Bikers look out for one another

To Santiago/A sort of pilgrimage (DUBLIN TO CHERBOURG): The camaraderie of biking impresses Peter Murtagh on his 'pilgrimage…

To Santiago/A sort of pilgrimage (DUBLIN TO CHERBOURG):The camaraderie of biking impresses Peter Murtaghon his 'pilgrimage'.

Tzzzzzzzzzz-phat! The fly was probably only going at two or three km/h. But I wasn't. I was doing something a bit over 100 which means that when the fly and I met, the force of impact was considerable.

In the nanosecond of searing pain that followed, my right eyeball felt like it had been struck by a dum-dum bullet.

I pulled over to the hard shoulder. The right eye was stinging and weeping so much that the left eye closed in sympathy. I couldn't see a bloody thing. Tony was in front and hadn't noticed anything.

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Three biker Good Samaritans pulled over. One of them, a fierce-looking fellow with a beard asked me if I was OK. "Are you broken down?"

No, fly in the eye, I said. I think I'm okay . . . just need a few minutes. I limped to the boat, barely able to see the road, my right eye streaming, looking like a cross between an over-ripe tomato and steak tartare.

***

Bikers are a community. They hang out together in the ferry lounges and restaurants. They talk about engines and makes and other stuff like torque.

It's definitely a world all of its own to which Tony, my accomplice on this sort of pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, and I have briefly been granted access.

By the time I got to the ferry check-in, the bikers who had stopped to make sure that I was okay had sussed out Tony and told him what had happened.

Branka and Pete, my roadside helpers, are on their way to Faro in the Algarve - to a bikers' convention, the largest in Europe, they explain next morning at breakfast as the ferry arrives in Cherbourg. There'll be 40,000 bikers there. 40,000!

Pete could not be confused for anything other than a biker. His head is shaven completely and he has a big hairy beard. He wears a vest-style T-shirt, a tattoo on his forearm and smokes roll-up cigarettes. You can tell from his fingers that he loves taking engines apart and replacing leaky seals and banjaxed gromits. He speaks softly, in an English midlands accent.

Branka is a slight woman with a warm smile and bouncy personality. Her blue eyes light up when she talks excitedly. Her memorable name derives from her Yugoslav Dad and German Mum. She grew up in Scotland.

Branka and Pete live in Galway. She's a gardener; he works for Boston Scientific on R&D and quality control of their stent production.

Pete's bike is a K class, water-cooled BMW, a big brute of a machine that looks comfortable for cruising. Branka's is a Sachs 805 ('cos it has 805CCs, she explains to ignoramus me).

Branka and Pete came to live in Ireland to escape the pressures of life in the UK and because they reckoned our education system was better then theirs. Now they have a daughter studying marine science in UCG and another off in Berlin at a summer school.

***

As we disembark on a sunny Normandy day, we say goodbye to Branka and Peter. They are lovely, gentle people.

And so if this morning, you are about to have a stent inserted into your thigh and pushed through tubes up your chest and into the blockage threatening to give you a heart attack (just like Tony's), remember that one of the guys that makes it all possible is Pete the biker, currently somewhere around Salamanca hurtling his way to Faro for a weekend of beer, fags and Joe Cocker.

u Next: Through Normandy to Orléans and Vezelay, the start proper of the road to Santiago.