Meet the motorcyclist conquering sexism around the world, one epic road trip at a time
The next time you’re stuck in traffic, dreaming of a life on the long open road, think of Lois Pryce. Since passing her motorcycle test and ditching the day job in 2003, she’s travelled across the world - scaling the length and breadth of America and Africa, and completing a 3,000-mile circuit of Iran, solo - leaving a trail of bemused spectators and a much-loved collection of witty travelogues in her wake.
Because Pryce isn’t what everyone expects to find under a bike helmet. She’s vivacious, has an infectious sense of humour, a coiffed shock of glossy red hair and, as if it needed pointing out already, she’s a woman - not necessarily your average motorcyclist in the UK, let alone in the world’s more remote recesses.
Before heading off on her first journey, Pryce admits she was scared but that her fears were ultimately unfounded. Where she had expected danger, she found friends. ‘The world is a much safer place for women than one is commonly led to believe,’ she says. Over the past 15 years she’s made it her mission - through writing and public speaking - to inspire other women to release their inner-wanderlust and find out for themselves.
To those yearning to break free from the shackles of their desk, ‘I’m living proof,’ says Pryce, ‘that you can just be this sort of normal person that just thinks, “OK I’m gonna have a go at this”’. It’s how her love of motorcycling first started, after all. ‘I just thought it looked like a fun thing to do. It was that simple,’ she shrugs.
Her feet first started itching in 1986, when a 13-year-old Pryce and her friends set out on their first parent-free holiday in Cornwall. Days were spent playing in streams, swimming in rivers and scoping out farmers’ barns or comfy patches of grass on which to pitch their tents. ‘It was the 80s,’ she says, cavalier. ‘These days, someone might call social services but I’m very grateful to my parents for being gung ho in that way.’
Rev forward 30 years and Pryce is on a motorbike, 200 metres away from completing a 10,000-mile ride from London to the Cape of Good Hope, the southernmost point of Africa. She's covered thousands of miles since but it remains ‘the most physically and emotionally gruelling trip of [her] life’.
For Pryce, who had recently swerved landmines in Angola, been held at gunpoint in the Congo and tackled the barren Sahara, the last thing she expected to face on the smoothly tarmaced home stretch was yet another obstacle. But, as the golden beaches emerged on the horizon, her trusty bike conveniently conked out. Worse, her last few splutters landed her beside a coach-load of jeering South African rugby players who took the opportunity to bombard Pryce with a barrage of sexist mockery while they tinkered fruitlessly with her bike. ‘It wasn’t mean, it was good natured,’ she insists, ‘but in that moment I had an out-of-body experience’.
‘“Lois,” I thought, “you have just ridden the entire length of Africa”. So I yelled, “get out the way!” I took my toolkit out and I started fiddling about on the bike.’ Minutes later it jolted back to life, much to the chagrin of her beefy spectators. ‘“Okay guys, see you later’ I said before heading off. It was a nice little moment of triumph’.
And a reminder of her own power as a female traveller. Way back in 2003, when she first lit the ignition on an epic journey from Northern Alaska to the tip of Tierra del Fuego in South America - a journey which provided the raw material for her first book - friends were concerned. ‘But when I went to Iran [in 2013],’ Pryce inhales sharply, ‘that was the trip that people were the most worried about’.
But she was surprised - ‘when I got to Iran, I realised “wow, we have really got it wrong”’. Those who spotted her were surprised too: laws forbid Iranian women from riding motorcycles in public. But to see such laws as oppressive is reductionist, she says. Behind the veil of modesty, women are tearing up the tracks. ‘They even have their own motocross!’
After three months spent zipping through deserts and over mountains, punctuated by countless cups of tea slurped with friends found along the road, Pryce realised she’d fallen for Iran. Head over wheels. ‘After the trip I felt a duty to do something to negate some of that [anti-Islamic] damage’. So came her latest book, a 304-page testament to the power of travel.
‘For me, travel just reinforces how much you have in common with your fellow humans despite the fact that you’re in very different situations’. She pauses, deep in thought. ‘That is what motivates me - it’s getting out there and talking to people’.
Have there been mishaps along the way? Sure. Any disasters? Pryce’s usually expressive face draws a blank. She’s never been a ‘nervous female traveller’ and finds the concept, if not mythical, a patronising cliché. ‘Obviously you’ve got to be sensible,’ she reasons, ‘but to tell women they must be really careful before they set off immediately puts a negative slant on the trip’.
Forget cramming your rucksack with door-locks, pre-emptive safety gadgets and disaster-dodging security devices. ‘I really believe that what you put out in the world you get back,’ confides Pryce, ‘and in my experience, if you go into any situation confidently but friendly, that seems to be what comes back to you’.
The 2018 everywoman in Travel Awards is now open for nominations and the search is on for the industry’s most remarkable and trail blazing women. With new categories introduced for 2018, this year’s awards will also recognise the achievements of men who are advancing the progress of women working in the sector along with women inspiring their communities outside the UK.
Entries are free and can be completed at everywoman.com/travel-awards, before the deadline of 11 June 2018.
