Full Throttle Freedom: What A Harley Ride Through Spain Teaches You About Life

On Monday 6th July, anyone driving on the roads of Spain could not fail to notice something extraordinary. They were empty. Not “how lovely, traffic is light” empty. Not “everyone must be having a late lunch” empty. Properly, gloriously, apocalyptically empty. Spain, as one passionate, football-loving nation, was glued to its televisions in a patriotic trance, leaving the roads almost eerily deserted. No vans performing suicidal overtakes on blind bends. No mopeds appearing from nowhere like angry mosquitoes. No elderly señor in a Seat Panda doing 22 kilometres an hour with one indicator permanently flashing since 1987. Just open road. And silence. Well, silence until the Harley started. After yet another long, hot Andalusian day — the sort of day when even the bougainvillea looks as though it needs a lie-down and a stiff drink — Mr E turned to me and said, “Do you fancy a little tootle on the Harley?” He had not finished the sentence before I was on it. Helmet? On. Sunglasses? On. Lip gloss? Obviously. Spirit of adventure? Fully activated. Left buttock? Blissfully unaware of what lay ahead. There is nothing quite like the freedom of a Harley. The cool air against your skin. The deep rumble beneath you. The world rushing past in flashes of heat, colour and possibility. A Harley is not transport. A Harley is therapy with handlebars. Now, after more than three decades together, there are plenty of things Mr E and I have bought and later questioned. Property. Cars. Clothes. Furniture that looked “fabulous” in the shop and then arrived at home looking like it belonged in a Marbella nightclub circa 1994. Newspapers too — although not the Euro Weekly News, I hasten to add. That was our baby from inception, and some loves never leave you, even when the business cards do. But yes, over the years there have been purchases that made us look at each other and whisper, “What on earth were we thinking?” There have also been things we did not buy and later wished we had, which is worse, because regret with a receipt is one thing. Regret without a receipt is just bad administration. The Harley, however, has never appeared on the questionable list. Never. She may be older now. She may be slower than the younger, flashier models purring and preening along the coast. She may be harder to manage than her sleeker sisters on the road. But she is solid. She is dependable. She is breathtakingly beautiful in her own stubborn, glorious way. She is not trying to be twenty-five. Neither am I. Well, not before coffee. She is a turquoise-blue magic carpet. A passport to freedom. A rolling reminder that life does not always have to be sensible, practical or beige. From the back of the Harley, the world looks completely different. You see things from another perspective. And sometimes, quite frankly, that is not a bad vantage point from which to view life. Because sometimes things are not what they appear to be. Sometimes they are not even as you remember them. That dry, barren patch of Spanish land you have passed for years — the one you barely noticed anymore because it looked as though even the weeds had given up — is suddenly tended, watered and cared for. Someone has loved it quietly, patiently, consistently. Then one day, without drama or announcement, it is in full bloom. Suddenly there are flowers. Colour. Life. A tiny miracle between two roundabouts and a petrol station. Then there is the ugly old building that has sat abandoned for so long you assumed it had entered a legally binding relationship with decay. You have driven past it for years thinking, “Surely someone will do something with that.” And then, because this is Spain, nothing happens for a decade. Then everything happens in 11 minutes. Planning permission is finally granted and, with the speed of light that only Spanish developers and builders can mysteriously muster when they are truly in the mood, an entire house appears. One week it is rubble. The next week it has glass balconies, mood lighting, a suspiciously perfect lawn and someone called Javier watering the palm trees in designer trainers. Just like that, what was once an eyesore has become someone’s dream. A loving home. A new beginning. Possibly with an infinity pool and a mortgage that would make your eyelashes fall out, but still — a beginning. And that is the magic of being on the back of the Harley. You notice things. You notice the old man outside the venta who raises one hand as you pass, as though he has personally approved your afternoon. You notice the little white village clinging to the hillside like it was painted there by someone with a romantic heart and a very steady hand. You notice the goats, who always look as if they know more than they are letting on. You notice the woman sweeping her doorstep with the seriousness of someone preparing for a royal visit. You smell jasmine. You smell the sea before you see it. You smell someone’s lunch drifting out of a kitchen window and instantly regret having eaten nothing but a sad cracker and a sense of optimism. In a car, life is framed by glass. On the Harley, there is no frame. You are in it. Part of it. Moving with it. The warm air wraps around you. The bends in the road become rhythm. The mountains change colour. The sky seems bigger. The problems sitting in your chest loosen their grip just a little. There is something wonderfully liberating about being on the back of a bike. You cannot check your phone. You cannot reply to emails. You cannot reorganise your entire life, write a legal letter in your head, remember you forgot to buy dog food, worry about invoices, or mentally murder someone who annoyed you before breakfast. You can only hold on. Breathe. And occasionally shift your left buttock into a more comfortable position with all the elegance of a woman trying to rearrange herself on a bar stool after three cava sangrías. There is no dignity in buttock management on a Harley. None. You start off like Grace Kelly. You finish like someone trying to remove a wedgie during a flamenco class. But even that is part of the joy. My love affair with Harleys began more than fifteen years ago in Cannes, where we had a home we loved with an absolute passion. One blisteringly hot July, Mr E decided to rent a Harley and ride to Saint-Tropez. Now, anyone who knows the South of France knows that getting into Saint-Tropez in high summer is not a journey. It is a test of character. It should only be attempted by helicopter, yacht or people with no sweat glands. But Mr E, being Mr E, decided going by Harley would be faster and easier. Oh no. Oh no, no, no. There we were, riding in shorts and vests, trapped in the mother of all traffic jams. We could not go forwards. We could not turn back. We were stuck in the scorching Riviera heat being slowly spit-roasted on the back of a motorbike like two confused chickens in designer sunglasses. Three interminable hours later, we finally arrived in one of the most glamorous ports in Europe looking as though we had been pressure-cooked. My hair was glued to my helmet. My clothes were stuck to my body. My throat was so dry I could barely ask for water. I remember staggering into one of the most salubrious restaurants in Saint-Tropez, collapsing into a chair and trying to look chic while silently praying my thighs had not actually melted into the leather seat. It was not elegant. It was not glamorous. It was not remotely like the films. But somehow, absurdly, wonderfully, it was the beginning of something. Because that ridiculous, boiling, chaotic ride lit something in me. I cannot ride a motorbike. Unless we count the one in the gym, and frankly even that has witnessed some questionable performances. So I never imagined for a second what would arrive for my birthday that August. Mr E has always been brilliant at surprises. Birthdays in our household have always been a big occasion. They are not just dates on a calendar. They are sacred. They are your day. The one day that belongs entirely to you. And this birthday was unforgettable. The gates opened and down the drive rolled Mr E beside the most beautiful turquoise-blue Harley I had ever seen. She was magnificent. She still is. To this day, she gives me the same excitement, the same thrill, the same rush of freedom. No, she is not a purchase or a present I will ever regret. She has given me endless hours of fun, delight and escape. The magical way I feel on the back of her is priceless. The fact that I cannot actually ride her is entirely insignificant. Details, darling. Minor administrative issue. Because she is still mine. My passport to freedom. My rolling fountain of youth. My reminder that even as we advance into our autumnal years — or, as I prefer to call them, our “vintage champagne era” — there are still moments when we can feel young, carefree and gloriously alive. Sometimes it really is the simplest things that give us inner peace. A ride. A breeze. A road with no traffic. A familiar hand in front of you. A machine that rumbles like it knows secrets. A view of the world that reminds you nothing stays the same forever. The barren land can bloom. The ugly building can become a home. The road you thought you knew can still surprise you. And sometimes, when life feels complicated, loud and heavy, the answer is not to think harder. Sometimes the answer is to get on the back of the Harley, hold on tight and let the wind do the talking. Because she may be old, but so are some of the best love stories. She may not be the fastest girl on the road, but she still turns heads. She still has presence. She still knows how to make an entrance. Rather like all of us, really. So off we went, whizzing through life once again, the heat behind us, the empty Spanish roads ahead of us, and that wonderful engine beneath us saying exactly what I needed to hear: Keep going. Look again. The road is still there.

There are moments in life when timing really is everything, and Monday evening proved to be one of those occasions. With my back operation looming, Mrs E and I decided that this might be my last opportunity for a while to take the Harley out for a proper evening cruise. It wasn’t a difficult decision for long, although there was one dilemma. Spain were playing Portugal in a match that promised to capture the attention of millions. Should we stay home and watch the football live, or take advantage of what could be my final ride before surgery? In the end, the Harley won. Modern technology meant I could always catch up with the football afterwards, but a perfect summer evening on a Harley-Davidson isn’t something you can simply record for later. Anyone who owns a Harley, particularly one of the older models, will understand exactly what I mean. These motorcycles have character in abundance. They don’t just start; they come alive. They don’t simply travel; they rumble, pulse and throb with a heartbeat all of their own. They also generate enough heat to remind you constantly that you’re sitting astride a large V-twin engine designed more for personality than efficiency. That is precisely why summer evenings are the perfect time to ride. The worst of the daytime heat has faded, the air is a little cooler and, perhaps most importantly, the roads become quieter. On this particular evening they were quieter than I can remember for years. Almost everyone was watching Spain take on Portugal, leaving the coastal roads almost deserted. It was one of those rare occasions when mile after mile passed with barely another vehicle in sight. The Harley settled into its familiar rhythm, the engine beating steadily beneath me as I cruised along the Costa, enjoying that unique feeling of freedom that only motorcyclists truly understand. The last time I remember seeing the roads this empty was during the dark days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Those were extraordinary times that none of us will ever forget. Lockdowns transformed bustling towns into ghost towns almost overnight. Roads that were normally packed became eerily silent. Businesses closed, tourism disappeared and uncertainty became part of everyday life. For us at the Euro Weekly News, there was never any question about whether we would continue. As publishers, we felt a responsibility to keep people informed during one of the most confusing and frightening periods many of us had ever experienced. Every week we continued producing newspapers while dramatically expanding our online coverage. Readers desperately wanted reliable information about restrictions, travel rules, vaccinations, border closures and the rapidly changing situation throughout Spain and beyond. The response was astonishing. At the height of the pandemic, the Euro Weekly News website was attracting well over ten million visitors every month. People from across Spain and around the world turned to us for trusted information during an unprecedented global crisis. Looking back, it remains one of the proudest achievements of everyone involved with the newspaper. We were helping people make sense of a situation that was changing almost by the hour. Thankfully those days are now behind us, but the empty roads on Monday evening brought those memories flooding back. Even after sunset, however, the Mediterranean summer was refusing to cool down. The heat radiating from the Harley’s engine was intense. Anyone who says Harleys don’t run hot has clearly never ridden one in southern Spain during July. Unfortunately, I was dressed more for comfort than protection. Yes, I know. Shorts and a T-shirt are hardly ideal riding gear. The inevitable happened when my leg briefly came into contact with the engine, leaving me with a painful but thankfully minor burn. It serves as yet another reminder that proper protective clothing exists for a reason. Will I remember that lesson next time? Probably… although many motorcyclists will admit that common sense and warm summer evenings don’t always make ideal companions. Despite the burn, every minute of the ride was worth it. By the time I returned home there were only around ten minutes remaining in the football. Perfect timing. I hadn’t missed much, and with a cold beer in hand I settled down just in time to watch the decisive moment. As an Arsenal supporter, I was naturally delighted to see one of our own help finish Portugal’s hopes. For me, Arsenal will always be The Arsenal, and seeing one of our players making the difference on the international stage always adds a little extra satisfaction. Sadly for Cristiano Ronaldo, it may well have been another step towards the end of one of football’s greatest careers. Whatever colours you support, it is impossible not to admire what Ronaldo has achieved. His professionalism, dedication, fitness and relentless desire to improve have redefined what is possible for a footballer. Season after season, year after year, he has continued producing performances that most players could only dream about. Alongside Lionel Messi, the pair have dominated world football for almost two decades. Fans have often argued endlessly over who is the greatest, but perhaps we should simply appreciate how fortunate we have been to witness both at the same time. Messi’s magical vision, balance and natural genius have complemented Ronaldo’s extraordinary athleticism, power and determination. Together they have won countless league titles, Champions League trophies, Ballon d’Or awards and almost every individual honour available. Between them they have rewritten football’s record books in a way we may never see again. Age eventually catches everyone, however. By the time the next World Cup arrives, Ronaldo will be around 45 years old, making another appearance seem highly unlikely. Messi’s future is equally uncertain. Whenever they finally decide to retire, football will lose two genuine icons whose influence has shaped an entire generation. Fortunately, every era produces new stars. England supporters will certainly hope some of those stars are wearing white shirts over the coming games. There is genuine optimism surrounding this England squad. It possesses talent throughout the team, a blend of youthful energy and valuable experience, and perhaps most importantly, a growing belief that they can finally go all the way. English football fans have become experts in hope mixed with heartbreak, but every new campaign begins with renewed optimism. Could this finally be the tournament where everything falls into place? Stranger things have happened. So, come on England. Let’s keep marching forward one game at a time. The dream of reaching another World Cup final remains very much alive, and who knows? Perhaps this could finally be the year that football really does come home. As for my own evening, the timing couldn’t have worked out much better. I enjoyed one glorious ride on the Harley before my operation, experienced roads as quiet as they were during the pandemic, returned safely despite a minor burn, and arrived home just in time to watch the winning goal. Sometimes, everything simply falls into place.