Monkey business: Venturo biking on the remote Scottish island of Jura

“We’ll host you, give you a vehicle, and point you in the rough direction,” says Tom Morgan, the convivial dreamer and architect behind ‘The Adventurists’ who has met us at the shore. “After that, you’re on your own. If you break your legs, you’re going to be crawling your way out.”

Photography: Mark Riccioni

Given it’s taken myself and photographer Mark Riccioni two days, three boats and the minor inconvenience of having to get our car towed out of a ditch by a farmer to even get to this point, these are hardly words of reassurance.

But my journey is rather paltry compared to some. In our random cabal of helmeted misfits is one chap who has arrived from Bulawayo, Zimbabwe... via Harare, Lusaka, Dubai, London, two trains to Oban, a bus and a not insignificant hitchhike. But that doesn’t matter, because that’s the aim of the game. We’re all here for one reason: adventure.

See, video may have killed the radio star, but convenience is destroying the very essence of adventure. Nowadays, in a world of clout chasing and instant gratification, being adventurous is seen as going to a restaurant without checking it out on Tripadvisor first. Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay must be so proud. And it’s not like marketing departments are helping.

In the car industry, we’re constantly force fed ‘lifestyle’ images of the perfect nuclear family – vacuum packed in Gore-Tex – on their way to kayak through the Rockies or paddleboard around Socotra. In reality, they’re arguing on the way back from Sainsbury’s.

True adventure embraces exploration, challenges curiosity and requires you to surrender expectation and comfort to go with the flow and allow discovery and uncertainty to be the memorable moments, not a generic selfie.

Someone who knows this more than anyone is our puppet master Tom, who, thanks to an obsession with his gran's National Geographic mags, a flunked art degree, zero financial or business sense, plus a fascination with utterly stupid endeavours, has made hilarious adventures his raison d’être.

It started when he bought a shonky Fiat 126 while at university and attempted to drive it to the most stupid place he could think of – Mongolia. This kernel of idiocy led to the inception of the now wildly successful ‘come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough’ Mongol Rally.

This has snowballed into other adventures which you can get involved in; like the Rickshaw Run (where you can take on India in what’s effectively a glorified lawnmower), the Icarus Trophy (the world’s toughest paramotor adventure race), the Kraken Cup (a hollowed out mango tree and a bedsheet against the ocean), the Mongol Derby (the biggest equine adventure race on the planet recreating Genghis Khan’s postal system across the Mongolian steppe) and the Monkey Run (where minuscule motorbikes take on giant adventures across Africa, South America and beyond).

It was during his latest monkey bike-based endeavour where a lightbulb moment happened. Having bought around 400 monkey bikes over the years, Tom got fed up that the only apparent design principle was cheapness. So, he thought he’d build his own.

“I wanted to make the ultimate adventure machine,” Tom says. “Something that could swallow the earth whole, then s*** it out the other side in a little adventure-shaped brick.”

His philosophy was clear – it had to be structurally sound but simple enough that if you break down in the Kazakh desert you can fix it. It had to look good. And hold anything you could possibly need, from your pants to your grandmother. Oh, and Tom also wanted it to fly.

It would be called the Venturo, and after supply chain issues, a pandemic, plus lots of swearing at the DVLA, Tom made his dream a reality. Including the flying bit. But you can’t just buy a Venturo. You must earn it.

Once you’ve paid your £3,900, you’re sent a GPS pin of where your bike is – normally in an insanely inconvenient part of the world, so your Venturo journey starts with an adventure. Which is why I’m on Jura, with the first Venturo customers.

The plan is to find, exhume, and ride the Venturos off the island. Problem is, being Jura, the most tempestuous and thick accented of Scottish rains has started to descend from the skies. And there’s no phone signal.

We scatter, and I begin a lung cauterising hike up ancient, slippery slopes in search of a bike. It is shortly after that I get my left boot stuck in thick grey sludge. Quickly followed by my right. It’s going to be a long day.

After some signing, crawling and scrambling over peat black burns, as well as faffing through brambles and some breathless swearing, poking out of some of the bracken I see a glinting streak of chrome hope. Running over to it, I boil over with sweat to see a pint-sized bike on its side, tried under a blanket of auburn ferns. 

Too tired to celebrate, I sit in a bog to recover and admire the Venturo. It’s sensationally handsome and simple, put together with proper materials and thought. Fitted with a four-speed gearbox, carburetted 125cc engine, upgraded suspension, bespoke frame, strengthened pegs, uprated electrics and finished in green over tan, it’s not hard to see why people have been obsessed with these clever, diddy bikes for so many years.

Monkey mayhem hit fever pitch in the 1970s, when every flare wearer worth their hippy bath salts wanted one. But the first bikes date back to 1961 when an amusement park in Tokyo wanted some tiddly bikes for kids to tool around on. Honda stepped up to the plate and developed what was effectively a tiny, two-wheeled 49cc toy.

But with an adorable design, distinctive chrome tank, folding handlebars and 5.0in rigidly mounted wheels, it proved to be a massive draw for child-minded adults too. So much so, that a road-going version was developed and exported to America and Europe in 1963.

A Venturo infantilises you, it's a balance bike with torque

Over the next decade, it kept on developing and getting both physically and culturally bigger. By 1969 its wheels increased to 8.0 inches, and in 1970 it gained quick detach forks, meaning it could fit into the boot of a small car, making it the perfect tender for people needing to mooch around town. But now, Venturos can take people further afield. If I can get out of this godforsaken bog.

Not having the luxury of a starter motor, and having been on its side, firing the thing into life requires a reinforced quadricep and a lot of patience. After many attempts, it rings into life with a surprising throatiness. I kick down a gear and head off... to instantly get it stuck in the mud. I’m definitely starting to think that the ‘FML’ numberplate is a cruel joke.

But with it only weighing 67kg and sitting 1,400mm long and 960mm tall, you simply pick up your mucky steed and manoeuvre it out of any obstacle. Lowering the pressures on the knobbly tyres makes traction more apparent, so I set off in the direction I came in.

The challenging landscape continues as I reach a water crossing. With significant ‘arm pump’, I whiskey throttle my way through, rather fitting considering Jura and its sibling island produce 20,000,000 litres of the stuff a year. But nearly falling off the bike as the LED headlight points to the sky, I take solace in the fact I can see firmer ground ahead.

Thanks to my phone’s magical compass, I know I’m at the north end of Jura and east of the Gulf of Corryvreckan, home to one of the world’s largest whirlpools. To get the ferry, I must head south, down the east coast. I point the bike that way and pin the throttle, bobbling through wet, slimy boulder fields.

A Venturo infantilises you, it’s basically a balance bike with torque. It also makes you a better rider as you get to understand basic bike handling dynamics on a shrunken scale: twist your wrist too much and the back end will step out or the front will come up. Grab the brakes forcefully and the front end will fold under itself.

Luckily there’s no clutch to worry about and if there’s any slip you can put your foot down and catch the bike. On a proper motorbike that’d end up in a snapped leg. Not ideal when the nearest hospital is hours away.

As my arse comfortably numbs, I pass Barnhill, a stout whitewashed house where George Orwell lived from 1946–48 and wrote his famed dystopian novel on totalitarianism, surveillance, censorship and the manipulation of truth. None of this is going through my head, the more considerable concern is if I’ve got enough fuel in the 4.5-litre tank.

Ploughing on, mile after mile, puddle after puddle, splash after splash, the scenery opens up, making the tiny bike and me feel even smaller.

All of this culminates in one of those weirdly reflective moments that isolation and adventure gifts you – a sense of freedom and discovery that can easily rebalance your outlook on life. But then so can hard, smooth tarmac, which 25 miles later, I hit. 

There’s only one road on the island and the Venturo becomes a different beast on it. Being so small, it’s hilariously playful and fun – solid proof that driving a slow thing fast is better than driving a fast thing slow. Pair this with Jura’s coastline – a symphony of rugged cliffs, serene turquoise beaches, and hidden coves – and it starts to become almost idyllic. But knowing the exfiltration ferry is infrequent (if there at all), I need to press on.

As the sun comes out, I tuck my head down into the CNC triple yoke dashboard, say a prayer and channel my inner monkey bike Marc Márquez. No matter how hard I push the bike, I need not worry about ending up in jail for two crucial reasons – with a top speed of 60mph the Venturo can’t punch through the national speed limit. More importantly, Jura doesn’t have a police force.

Shifting my body weight around on the bike, the Venturo responds incredibly positively. Sometimes too positively. Shifting pressure on the pegs can have a drastic effect on dynamics. But with a raspy vintage exhaust and backfire, and no one on the road, it starts to feel like I’m wearing some bizarre VR headset – epic beauty, snaking roads and no one else around.

I pass Craighouse, Jura’s biggest and only ‘town’. Don’t get your hopes up, it’s just a shop (closed) and a distillery. So I keep my head down and the revs up, heading further south, ascending over the topography to see the distinctive Paps of Jura, a trio of conical mountains that dominate the island’s skyline, and more importantly I spot the slipway for the ferry.

Shortly afterwards a buzz of other Venturos swarms in, everyone covered in mud (some with singed eyebrows having ridden through a fire) but all with beaming smiles. Bobbing back to the mainland and reality we share stories of our adventure, a tale made away from the safety of our mundane, over-scheduled lives. Tom and the little Venturo had helped strip away the superfluous layers of comfort and convenience so we could rediscover something raw and gloriously unfiltered. True adventure. So get off Tripadvisor and go have one. Or buy a Venturo and be forced to.