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Text and Photos by Sam Bean
GWRRA #108949 • Greenwood, Indiana

I am a born trip planner. I like to know where I’m going, when I’ll get there, what I’ll do and how long it will take. When I plan a trip, sitting around is not
an option.
Knowing that, you can guess I was not happy with the prospect of a ten-hour layover in London, England, while on the way to deliver motorcycles in Africa (another story). My idea of fun is not spending ten hours sitting around Gatwick airport. Something had to be done.

Tower of London, viewed from the back seat

I knew that ten hours was enough time to do some sightseeing. The big question was the best way to do it and how much I could get done in the time allotted. To complicate matters, I would not be alone; there would be three others with me: Jim Poer, also from Indiana’s Chapter L-2, and Jean Johnson and Jeff Satterthwaite who are members of my church. My very first thought was, Wouldn’t it be great to see London by motorcycle?
I turned immediately to the GWRRA Web site and the travel message board. I knew I had seen international messages there, and I figured if international riders post messages there, they must read them as well. I posted my message looking for tour guides and waited.
Almost immediately I started getting responses. Cool! One guy from the central UK skipped the e-mail response and called me on the phone about our trip. He was too far away to help out, but we had a nice chat. One response was from a guy in the U.S. who wrote that we should probably just count on getting a bus tour and passed on some information. Oh, ye of little faith! Then I got the magic response.
The e-mail said, “Sounds like I might be able to help you. Send me some more information.” It was like getting a Christmas present! early. The e-mail was from Peter Garside (Peter G.), a Wing rider who lives about 40 miles outside London. Peter is a factory foreman and events co-coordinator for his Chapter. I sent him our schedule and waited.
It didn’t take long for him to write back and tell me three friends and he would be giving us a tour on their Wings during our layover. It proves that you can count on motorcycle people the world over! After several more e-mails we had all the details worked out.

Silencing the Wing’s alarm at the car park.

Ready to ride.

Millennium Dome.

Gold Wing tour of London.

We arrived at London’s Heathrow airport at about 10 a.m., about a half hour early. I couldn’t have planned it better myself. We then had to catch a shuttle bus from Heathrow to Gatwick which, we were told, would take about an hour and a half by the time we caught the bus and made the transit. Traffic must have been good, because it only took about an hour—barely time to finish the tea served on the bus. At Gatwick we stored our luggage and headed for the train station on the lower level of the airport.
Our train took us from Gatwick through the countryside and the London neighborhoods to Victoria Station in the heart of London.
When we arrived at the station, we started to look for our hosts. Peter G. said we would recognize him as a “60 guy in leather pants and motorcycle jacket.” The first guy we spotted in leather had tall green spiked hair. We passed on him since it was obviously not helmet hair. We also looked around for the car park (“parking lot” to you and me). Here in the States it would be a huge flat spot outside the front door, but we couldn’t find that either. Finally we spotted each other and Peter G. headed us off to meet the rest of the group who were waiting in the car park, which holds only about 20 cars. No wonder we couldn’t find it.
In the car park, we found Peter G.’s ’91 Light Blue Aspencade and met Peter F. who owns a motor repair garage and rides a ’96 Atlantis Blue SE, Roy who works for a printing company and rides a ’97 Green SE, and Danny, an ex-fireman and current London taxi driver, who rides an ’89 Champagne Aspencade. Roy and Danny are joint Regional Reps which is the equivalent of our Chapter Director. As introductions were going around, we noticed that Danny’s bike was surrounded by parts that had been removed. It turned out that just as he turned off the ignition he remembered that he had left his alarm system clicker on the table at home. He and Peter F. worked furiously to find the right wires to cut to get it to start without the alarm going off. In less than half an hour, they had succeeded and we were ready to start.

Crossing Tower Bridge.

Since we arrived in late November and the weather was chilly (about 40 degrees) our hosts had provided for all our needs. They had helmets with headsets for each of us, plus insulated suits and gloves. We stuffed ourselves into our gear while Danny put the final parts back on his bike, then we mounted up and headed out into the streets of London.
Danny took the lead and made good use of his experience as a fireman and taxi driver in planning our route. London was crowded and busy. On top of that we were riding on the wrong side of the road. It doesn’t really affect a passenger too much, but you still look the wrong way at times. Lane splitting is allowed also, and our riders took full advantage. There is nothing quite like lane splitting in heavy traffic beside those big double-decker buses.
In the midst of all the traffic we got to see (ride by) almost everything in London from the oldest (fragments of Roman walls) to the newest (Millennium Dome). Surely we didn’t miss much. Here is the path we traveled to the best of my recollection:
From Victoria Station we went past Westminster Cathedral and Westminster Abbey, Houses of Parliament and County Hall, the London Eye (a huge Ferris wheel structure about 150 meters high). Then we went by the London Dungeon, over Tower Bridge and past the Tower of London and the monument where the Fire of London started. We then turned south over London Bridge, stopped briefly and saw the Cutty Sark and went out to Greenwich where we stopped and were able to step over the line from the western hemisphere into the eastern half of the world.
We then went back into the city via a long winding tunnel under the Thames River, past the Millennium Dome to London Wall and past some of London’s famous museums. By this time, we had been riding for about three hours, and we stopped for some refreshments. We parked the bikes, and all but one of us went inside for drinks and pastries. One person had to remain on watch over the bikes. I have to mention that, while we were seeing the sights, everyone else was watching us. Big motorcycles like Gold Wings are not that common in the UK, so four together made for a bit of a show.

London double-decker bus.

When we were finished with our break, we continued on to St. Paul’s Cathedral, past the Old Bailey and the British Museum. Then down Shaftesbury Avenue round Piccadilly Circus and along The Mall, past St. James Palace and Clarence House where the Queen Mother lives, to Buckingham Palace. Past the Guard’s Barracks, Horse Guards Parade down Whitehall along the Embankment, up Northumberland Ave. around Trafalgar Square and on to Regent Street, New Bond Street, Piccadilly, Hyde Park Corner, Park Lane, Marble Arch then through Hyde Park to Exhibition Road, past Harrods down Constitution Hill, past the Palace again, through the Strand, Aldwych, Waterloo Bridge and finally back to Victoria Station.
Just writing it all down makes me a bit breathless. On top of this whirlwind trip we had one last small glitch. I was riding with Peter G., and just as we were about three blocks away from the station, the entire bike went dead. We coasted to a stop and waited for the rest of the group to notice we were missing. It turned out that a main fuse had blown, but it made for some added excitement since we were on the way to catch our train.
In all we spent a little more than six hours getting to know our new friends and seeing the sights of London. To top it off, they refused to let us help with petrol or pay for our own drinks (or theirs) even though gasoline in the UK is extremely expensive. What great people!
I’ll tell you; this experience sure beat the heck out of a bus tour! I’m glad I made the effort to find some fellow motorcyclists on a stop far away from home. The camaraderie of fellow riders stretches all the way around the world. I hope that someday I get an e-mail from one of them that says, “I’m going to be in the U.S.” I can’t wait to jump at the chance.