He worked for a lift company and had relocated due to his work. Married to an English girl, he took great pleasure in taking the Mick’ out of her whenever the two countries met at sports. “If we don’t beat them there are always plenty of countries who are willing to do the job for us”. And let’s face it , they generally do. We told him that after 540 miles we only met one other motorcyclist who was German, dressed like a Hells Angel and had his son with him in a side car. His reply was, “Well, he’s German and they wear uniforms”. He also said that it’s typical that they would spoil a motorbike by attaching a side car to it.

He made his exit wishing us luck. Nice Guy, he was cutting with a pleasant attitude, but I couldn’t help wondering how he was going to described me and ‘The big guy’ to his mates in the bar which he was obviously going to visit that night. I guess we’ll never know. We hacked on our merry way to Genoa. The first leg was really fun. Then the Alps appeared in the distance... I could see snow... and lots of it. The sight was amazing. The only other experience I’d had of them was flying over them on the way to do a show with Nick Heyward the pop star from back in the day.

He hated flying and when we got over the Alps the most vicious turbulence was pitching the plane up and down about a 1000 feet at a time. Nick’s fingers of his right hand were imbedded firmly into the foam of the armrest and the fingers of his left hand firmly in my right arm. Needless to say, it made me a nervous wreck and now I was having flashbacks. Once up in the Alps I saw people descending with skis! This could only mean one thing. There was more snow than I had originally thought. Snow and bikes don’t mix.

Add cold to that and you have my worst nightmare. Everything up there had about five feet of snow sitting on top of it. Cars, trees, petrol pumps, even people! We were low on fuel so took a slight detour to a little town to fill up. We took some photos where I did a little ‘soft shoe’ whilst Graham thought it would be funny to sit on a massive throne of ice that had formed on one of the pumps. When he tried to get up he fell backwards and filled his pants with snow. He then uttered the words, “Don’t worry it’s all downhill from here”... Bikes... snow... ice... downhill... actor... S***! Anyway we got down alive and my elation was only short lived.

Every two minutes we would go from tunnel to daylight, tunnel to daylight, I was going stir crazy. Then at last we arrived at Mont Blanc which is called that for reasons I’ve just explained. The tunnel there blows warm air into your face that immediately steamed up my visor, mirrors and most importantly my body. We were like two kids in a cake shop. At last Mediterranean warm climate... NOT! As we proceeded we were greeted with FREEZING FOG! And now my bike had started spluttering! I told Graham to keep an eye on me as RAC at this critical moment only meant, ‘Runny A*** Climate’, to me. Every time I got to 90mph my ‘Tranny’ started doing a Salsa. We decided to stop at the next petrol station. Filled up the bikes with fuel and our bodies with pasta.

Half an hour later we had defrosted and the weather had brightened up. The next leg was quite enjoyable as my ‘Tranny’ had magically righted itself. I promised not to bring it up ever as to not tempt fate. We’ve got a desert to get through. We arrived in Genoa with three hours to spare. No one seemed to know what time or where our ferry was departing from. Once we found the place all we could do is wait. We called home and generally chatted to the locals, well, a German kid (not in uniform) who was so prepared for his two week trip, It made Graham’s immaculate planning look shoddy.

This guy had all his paperwork in a nice plastic folder, knew all the protocol, had his girlfriend doing the driving (in his pristine VW Transporter with luggage box on the back) his Cannon HD camcorder that went nicely with her Cannon stills camera with snazzy lens and of course, his confident (but not arrogant) Michael Schumacher smile that made me think, “What the f*** am I putting myself through all this s*** for?” Then I remembered... CHARITY! I rolled my dribbling tongue back into my extremely jealous head and decided against quitting our trip and asking him for a lift. Once we had loaded our stuff onto the ferry, Had a shower (which was the best I’d had thus far) we hung out with a Guy named Rashed who at the dock had told us that our Sat Nav route was longer and more boring than the preferred route chosen by the Germans and the Swiss when travelling from France to Italy.

He has invited us to change out plans and come stay with him and his family on an island off the south coast of Tunisia. I means us not having to camp that night so I was the first one to raise my hand like a little precocious school kid. It means a longer ride that night but a shorter ride to Libya. The receptionist on the boat called Donia said that I looked like a Tunisian friend of hers. I know. They all say that. Donia could only be described as what Jamaicans would say is a ‘Hot Gyal’. She showed us photos of her partying in Dubai with all her ‘Hot Gyal’ mates, mostly with their lils on show via very skimpy clothing. She somehow still remained professional whilst doing the facebook thing, showing us photos and booking us in. Graham told her I was an actor and she wanted to take a photo with me, to which I gladly obliged. She is now my friend on facebook. We had dinner and a couple of beers to loosen up the muscles.