Where ? Oh yes - I didn't notice that !
Seriously - this is one of my favourite photos for various reasons, photographic and memory wise.
It was snapped in a moment - he was fairly clipping along - and you 'sense' a big tankie coming before you see or hear him. Especially at speed on a metalled road - even with the rubber blocks in. I think I'd just stopped to check my map (it's on the petrol tank) when instinct told me to get the camera out. We all had a very healthy fear of tanks - partly because 'rumour control' on exercise was rife with stories of civvies and squaddies alike coming off worst.
Photographically (and engineeringly) I like the fact that the tank itself is blurred, it's wheels are even more blurred yet the track on the ground is sharp (ish !) because it is static. So one bit of kit is doing 3 different speeds.
On a less serious note I also like it that the gun barrel is draped with black hessian as part of his scrim and this is echoed by the grips on the bike which I similarly wrapped in hessian to make them a better fit in my hand. They add to the slightly scruffy and maverick air which we liked to foster - it wound up the poor Bedford and Landie drivers who were either stuck in a Loc or stuck in a 28mph convoy while we swanned about like free spirits, stopping at an Imbiss when we felt like it, not fighting with an SLR in a Landie cab, and generally having a biking holiday on foreign soil. It wasn't all fun - we slept in the open, (Northern Germany in October) for never more than 2 hours at a time but I have fonder memories of that than I have of sleeping on a stretcher in the back of something that stank of dust, mud, bits of tree, scrim and Fullers earth.
I have a waterproof that still stinks of 'Ole Landrover' - 30 years later !
Despatch riding was a fun job - the truckers never understood why ;-)
