Every Great Journey (How to eat an elephant)

by Rex and Sally · Published June 7, 2025 · Updated June 11, 2025

Dateline London, England 3rd June, 2025

The journey begins.

What makes a journey a “great journey”? They say it should begin with a single step but which step is it that actually marks the beginning of a journey. For most it is the step that proves to be the hardest of all. Getting off the couch, away from the screens and committing to action! It has become far too easy to live our dreams vicariously through the marvel of modern media platforms and all the while making excuses to justify our own inaction. Sure, we get it. Many of you will have health, financial, family, career and other challenges that you think preclude you from embarking on an adventure, so make your “great journey” fit your circumstances and get off that bloody couch!

‘allo ‘allo ‘allo, what’s all this then?

Now Sally and I are in the very enviable position of having very few of those above mentioned constraints so we made the choice a while back to embark on “great journeys”. We took that first step and now there is no turning back. Our latest adventure? Almost four months in the UK and Europe, including a couple of weeks in Iceland via the Faroe Islands, a http://compassexpeditions.com/ trip through Norway and another around Italy and The Balkans for good measure. It is only after this that what I hope will be the truly “great journey” begins. Sally will leave me to fly home from Vienna while I will continue East and right a bit until I reach Australia. I hope to travel through as many strange and wonderful out of the way places as possible and immerse myself in the cultures I pass by.

Of course with any journey there are likely to be stumbles along the way and this journey has already proven that point. We are only in England two days when we discover a fairly significant oil leak on the bike. Turns out the very well payed, highly qualified yet totally incompetent mechanic who serviced the bike in Geelong before we packed it off to the opposite side of the world managed to strip a bolt in the valve cover. If this is their regular standard of work it is no wonder that entire dealer network has collapsed. It will take several days to fix as the parts have to be ordered and it’s now a weekend. The bike is still usable but we need to be cautious so we base ourselves in a beautiful little Airbnb garden cottage in Farnham till the parts arrive and make the most of a crappy situation by taking short trips around the area.

Could be worse.!Our beautiful Airbnb in Surrey.

So far we have stumbled across a couple of local gems like the slightly ruined Port Chester Castle

Sally and the Tiger in front of a lightly crumbling castle.

and the totally over the top Windsor Castle

Windsor Castle

not to mention Stonehenge.

4,000 year old stone work and most of it is still standing!

And now you know where the rest of it went.

We have befriended a couple of local bobbies, treated ourselves to some marvellous local food and petted several dozen dogs. This weekend we will be catching up with our friends Charley Boorman and James Crates and hopefully get in a little riding around some local country lanes.

We attract attention everywhere we go.

Everywhere we go the bike draws attention with the oval AUS symbol on the back leading many to ask if we are from Austria. When we point out the true origin of the bike most are disbelieving and then when we mention that I will attempt to ride all the way back from whence I came they really lose their shit. I’m surprised they haven’t called the guys with the straight jackets.

So will this journey be a great journey? How would we know? Maybe any journey can be great. Perhaps life is the ultimate journey and it’s how we choose to live it that really matters. There is no right or wrong way live your life, just choices. We choose to do it on our terms. We are going to eat the elephant one bite at a time.