I decided, in all of my wisdom that a road trip on 50cc mopeds would be a good idea. Fortunately my friend is as ‘bonkers mad’ as I am, so we headed off in the strong winds and occasional down pour.
The Route
When I said, “Let’s go for a road trip on our mopeds”, I didn’t think we would have ended up where we did. We left Chatham and headed to Pluckley, from there to Ashford, then on to Hythe, Dymnchurch – where it became too windy to continue – and then turned back through Hythe, to Folkestone. Here we decided to plan our route back to Chatham, which went through Canterbury, Faversham, Sittingbourne and Rainham.
The Pictures
I thought I’d start with the trusty 50cc mopeds that carried us along our mega-sized road trip.
The trusty vehicles.
This picture was taken outside of Pluckley, where I got us lost – again. This picture captures the awesomeness of our road trip, these little mopeds only have 50cc (the grey one has 49cc) engines, which is no more than 40mph managed to carry us over 70 miles (taking into account the bendy country roads, and getting lost) without breaking down or exploding. So, yeah, we held up a huge amount of traffic, sorry. I chose the de-saturated look because I thought it really shows how exhausted this mammoth trip made us, especially our backs, and numb behinds.
This has a cool story.
Coming along one stretch of road we noticed it was very quiet, so we pulled over and I grabbed my camera. If you look at her face you can see she is looking at me and something in the distance. I am in the middle of the road, on one knee with camera in hand. Behind me is mister trillion tonne lorry… It could have turned out worse I guess. Other than this you can clearly see the enjoyment that accompanied this trip.
*Note to self/photographers – Do NOT stand/kneel in the middle of a road to take a photograph*
If not a little windy.
Just outside of Folkstone we pulled up next to the beach to stretch our legs. I think it is safe to say it was a little windy, which explains the cutting off of the side mirrors (flags and other things where in the way). With this photograph I decided to keep it a little dark and gloomy, to keep with the sky and show the weather. Although I added a little colour to really show the colourfulness of my helmet, yes I wear a bright, ‘hello, look at me.’ helmet.
All in all the day was truly enjoyable and I would love to do it again, although maybe on a 125cc or 600cc and maybe in the sun and heat.
For other photographs and the full resolution versions of these pictures, go to my Flickr stream – http://www.flickr.com/photos/georgelangridge/
Also check out my Twitter and Instagram : @georgelangridge
I am still on the hunt for any volunteer models to model for a few hours, to help improve my portrait photography.
George Langridge
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