Hello, we are Andy Berwick (UK) and Maya Vermeer (NL). We live in Scotland. Both ride bikes and are infected with the travel virus since a long time. We like to go off-road as much as we can and prefer to camp in the wild.
Curiosity and side-car madness is our drive to explore the America's. Our motto's are 'We might not know where we are, but we ain't lost' and 'Side-cars go in deeper and come out harder'.
We hope you enjoy reading about our adventures and we wish you happy travels!
Andy and Maya.
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During our first trip together to South America (Nov.2005-April 2007) we travelled with a BMW R 100 GS and a side-car, a very trustful combination. The good thing about this BMW is that you can fix most things yourself and it has no modern electronic stuff on it (like by example a modern BMW 1150). We enjoyed travelling with the old BMW a lot, but Andy wanted to travel with a pure British bike, so we bought a Triumph Scrambler. You have to follow your heart.
Months of preparation made us sweaty, longs days of working on the bike and endless technical discussions followed. |
| Andy modified a Hedingham side car (which was shortened at the back) and build it onto the bike, which isn't as easy as it reads, so we had 'a red hot telephone line' connected to Ron from Unit Side cars. Also Chris from Abbey Motorcycles in Dumfries was very friendly and helpful to us, it never seemed to be a problem for him to organize bits and pieces! |
I think Andy's welding is not to bad, quite robust I would call it. He made up some tube work and braces, a luggage box, side panels and a folding lid to enclose the food well. He fitted a toolbox to the floor and created a folding backrest. The front forks are not original at all, the leading links are from Unit Sidecars, the yokes from the old BMW so they accept the Bonneville fork stem.
The front wheel and unbelievable powerful brakes are from a Cagiva Elefant. Triumph wheels are to fragile for off- roading, so the back wheel comes also from the Cagiva. It didn't fit totally and spacers are made to line up the sprocket.
The beautiful Triumph tank is to small, so between the bike and the side car you will find a 23 litre plastic container plus a fuel pump. And it has a Scott oiler, a second hand screen from a Triumph Thunderbird and a glove box for my sweets.
What I had put in was sharing the thinking process, producing loads of coffee and food, disconnecting bike parts, painting, giving my life for test rides and being patience (I had packed all the luggage already 3 months ago). Like a doctor and a nurse we worked together. I was absolutely over the moon when I could ride the side-car myself, I immediately fell in love with it's character and sound and felt so proud about Andy being so strong willed about full filling a dream. And my pride will continue as long the side-car doesn't go to the left and the bike to the right. |
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Before October the first of 2008 we had to leave the house to make space for our new tenants. We were very lucky to have loads of help from our friends Debz, Iain, Hazel, Tony, Bev, Fritz and Neil.. Without them we would have broken our backs by trying to move everything our selves. The bike was ridable at that time, so we drove from Scotland totally overloaded with tools to Zebb in Liverpool, who had organized the GPS stuff for us. I am very pleased with that, because I am the worst navigator ever. Than we got spoiled at Andy's mum's place and now we can work in Chris's workshop, an old mill. Chris and Andy know each other since the prehistory and Chris used to race side cars. I do a bit of trip preparation and the boys amuse me with their technical talk and stories from the old days. Chris took me one day for an awesome ride on the back of his 'Vincent'. I couldn't have had more luck!
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We want to thank Chris for having and helping us, his great welding and big input; it was fun to be with you! And also we want to say thanks to the people from Hagon and Hedingham for their help and advice! And Andy's mum; a BIG hug for looking after us so well.
In a good way our trip has already started.
The plan is to ship the bike RORO in November 2008 to Charleston in the USA. We would like to do a bit off- roading in the States. Than we will travel through Central America, ship the bike to Colombia or |
Peru, enter Brazil, following the Transamazonian Highway ( most of it is a mud track) and hop back into Argentina....if we don't get lost.
All preperation completed we travelled to a cold Southampton Dock and waved goodbye to our trusty Triumph all the time praying we would see her again on the other side of the Atlantic....
To pick up the trail from here please head straight to Horizons Unlimited where we will be posting regular updates on our personal Blogg.
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