While the 1979 Earls Court Motorcycle Show didn’t make much of a mark on exhibition history, big-bike fans who were there might remember going weak at the knees when Kawasaki pulled the wraps off a giant, six-cylinder behemoth called the Z1300 – then the largest-engined machine on the market.
As an impecunious 15-year-old with a year to go before the law would allow me near a public highway on a moped, the mighty Z was momentarily thrilling but totally irrelevant.
Wandering dejectedly from the crowded Kawasaki stand, I came across a makeshift display in the low-rent area where a lone, curly-haired man was sitting behind a trestle table piled with books. Beside him stood a battered and travel-stained 500cc Triumph Tiger 100 which, at the time, probably had a street value of £200 on a good day. His name was Ted Simon and this was the bike on which he had just spent four years riding around the world. Back then he was a revolutionary: plenty of people used motorcycles for short tours around Europe, and some even fulfilled the dream of riding a Harley-Davidson coast-to-coast across America. But riding solo around the world, through its deserts, jungles and mountain ranges where tarmac was often a novelty, well, it had been done, but not by many. Ted’s colourful experiences along the way resulted in an account of his odyssey called Jupiter’s Travels (1979), the book he was selling at Earls Court.
I still cherish the copy I bought from him that day (with financial assistance from my mother – it cost £7.95) and the work has since become the overland biker’s bible, inspiring thousands, if not tens of thousands of people searching for more out of life. But the story didn’t end with Jupiter’s Travels because in 20
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Subscribe now or Sign inWhile the 1979 Earls Court Motorcycle Show didn’t make much of a mark on exhibition history, big-bike fans who were there might remember going weak at the knees when Kawasaki pulled the wraps off a giant, six-cylinder behemoth called the Z1300 – then the largest-engined machine on the market.
As an impecunious 15-year-old with a year to go before the law would allow me near a public highway on a moped, the mighty Z was momentarily thrilling but totally irrelevant. Wandering dejectedly from the crowded Kawasaki stand, I came across a makeshift display in the low-rent area where a lone, curly-haired man was sitting behind a trestle table piled with books. Beside him stood a battered and travel-stained 500cc Triumph Tiger 100 which, at the time, probably had a street value of £200 on a good day. His name was Ted Simon and this was the bike on which he had just spent four years riding around the world. Back then he was a revolutionary: plenty of people used motorcycles for short tours around Europe, and some even fulfilled the dream of riding a Harley-Davidson coast-to-coast across America. But riding solo around the world, through its deserts, jungles and mountain ranges where tarmac was often a novelty, well, it had been done, but not by many. Ted’s colourful experiences along the way resulted in an account of his odyssey called Jupiter’s Travels (1979), the book he was selling at Earls Court. I still cherish the copy I bought from him that day (with financial assistance from my mother – it cost £7.95) and the work has since become the overland biker’s bible, inspiring thousands, if not tens of thousands of people searching for more out of life. But the story didn’t end with Jupiter’s Travels because in 2001 Ted set off to ride around the world all over again. At the age of 69. By then I was a freelance journalist writing for national newspapers, so it was with great pleasure that I arranged to reunite with my long-standing hero in order to interview him. I arrived at our rendezvous clutching my well-thumbed copy which Ted dutifully signed. Over twenty years on he was the same kind-eyed and affable man I remembered from Earls Court and, although we hadn’t seen one another during the intervening period, the fact that I had by then read all his books made me feel as though I was meeting an old friend. Ted completed his second round-the-world trek in two and a half years and wrote of his adventures in Dreaming of Jupiter (2007). That was followed by Rolling through the Hills, an account of his journey around Britain on a three wheeled Piaggio scooter in the summer of 2009 and, more recently, Jupiter’s Travels in Camera – the story of the first trip told through often stunning, large-format photographs. We’ve kept in touch. At the end of ‘lockdown one’ in the summer of 2020, I had occasion to ride to Montpellier on my old BMW. I knew Ted lived in the nearby village of Aspiran where he keeps a couple of rooms available – free of charge – for the use of fellow writers and adventurers. He generously invited me to stay, and it was while we were chatting about how the world has changed since his epic ride around it almost half a century ago that the subject of his age came up. On 1 May this year he turned 95 and he continues to inspire countless motorcycle ‘overlanders’ through his books, by giving talks at motorcycling events around the globe and by publishing extracts from the detailed notebooks made during his 1970s odyssey on his website, jupitalia.com. But before delving into them, it’s probably best to acquaint oneself with Simon by reading Jupiter’s Travels. Originally a magazine and newspaper man, Simon had persuaded the Sunday Times’s editor Harold Evans to sponsor the trip in exchange for regular updates that would be published in the paper. Simon had made the decision to ride a motorcycle around the world in March 1973, seven months before he eventually set off. The idea, he said, came to him not on a whim but ‘as a fully formed conviction’, despite not possessing a motorcycle or even the licence required to ride one. He failed his first test after borrowing a bike from Yamaha, ostensibly to ‘try it out’. (What he did not tell Yamaha was that he had ‘L’ plates tucked inside his jacket and a pressing appointment with a driving examiner.) His second attempt was successful, and the problem of having no machine was solved when the then ailing Triumph motorcycle company agreed to supply one of its new, albeit outdated, 500cc, twin-cylinder models for the trip. Simon describes all this in the opening pages of Jupiter’s Travels, which also include a detailed description of the logistics of packing the Triumph – notably slipping in ‘an impeccable white linen jacket reserved for garden parties on the lawns of tropical embassies . . .’. There follows a depressingly vivid account of the night of 6 October 1973, when he stands ‘dripping rain water, sweat and despair, crushed by the enormity of the prospect I had invented for myself’ and sets off ‘in the general direction of the English Channel’. ‘Within minutes, the great void inside me was filled by a rush of exultation and, in my solitary madness, I started to sing . . .’ The remarkable length of the journey ahead is reflected in the fact that Simon barely mentions the first leg through France (where he drops in at his then home in Lodève). The anecdotes only begin to flow on the ferry bound for Tunis, the crossing to Africa representing ‘a decisive leap into the unknown, a voyage of no return’. By this stage, it’s a voyage of no return for the reader, too, because this isn’t a book about motorcycles, or even, really, about the joy of riding them – it’s a book about the very different things that seem to happen when one does. That means stories of surprising people, well observed; of overcoming the fear of the unknown; of believing in karma and of being open to any and every possibility. And it was in India – the home of karma – that a seer suggested to Simon that he might be Jupiter, leading him to toy briefly with the idea of actually being a deity. The fact that Simon survived the four-year, 60,647-mile road trip (plus a further 17,655 miles by sea) despite encountering war, revolutions, accidents and imprisonment along the way certainly suggests that he has supernatural powers. Which might explain why, at 95, he seems little older than he did back then in 1979 at the Earls Court Show.Extract from Slightly Foxed Issue 90 © Simon de Burton 2026
About the contributor
Simon de Burton has been captivated by motorcycles ever since being given his first one at the of 6.
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