At the age of sixty-eight David Stokes could not be blamed for shying away from any kind of physical activity – yet the retired military man has done anything but.

Having passed his motorbike test in 2008, he could be considered a late starter, but he has more than made up for it by clocking up more than 24,000 miles in six years.

David, from Mackenders Lane, Eccles, has travelled across the United States, to the Middle East and around Europe, and has no plans to stop in the near future, with a trip to Constanta on the horizon and a book in the works.

While visiting these exotic locations he enjoys getting off the beaten track and going where most tourists never go.

“To quote an unknown source – ‘a traveller does not know where he is going but a tourist does not know where he has been’,” he says.

This was certainly true when, in 2012, he visited Tunisia shortly after the Arab Spring.

His love for long solo trips was triggered by a 1996 trip, towing a caravan to Turkey and back in a Polish pick-up.

However, David may have caught the travel bug much earlier in his life: “My mother had wanderlust and I have got it too,” he says, while recounting the 80-mile round trip he used to make as a 14-year-old from Rainham to Margate on his bicycle.

The freelance journalist, who regularly writes pieces for motorcycling monthly Ride magazine, will set off on a 3,500km round trip on July 29, travelling across Europe for two months on a 1990 Honda motorbike on his way to Constanta in Romania, but only after he spends July celebrating his 45th wedding anniversary and his wife Jennifer’s 67th birthday,

David says he thinks his wife enjoys the peace and quiet when he’s away and particularly likes the freebies that his many trips abroad deliver.

The upcoming trip to Romania will also see David, who worked as a bus driver and postman in a previous life, travelling on barges down the Rhine and Danube, inspiration for his next adventure – a foray into literature recounting his time on Europe’s waterways, called Barging About.

One of David’s most ambitious trips came in 2010 when he rode a 50cc moped 5,500 miles across Europe, negotiating the Atlas Mountains before arriving in Marrakesh.

David returned from his most recent journey, a month-long expedition to Poland, at the end of May having completed the trip on a motorbike and sidecar purchased from ebay for £1,100 back in December.

Next year it will be all work and no play for David, if everything goes to plan – he wants to get a driving job in order to fund a trip around the world, taking in the length of Russia before travelling to South Korea and the US.