In the early 1980s, after finishing her architecture degree and splitting up with her boyfriend, Elspeth Beard set off (almost on a whim) to ride her BMW motorcycle around the world, a feat that very few men and no woman had by then achieved. Two and a half years later, Elspeth returned to London several stones lighter, decades wiser, feeling triumphant. She'd ridden through post-revolutionary Iran while it was at war with Iraq and closed to Westerners. She'd survived life-threatening illnesses, brutal accidents and third-world hospitals that left permanent scars and a black hole in her memory. She'd witnessed riots and civil uprisings that altered the course of nations and forced her to fake the documents she needed to get out of the country. She'd fended off physical threats, sexual attacks, biker gangs and corrupt police convinced she was trafficking drugs. She'd had a number of accidents and had to repair and service her bike on the road. She'd fallen in and out of love with three men, tussling as she neared home with a decision between the biker with whom she could continue her love of adventure and the safe engineer with whom she might start a family. But when Elspeth returned home, no one wanted to know. Her mother asked her to pop out for a pint of milk. Her friends found it hard to relate to her adventures. But now, of course, her journey seems extraordinary. In an age before email, the Internet, mobile phones, satnavs, medevacs and, in some parts of the world, readily available, reliable paper maps, Elspeth achieved something that would still look remarkable today.