The year is 1988.

The Cold War is ending.

Europe's near-abroad unlocks.

... and a 30-year-old Londoner attempts a road trip from France to western Turkey in a vintage Bentley.

This journey unfolds into a circumnavigation of the Mediterranean Sea.

For his next expedition, the author plans to ride a Russian copy of a German WWII military motorcycle with sidecar from Moscow to Madrid.

In the final episode he and his new bride drive a condemned VW Beetle from Tuscany through the Bosnian war zone into Albania.

Spanning eight years, these three journals give a kerbside view of late twentieth-century Europe, a time and place already unfamiliar.