The camera Ride

None of us really need a specific reason to ride our motorcycles, but we do sometimes find ourselves working an excuse into our lives that require us to cover miles on a bike

- David Champion

I never need a reason to go on a motorcycle trip, but 'sometimes' something happens to prompt me. You know little things like the collapse of the Soviet Union encouraging me to visit Czechoslovakia in 1990, for their first legal bike rally in a very long time.

That trip was made on my 500cc Gilera Saturno; not an obvious touring bike I hear you say, but there is a picture hereabouts with a small homemade rack on one side and a Triumph tank rack on the seat hump - I did 3000 miles in three weeks! Well, the idea for the trip I am about to go on started because I bought an old camera. I didn't need it, but it was shiny and right in my price range (cheap).

When I am not riding a bike I am a photographer. There are always cameras about, but there was something that fascinated me about this particular one.

I didn't know the Diax brand name, but a bit of research soon told me that it was manufactured in the Bavarian town of Ulm by W. Voss, a company that only existed for 10 years during the 1950s. I had never visited Ulm so that was enough for me to start looking at the maps!

Usually that is about as far as the planning goes before I set off, but I was stuck at home and not allowed to go anywhere while the world grappled with Covid. My mind kept working and Plan A was hatched.

By 2022 biking had probably returned to normal so I did a trip to France just to check. Everything looked much as I had left it; the roads were still back-to-front and the shops closed for lunch. I decided that it was okay for my photographic bike trip to happen in 2023.

A plan of action