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Two-Up with Thelma Cornish BMF rep Tiffany Coates is one of the world’s top overlanders – what makes her tick?
“I
’ve always been a traveller, since I was a teenager doing a lot of backpacking – my parents brought us up to be independent. The motorcycle thing started after I hitchhiked to Istanbul, which opened my eyes to how much ground you could travel with your own transport. My friend Becky and I had already decided to travel to India, and she suggested going by bike. Neither of us had a licence, and neither had even ridden a bike before. “We went out, did five days of training on 125s and both passed first time – it took me three attempts to pass my car test. To save money we decided to ride two-up, which would be simpler as well as cheaper. As we were both at the same skill level we were happy to share the riding, but it was a bit of a trust exercise as we both lacked experience! “As for a bike, we asked around and the consensus was that an Africa Twin would be too tall while a BMW R80 or R100 GS would be big and heavy, but would be great two-up, would take all our camping gear and be good on rough terrain. A mechanic friend of ours pointed us towards an R80GS he knew of – five years old, 23,000 miles on the clock and solid. We bought it, christened her Thelma, and I still have her. In fact she’s the only vehicle I’ve ever owned, as I’ve never had a car. “Two months later we set off, and it turned out we had bitten off more than we could chew. Thelma certainly was big and heavy, as well as tall, and we dropped her at low-speed several times in the early days. Low speed manoeuvring was the difficult thing, especially two-up with luggage. We never realised it was more
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Motorcycle R I D E R
Mongolia and my slightly stunned face after a dramatic off
difficult riding two-up than solo because that’s what we did from the start. Nor did we have much experience of bike mechanics, just a couple of days in the workshop with a friend before we set off. “Originally I planned to be away 8-9 months, and was a bit wary about taking a vehicle, because it meant more responsibility and the possibility of breakdowns, theft, all sorts of things. But in the event it was great and having Thelma enhanced the trip because she gave us complete independence to go wherever we wanted. To save money, we wild camped as much as possible, but again that was one of the advantages of a bike.”
