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called Ship to Shore and
     is situated on a section of coastline dotted with colonial-style homes with sweeping driveways. Gordon told me that John,
     a former shucking champion, was definitely the ‘Mr Oyster’ of the island – he knew all there was to know about crustaceans
     and in another life might well have even been an oyster.
    Mr Oyster had gone ahead to get things ready and was inside the restaurant, all ready with a plate of oysters and a chilled
     bottle of wine on the counter waiting for us. The ones he was serving were five to eight years old, which made for really
     good eating and they were, of course, the best quality. John started shucking, and man, could he shuck. He worked his knife
     under the shell and a moment later the thing was opened perfectly – no grit, no slivers of shell. In his words, the oyster
     didn’t even know that it was open. Gordon told me that in competition it’s not only the speed with which the oyster can be
     shucked that is judged, but how well. Given that it takes between five and eight years to grow one fit for a restaurant table,
     it has to be perfectly presented. John could open one every four or five seconds and they all looked like the pristine example
     on the plate before me.
    For the past fifty-two years, the world oyster shucking championships have taken place in Galway, Ireland, and John had been
     over three times. There is no prize money on offer, justthe glory. (Although John told me that if you’re known as a world-class shucker, then of course you get more trade.) Me, I’m
     not the best at opening the shells, but when it comes to eating them, the old Boorman magic just seems to kick in. All it
     takes is a chilled glass of wine and, in this case, some salt, vinegar and cracked black pepper.

3
Deliverance
    B y the time we hit New Brunswick, I was full of it. I had four hours’ off-road biking to look forward to and I could not wait.
     So far we’d only been on tarmac, but I grew up riding off road in the woods and hills around my father’s place at Annamoe.
     God, those were the days: carefree, fun-filled; if I wasn’t blatting through the green lanes I was floating down the Avonmore
     on an inner tube.
    Life goes by so fast. Now I have teenage children of my own, but it seems only yesterday that I was just a teenager myself.
     I know what you’re thinking: you still are, Charley, you still are. And it’s true in a way, I suppose. My dad’s always telling
     me that he’s spent his life swimming against the current, while I’ve spent mine bobbing downstream.
    Although Quebec is the only Canadian province where French is the official language, a third of the population of New Brunswick
     speak it as their first language, and constitutionally the provinceis the only one that’s listed as bilingual. New Brunswick borders Quebec and Nova Scotia and opens on to the Gulf of St Lawrence
     on its north-eastern boundary. We hooked up with a few of the English-speakers, a bunch of guys who run the New Brunswick
     Dual Sport Club. The guide was a heavy-set guy called Mike, with cropped hair and a wide smile. He mentioned that my 250cc
     dirt bike was brand new and that I had to break it in for him Charley Boorman style. I hadn’t been on a dirt bike in a while,
     though, so I thought I ought to get my excuses in early … you know, the dodgy knee and dodgy arm, the dodgy head, that kind
     of thing.
    Mike led the way deep into the woodland to a bespoke but very narrow enduro trail. The truth is, I felt a tad rusty, but you
     don’t really ever lose it, and once the adrenalin started to fully kick in, I was back in the groove. There was this one corner,
     mind you, that caught me out every time – a sharp left-hander where the trail fell away, the front wheel dug in and I was over
     the handlebars with memories of my crash at the Dakar Rally in 2006 flying through my head. Every time I took that bend it
     was the same, and after a while it really began to