In the current issue of ADVMoto we review Down and Out, serial-world traveller Greg Frazier’s autobiography. Well, it looks like these old adv moto hands are all at it now. UK-based Adventure Motorcycling Handbook author Chris Scott is about to publish Adventures in Motorcycling – Despatching through 80s London, and he's very keen to stress ‘this is not a handbook’.

It tells a parallel tale to his kindle book Desert Travels, also set in the 1980s, but in the Sahara, but is quite a different story. ‘Looking back, it’s actually shocking what we got away with back then. Laws were either seen as irrelevant or used as guidelines among the riders I knew, though we were hardly some ‘Wild Bunch’ of delinquents. It was just the era, compounded by the sharply polarised politics in the UK back then, and of course the compulsive nature of motorcycle messengering. The faster you go the more you earn. How fast was too much?’

Set largely in London, there’ll be plenty to wag your finger at in the new book, but there’s also plenty of wholesome dual sport action. Most of the forty-plus bikes Chris ran during that time where either demented enduro strokers or trail bikes, including the famous original Yamaha XT600Z Ténéré. You can pre-order the kindle and paperback versions off Chris’ website – adventure-motorcyclingh.com – or enter a retro-style ‘Spot the Difference’ competition to win free copies. We’ll be reviewing the book in a future issue of ADVMoto.