Nick Sanders’ Coast – Part 3
Nick Sanders cascades down n from the Humber Bridge on his epic 5000-mile loop of the UK mainland
‘I was happiest arriving in a new place each night’ ‘I keep the sea to my left, coastal towns to my right’
When the Humber Bridge was constructed, the towers were linked by the longest single span in the world. Two kilometres shore-to-shore and now, on a damp estuarine night I was fighting off a stiff crosswind funnelling cold air up from what had to be a stormy sea. On the road the momentum of travel builds up a head of steam so strong it starts to become impossible to stop. With Hessel behind and the lights of Barton on Humber blinking on the south bank, this coast of Britain ride was beginning to mess with my head. Roads, small and narrow hugged sides of fields trapped tight against a hedge or as a gridlike feature skirting mud flats and braided rivers that drain east.
Battle of the bulge
Around the Wash to Norfolk the route was straight with 90-degree corners laid down as if made in a maths class against barley, maize and wheat and that piercing East Anglian light. The bike went on forever like the big sky, blattedyblatt, its parallel twin punching above its weight.
Riding on any trip can be like a staged transformation; a general descent into squalor that starts off with showers and hotels ending with your tent being thrown up in the dark. And yet, I was happiest when spending every evening arriving into a new place.
The great Valentino Rossi said how riding a bike is like an art, something you do because you feel something inside. The Norfolk coast captures that with its sublime gentility. All friendly ‘hellos’ and faraway vistas. Hunstanton has its narrow streets, Burnham Market masquerading as ‘Chelsea by Sea’. Equally for me, of all the things I’m genuinely hopeless at, living in the real world is really where my hopelessness shines, riding my bike is my one constant. Out of the shed to turning the key it’s the only thing that joins up the loose ends. In this way the bridge joins the East Riding of Yorkshire with Lincolnshire and that links with a route which threads through Scarborough and Sussex, Essex and the bridging point of London.
Stepping back in time
At North Walsham, Steve at the Norfolk Motorcycle Museum
displays a collection of classic bikes revered by old friends. Sammy Miller’s it wasn’t, but it’s still an uber-cool time-warp in some industrial backlot. I always stop by for a chat if I’m passing. Ever since my satnav packed-up in Grimsby I’ve simply kept the sea to my left. Great riding, create the lean, the bend, setting the apex to trace in your head how to get round to follow through to that vanishing point. But heading down into Kent the traffic was building, pulsating to a peak and the vanishing point was a number plate in front of me. I did meet a bloke in Dover who swam the Channel 38 times.
Next stop Portsmouth. At Beaulieu I popped into the Motor Museum and nearby Sammy Miller’s place to pay homage to his illustrious life and the 450 bikes he’s restored to an impossibly mint state. Like Sammy I’m connected to my past as the future seems a ridiculous thing and as we both agreed, Sammy and me: “You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.”
The sea to my left, coastal towns to my right, and everything flashing by amazingly in sparkly Bournemouth and onto Studland
Bay. With so much frenetic activity I took time out for a coffee in Christchurch to simply watch the world go by.
The English enjoy great pleasure from doing things oddly but in a quietly understated way. Large parts of the coast are deployed for the purpose of giving people in tracksuits somewhere to go for the day. I don’t mean this harshly, but trackie bottoms and a United T-shirt is a kind of uniform like mods with their scooters and me in my gear, as did blokes with piss-pot helmets and customgrown beards. You sit with friends, comrades-in-arms where motorcycling in familiar territory is exciting if only for promoting interesting guesses about who people are in their normal, everyday life.
Riding a bike gives you time to think and consider the differences between adventuring at home and across the world. It’s a space thing.Great Britain is really Little Britain if you assess who we are by size. As a nation we have a private sense of distance linked to the idea of Britain as a lonely island and being by the seaside upholds this traditional view.