If Only I Had More Time. A Motorcycle Journey Through Britain with Mark Probert
Good travel books are not just about a physical journey or a place. They are also about the emotional side of travel and the feelings we experience along the way. In this interview with Mark Probert, we discuss his motorcycle journey through Britain following the path of writer John Hillaby 50 years after the original book — and how the passing of time impacts our choices around travel, especially at a time when we cannot take it for granted as we did pre-pandemic. Mark Probert is the author of Another Journey Through Britain about a motorcycle road trip through the back lanes of Great Britain. Show notes * Riding the length of Britain on a motorbike * The pros and cons of motorbike travel * Changes to parts of Britain over decades * Enjoying food specific to local areas (like cheddar in Cheddar) * Does reporting on travel change your experience of it? And does that matter? * Reflections on the passing of time * Recommended travel books You can find Mark Probert at MGProbert.com Transcript of the interview Jo Frances Penn: Mark Probert is the author of Another Journey Through Britain about a motorcycle road trip through the back lanes of Great Britain. Welcome, Mark. Mark Probert: Hi, Joanna, thank you for inviting me. Jo Frances Penn: I’m excited to talk to you today. Before we even get into that bike trip, I want to ask about your previous career because you spent 28 years working for Ordnance Survey as a mapmaker all over the world. And I’m thrilled by that. It just sounds so exciting. Tell us what drew you into mapmaking and what were some of the highlights? Mark Probert: I was basically very lucky. When I think back the first time I got hooked into maps was probably going back to my teenage years at school. I really loved geography. I loved all those field trips to places like the Isle of Purbeck and Yorkshire Dales and I just love the maps. I think some people’s brains just work that way, don’t they? Some people work with numbers and some people work spatially. And I love the maps. When I first started work, my first full-time job, it was actually updating charts, rain charts. That was in Southampton. But as luck would have it, I saw in the newspaper one evening that Ordnance Survey was advertising for surveyors. And I applied and things just fell into place. And the rest is history. So, yes, I spent 28 years with Ordnance Survey. The first half of that was as a land surveyor. I worked up and down the country, literally from Land’s End to John o’Groats, updating the various scales of mapping. And then I left the surveying side of it, and I went into the R&D section. This is back in the ’80s. This is quite a long time ago now. It was the early days of digital mapping. And it was very, very exciting stuff in those days. We all take it for granted now, because we just look at all this digital mapping, and aerial photography on our phones now, and everybody’s got access to it. But back in those days, it was pretty groundbreaking stuff. And then I moved into the marketing section for a while. And then I moved into the international section. I had my first couple of jobs. One was in Latvia, one was in Croatia. And I was pretty hooked on that overseas work by then. And then I was really lucky to have a couple of years or two and a half years working in Paris and took the whole family out there. I left Ordnance Survey in 2003, and set up my own company, and carried on working abroad. And my sphere of work was first of all Eastern Europe. And then it gradually went further east; went out to places like Azerbaijan and Mongolia. And then there was a period where it was all Africa, places like Zanzibar, Ghana, Rwanda, Senegal.