Is this the most travelled custom bike in the world?

It’s funny what comes to you when you’re out doing your Government-approved exercise, isn’t it?

I was thinking about where I’ve been on the ex-BSH project Future Bike in the 25 years I’ve owned it, and the number of countries we’ve been to together, and I reckon the total’s 11:

• England
• Wales
• Ireland
• Scotland
• The Shetlands (yeah, I know that’s not really a country, but it’s a bloody long way from where I live in Suffolk)
• The Channel Islands (similarly)
• Belgium
• Norway (we didn’t actually get off the ferry there, but we did dock in Norway so…)
• Sweden
• Spain
• Portugal
• Australia

That’s thought-provoking enough for a scruffy, post-apocalyptic custom built 36 years ago, and never actually intended to be a road bike (it had no back light when it was built), more a styling exercise.

Then, as I was thinking about the 2011 trip to Australia for the 30^th anniversary of the making of Mad Max 2 (the film that inspired it), I remembered that it’s been a few more countries too – countries that I haven’t! Y’see, it was shipped from here (well, Southampton) to Oz via, as far as I know, the Suez Canal (Egypt) and Singapore. Then, on the way back, the shippers put it on the wrong boat, and so instead of coming back the same way it went right across the Pacific, down the coast of the US, through the Panama Canal, and across the Atlantic. That means that the bloody thing’s been to countries I haven’t… and it didn’t even send me a feckin’ postcard!

That means that the list of counties it’s been to is:

• England
• Wales
• Ireland
• Scotland
• The Shetlands
• The Channel Islands
• Belgium
• Norway
• Sweden
• Spain
• Portugal
• Australia
• Egypt
• Singapore
• New Zealand
• Hawaii
• USA
• Panama

That’s 18!

That means it must be, probably, the most widely travelled custom bike in history! Unless, of course, you know better?