Ups, downs, and round and rounds...

All great adventures have their highs and lows. Those moments of jubilation and those moments of utter despair. The great thing about these moments is that in the end they all become highs, it just takes a little time to appreciate them. It may not seem like it at the time but the breakdowns, arguments, border problems and bouts of rampant diarrhoea, all become favourite pub stories once you've actually come out the other side of them.

Admittedly death might be a low you'd struggle to see the funny side of, or perhaps an unexpected gang rape by wild boars, but when all is said and done, most of these moments are what make adventures an adventure, else they'd just be a trip to the post office.

On the Wrong Way Round we've had a few. In fact if the trip was a polygraph it would fluctuate slightly more than when Bill Clinton proclaimed he did not have sexual relations with that woman. I mean right from the off there was the joy in the pub when we agreed to do the trip. And then the depression of realising we weren't joking.

Then the school boy excitement of meeting up with Charley Boorman and Russ Malkin at the Long Way Round HQ, followed by the your-in-detention moment when we realised that neither of them had the meeting in their diaries, followed by the we've-got-a-supply-teacher excitement when they both turned up anyway by sheer fluke. Hmm must stop thinking about school boys.

There was the low when we realised our own new HQ had no toilet facilities, only for us to land a sponsorship deal with Shit Box. The high of reaching the first 1,000 cans on the Stella wall and the low of Charlie passing his bike test.

And once we were on the road the roller coaster just cranked up a level. No sooner were we smoozing in the complimentary P&O Club Class ferry lounge than the morning papers were telling us the great Michael Jackson had snuffed it, and not even in a good way. Just your average overdose of painkillers, anti-depressants and monkey sperm.

Then in Assen we missed our long awaited photo shoot with Suzi Perry only for the gloom to be lifted by the Dutch police officer who failed to clock the support van was RHD and promptly breathalysed the passenger.

Oh and then how about two lows in quick succession. Nick's engine failing followed by the realisation Oz had packed the wrong spare engine. But matter not, cos you always know it's going to be followed by two highs, which incidentally were the Hungarian camp site owner's home made Palinka and the fact that Nick could start the spare engine in less than 12 kicks.

Then a high in every sense. The 2,000 metre altitude Transfagarasan Highway which we not only conquered, but we also overtook a moving car and nobody suffered multiple injuries from an unscheduled diversion off the cliff edge. In fact it was almost too good, as Nick's bike didn't even blow up. And then it just kept getting better. We popped in to see Dracula, the sun didn't stop shining and then we fluked across the most stunning campsite in Transylvania. I swear if the day had lasted just an hour longer, the Hawaiin tropic girls would have turned up offering free rub downs.

This inevitably meant the next day would redress the balance by perhaps pissing down or producing a crash, a blow up etc... But the day dawned to beautiful sunshine so that wasn't it. Nobody crashed and nobody blew up so that wasn't it. And then we reached the Moldovan border...

Bear in mind this was the first "proper" border. Up until then the borders were all EU countries so the only way you knew you were in another country was the fact they wouldn't accept cash from the previous one, and the police wore slightly different hats (which by the way get bigger the further East you go). I was fully anticipating that by the time we reached Kazakhstan the Chief of Police would need scaffolding to hold up his brim.

Anyway suffice to say this was a proper border, with proper barriers and proper guns and the first occasion when we needed to produce our documents.

Passports: Check.
Vehicle registration documents: Check*
I do not have Swine flu declaration: Check
No we are not smuggling cigarettes and vodka: Check

* at some point the man with medium-sized hat points out he has 5 passports but only 4 registration documents. At the same moment Charlie is seen scrabbling round the floor of the support van sifting through old socks and empty Pot Noodle cartons looking for his V5. Five minutes later Charlie confidently explains to man with medium-sized hat that he doesn't know where his V5 is but he can remember what it looks like if that helps.

Cue man with larger hat and more stripey bits. "No V5, no entry".

At this point we resign ourselves to the fact that this is going to involve a complete search of the van, and most worryingly, dangerous exposure to multiple-worn underpants which have thus far remained in quarantine in the remotest corners of the van. We roll our sleeves up to get stuck in when to our relief Charlie reveals that he knows where his V5 is.

"In Manchester...in my front room...sitting on the scanner"

Words failed us. Well when I say failed I'm pretty sure we managed "Fuckwit", "C**t" and "Raging bellend" before silence descended.

Unfortunately for us, one of the European Union's stipulations for prospective members is not to take bribes from tossers who forget their documents. Even the man with the biggest hat could not be swayed by vodka, cigarettes or porn. In fact they wouldn't even let the bike through on the trailer. Now this really was a problem. We'd obviously planned for the fact that we might lose an engine or two along the way, but not a whole actual bike.

The reality was we were going nowhere with that bike. We considered our options. We could run the border. That would be great for the video but their guns looked liked they worked so we discounted that idea. We could smuggle the bike back through the next day by cunningly hiding it on the roof where no one would ever look. Except that was one of the first places they had already looked. And so the harsh but grim reality was that we were going to have to ditch the bike.

Now ordinarily that wouldn't be a complete disaster. We could just buy another one. Except that nobody else in Europe is mental enough to import Yamaha Townmates. Well apart from Albania which says it all really, but that would mean a detour of over 2,000kms and put us behind schedule by 2 weeks which was just not going to happen.

At this point this was looking like one of those lows that was going to take a long time to be funny, like Bobby Davro. There was no silver lining. Someone had switched off the light at the end of the tunnel.

We retreated back to Romania, stripped the bike down for spares and contemplated our next steps. Whatever happened there was no way we were turning round. The next morning we got up and went back to the border. It was a change of guard but they knew all about our failed attempt the night before. Typically they didn't search the roof so we could have smuggled the bloody bike in after all.

Next stop Transnistria - now that is another story...