,” I took the toothpick out of my ear, “Let’s go and see if we can part with some good money for those starched sheets instead.” * Mark was holding court * *Mouthing off “I don’t see why they bloody need to come ashore at all. Why don’t they just shove a few hundred bottles of yeni raki* and a couple of old dogs in a carrier bag and row it out to the ship. Anyway, I thought Turkey was supposed to be on our side, NATO and all that, letting a bunch of Russian sailors infiltrate their women and spy with their...spyglasses!” * industrial alcohol The sailors had stayed and we had gone. Now in the gathering dark we were forced to cycle on to the next town, Giresun in the hope that the port was too small for a battleship or the women too pock-marked for the sailors, although the latter seemed a vain hope. We pinned our chances on the former, as we knew from experience that those dreadnoughts drew a lot of water. A while before, the ‘defence’ company Mark and Murphy spent their working day lounging around in reading cycle mags, had been selling off a frigate and the three of us had entrepreneurialy formed a syndicate to buy it. The plan had been to convert it into a high-class, high-priced pleasure craft* running day trips up and down the Thames, or to hire it out for freelance gunboat diplomacy. There was no trouble with our syndicate putting in a bid, the company being quite happy to sell it to anyone on their Government approved list, ie. anyone willing to cough up the cash; the slight hitch was that its draught was thirty-six feet. This would have been hard to find a mooring for next to the boatyard in Shepperton, where it would also have blocked the entire river. There was also the slight matter that the syndicate’s funds once pooled, fell short of the £19,000,000 reserve by £19,000,010. *Not a euphemism for a brothel, although it was an idea... Our calculations this time however, seemed far more to the decimal place as on our arrival, Giresun was thankfully sailor-free and the very first hotel surely had the starchiest sheets to be found in Asia Minor. * On leaving the following morning, two choices wormed their way into our affections: carry on along the main Black Sea road to Trabzon, or turn off inland towards Gumushane and Bayburt. The coastal route promised good tarmac but hinted at greater distance while its inland counterpart, paraded itself as more direct but confessed to slower, secondary roads. The deciding factor proved to be a reported sighting of a folklore festival in Trabzon. We hadn’t spent all that time in the last few days maintaining the bike, but if we had, Mark swore that he didn’t want to risk getting ‘folk’ all over it and suffer death in the immediate body. Turning off the main road we were soon struggling up a small river valley, our tarmac-melting rate of progress seriously reduced as the road had all the hallmarks of one left to its own devices for a good half of the year. As the tandem ground its way though the first signs of habitation since leaving the main road, a Rottweiler-sized mongrel lopped out for some fun. Its version of fun, we quickly surmised, was to sink its teeth into anything soft and fleshy and loathe though we were to spoil its enjoyment as it had made such an effort, a quickening of pace seemed desirable over a thigh-full of canine teeth. We started to huff away at the speed of fear but then I noticed we had a slight advantage “He’s only got three legs, poor old thing!” “Great! Maybe it’s only got three teeth!” “Don’t be nasty, he’s doing a great job keeping up with only three legs. I wonder what happened to his other one?” “Probably just forgot to put it on or went out on the binge and returned legless.” I groaned, “Perhaps we should slow down and give him a chance to catch up.” “Good idea but it may have escaped your notice that we’re pedalling as fast as we bloody can up this effing mountain and at this moment in time, he’s gaining on us quite nicely.” My superficial sympathy vanished: “Shit! Move it!” Amazingly our three-legged companion kept up for another couple of bends before fading, along with the tarmac which was now replaced with dirt. The road continued to deteriorate as we spermed up the valley until it was little more than a rubble-strewn excuse for a game of crazy paving. * Coughing up to the top of the valley, Team Sydney were borderline rancid and in serious need of an early stop for the daywhen the small village of Kurtun kindly appeared. Whatever accommodation was available, we intended to take advantage of it, this was far enough for us. Were we to carry on to Gumushane, the day’s total would have topped one hundred and sixty kilometres and neither of us fancied such heroics on this sort of surface. Drawn by our dazzling entrance the obligatory gawping crowd had immediately formed around us, or to be more accurate, around the tandem. Its celebrity status was proving a double- edged scimitar: the crowds it attracted allowing us to find a receptive audience for our eating and sleeping charades while on the other handle, for all practical purposes it made sneaking into any place inhabited by any one except a blind mole rat, impossible. So far not too much sleep or sweat had been lost over it, though occasionally arriving somewhere buggered and hungry, just looking for a meal and a bed, it would have been nice to be a little less conspicuous. Further on however, through Iran, Pakistan or China there was a distinct possibility that we might come to regret being wedded to six foot plus of purple gas piping. No such worries in Kurtun as the friendly natives led us to the door of, we assumed, the mayor. To call him a midget would be unkind but accurate, so we will. The midget, recognising like-sized people, greeted us warmly. A loud discussion then ensued between him and the rest of the village as to where we were to spend the night, it being obvious having walked what high street there was, that there were nowhere to stay. Then with lots of reassuring nods to us, the whole hamlet accompanied us back down the ‘high street’ to granny’s house where we were shown to a spare room with a spare bed and a spare view down the valley we had just come up. The only drawback was that oh-so-hospitable granny made no mention of dinner, leaving us, after we had freshened up, to sulkily go seek our own. Given that our stomachs were part way through digesting their own lining, thankfully the small village store had the perfect triple cheeseburger, maxi fries and pork scratchings substitute in the form of bread and cheese. Spreading the white curdled bovine emanations on slices of dry plasterboard, we bemoaned the lack of something cooked in its own grease and served in a bun, and swore to restrict our adventuring to the developed world in future. * The day had been a scorcher and as the evening shadows lengthened (ooh Mr Bysshe, I’ve come over all poetic) the heat in the miniscule room seemed to increase rather than lessen. The glassless window did its best to allow at least some of the heat out while the netting kept guard lest the repellent insect world crashed the party. Woken at 2am by a million bites from an army of invisible assassins sauntering in through the window however. The question that struck as we slapped ourselves stupid and flailed around was “ Why the Attatürk have fly netting large enough for slap the smack sodding swipe flies to slap get smack through swipe oops! Sorry!” “Fucking Insects” we chorused as we danced till dawn. * “1,875 metres! Bring on de Himalayas man, we’se gonna eat dem up for breakfast!” Much as I applauded Mark’s sentiments on reaching the giddy heights of the Vaudag Gecidi, whatever that was, I wasn’t quite sure if this would necessarily mean the Himalayas would similarly crumble at our awesome hill climbing technique. I was sure I had read somewhere that they were a tad higher than this unnamed, little-known mountain range on the way to Erzurum. The facts of the matter couldn’t be ignored though: we had climbed up to almost six thousand feet and we were still standing and had the sign read ‘ Rakim: 1876m’ instead of ‘1875m’, we’d have still made it, though not necessarily with the standing bit. Flying down the vertical face of the other side like a Teflon-coated purple penguin, we hit the town of Bayburt, quite literally. Or to be more precise, the inhabitants, stumbling around blind as they were on the public highway, “What are you doing hiding under a blanket in the middle of the road, you silly cow!?” Mark yelled as he swerved, wrenching the bars and bike around the brown shapeless lumps shuffling in front of us. Unable to quite miss them all, we nudged one with the rear panniers, sending her whirling Dervish style off in to the dirt. “Sorry!” Age caught up with us as we rounded the next bend. Both of us remembered the first computer games such as Pacman coming in but neither of us were of that generation, preferring more old fashioned pursuits in the bedroom. But Twister wasn’t going to help here as Asteroids came at us from all sides, “Incoming! Incoming!” Mark shouted “If you were going to dress up from head to foot in bloody brown blankets wouldn’t you at least leave a slit for your eyes!” I yelled as another brown form with particularly erratic vectoring glanced off my handlebars. The reasons behind the ladies' very unusual dress and their attraction to the middle of the road like moths round a flaming tandem, we never found out. The explanation for their frankly drab colour scheme and thick, coarse blankets became evident however, as coming out of the other side of the village we ran straight into a flock of brown, wiry sheep in the middle of the road. “Hence the brown blankets!” Mark nodded to himself sagely, as we screeched clear of the village and its dangers, “ 4000 years this village has apparently been here - how the hell have they survived that long with the collective road sense of a lorry load of lemmings!” I squawked, without embarassment, that maybe if we looked where we were going a little more and slowed down a tinsy bit, they might make it another few thousand. But just at that point we hit the downhill and all thought of slowing down and cycling at a more sedate pace, vanished... * Chaffing one's nuts off into the face of a bastard headwind in the lowest gear possible is never one of our favourite activities, ranking alongside self-appendectomy and washing. To have the chance to do so grinding immediately down a mountain just grovelled up, was way too much fun for us to handle, so ten kilometres or so outside of Erzurum, we pulled over to collapse in a heap of foul distemper and even fouler bodily fluids. The really galling thing was that the road was so Methodist straight* that the still distant town could already be seen, teasing us like a whore. *We are in no way reiniforcing the stereotype that Methodists do not live on corners. Having exhausted our bile, we remounted and creaked off, only to be stopped shortly afterwards by a group of soldiers, their vehicle blocking the road. Apparently the trouble between the Turks and Kurds in the East was getting worse and military check points were now in force on most roads. The soldiers informed us that there had been several unspecified 'incidents' between here and the Iranina border. It seemed that things were hotting up even before we reached Iran itself. Ooops! After helpfully imparting this news, trying to cadge a ride on the tandem and some fags, they left team Slightly-Nervous-and-Looking-over-Their-Shouders to creep on down the uncomfortably deserted road towards an ever visible, but infuriatingly still far-off, Erzurum. * The following morning we left Erzurum, now keen to make it to Iran and the thrill of a new country – it would be our ninth! It was a little premature to be thinking of as there were still several days ride to Dogubayerzit, the last town before the border, but apart from being waved through an occasional road block by the army, the journey was uneventful and we arrived happy nonetheless to have got that far. That far was as far as that and no further as it was mandatory to take transport from here to the Iranian border. Apart from the troubles, apparently there were wild animals with an appetite for human flesh out there and also tight security, as the army had made an 'interesting’ discovery on nearby Mt Arat. “Damn cheek!” Mark voiced, “ If they think a little local trouble, wolves, bears, a ‘sighting’ of Noah’s ark, and their blasted army marauding around are of concern to a couple of oft-bitten, spit-in-your-eye, bite-the-head-off-a-cow kind of International Tandem Hard Men like us, then…!” “Absolutely!” I concurred, “ It’ll take more than that to put us off!” “Well, maybe not a hell of a lot more though.” “What? Where’s your backbone man?” “Attached to the rest of my body and I thought we’d keep it that way.” “Fair dos! Now where’s that dolmus?” Having reached this far without incident, in truth we could handle taking wheels for the last few kilometres to the border; the only challenge was how to transport the tandem. The ubiquitous dolmus was our first thought and soon solved the problem. After the obligatory haggling over the price as there would be no room for anyone but us, we had ourselves the requisite wheels and, courtesy of the dolmus driver, dinner. Indeed, in usual Turkish fashion, having argued so vehemently over a few extra lira, by the time he had finished feeding and watering us, half his hard- haggled monetary gains had gone down our throats. But that was why, even though Team Sydney was looking forward to powering into its 9th country, we were also gutted to be leaving this one. It was hard to imagine that there could be another with quite such inexhaustibly hospitable and helpful people. Tomorrow we would find out if our homespun philosophy that there are no 'evil nations', only two-faced jackals who perpetuate this toss was true - or perish in Persia in the attempt... ####

Thanks for reading! We really hope you enjoyed this book. Please take a moment to leave a review and if you loved the book, tell your friends! (You can tell your enemies as well if you want, but we figure you probably don't speak to them that much). If you would like to read Wild Dogs & Nutters Part 2 free when it is finished, then please leave your email here and we will let you know - please note we hate spammers as much as you probably do and will never use your email you for any other purpose unless you authorise us. If you would like to discover more (including free books and free samples) then ankle over to Joie de Vivre World and find out what we are all about. As well as wicked writings you'll find cool competitions, fun free foolery, belting blogs, prophylactic podcasts, cheery children's charity & several non-illiterating items - all guaranteed to fill your vital organs full of Joie de Vivre. Mark & Laura, Our author bio can be found here Links to our other books (on Smashwords) can be found here - free and priced - all include free samples - or search for Joi de Vivre World in authors on your eReader.