Ben Welsher | Writings

Day 1 - Basel to Ottmarsheim The fact that I was violently cursing a hunk of metal as I struggled to drag it onto a train had to go down as a major success. I'd found an suitable alternative model of bike and hit what few shops in Munich purported to sell it. And sell it they did, in the wrong size, or with the wrong brakes, or the right size with the right brakes...on the women's model. It was early afternoon by now and shops were starting to close, indeed the one we were in had only 30 minutes until closing. As I despaired at the options I spied from the corner of my eye a bike I had considered at the very start of my spreadsheet marathon. It was the older model and had seen enough test rides to make 'new' a debatable descriptor but it might just do. The price was luficrous, a fact the salesman also recognised by immediately dropping it by 200 euros. A bit more haggling and it had new wheels and security bolts for a final bill that was acceptable in my circumstances....

Day 0 - London to Munich A simple idea rarely retains its virginal simplicity when further thought upon. A simple plan sprouts like knotweed when developed. But then again I'm not sure why I ever thought that riding a bike from Germany to the UK would be a simple thing. The genesis of this trip was in Sandra's determination that flying her bicycle over from Munich (on a plane, it's just a normal bike) was too expensive and inconvenient so why don't we ride back instead? She'd left it there when moving to the UK. I liked the idea instantly. It combined adventure with time spent in nature and I would be able to boast in years to come of the great physical exertion of a thousand kilometre journey and pretend, to my audience, that I was a person that enjoyed great physical exertions. The trip would also allow me to spend inordinate hours researching and inadvisable amounts of money on a bike. For this is something I did not possess. And this is where the plan immediate...

Day 10 - Munich So many people have become just portraits hung only with cobwebs in the attic of my memories. Passing acquaintances and fleeting passions created by chance intersection of different paths criss-crossing the world. And so I thought it was with her. I hadn't seen the girl since those last days of Margaret River, part of the sturm und drang that fires the memory of it. There is a delight in the dramatic recall but memory is just our internal storytelling function, malleable to the narrative that we want to hear. Is all history oral and shaped by Chinese whispers? Maybe this blog will act as my corrective to that, once stripped of the requisite flourish. Even now those events seem improbable, like EastEnders in Oz. After a hasty goodbye shielded from inflamed eyes, and one prompted by belated decency on my part, I welcomed the escape of the road. But they were great days for all their filthy, haphazard melodrama and I tear a little at their remembrance. I guess not all...