I met Fred in a dingy Yorkshire pub in 2010. He was finishing a degree in engineering and my filmmaking career was well begun. Over a few, we discovered a mutual lust for adventure - but it wasn't for almost another decade that we would find an opportunity to collaborate.
Since graduating Fred had moved to Hereford, and each year when he came north for Christmas we would get together and catch-up. It was toward the end of 2017 that Fred arrived, excited by something which had arrived in his workshop.
It was a beaten-up, 1961 Enfield Bullet - or a motorbike if, like me, you’re uninitiated. Built in Redditch and shipped out as a kit of parts, the bike spent nearly its entire life cruising around India. After its repatriation the bike fell into Fred’s hands and rather than fettling it back into form as just-another vintage petrol bike, Fred had a far more novel idea.
The well-worn engine and gearbox were retired and replaced, Frankenstein’s monster style, with an electric motor and lithium batteries; salvaged from a knackered Nissan Leaf. The result is a peculiar juxtaposition: a low-riding, chunky, chopper-style bike that purrs by with whisper-quiet, electric hums and whirrs.
With electric vehicles on the brink of becoming commonplace, we agreed this was an interesting story. Over gallons of tea in the workshop we shared stories about other green transport tech we found interesting, while Fred tinkered with the bike. It wasn’t long before a line could be drawn, joining these dots together on a map. And the trajectory was intriguing: a diagonal from southwest to northeast - a meandering mission along Britain’s most iconic overland journey. So I challenged Fred to get his 50-mile-range commuter bike from Land’s End to John o’Groats.
The expedition was going to be ambitious. I’d drive a support vehicle filled with my filmmaking apparatus, a miniature workshop of Fred’s tools, and all the cooking and camping kit we’d need to survive a month on the road; while Fred rode ahead on his electric steel-horse. We scraped together the cash we needed for our no-frills adventure with a crowdfunding campaign, and a bit of researching, writing and itinerary planning later we found ourselves at Land’s End on a brilliantly sunny, early October morning.
You can read about building the bike and our voyage on Fred’s blog, and you can see the film - my first feature - right here:
The Charging Bullet made the official selection at the Santa Cruz Moto Film Festival, Adventure Travel Film Festivals in the UK and Australia, and was nominated for Best Independent at the International Motor Film Awards.