The participants in this epic and testing jaunt are left to right Denzil Addison aka Dee, Andrew Monkhouse aka Monkey and Alan Walker aka Bowie. Monkey and Bowie have been friends since the age of 17 and met Dee some 14 years ago, over the past decade the three annually undertake long motorcycle tours visiting the Alps, Pyrenees, Scotland, and Ireland on their usual Ducati Multistrada bikes. None of these tours could be considered to be relaxing indeed from the onset they are fraught with danger and intense stress. The slightest mistake by one rider will be pounced upon by the other two in a merciless tirade of exaggeration and exploitation the object being to ridicule the unfortunate party. This stress is not limited to the riding of the motorcycles it covers all aspects of the tour, indeed the simple act of falling asleep on a sofa with a brew in your hand and inadvertently spilling coffee on you crutch will result in days if not months of incontinence jibes. Allowing a cyclist to pass you descending a French Col summit results in years of intense ridicule as does stupidly advising your riding buddies that you are nearly out of fuel on a mountain top on a Sunday in Switzerland.

DENZIL ADDISON – “DEE”

Dee is the old man of the bunch at 65 and retired two years ago, his normal touring bike is a Ducati Multistrada 1260 GT and his local weekend ride a CCM Spitfire Flat Tracker and has ridden motorbikes on and off since the age of 16. Dee joined Blood Bikes Cumbria in its inaugural year and has served them for 8 years as a rider and latterly the charity’s treasurer.

Dee despite his navigational training and the ownership of the groups only on bike satnav frequently leads the group up the wrong road or dirt track, he is also the incontinent coffee sleeper and as Monkey he also suffers from Larditus thus is no stranger to a full English breakfast.

Dee commenced his working career in 1975 as a navigational officer cadet in the British Merchant Navy working for Manchester Liners Ltd. He qualified as a maritime navigator in 1979 at a time where satellite navigation did not exist, using a sextant, chronometer, and paper chart he navigated large commercial cargo ships across all oceans and rose to the rank of second mate. In 1981 having recently married and wishing to start a family he chose to come ashore and retrained in construction initially as a bricklayer, by 1985 he was the managing director of a Penrith based family construction firm. In 1995 he single handidly set up the Carlisle based LLED Construction Limited who specialize in supplying directly to blue chip clients commercial and retail all trade constructional reactive maintenance services. Having built the business up from a one-man venture over the next twenty-one years he sold the company to the national construction firm Morris and Spottiswood Limited in 2016, his purpose in doing this was to enable him to retire whilst maintaining employment for his loyal and longstanding workforce, without whom he clearly identifies his business would never have been so successful. Dee remained as an employee of the new business owners until March of 2021 running his former business and also their own maintenance division for them in the capacity of operations director. He now spends his days mithering his long-suffering wife Karen, getting into mischief with his twenty-four-year-old daughter Jodie, holidaying, playing golf, walking and chasing down his two Husky’s when they make a bid for freedom, riding bikes, drinking beer and talking utter rubbish.

ANDREW MONKHOUSE – “MONKEY”

Monkey is the youth of the group ripe old age of 57 and one day younger than Bowie, he has ridden bikes since he was 16 years old, his touring bike is a Multistrada 950, his Sunday hooligan bike is a CCM Spitfire Flat Tracker, he also owns several other road bikes most notably a Ducati Hypermotard which he describes as “Bonkers”.

On the boy’s road trips Monkey is the route and accommodation planner and sometimes has difficulty in collating the number of days we’re away with the number of hotel nights he’s booked. On Alpine passes monkey develops involuntary facial twitches when he sees cyclists having been passed on a downhill Alpine Col by what he described as Chris Froome. Dee and Bowie maintain it was an old French dude with a fag in his mouth, wearing a beret with a string of onions round his neck on a sit up and beg velo with a basket on the front.

Monkey and Bowie met at the age of 17 as engineering apprentices at Aero Precision where they both served their time together, upon qualifying Monkey moved employment to Rickerby’s Ltd a Carlisle based agricultural equipment supplier and then to Allied Signal latterly Called Kangol a Carlisle based seatbelt manufacturer.

In 1998 Monkey and Bowie went into business together establishing Complete Engineering Services Ltd. and several years later were contracted by their former employer Kangol who had sold off their seat belt manufacturing business. Their mammoth mission was to move the entire Kangol production line from its base in Carlisle to Italy and re-commission production there, for several years after the new owners often called on the boys for their expert knowledge and services for the operational maintenance of this manufacturing line. Complete Engineering has under the two boy’s expert guidance grown and become a thriving and leading supplier of precision engineering to business as diverse as motorsport, traction engine restoration, plant maintenance, tattoo artists and agricultural engineers to name but a few.

When Monkey isn’t working his hobbies include annoying his wife Angela, riding bikes, holidaying, playing golf and watching Carlisle United often with Dee, drinking beer and talking complete nonsense.

ALAN WALKER – “BOWIE”

Bowie is the middle-aged group member at 57 being born one day before Monkey was, he has been riding motorbikes since 2006, his touring bike is a Ducati Multistrada 950 and his local tarmac terrorist bike a CCM Spitfire Flat Tracker. Bowie is of a far less portly stature than that of his co-riders, indeed his healthy lifestyle and slim physique make him vulnerable to weight loading on his bike for this jaunt to keep his top speed in line with the butterball twins.

On the boy’s trips Bowie is the quiet but observant one, with a passion for randomly identifying the obscure. Bowie is pentatonic to the point of OCD about time, thus, when told on a tour the night before that we are leaving the accommodation at 0900, he will be ready to depart at exactly that time and not a moment sooner.

Hence, he is often the victim of premeditated and fictitious departure times. Before Bowie was blessed with Ducati foresight, he owned a Honda touring bike whose fuel tank capacity was no match for the other two’s Ducati’s. Not being involved in route planning nor navigational duties he often found himself on remote mountain tops with only fuel vapour in the tank combined with zero empathy from Dee and Monkey. Bowie is a light sleeper and refuses to share accommodation rooms with Monkey and Dee who he declares both snore and sound like Walruses in labour. Bowie is not involved in the accommodation booking on our trips so to keep the group tight Monkey often books him into the room next door to that he and Dee share, on occasion this results in unpleasantness from Bowie.

Bowie and Monkey met at the age of 17 as engineering apprentices at Aero Precision where they both served their time together. Upon qualifying Bowie remained there later moving employment to Allied Signal latterly Called Kangol a Carlisle based seatbelt manufacturer to be re-united with is old colleague Monkey.

In 1998 Monkey and Bowie went into business together establishing Complete Engineering Services Ltd. and several years later were contracted by their former employer Kangol who had sold off their seat belt manufacturing business. Their mammoth mission was to move the entire Kangol production line from its base in Carlisle to Italy and re-commission production there, for several years after the new owners often called on the boys for their expert knowledge and services for the operational maintenance of this manufacturing line. Complete Engineering has under the two boy’s expert guidance grown and become a thriving and leading supplier of precision engineering to business as diverse as motorsport, traction engine restoration, plant maintenance, tattoo artists and agricultural engineers to name but a few.

When Bowie isn’t working his hobbies include annoying his wife Tracy, riding motorbikes and mountain bikes, holidaying, playing golf, drinking beer/wine and talking complete gibberish.