THE GREAT MILE

A new rally takes bikers from northern Scotland to Cornwall on the UK’s most spectacular roads. Octane saddles up and joins The Great Mile

The UK’s longest bike rally

ANYONE WHO has kept an eye on the motorcycle world these past few years will agree that things have changed a bit. Biking is now less about haring around on plasticclad race-replicas and more about throwing a leg over a cool custom and heading off in search of slow-speed adventure on the road less travelled.

Plenty of people have cottoned on to the business potential of the café-racer/bobber/ street-scrambler scene, and not just bike builders; see, for example, the thriving Bike Shed club, restaurant and coffee shop in London’s trendy Shoreditch. Then there’s the annual Distinguished Gentleman’s Ride, which brings together thousands of riders in cities across the globe to raise money for men’s health charities.

Few have done more for the scene in recent years, though, than cousins Jonathan Cazzola and Robert Nightingale. In 2015 the pair organised the ‘Malle Mile’, named after their high-end leather goods business. Held in the grounds of Cazzola’s family home, Kefington Hall in Kent, the Mile started as a fun, no-red-tape hillclimb and sprint for a few friends, but it was received so enthusiastically that it has since become a major annual event.

Spurred on by the success of the Mile, which attracts a large and notably eclectic field of machines, Cazzola and Nightingale last year launched an even more ambitious undertaking: the Great Mile, a 1200-mile motorcycle rally for up to 100 participants.

Said to be the longest motorcycle rally in the UK, the event began on the afternoon of 30 August with the arrival of bikes and riders at the Castle of Mey, the country house of the Queen Mother and very nearly the most northerly point of mainland Britain. The riders left at intervals the following morning to begin four days of hard riding to the finish on Cornwall’s Lizard Peninsula.

The majority very sensibly took advantage of the organisers’ offer to transport their machines to Scotland, and travelled up by aeroplane. I, however, unfathomably elected to ride my 40-year-old Honda 400 Four all the way from Devon in order to get to the start-line.

On arrival, I was greeted by a remarkable array of mostly ancient machinery and around 80 participants from all walks of life and many parts of the world. Photographer Carl Proffit and his new bride Sonya Cameron, for example, had travelled from New Zealand – on their honeymoon!

After a night of not-quite-glamping in canvas bell tents, we emerged into a good Scottish mizzle, ate a hotel breakfast and then lined up outside the Castle of Mey to be flagged off for the first day’s riding. Ahead of us were over 250 miles that would ultimately, and circuitously, take us to Glencoe via the northern coastline to Tongue Bridge, down to Ullapool and through Inverness.

Predictably, the weather ensured that motorcycling conditions were far from ideal, but Cazzola and Nightingale had researched and plotted the route painstakingly. Their efforts paid off because we were travelling on tiny, interesting roads punctuated by some of the most breathtaking views imaginable.

‘Why am I doing this?’ I had asked myself on the long ride north. Now, as the trusty Honda climbed serpentine B-roads and purred past glassy lochs, I was thinking, ‘Why haven’t I done this before?’

Yes, I’ll concede that I would have been drier in a car, but travelling by motorcycle makes it so much easier to really appreciate the landscape and absorb (literally, in this case) one’s surroundings.

As night fell we gathered around smoky fires at Glencoe’s Red Squirrel camp to share tales of on-road adventures, bellies full after a hearty dinner at the Clachaig Inn. Each day followed a similar pattern – ride, gawp, eat, reflect – as we traversed the east of Scotland down to Carlisle, ‘scratched’ through the Lake District via some of its passes, and pitched camp beside the beautiful Forest of Bowland.

Our third day took us through some of the finest valleys in Wales, ending with a night on the Glanusk Estate in Powys. And so to the final day, riding into Somerset, through the famous Cheddar Gorge, around the edge of Exmoor and on to the very top of a rainlashed, fog-bound Dartmoor to get our route cards stamped at Princetown before the final run to the finish at Lizard Point.

Not everyone made it – but even those who didn’t had already pledged to sign up for 2018’s Great Mile. If you own a suitably ‘inappropriate motorcycle’ and want to put it through its paces while reminding yourself of just how beautiful Britain really is, you should join them.

‘Yes, it was often a bit damp, but travelling by motorcycle makes it so much easier to really appreciate the landscape’