A phrase from the David Bowie album, “The rise and fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars” that resonates with me is a fitting title to this relatively short blog entry.  It really has been five wonderful adventure filled years since the first tentative blog entry I made back in April 2014.  Who would have thought, certainly not me, that we would still be blogging some five years later, even if no-one is reading anymore. Two RTW trips, two shorter trips to Spain/France and Southern Africa, albeit in a 4WD, have taken place in this time totalling over 62,000 miles / 100,000 kilometres.  We cannot say what the future will hold or how long we will travel by motorcycle, but 2019 will see the 2slowspeeds on the road again motorcycling to new and interesting locations.  Not as far flung as previous odysseys, as we will only ride for a couple of months this year during the northern hemisphere summer due to Anne’s work commitments. We also wanted to spend more time in one or two locales rather than sometimes seemingly continuous riding to meet a visa or seasonal weather limitations.

So where to this time?  As you know we are warm/dry weather riders who like a hot shower, good food and cold drink at the end of the day. Well I am, Anne is made of tougher stuff. So logical places for this year would include, Spain, Italy or Greece, but no, we are off to the Faroe Islands and Iceland in July and August.  We fell in love with Iceland last March when we visited and presented to the BMW Icelandic Motorcycle Club at their AGM. The lure of the dramatic landscape, the apparent isolation and potential for camping have added to an irresistible call.

We said we would come back, and we are.  We are looking forward to meeting with and hopefully riding with some of those we met and especially our loyal Icelandic blog followers.  We will also get the opportunity to camp which did not feature nearly as much as Anne would have liked on our RTW trips.  We are furiously planning and booking flights and ferries.  We know that wet/cold weather gear will need to be packed but at the end of June we will be airborne from Australia and ‘Streak’ and ‘Storm’ will be on the road in early July.

– Anthony