6 January 2009 – Daramane Junction with the Diboli to Kayes Road, Mali
Driving into Mali gave me very mixed emotions. I was very glad to finally be here having planned on travelling to Mali since spring 2005 but equally it was a desperately sad reason that brought me to this spot in the first place. My friend, one time mentor and all-round amazing man, Simon Milward, died about 45 kilometres from the Senegalese border. Nailing Simon's picture to the baobab tree where other friends had carved their names I reflected on his life and death.
| He was on a round-the-world trip which had taken him across five continents over five years. No-one knows what happened to cause him to crash his hand-built motorbike and kill him instantly but having driven thousands of kilometres in this part of the world along roads which have at times reduced the Mog to just 20 kilometres per hour I am now beginning to understand. |  |
| Due to extensive refurfacing projects, the roads are in much better condition than when he was travelling along them just under four years ago but still, in places, they are...well... dilapidated just isn’t a strong enough word! In addition to the road surface a constant stream of animals wander about on the roads – goats, cattle and donkeys the prime suspects but also a very beautiful, vivid blue bird flies directly across the path of vehicles. Even though he was one of the most experienced motorcyclists I have ever met, it would only have taken Simon a momentary loss of concentration to make him swerve to miss an animal or deep pothole half-filled with sand. | |
Simon had worked with Motorcycle Action Group as the Southwest representative and I used to try to decipher his handwritten scrawl handed to me on ripped up beer mats or disassembled fag packets and type them into neat letters to send to MPs or collate them into speeches which he delivered to the motorcycle fraternity. Trying to organise Simon was ... I think a job description would term it as “challenging”! But we also shared laughter, beer, food and good memories and he was eternally generous, kind and understanding to everyone he met.
During his round the world ride he collected money for Medecines Sans Frontieres but once he saw the poverty and hardship first-hand he was moved to set up a project in Indonesia which he dubbed ‘Health for All’. This project was based on the Riders for Health principal of delivering healthcare to individuals usually deprived of such a basic need via small, lightweight motorcycles which could negotiate terrain and conditions even 4x4 vehicles could not. After Simon died a group of likeminded people decided to carry on the work he started and formed Motorcycle Outreach, a UK charity which continues to deliver healthcare to around 45,000 people on the island of Flores in Indonesia. The charity hopes to extend the project to other islands and other areas.
| Standing where Simon died I was finally allowed to say goodbye to him properly. To say ‘rest in peace’ would be a joke as Simon never rested in anything he did. He threw himself at and into everything and never sat still for more than five minutes together. As Ian Mutch so accurately described Simon, “Even when he was stationary he looked like he was still moving”! |  |
| His death left a hole in the lives of not just his lovely mum, Jane and brothers, Mark, Paul and Shane but everyone he encountered on his travels through life. Tributes come in from around the world from people who’d only met him for an evening or few days as well as those privileged enough to have spent longer in his company and hundreds attended his memorial service in his home town of Exeter. | |
Everyone was stunned that he had been killed. This man was immortal. He could not die. As motorcyclists we have to believe we are not going to die or we would not leave the driveway – the same goes for all dangerous activities, it is not fear of death that makes someone climb Everest but the exhilaration of the climb. To have someone immortal like Simon die brought home the fact that we bikers must be mortal after all. On that long day in March 2005 we lost our innocence as well as an amazing friend.
Simon Milward
28 Jan 1965 - 4 March 2005