Mercifully the motorbikes came with helmets. I took my time adjusting the straps and putting mine on. It looked like I was being safety conscious, but in reality I was simply trying to remember everything I’d learned the one time I’d ridden my friend Justin’s scrambler, on his parents’ farm in Wales. That was over a year ago. I knew how to work the clutch and gears at least. This meant I didn’t make a complete fool of myself as Marcel set off, expecting me to follow. But I wasn’t that smooth: I nearly came off, swerving to avoid a small, stark-naked child who wandered across the track as we headed out of the village, and I pulled an unintentional wheelie accelerating too hard when Marcel opened up the throttle in front of me. I got into the riding though. The smell of the exhaust fumes from Marcel and Amelia’s bike was instantly the same as the smell of the bike on the farm, and weirdly the scenery rushing past, all green and gold and full of flying mud, though thousands of miles distant, felt pretty similar, too. I had to concentrate. The bike squirreled and squirmed in the rutted muck. Marcel didn’t hold back: we had ground to cover. I kept an eye on the line he was taking, gritted my teeth, fought the handlebars and by doing my damnedest I just about managed to keep up.

46.

We rode for six hours straight. It was tough: my shoulders seized up with the effort of hauling the bike left and right, and the rattling, bucking bike frame, shot through with vibrations, made my feet, hands and bum so numb I could barely feel them. The burden of my pack didn’t make it any easier to keep the bike upright. And the ancient helmet was heavier than I’m used to as well. My head felt like it was about to come off. We kept having to slow down to cross tiny streams, either through the water itself or across crude bridges made of little more than branches. I got wet. Ahead of me, I could see Amelia struggling to stay balanced on the back of Marcel’s bike. Every now and then she’d tense up rigid, the tendons standing out in her neck, and on more than one occasion I saw her bump helmets with Marcel. But she didn’t call a halt, and Marcel didn’t either obviously. So neither did I. I battled on, though before long every part of me seemed to be screaming, ‘I need a rest!’