And they're off!

Monday 5th September 1983 Honda 90 motorbike mileage at Esher was 13,698 (13,685 at home)

Pre-departure Note (added 25/03/2020)

At a garden party last summer at my house in West London we got into conversation with our friend’s father, Pete Willis. He had travelled back to the U.K. overland from Australia in a VW Combi Campervan in 1970. We were having second thoughts about going overland to Australia but he said “Just get yourselves an old Honda 50 each” (we got Honda 90’s in the end). “Ride one each until one packs up, then both get on the other and continue until that bites the dust, then continue by public transport.” He waved expansively at my parent’s guests in the garden and said “get out into the world, you don’t want to end up like these no-hopers!” My grandmother overheard him and said to me later “what a wicked old man, advising you to give up your happy family life and careers for a road trip.”

Prior to the trip George and I had travelled to the tower block headquarters of the Automobile Association (AA) in Basingstoke. We intended to get a Vehicle Customs Carnet for our Honda 90 motorbikes. A Carnet de Passages en Douanes is an internationally recognised Customs document entitling the holder to TEMPORARILY import a vehicle duty-free into certain countries, which normally require a deposit against import charges for such vehicles (generally countries outside Europe). We needed this to ride our bikes into Asian countries on our journey. As we had no intention of bring the bikes back to the U.K. we would forfeit the money that would be required as a guarantee. Applicants must provide a security amount in the form of either a non-refundable insurance indemnity or a part-refundable deposit guarantee. The AA valued this at £500 for each of the Honda 90’s, a sum which we both felt was too much to forfeit, so we would have to abandon or sell the motorbikes before we left Europe.

Our Honda 90 motorbikes had a fuel switch which should be "ON" normally while running but required manually switching to "reserve" when the tank was getting low. This is for when you are running out of petrol and just need to get to a petrol filling station.