Two Wheels, One Teenager and a Plan That Went Out the Window
You learn a lot of life lessons on a three-week motorcycle adventure with your 13-year-old son. And by “learn”, I mean you get dragged into a deeper understanding of adventure travel, and parenting, through the broken glass of all those precious plans you’d made.
You realise, for instance, that teenagers don’t care much for spending hours in the saddle, looking at mountains and listening to your alleged wisdom. You realise they don’t want to be passengers in your dream – they want to grip their own handlebars and let it rip. You realise your kids are far more resilient than you ever imagined.
But most importantly, you realise how some risks, even putting your child on the back of a rocket with two wheels, are worth taking if you want to share with them the true spirit of adventure.
So, why did we do it? Because my wife finally said yes. And because I wanted to show my son some real-world friction – that magnificent stuff that big tech companies want us to trade in for a screen and the latest app. I also wanted to introduce him to the kindness of strangers when you’re far from home.
As a journalist, I spent years adventuring around the globe, from writing about ancestry studies in the Maldives to reporting on the rescue of a zoo in war-torn Libya. When I wasn’t working, I was adventuring: backpacking through China or catching the Trans-Siberian Express across Russia. On our honeymoon in America, my wife and I booked a hotel for our first two nights and made the rest up as we went.
The UK is my fourth home country. As an immigrant, my entire life has been an adventure – a creative affair with “otherness”. Reading about how technology is making our children more isolated, anxious and lonely, I turned towards the real world. I tried skateboarding with my son. It hurt. A lot. I learnt how to belay him as he learnt to rock climb. We joined Scouts. And we started to ride together. Eventually, Ride Against the Machine was born.
Our plan was to ride across southern England, catch a ferry to Spain, conquer the Pyrenees, and cross over into France via Andorra. The longest motorcycle trip we’d done up to that point was a one-nighter on the Isle of Wight. It was, let’s say, an ambitious plan. Or, as author Lee Child once described some of his life decisions, it was “deliberately ignorant”.
Being awarded a grant from The Armchair Adventure Festival gave us a big boost. The money helped me buy panniers for the bike, which doubled up as a canvas for our travel stickers. But more than that, it was a public commitment to the adventure. And for my son, it felt like we’d been “sponsored”.
The trip turned out to be nothing like I’d planned.
We got attacked by ticks in Dartmoor and rode straight into a vicious heatwave. We spent four unexpected days at an enduro centre, where my son learnt to ride a motorbike. There were fights and disagreements. At one point, my son was Googling ways to get back to London without me. But there was also so much beauty: lazy hours of kicking a football around, cooking together, swimming, and staying in a hotel that was once a prison. We landed up in medieval towns and chased an eclipse (unsuccessfully).
Now, we have stories we tell. Like the one about getting lost riding motorbikes up a mountain. These stories are worth every tick bite, every difficult mile, and every hardship (in Bilbao, I nearly lost an eye to a whipping bungee cord while packing the bike).
The route I’d planned went out the window within an hour of us leaving home. Despite my best efforts to adjust my son’s helmet, he’d outgrown it and urgently needed a new one. We never really got back on track. We improvised from start to finish. Looking back, I wouldn’t change a single day.
The biggest lessons I learnt were:
Don’t plan an adventure and then invite your kids into it. Step into their world. Plan together and be ready to change direction.
Think carefully about duration. Especially if you’re travelling with a teenager. Time is relative, and three weeks feels much longer to a child who’s missing their friends, their bedroom, and their Nintendo.
Yes, it’s all about the journey, but make sure you’re riding towards checkpoints that excite your travel companion. I found that we were much happier when we were travelling towards specific destinations (the off-road centre, an interesting hotel, a rock-climbing spot).
I’m not a spreadsheet guy, but I learnt to make a kit list in Scouts. Doing one for this trip - and packing a tick remover kit - was one of my greatest wins. I wish they gave out dad badges for this kind of stuff.
And as obvious as it sounds, speak to people. We met a couple while wild camping in Dartmoor, and within minutes they’d offered my son a harness to rock climb with them. Fellow bikers, who’d retired as teachers, offered school advice. A guest house manager gave us his eclipse glasses (it was the 11th hour and buying a pair was impossible). A trip like this reminds you how wonderful people are when you’re not on social media.
In the end, we forged our most treasured memories doing things we never planned. That doesn’t surprise me. We know adventure begins where plans end. But what does surprise me, after decades of adventuring, is how much I learnt travelling with my son. And how important it feels to teach your child the value of taking calculated risks.
Follow Alex on Substack, where he writes about adventuring, parenting, and motorcycles.
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📍 Mount Edgcumbe Country Park, Cornwall
📅 22nd - 25th July 2027
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