TeapotOne / Riding RTW On An Inappropriate Bike, and Loving It! - Adventure Rider

Riding a motorcycle ’round the world is not everyone’s dream, but it sure intrigues more than a few. As you ride familiar questions are asked – Why are you doing it? What happened to make you leave when you did? Why that bike? What will you do when you are finished?

Bruce Smart aka Teapot One, answers all of these questions and is an inspiration to many, this is his story…

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Tell us a little about you as a person, and why did you choose the name TeapotOne?

Hi, my name is Bruce Smart, I’m a 45yr old Scotsman who now lives down in Kent in the South East of England. Back in 2012 I set off to ride around the world after promising my mum (before she passed away from cancer) that I’d live out my dream to do just that.

Up until about 2 years ago I was police officer in the Met in London, and TeapotOne is the callsign for the Met’s catering truck. It’s basically a NAAFI-wagon that would be used when there were large numbers of officers deployed to events like demonstrations, pre-planned ops etc.

It just meant you got 10 minutes off the front line for a brew, biscuit, cigarette etc. As I was taking a career break from the Met to do my trip, one of my mates said why not call the trip ‘TeapotOne’ – and that was that.

What bike did you ride RTW and why?
I rode a 2011 Suzuki GSX-R1000 around the world. It was completely stock apart from a Pipewerx slip-on, R&G heated grips, and a K&N air filter.

Why? – Why not? Any bike will go anywhere, it’s just a question of mindset. I was told by the great Sjaak Lucassen, who has ridden an R1 around the world on an epic trip lasting almost five years, to “just take the bike that makes you smile”.

Never a truer word said.

Most people hit the road on a bike they owned already. Was this the case with you?
Yep, I did make enquiries to try and get sponsored by a manufacturer but none of them were interested. I’d always ridden Gixxers, I currently owned one, so that’s the bike I took.

Did you have anybody motivate you for this ride?

My mum was the motivation for sure, her words – ‘Live Your Life’ changed my world in an instant when she said them, and I’ve tried to live by them ever since.

I also have a son who would have been around 14 when I left, and I wanted to show him that if you set your mind on something, anything is possible.

My Mrs was a huge inspiration too, we met after I’d started planning the trip, so it was always on the horizon for us in the future, yet she stuck by me the whole way, never once trying to stop me or playing the guilt game. She was my rock throughout and still is to this day.

What was the turning point in your life to make you hit the road?

The death of my mum was the impetuous for sure. I’d also had a situation at work where I literally ended up staring down the barrel of a loaded gun, hearing it go click … and then nothing. Thankfully it misfired.

Things like that can make you look at your life a bit, so I made the decision to go for it and that was that.

What are some of the challenges of riding a bike like yours, and what are some of the positives?

I genuinely never had any horrendous comfort issues when riding a sportsbike. I’d always ridden them – my first-ever bike was a GSX-R600 and I moved to a GSX-R1000 after about eight months. I rode every single day and used to cover around 40,000 miles a year on the bike—I literally went everywhere on it. I’d sold my car.

I toured Europe whenever I could, thinking nothing of big mileage days, spending 18 hours in the saddle. I was young and stupid, but in love with biking so didn’t care.

Obviously a sportsbike is hard work on rough terrain, but I’d never ridden offroad before so it wouldn’t have mattered if I had a ‘proper’ adventure bike as I’d still have no idea how to ride offroad. I just took my time when the road ran out and ground out the miles until some kind of tarmac returned – to be honest the sections where the road ended were some of the most memorable.

Positives of riding a sportsbike on a big trip?

You really do attract attention from people so making friends was never an issue. All people wanted to do was sit on the bike and have a pic taken. It was a fantastic ice breaker.

Most of your ride was on shown on YouTube, why did you pick that format to share?

I’d watched a few trips on YouTube, like Nick Sanders, some of Sjaak Lucassen’s, Brainrotting and a few others, and YouTube was still fairly new then. Baron Von Grumble was just starting to come onto the horizon and I thought it would be a great way to not only let my family and friends follow my journey, but also to help promote it and in turn help raise funds and awareness for my chosen charities.

The route you showed before leaving isn’t the route you did. What made you change that?

Aye, my initial route was 100,000 miles and included a circumnavigation of Africa, the Middle East, India, Nepal, China, New Zealand, the extremes of the American continent, Iceland and a few others. After it went a bit wrong in Africa and I ended up back in the UK, I re-evaluated my route and just wasn’t prepared to take the risk of riding through places like Iraq, Iran, Syria, etc., in case I ended up having to be rescued and that would put other people’s life in danger just because I wanted a thrill.

财政是同样一个问题我就卖everything I owned to do the trip and I’d lost a fair bit of that on the first attempt. So, I made the decision to alter the route and cut it down to around 70,000 miles. I rode all the countries highlighted in red.

I’ll just have to go back at some point and ride the bits I missed out.

What were the challenges for your route, logistically speaking? In hindsight, would you take the same one if you were to do it again?

Visas are always an issue—they change from country to country. Some you must apply for from your home country, others you simply get at the border when you ride in. Some are given for a set period which starts the day you are given the visa, others start only once you enter that specific country.

Some countries like China require you to always have a government guide with you, so you must pay for them the whole time they’re with you. Plus, they tell you what you can and can’t see. I didn’t want that, so missed out on China.

Would I do the same route again? I’d be perfectly happy to, yes, but I’ve done it now, so I’d like to visit places I’ve not been to yet.

Where would you consider the toughest area you’ve ridden, and why?

There’s a few places that were physically hard to ride in for various reasons.

Parts of Laos had no road, so that was challenging at times.

I went through Australia during the height of their summer, so it hit 53 degrees Celsius in the outback—not good in a leather suit.

It hit -38 Celsius with windchill in Canada, and I only had a fleece to put over my leather suit, so that wasn’t great planning on my part.

But no matter what the tough days were like, you simply had to remind yourself that you were riding the world, something most people would give anything to do. As with life in general, you grind through the bad parts to appreciate the good.

Scariest moment on your travels?

My absolute lowest point of the whole trip was ending up back home after it went wrong in Mauritania. I felt a complete failure, was embarrassed for my Mrs., family and friends as I’d made such a ‘thing’ about going on the trip, and ultimately I’d let my mum down on the promise I’d made her.

也就是说,被一伙人正在with the police at the Rosso border in Mauritania, then held for hours in a concrete room whilst people pointed guns at my head trying to get all my money out me, wasn’t the best either.

(1st of the 4 times I snapped my rear subframe – you just have to keep going)

It’s just how things are done in certain countries, I know that now, but at the time it was such a culture shock. I’ll go back and ride Africa again though, that’s for sure.

Most memorable day?
I was in Laos and making my way down to Cambodia. I’d been to see the incredible Plain of Jars and whilst planning my next section on of route on Google Maps, I’d noticed an awesome-looking twisty section of road through the mountains that I really wanted to ride. (Laos has some incredible riding roads in places, beautiful stretches of tarmac that skirt up and down along gloriously lush, green, forest-carpeted mountains and valleys.)

I kept trying to plot a route with my GPS but it wouldn’t let me do it, so I went anyway and just followed my nose.

All was good to begin with but then the tarmac changed to gravel. I pushed on, gambling that it would soon go back to tarmac down the road. It didn’t.

I ended up riding around 80 miles over the next few days in some truly epic conditions. Thick mud, sand, loose rocks, landslides, steep rocky paths with 100ft sheer drops to rivers down below—it was possibly the hardest thing I’ve ever done. At times I literally had to drag the bike up and over rock-slides.

They hadn’t actually built the road yet, you see—they’d cleared a rough route in places, but at best it was just a muddy path.

更糟糕的是我被迅速耗尽fuel and literally at the last-chance salon when I saw a local come by on a wee moped. I asked him where to get fuel by pointing at my tank and empty jerry can. He just pointed down the way he’d come and rode off.

Literally five minutes later I was filling up fuel in a full-on proper petrol station forecourt, in the middle of nowhere without any roads? I still don’t understand why it was there?

Most riders after a RTW tend to disappear, and that’s not the case with you. What have you been up to since you got home and what keeps you busy now?

Coming back home and dealing with life after the dream is hard. Really hard. Nobody ever mentioned to me how hard that would be actually, and it took me a good 8-12 months to sort my head out and get used to being home, stationary, and back in my old life.

But I never really did feel like I fitted in that old life anymore, I’d changed but nothing else around me had.

I really missed the social interaction I had when on the trip—not just person-to-person with the people you meet along the way, but also the community I’d built up across my Facebook page and YouTube vids.

在我的脑海里“TeapotOne”只是我的环球套票旅行,所以它was finished as soon as I got home. I stopped doing all the vids and didn’t really feel I had anything to post about, except the odd talk at overland events I’d do, or the release of my book I wrote about the trip.

By the end of 2016, I was feeling pretty lost to be honest, and decided to do a wee vid on YouTube, covering lots of questions people had been asking me since I’d finished the trip back in the summer of 2014.

It seemed to go down well with people and all of a sudden it felt like I had that connection with people again through the comments. I decided to try and do a vid once a week and just see what happened—and the rest is history.

Four years later I resigned from the police and went full time on YouTube, and now have around 60,000 subscribers with a reach across my socials going into the millions.

I’ve also started doing my own tours to the Picos and Pyrenees in Spain, and also take groups away with other tour companies I built relationships with over the years.

During lockdown I started a podcast called “Bru Time” that has already become one of the top 10% in the world somehow! I’ve already had guests like Peter Hickman, Matt Pritchard, Sam Manicom, Sean Conway, Lyndon Poskitt, and loads more people from all different walks of life.

It’s not always to do with motorcycles or travel, but I like to have people on who have a story to tell and fit my ‘Live Your Life’ mantra. I love it!

My plan for the future is to keep building the YouTube channel and smash that 100,000 sub mark this year if I can, as well as keep growing the podcast, meet lots of new interesting people and discover lots more awesome places around the UK and beyond—all whilst riding fantastic roads on great bikes to get there.

As a very wise and beautiful person once said to me, “Look after those you love, but LIVE your life”. I intend to.