By Any Means: His Brand New Adventure From Wicklow to Wollongong (3 page)

So many great racers lived here: Neil Hodgson, who was riding for Honda in the AMA Superbike series, James Toseland, the only Brit in MotoGP. Though I’d never been before, the place evoked bittersweet emotions. Ewan and I used to run David Jefferies in British Superstock. He was one of the great characters of bike racing and was killed practising for the TT in 2003. I couldn’t help but think about him now: he’d been undisputed king of the mountain and I still missed him - but he died doing what he loved.

2

King of the Mountain

The following morning I was outside the hotel with a classic MV Agusta burbling away in front of me. Older bikes need to be warmed up properly to avoid placing unnecessary stress on the engine: it’s when a bike is cold that things can break suddenly.

I was really excited about today. A little later I’d be hooking up with John McGuinness, the current ‘king of the mountain’, and together we’d do a lap of the 37.75-mile circuit. There was somebody I needed to speak to first, though, and he was waiting for me on the start-finish straight.

The Isle of Man TT is the most famous and the most dangerous motorbike race in the world. Someone who can testify to the latter is Richard ‘Milky’ Quayle. Milky - a tall, slightly built guy with glasses - got his nickname from his resemblance to the Milky Bar Kid. He’s Manx, a local who won four TT races in his time. His final race was last year and with his wife expecting a baby, he decided enough was enough. Not before he’d spent two weeks in a coma, though. I met him by the pit board where the lap times and rider placings are still recorded manually by local scout troops. He pointed out a few racing landmarks and we talked about the speeds riders get up to. Then he took me to the spot where his 160 mph crash had been captured on home video.

It had been an horrendous crash - and standing with Milky on the exact spot where it happened really brought it home. Milky knows the circuit like the back of his hand but he’d had set-up problems and the bike wasn’t working quite how he wanted it to. He was blatting through a narrow, wooded section when he came to a jagged rock wall at a really fast left-hander. Tipping in a fraction too early, he brushed the wall with his shoulder. There was barely any contact but at 160 mph it was enough to rip his hands off the bars and send him and the bike careering across the road and into the far wall. The wall exploded, the bike disintegrated and Milky was thrown twenty feet into the air and a hundred and fifty feet down the road before he landed under some trees. His left shoulder was smashed, his ankle was shattered, his lungs collapsed, one kidney packed up and he lost his spleen. He doesn’t remember much about it because he was knocked unconscious and stayed that way until he woke up in hospital two weeks later. Having watched the footage on the web then listened to him talk me through it, I was staggered he was standing there at all. It just shows that no matter how many races you’ve won or how intimately you know the circuit, all you have to be is a fraction off line and it can be curtains.

The video footage Milky showed me was still raw in my mind as I waited for John to arrive: I was about to do the lap myself and would ride through that cutting. Before long I saw a white sports bike gunning up the road towards me, the rider wearing race leathers. Pulling up, he lifted the visor on his helmet. ‘Hello, Charley,’ he said. ‘John McGuinness.’

Since 2004 John’s won every superbike race on the island. He is a superstar of road racing, one of the gods, yet he’s the most down-to-earth guy you could wish to meet. Milky told me that - professional or amateur - there are no prima donnas at the TT; everyone is there because they love racing bikes and John is no different. His favourite part of the track is a left/right kink where he’s doing just shy of two hundred miles an hour. No matter how many times he does it he gets the same rush. He’s a lovely guy, a great laugh, and he was really up for showing me round.

I was on the classic MV which threatened to tank slap when I let go of the handlebars: John was on a stock Fireblade and he popped the front wheel beautifully as we set off. It was an incredible couple of hours, riding right behind the world record holder. The lap was so varied it was soon clear to me that it would take years to learn it well enough to be both safe and competitive. There are long, blisteringly fast straights, hairpins in the middle of villages, flying sections through built-up areas that scare the shit out of you, wooded glens like the one where Milky overcooked it, not to mention the mountain and the wind-blown roads bisecting farmers’ fields.

Riding at my side, John talked me through the technical parts and the really fast stretches. There are a couple where you flash by the houses at more than 190 mph and one in particular sent my stomach into a flip. You’re tearing along when suddenly this wall appears as if it’s right in front of you. It’s actually marking a bend, but as you race up it looks like it is dead ahead and you’re going to crash into it. Your eyes are telling you there’s nowhere to go while your memory is telling you it’s a corner and to keep going. Steve Hislop was a few centimetres off line there once and banged his head on the wall.

There’s no speed limit on the open road and I tried to follow as John wound the Blade up to more than 170. I had the MV off the ground at Ballaugh Bridge, landing with a bit of wobble, but this was the TT circuit and Ballaugh is one of those magical landmarks. Out of the village, John cranked the throttle again. The road was incredibly bumpy now and I was thinking: ‘Oh my God, imagine taking this at one sixty with the wheels off the deck one minute, and suspension and the forks on full compression the next.’ I suddenly remembered something that Milky had told me. He said that it’s a long lap and riding it in race conditions your mind can begin to wander. The thought of taking my mind off what I was doing even for one second made me laugh out loud.

We were approaching the mountain now. It was very windy here, with the fields rolling down to the sea. We were climbing, John leading me into a hard and fast right-hander: past the waterworks where a low wall marks the edge of the road and beyond . . . a hell of a long fall. It’s only when you ride the roads, even at relatively slow speeds, that you have any idea of just how on the edge the racers really are, not to mention the hundreds of amateurs who come here from all over the world.

John led me to the goose neck and the start of the mountain. From fourth gear you’re on the brakes and down to second, then accelerating hard to the mountain mile itself. By the time you get to Guthrie’s memorial you’ve taken three consecutive left-handers and are all but flat out. (Jimmy Guthrie raced for the first time in 1923: he rode a Matchless in that race before winning in 1930 on an AJS. He was killed in 1937 at the German Grand Prix. The memorial marks the cutting where he was forced to retire from the TT.)

The whole island is steeped in history - not just the course and the competitors, but the crowd, the pit crews, the volunteers. Every year hundreds of people help out, including marshals like Gwen Crellin, who has been outside her house in Ballaugh at five a.m. every TT day for the last thirty-eight years. Like all the riders, John would give her a wave as he passed during practice. In the races he’d try and lift a finger; Gwen understood: he was a little busier then.

We stopped at the Creg Ny Baa, a pub that marks a right-hand bend on the hill and honours Geoff Duke, the six-time TT winner and six-time world champion. He’s eighty-five now, but meeting him there and seeing him face to face, you would never know it.

It was an amazing experience to sit with a former king of the mountain along with the current one, talking about a racing history that’s spanned one hundred years. I asked Geoff if the course had changed much since his time.

‘The basic shape hasn’t changed,’ he said. ‘But the way you ride it has. Windy Corner, McQuarrie’s, they used to be taken in second gear and now they’re just about flat out.’

He told me that during his first race, the Manx TT of 1950, he pulled into the pits for fuel. His mechanic topped him up with both petrol and oil and as he rode away Geoff could feel the back end slithering. He realised that oil was spilling onto the back tyre. Cursing his mechanic for overfilling the tank he had to scrub the speed off until the heat in the tyres burned up the oil. But in fact the mechanic hadn’t overfilled the tank. Unbeknown to either of them it had actually split. Just as Geoff approached the mountain the engine seized. Managing to keep control he got the bike stopped and leant it against the wall. Helmet off, he wandered over to a mechanic at the mountain mile checkpoint.

‘What number are you?’ the mechanic asked him.

‘Twelve.’

‘Really.’ The man nodded calmly at the stricken bike. ‘Shame about that, you were leading.’

It was the end of his race that day but Geoff went on to win six times. He told me he loved every minute of racing. In 1950 the prize money for winning the senior TT was £200 but he couldn’t have cared less; he did it for the sheer enjoyment. It’s much more commercial today but even so, John races for the love of it just as Geoff did. In Geoff’s time the roads weren’t so smooth, the bikes were less powerful and the tyres less sticky. They had to use the same tyres for both wet and dry conditions. The roads were heavily cambered back then, which meant the riders had less road surface to play with, all of which made a huge difference. Different eras mean different standards of bike and therefore different hazards: Geoff rode his machinery every bit as hard as John rides his now.

Sitting there with the two of them, the spirit of the race was really brought home to me. John told me that every year before the race began he would visit Fairy Bridge to say hello and keep the fairies on his side - he’ll do anything that he thinks might help him when it comes to race day. He even wears the same socks and underpants throughout the entire festival for luck. He does wash them daily, though, he assures me.

As Russ and I boarded the ferry to Liverpool I vowed I’d be back. I stood at the rail and watched as the island with its banks of three-storey terraces slipped away, still not quite believing that I’d just ridden a lap with the fastest man ever around the circuit. What an incredible experience.

However, it was time to turn our attention to the next stage of our journey. Russ and I headed to the bridge, and asked the captain of the ferry if we could join him. His name was Joe and his assistant was a mad-keen biker chick called Laurie. She lived on the Isle of Man and rode a Honda 350. Every year during the racing she made sure she was on the car deck to tie down the three hundred bikes that crossed every time the ferry sailed.

Joe showed us the bridge and its mind-boggling array of screens and dials, sonar, radar and GPS systems. It looked very hi-tech, though in fact the vessel was ten years old. I was looking for the wheel, but Joe just pointed to a tiny little joystick, like something from a games console. The skipper steered the ferry with it using just his left hand. Meanwhile four massive engines powered jets which chucked water out of the stern at a rate that could fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool in thirty-six seconds.

We raced across the Irish Sea at 34 knots with Joe calm and composed at the ‘wheel’. When we docked in Liverpool - after cruising up the Mersey past the Liver Building - he eased the massive boat into the berth just by feathering a couple of levers. He was as much in his element as Geoff Duke had been; as John McGuinness when he was catching air at Ballaugh Bridge. It struck me that this was what this trip was all about; a chance to step into other people’s lives for a little while.

From the docks it was a mad dash to the station and Platform 7 for the train to Coventry. Russ had jumped in a cab but Mungo and I had been messing around and had to wait for the next one. Sitting hunched in the back with my suitcase on my knees, I realised we were ten minutes away from the station with the train leaving in five.

No worries, our cabbie knew a short cut and beetled through the traffic, pulling up as close to Platform 7 as he could get. We piled out, bags in hand, and legged it towards the train. I could hear the whistle blowing. I could see the guard on the platform. I could also see Russ trying to keep the doors open. Stumbling past the guard I threw my bag in and followed it just as the doors closed.

Russ tapped the face of his watch. ‘If we’re going to cut the whole trip this fine, we ain’t going any further. You know what I mean?’

 

We were planning to camp for the night at the Coventry Transport Museum. My bike from Long Way Round was on display there and it made sense (or so I thought) to call in. That was before I learned that the museum was haunted.

We met Steve, one of the curators, outside the museum. It’s a wonderful place, well worth the visit. The timelines of the world are lit up in blue across the concourse and arriving in darkness we had the full effect. Inside there’s a fantastic scene of London during the Blitz, with rubble everywhere and an old Austin lying on its side.

Russ marched in, stripped off his clothes, dumped them in a pile in front of a classic Bentley, and headed for a shower. I shook my head, suddenly remembering why I always refused to share a room with him.

‘Is the place really haunted?’ I asked Steve. ‘Russ will be up for that; he’s into ghosts. One night he slept in a haunted hotel room with a couple of cameras set up.’ I didn’t mention that I’d had my own encounter with a ghost just last year, while staying in a haunted sixteenth-century Scottish castle at the start of Long Way Down. I’d woken up with a mysterious black bruise around my eye, and really didn’t want a repeat of that experience.

‘Did he see anything?’ Steve asked.

‘No.’

‘He might here.’

‘Oh great.’ I could feel a shiver up my spine.

‘We’ve got a collection of old bicycles upstairs,’ Steve explained. ‘They were donated by an old chap who died while he was riding one of them.’