No seat belts. No airbags. Just air, and coming at you as fast as you like. Motorcycling shouldn’t be allowed, really, but thank God it is. Hanging on to an engine braced between two wheels as you travel through the countryside is worth any dose of mindfulness. The NHS should prescribe it. Even with the cost of broken bones and, alas, the occasional overheads of the mortuary, it would save money on mental health treatments.
Your senses are stimulated in a way that is impossible in a car, with the force of movement intensifying an ordinary experience. Smells and temperature become suddenly distinct as you dip or rise, fly through conifer or broad leaf, past farmyards and bonfires. Other traffic on a good sweeping road becomes an irrelevance. You just fire past it as your arms stretch and eyes weep in the welt of acceleration.
I have taken to riding regularly with an old friend of my wife about whom I never worried much until I discovered he was a regular petrolhead.
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