FOLKLORE: THE BEAUJOLAIS RUN ,1981

Bike’s wine correspondent on a vintage year for intoxication.

Idon’t know much about wine but I know what I don’t like. And I don’t like Beaujolais nouveau because it’s dull and piss weak.

So the idea of risking your life to get one bottle (yes, one bottle) from the south of France to London just as fast as you can, via 500 of miles of middle-of-the-night, fogbound French autoroutes, is really, really stupid. Looking back, I only got this gig because I was the new kid in the office, who had to do

whatever everyone else didn’t want to do. I’d got my first job as a journalist on The Biker magazine in the spring of 1981. This was six months later.

Someone at Suzuki GB had the bright idea of lending us one of their brand-new Katana GSX1100S, which we’d ride to France and back, then write a nice story about the jolly time we’d had taking part in the Beaujolais run. This event was a PR exercise designed to generate headlines by rushing the first bottles of the newly released wine back to London. In other words, it was an illegal street race.

Never rid den abroad before

There were four of us involved: me on a Katana, friend and fellow racer Conor Brennan (RIP) on a GS850, with French navigator Marc Bottinger on the pillion, and Suzuki PR man Ian Burgess, riding another Katana. I was 22 and I’d never ridden (or driven) abroad before. I was wearing an old

AGV helmet, Highwayman leathers, plastic Derri Boots and gauntlet gloves, with electric inners.

The run started at midnight on 19 November, from a vineyard on the banks of the river Rhone, just north of Lyon. It followed a big dinner, during which most of the diners got royally pissed.

Looking around the dining room and mooching around the car park I realised that most of the people on this run were Yuppies in Ferraris and Porsches, some of the cars pimped up for the occasion with racks of spotlights.

The more I thought about it the more I decided that I COULD NOT LET THEM WIN THE RACE. I wasn’t prepared to die specifically for my cause, but in my early twenties I didn’t really care about dying anyway, so it amounted to the same thing.

I had no plan but I knew that beating the more serious car drivers wouldn’t be easy. I had one headlight, they had many,

‘Perhaps a dozen times in my life – being chased by scooter thieves, doing a runner from the cops – I’ve allowed myself to ride on the roads like I was racing’

I had six gallons of fuel on board, they had 17. Worst of all it was just above freezing as we were waved off…

Most of the 500 miles ahead were autoroutes. North towards Dijon, north west to Paris, north east towards Dunkirk (no autoroute to Calais in those days), then Routes Nationales to Calais, the ferry and the M20 into London, where the Grosvenor Hotel in Park Lane was the finish line. The first miles were good but once we hit the autoroutes the fast drivers took off. A Porsche 911 could do 125 miles an hour all night long. Not so easy on a Katana. Our only plan was to go as fast as we could for as long as we could. Crouched low, helmet juddering on the fuel tank, trying to hide behind the Kat’s tiny screen and peering into the gloom I tried to keep the speedo needle above 120mph.

After 120 miles the Kat started coughing and dying. To my horror I realised the fuel was already down to reserve. This would mean lots of time-wasting fuel stops.

So we’d just have to go faster. Ian had all the cash, so when we refuelled or passed through an autoroute toll he paid for all of us. Around 3am we hit Paris and the Périphérique, which is France’s version of London’s North and South Circulars. But while London’s circular roads wend their way past tired suburbs and trading estates the Périphérique is more like riding around the Death Star: one moment you’re deep in a vast concrete trench, the next you’re in a curving mile-long tunnel, warmed by the orange sodium glow. This was all so alien I got shivers down my spine. I was also very cold, except for my hands, which were cooking. My electric inners got so hot they burned a hole in my knuckles (the scar is still there). My neck was the worst – it had gone numb – too fast, too cold, no fairing. And then we hit the fog: thick November fog.

The autoroutes were pretty much empty, but for trucks following each other’s taillights, so we pressed on, trying to keep around the ton, eyes wide into the dazzling whiteness, picking up truck taillights like you pick up cats’ eyes. Working from one truck to the next.

The fog took our first victim. Ian couldn’t keep up, but he had all the money, so the next time we stopped for fuel we had to wait for him. I was raging! When he arrived we took his money and Conor and I set off again.

Our only hope of winning the race was to make the same ferry as the lead cars, who we knew must be ahead of us. If we could manage that there was no way they were going to beat me into central London.

Scrambled brains

Finally we arrived at Calais – wide eyed and brains scrambled by five hours of dark, fogbound autoroute. And there, waiting by the ferry on-ramp, were a couple of the Porsches, whose drivers assured us – ‘Old chap’ – that no one could possibly have made the previous boat. Game on.

It was dawn as the ferry ramp clunked onto the dockside at Dover. By the time I crested the white cliffs I was going quite fast, certainly too fast to make the roundabout that appeared out of nowhere. There was no way I was going to stop, so I kept going straight, hard on the brakes, hopped the splitter island and just about wobbled around. Perhaps a dozen times in my life – late for a plane, being chased by scooter thieves, doing a runner from the cops – I’ve allowed myself to ride on the roads like I was racing. This means no respect whatsoever for speed limits or anything else. The M20 was done as quick as the Katana would go, about 135mph. I passed one cop car, but nothing came of it, because this was 1981, not 2020.

Into London and into death-wish courier mode. The Porsches were nowhere, of course, but I knew Conor would be around, because I knew he was as stupid as I was. And he knew London better.

The Grosvenor Hotel is very posh, so the welcoming party was around the back. But it wasn’t even there, because they were expecting us a bit later. I’d done the 80 miles from Dover in less than an hour.

Conor arrived minutes later. There were photos and interviews and lots of backslapping among the finishers. ‘Marvellous drive, Henry!’ Then I rode home to Ealing, where I lived with Team Bike, and we drank the wine.

It was rubbish. My neck remained numb for the next six months and is still knackered from that ride.