It was yet another gloriously warm sunny day as the bronzed skinny 17 year old lad wandered around the immaculately clean streets of the new housing development. The wide roads and low-rise white-washed houses were all fronted by pristine enclosed green gardens, adding to the overall impression that this was more ‘uptown’ rather than ‘downtown’. The owners of such properties were maybe not particularly affluent, but certainly ‘comfortably off’.
The teenager wasn’t on a mission, no errands to run and not going anywhere in particular, he just aimlessly took a random route, to do nothing more than check out the neighbourhood.
As he turned the corner to walk up a slight incline he was suddenly taken aback to see, glistening in the bright sunshine, an immaculate red 750cc Honda motorcycle. He stood transfixed in amazement, gawping at such an iconic and impressive machine. He wondered what it would be like to ride such a huge motorcycle in such a perfect place, and dreamt of a day he might do such a thing. For him this was one of those ‘OMG’ moments. But this was long before the English language had descended into such phrases, a time when three letter abbreviations were not so common and text speak didn’t exist, this was January 1974. The reason for the beautiful weather? It was the Canary Islands.
You will have guessed by now that over the passing 48 years the bronzed, skinny 17 year old has morphed into a white, not so skinny 65 year old, but that long held dream is finally about to be realised.
In four weeks time Reg the Rocket and the old wrinkly, head south again for a leisurely ride to Portsmouth, the 30 hour ferry crossing has us arriving in Santander early on 5th March. We then have three days to bumble along 600 miles of Spain’s finest backroads until we arrive in Huelva. From here we jump aboard again, destination Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
Watch this space………
