Motorcycle Explorer November 2016 Issue 14 | Page 15

This idea stayed with me. Concurrently, the further I
rode through Peru and Ecuador with my girlfriend
Pau on her little Suzuki DR 200, the more I was
swayed by the lightweight approach. So when Ducati
launched their Scrambler later that year, I inevitably
found myself wondering if this was the alternative
‘adventure bike’ for me.
Two years later, this summer, I got the chance to put
this idea to the test. Pau and I were in the UK for a
few months. It had been a year since we were last
exploring new roads on two wheels and we had itchy
feet. However, time and money were limited. So
instead of looking to distant shores, we turned north.
The Scottish Highlands were to be our playground;
and two Scramblers were to be our steeds.
In all the years I’ve lived in England, I have never
ventured beyond the Great Glen. The North West
coast of Scotland has always felt so distant, almost
out of reach. Such it the effect of the perspective of
scale in one’s mind; here in the UK, with its 65
million inhabitants crammed into such as small
space, a journey of two hours feels long, yet in the
Americas a day-long drive is considered routine.
Perspective, however, is often wrong; after the first
day’s ride from southern England we were camped
on the Scottish border and by the following
afternoon we were deep in the mountains,
surrounded by the peaks of Glen Coe.