"Life happens at 45 km/h — and honestly, the scenery is much better that way."
After racing around the planet in 80 days, my body had returned to the grid but my soul was still somewhere over the Pacific, trying to catch up. I was living in a 30-year-old Mercedes police van in Portugal, wondering what to do next, when I spotted her: Anita.
She was a Piaggio Ape 50 that had been forgotten on a farm for 15 years. I bought her for €200 — about the price of a decent pair of boots or a very regrettable weekend in Vegas.
The plan: drive this three-wheeled Italian shopping cart 3,600 km from Faro, Portugal to Kempten, Germany.
Anita was not exactly overland ready.
No brakes. A short circuit that murdered batteries. A carburettor that breathed more smoke than a 1970s discotheque. I spent two weeks improvising: cleaning the tank, building a wooden bed in the back so I could sleep in the "boot", and mounting a solar panel on the roof to keep my phone alive.
This was Not Fast and Not Furious. Five countries at a blistering top speed of 48 km/h. While BMW GS riders worried about their electronics, I worried about whether a bicycle would overtake me on an uphill.
It happened three times.
One of the unexpected gifts of the Slow Way Home was the welcome I received from Vespa clubs along the entire Atlantic coast. Dinners, garages, beds, company. At one point someone gifted me an entire Vespino moped on the side of the road. The scooter community is the best community on earth.
France provided the comedy section of the journey.
I slept in a bird-watching cabin and on a rugby field. One morning I woke up in my underwear to a bus full of shocked schoolchildren staring at the strange German doing "the helicopter" while taking a morning leak.
I said good morning. They did not respond.
Switzerland was an accident. I entered via an unofficial mountain pass in the middle of the night — accidentally, I must stress — and immediately faced a problem: a 50cc Ape is not legal on Swiss motorways, and I was now inside Switzerland with no obvious way out that did not involve a motorway.
I channelled my inner Jason Bourne. I crossed the entire country in one 365 km midnight run before the authorities could notice that a 50cc lawnmower engine was invading their pristine landscape. I reached the German border at Rhine Falls at 10 PM — exhausted, triumphant and slightly delirious.
Between the asphalt blowouts that made Anita buck like a rodeo horse and the cold nights where my tent smelled like a wet dog, something became very clear: this world is built for cubicle zombies. Adventure does not get delivered to your sofa.
30 days. 3,600 km. €200 for the scooter. Covered in grease and melancholic that it was over.
Anita did not just win my heart. She proved that you do not need a €25,000 adventure bike to see the soul of a continent. You need a spark of madness, a roll of duct tape and the willingness to be the slowest person on the road.
Ride — Eat — Sleep — Repeat. Slowly.
What is Anita? A 1970s Piaggio Ape 50 — a three-wheeled 50cc Italian light commercial vehicle — that had spent 15 years on a Portuguese farm before I bought her for €200 and drove her 3,600 km to Germany. She had no brakes, a short circuit and a carburettor that produced more smoke than movement. She was magnificent.
Did you really enter Switzerland illegally? Accidentally. Via an unofficial mountain pass at night. I crossed the entire country in one midnight run and exited at Rhine Falls. No further comment.
Why during a pandemic? Big international events were impossible. The Slow Way Home was the right kind of adventure for 2020 — intimate, slow, close to the ground. Just me, Anita and the Atlantic coast.
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