Around the World on her BMW

The first female Briton to circumnavigate the globe by bike
By Paul N. Blezard

Elspeth Beard is one of a select band of bold women to pilot a motorcycle around the world, and she was the first Englishwoman to do so. She achieved this feat a quarter of a century ago (1982-‘84. ed), in the days before SatNav and GPS, internet and email, mobile phones and iPODs and she did it mostly alone. The bike she chose for the trip was a second-hand 1974 R60/6 flat twin for which she paid £900 ($1800) in 1980, a substantial sum, at the time, especially for a machine that already had 30,000 miles on the clock!

Elspeth Beard on her BMW R60/6

Elspeth used the bike for her first long solo rides; from her home in London to Scotland and then to Ireland, then on to mainland Europe and Corsica, racking up over 10,000 miles in her first two years of ownership. Then it was time for ‘The Big One’. By now 24, Elspeth had finished the first three years of her architectural studies (it’s a seven year training) and saved more than £1000 ($2,000) working behind the bar at her local pub in Marylebone, central London in preparation for her round the world adventure.

She started the first stage of her journey in New York. “It cost £175 ($350) to send the bike and £99 ($200) for my own air fare,” she recalls. From the Big Apple she rode up to Canada, then down Mexico way before reaching Los Angeles with another 5,000 miles under the Beemer’s wheels.

Beard in India

From LA she shipped the bike to Sydney, but stopped off to see New Zealand on foot while the bike was in transit.Elspeth then spent seven months working in a Sydney architectural practice and living in a garage gaining experience and replenishing her diminished funds. She spent weeks constructing her own bespoke, lockable, top box-cum-panniers out of folded and riveted sheet aluminium before setting off on her travels once more. She rode all over Australia, and had her first big accident on a dirt road near Townsville, in Queensland.

The R60 cartwheeled and she was left badly concussed, but mercifully with no broken bones. She still has the Bell ‘bone dome’ helmet which she’s convinced saved her life (and which she carried on wearing for the rest of the trip!).

Shaken but undaunted, Elspeth spent two weeks in hospital before continuing north up the east coast of Oz then through the outback to Ayers Rock, and finally across the Nullabor Plain to Perth, on the west coast. In the Nullabor desert her bike caught fire and burnt out her entire wiring loom miraculously within sight of a motoring electrical specialist in the middle of nowhere. It took the proprietor several days to re-wire her machine and like Henry Ford’s Model Ts, every new wire on her bike was black.