If you’ve got this far, you probably don’t need me to tell you about the Enfield Bullet but basically the Classic is little changed from its original design of the 1950s. So adaptable is it for rugged terrain, heat, cold and bodged repairs that the entire factory was bought from Redditch, England and shipped to Chennai in India in the 1960s. They could see it would be the best machine for the country’s police and army at a time when the British motorcycle industry was being soundly beaten by Japanese imports. Enfields have been made in India ever since with new models popping up from time to time. New ones have disc brakes and electric starter and meet worldwide noise and emission requirements. In March 2007 when it was seven years old, mine just scraped into the UK in time, before new controls would have meant it not being allowed to come home with me. It would have been like abandoning my best friend and such a thing is unimaginable.

I didn’t choose the Enfield. The Dutchman I’d met was travelling on one. It was his idea. He gets the credit. Owning any other motorcycle would be unthinkable!

From Chennai to Bristol this wondrous motorbike took me about 40,000 miles (67.500kms). That has to be an estimate as I wiped off the speedometer hub drive when I did a sideways pirouette on a muddy road in Nepal and was without one for a while.

I do not refer to it as a Royal Enfield. That would be too pretentious for a machine that looks like it does now. Anyway it doesn’t matter to us. It has dents and scratches and quirky alterations and parts that shouldn’t be there and would never win a ‘Best Bike’ prize at any show. But each knock and idiosyncrasy recalls an event.

I’m not a brilliant mechanic but I can do some basic maintenance after all these years and miles. All I know is that when I’m riding it, I get that stupid grin that lasts the whole journey. People get ‘high’ from drugs or aerobic exercise. I just have to ride my Enfield. I don’t like being cold though. Then the grin becomes a frozen grimace.

It lives with me on a Dutch barge in Bristol harbour and is still my only means of transport. I know it’s just bits of metal, but the whole is greater than the sum of its individual parts and is my only concession to materialism.

Jacqui and her Royal Enfield