[emrat:8303] A Daring Young Woman: RTW in 1982-1984

From The Wall Street Journal . . .

 

A Master Builder

The first British woman to ride a motorcycle around the world did so long before the rise of ‘adventure touring’ gear—so she made her own

 

COOL RUNNING | Elspeth Beard in London, in 1984, shortly after she finished her round-the-world journey. Photo: Peter Orme

AMONG MOTORCYCLE fanatics, Elspeth Beard is something of a legend. She was just 23 when, in 1982, driven in part by wanderlust and the sadness of a recent breakup, she embarked on a 48,000-mile cross-continent journey—becoming the first British woman to ride a motorcycle around the world.

You might think she was the first adventure tourer, too, judging from the photo above of Ms. Beard and her 1974 BMW R60/6 with three large aluminum cargo cases, which she built herself, strapped to its back. At the very least, she was part of a small, far-flung group of long-distance riders who traveled for weeks, months and even years on bikes in the 1980s, decades before “adventure touring” entered the motorcycle lexicon.

Ms. Beard’s industrial-chic storage resembles the motorcycle luggage made today by Touratech, Metal Mule and others that has become de rigueur on the latest big adventure bikes. But Ms. Beard constructed her own, using a rivet gun to attach aluminum sheets to frames. (Specialized motorcycle luggage gradually evolved from shipping crates, metal ammunition boxes and other containers that were durable and lockable, but it would take years for aftermarket companies to start selling the big aluminum panniers for large on- and off-road bikes that are fashionable today.)

‘She built her cargo cases herself, using a rivet gun to attach aluminum sheets to frames.’

Much of the gear now associated with adventure touring—like reflective jackets and pants made of high-tech textiles, electrically heated base layers and satellite navigation systems—were not available in shops at the time. Ms. Beard wore a leather jacket, layers of wool and cotton to ward off the chill and oiled pants that she called “bloody awful.” She carried foldout maps, and built lots of flexibility into her travel plans. “A trip like that has to be open-ended,” she said in an interview. “You don’t know if it will take two months or two years.”

In fact, it took two years. She did not rush and moved with the seasons to avoid extreme conditions. “I’d go north if the monsoon was south,” Ms. Beard said. She left England in October of 1982, and after traveling across the U.S. (with jaunts into Canada and Mexico), Australia, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Iran and Turkey, she rode back into Europe and reached home in November, 1984.