“I will certainly never forget my first time solo in the Agriates desert in Corsica, where it was just me, my bike, and a tent. Spending nights in the cold under the starry sky was an incredible experience. Being isolated for days in the ‘wild’ environment of a relatively remote area like that really made me re-evaluate so many aspects of life. When you set off on a journey like that, you have a heightened sense of how vulnerable and ‘small’ we are compared to the nature surrounding us. On a motorbike, the constant presence of risk, even if it’s only marginal, forces you to sharpen your senses, to stay focused on everything around you. Then if the unexpected does happen, that’s when you feel most alive. When it happened to me, I skid out and my bike went flying into the current of a river, my instinctive response, after the first moment of panic, was to retrieve the bike as quick as possible, fix what could be fixed and try to start again. It’s from overcoming challenges like this that you learn how every obstacle, big and small – in motorcycling as in life – has to be faced head-on.”