MARY MOTORCYCLE - THE ROAD LESS TRAVELLED

Further to our previous piece on Mary Motorcycle, we went along to the bright lights of Southwick Community Centre on a gloomy Saturday afternoon to be regaled with a really exciting and inspiring adventure story, organised by WIMA GB (Womens International Motorcycle Association)  

It all started with young Mary Sievier, subsequently AKA Mary Motorcycle, reading about an adventure holiday competition in a newspaper in 1967. This was enough to inspire her to make a plan to ride to Russia and buy a BSA Bantam 175cc D7 motorcycle, not at all deterred by the fact that she had never ridden a motorcycle before, she'd just been on the pillion of a friend and found that scary! She bought a motorcycle expressly to go on her travels, because it was cheaper than a car and faster than a bicycle, but at the time, she never intended to go round the world, she just wanted to go to Russia because it was interesting! To learn to ride her new bike, Mary did an RAC ACU motorcycle course, on which she was the only woman and the only person on a motorcycle not a scooter (it was the 60's after all)!

Best Laid Plans
Somehow things did not exactly go to plan, after getting the bike, and when she was all ready to go, Mary applied for her Russian visa, only to be told that, as a lone traveller, she would not be able to get a visa to enter Russia. Undeterred, and as she had a motorcycle now, Mary decided that she would do the next best thing and set off for India on the hippy trail, complete with all of life's necessities loaded onto the back of her trusty bike: a typewriter, a sleeping bag, a tent, a red leather handbag and a few addresses of friends and people who might give her a hand along the way. There was a currency restriction in place at that time so Mary was only allowed to take £80 with her - not a huge amount to travel to India on so she knew she would have to work her passage. Her first economy was not to buy motorcycle leathers but get Helly Hansen waterproofs for sailors - much cheaper and apparently they did a brilliant job and the jacket is still intact and functioning today! How many despatch riders used waterproofs designed for the sea when doing their jobs in London back in the day? Many!

So she set off through France, Italy, Yugoslavia and onwards. She was averaging around 250 miles a day on the trip, with miraculously, only one major breakdown on the whole journey, (When I had asked her what happened when her bike broke down along the way and she said she ought to slap my face for even suggesting that it might break down, it was a great British bike :).

   It Just Stopped!
The breakdown she did have was later in her travels and rather unfortunately, in the middle of the Australian desert between Perth and Darwin, with no food or water on board. She was saved after 5 hours, just as she was about to light a brushwood signal fire to attract someone's attention, by a passer by with a Land Rover - her guardian angel was on it that day. Mary says she doesn't know what went wrong with the bike that time, it just stopped and although she had a tool kit and could usually fix things she just wasn't strong enough to take it all apart to find out what was wrong.

She had an average number of slips and spills on gravel etc on unknown roads and tracks as she travelled and many tales of the kindness of strangers, picking her up, dusting her down and sending her safely on her way. In fact it seems she was helped and people were kind, pretty much everywhere she went.

When she got a flat (only three times apparently) in the main she was given new tyres free as there was so much respect for what she was doing and her travels had gained a lot of publicity. Her speedo suffered on the world's bumpy roads and shook itself to pieces twice along the way and in the end BSA wouldn't send her another, saying that she didn't need it where she was anyway!

An Adventure Waiting To Happen
It was interesting the way that she found her route and got information along the way, with no GPS navigation and no mobile phone. Apparently she stayed in youth hostels a lot and the best way to find out what was ahead was to talk to someone who was staying there, but had come from where she was going to and could give her a heads-up about the route and any tips or hazards to look out for. She said that quite early on she was finding the journey really hard on her bike, but she met two South African boys who told her that she was doing something truly unique and gave her enough encouragement to carry on.

With no tech and no GPS the road was always an adventure waiting to happen and she needed to be really resourceful to find her way and deal with whatever was round the next bend...

Her journey, which was initially just going to be a trip to India, carried on from 1967 until 1973 and during that time she made many stops (one in Istanbul and two years in Afghanistan working for example), some of them quite long as she did various jobs to finance herself. It took her three years to get to Bombay then she shipped her bike to East Africa and travelled through Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, the Belgian Congo, Zambia, Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) and South Africa. Then on to Australia and New Zealand, Singapore, Thailand, Laos and then her faithful machine caught the boat to Hong Kong. At this point Mary was about to get married and her fiance persuaded her to do the last leg of the world journey. By then she had really had enough, but she did ship her BSA motorcycle to Los Angeles and rode to Charleston just so that she could say that she'd travelled the whole world! What an adventure!

Sea Salt
Back in the UK, Mary's BSA ended up in her mum's garage in Selsey where the seaside air proceeded to gnaw at it for the next several years, but it has since been restored and makes guest appearances at places like the Overland Event. The tough little Bantam now lives at the National Motorcycle Museum in Beaulieu next to Steph Jeavons bike.

It was a great treat to listen to Mary's story, she is a superb storyteller and seemed to be re-living the adventures as she talked - she is a very entertaining and funny narrator and clearly loved it all, despite the ups and downs. As she went, she cried, she laughed and she really enjoyed the journey and all the characters she met on the road.

...And Now?
What a fantastic story, would it be the same now? Have GPS and the tech aids we have now have actually taken a lot of the adventure and the need for resourcefulness away? Or have they made adventures more accessible? Would such a journey be possible today? Perhaps not, so many of the countries Mary travelled through are now at war or no go areas - it seems like a story from a different world in many ways.

Our thanks to Mary and to WIMA for organising the event - what a privilege to listen to such a warm, funny and entertaining story from such a great adventurer who is still telling the tale with such enthusiasm and charm. Mary apparently hadn't really noticed that she had done anything special, brave or unusual at all, until it was pointed out to her! Go Mary !