James Briggs, 46, cycled 3,000 miles across Europe following the trail of David Bowie's career after a midlife crisis struck in 2016. Inspired by the lyrics of the 1973 single Life On Mars?, his journey became a book, From Ibiza To The Norfolk Broads: A Bowie Odyssey.
A midlife crisis sparked by a song
Briggs, then an advertising copywriter, was singing a mournful version of Life On Mars? in the shower when the solution hit him. He needed to listen to Bowie, specifically the lyrics: “See the mice in their million hordes, from Ibiza to the Norfolk Broads.”
“I used to cycle into work every day in London,” he says. “And that kind of connection was ‘oh, maybe I could travel it. I could do it on the bike.’ From there it just became like a fire.”
“I was probably at a stage of my life where I’d been working 10 years in a career, and I was just, like, ‘oh God, is this all there is?’”
Plotting a route across Europe
He took all his annual leave in one go and got a bike through the cycle-to-work scheme. Using Google Maps, he plotted a journey from Ibiza to the Norfolk Broads. The most direct route would have taken him straight up through Spain and France in roughly 103 hours, but he instead focused on places connected to Bowie's career.
“I started looking at everywhere he played in Europe,” he says. “Berlin, the big concerts – he was that famous, he’d kind of played everywhere. And then he’d recorded a lot in Europe as well, in a lot of different studios.”
His path took him through France and Switzerland, where Bowie married supermodel Iman in 1992, before heading east to the Kremlin Palace Concert Hall in Moscow, where he played in 1996.
Challenges and memorable encounters
“It was about 3,000 miles and I didn’t know what I was doing,” he says. “I had never done anything like that on a bike before, I was very naïve. So I went across mountains with the wrong kind of equipment.”
He travelled between places of interest with massive stretches of nothing – 300 miles along French and Spanish hard shoulders – where personal thoughts could come out. Locals often asked what he was doing, but some had the opposite reaction. At the Château d’Hérouville, where Bowie recorded Low, the mayor of the village turned up to meet him.
His journey also took him through Berlin, where Bowie spent some of his most creative years in the 1970s. “It feels like an obvious answer, but there’s so much of him there,” he says. “I got to dig into more of those artistic things, like going to different galleries he went to, and to Berthold Brecht’s house, this playwright who inspired him.”
A new perspective on life
Briggs now says his six-week Bowie “pilgrimage” gave him a different perspective on life. “It was almost like a grieving thing, in reaction to his death,” he says. “But it’s definitely one of the best things I’ve ever done.”
“It gave me more love for Bowie. And I think it made me more optimistic about the day to day, you know. Like, don't get stuck down in jobs you hate. You can quit, and there will be another job – even if you hate the next one too.”
From Ibiza To The Norfolk Broads: A Bowie Odyssey, by James Briggs, is out now from Icon Books, RRP £10.99.
