Product Description

An aging nine stone hippy gives up his hard won career, family and home life to try and ride around the world on a Triumph motorbike in search of adventure and education and new experiences. At 45 Robbie Marshall had it all, or so it seemed. He'd been married, had two children, and built up a successful advertising agency. So what on earth made him trade his suit for leathers, his office for the saddle of a great British motorcycle, and his bulging appointments diary for an out of date world atlas? The prospect of a new challenge held such overwhelming appeal that he was prepared to risk it all - his hard won career, the trappings of wealth and the love of a good woman - for life on the road, and a lifestyle completely removed from anything he had known before. And so he shook hands with his business partner, kissed his girlfriend good bye and rode off into the unknown. Over the course of this double or nothing adventure he would come face to face with his own ignorance, enormous danger and wracking lonliness hand in hand with some of the best that human nature has to offer. All this and more comes his way, in a bid for knowledge and exploration of our fantastic planet. But what price did he pay for this freedom and did life on the road provide the longed for dividends?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #109898 in Books
• Published on: 2001-06-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 250 pages

About the Author
Born on Merseyside in 1949, he was the son of an Army doctor with two elder sisters. The Military lifestyle was educationally and socially disruptive, but Robbic enjoyed spending his most formative years on the Malay Peninsular shortly after its independence from British rule. He returned to the UK to be educated at Lindisfarne College, a second rate public school (he was too stupid to get into a proper one) at the top of Ruabon mountain in North Wales. By 20, Robbie was married and attending Hammersmith College of art studying sculpture. Their first daughter, Sasha was born in 1969 before the family moved to Nottingham for a degree in Three Dimensional Design where their second child Chantal was born. His first job was with the Liverpool Regional Hospital Board as Environmental designer, but spent the next decade dragging his family around the country in search of a career in industrial design.

Customer Reviews

journey to the heart of darkness on a motorbike
This is a very good read. It's fast, real, and soul searching. It is a personal adventure that keeps you turning the pages. It has humour and is a sharing that only truly great writers can accomplish. I have not been on a bike in years but think this book would be as appealing to non bikers as it is to bikers. Where is the sequel?

Biker travels the globe while missing his girl
Robbie Marshall 'Triumph Around the World'

I quite enjoyed this travelogue. Being a biker I've often dreamt of doing what Robbie Marshall has done; giving up a job, kitting out the bike and then off I go. I've often thought that it would be a good way to write a travel book; as events reveal themselves to you, you write them down in prosaic terms. However, because travelling around the globe is bound to involve many encounters, towns, animals and adventures one could fill several tomes.

Robbie Marshall seems to have done the opposite with 'Triumph Around the World'. Its seems a condensed book, packed with his travel encounters without dwelling on them too long, passing on quickly to the next person, city, even country. I'm sure this would be attractive to some readers but I prefer the drawn out descriptions, Ted Simon's motorcycling odyssey 'Jupiter's Travels' in particular is an excellent example of this genre.

Still, apart from the format, this book is a good, fun read. Alright, its not Thubron or Theroux in its level of vividness and profound observances, but I enjoyed the visits to each country, the meetings with the locals; those who helped him along with food and fuel, pulling him out of a ditch, shooting him through the helmet etc. I didn't enjoy the constant pining, though, for his partner back in blighty.

I'd recommend this book if you want a pragmatic adventure but I also think anybody who goes around the world in this way deserves to have their book read as a reward...

A proper warts and all account of travelling the world
I have to say I enjoyed this book tremendously. I actually read the book a few years ago now but I was talking to someone about Ewan McGregors recent trip and it struck me how something that on the surface was a similar trip could be so poles apart (excuse the pun). With Mr McGregor it was all GPS and support trucks done with full financial backing done , presumably, between film projects. Robbie, on the other hand did it all himself, bought a bike, jacked his job in and went a did something he needed to do for himself. I didnt mind his longing for home and his partner..it seemed from the heart..it showed a human, vunerable side that gets glossed over in some many bravado pumped books of this type. The book is written in a fast paced, honest and straightforward narrative that doesnt get bogged down in unnecessary detail and its a book that a non motorcyclist could read and enjoy. Above all its a story about having the guts to realise a dream...warts and all.

I met Robbie once..at the NEC bike show when he was promoting his book after returning from his trip. He really was 9 and half stone ringing wet and his choice of bike, a big heavy Triumph really wasnt the ideal machine to use for the trip. It makes his accomplishment the more remarkable.

Unfortunately Robbie isnt with us anymore, and the world is a poorer place for the loss of characters like him.

RIP Robbie