Beard learned to ride a motorcycle on Salisbury Plain at the age of 16. She began her global journey in 1982, after the third year of her architect training course, using a BMW R60/6 motorcycle. She added soft panniers, a tank bag and an extra bag lashed to the pillion seat before she embarked on the trip. She began her journey in New York City, United States, having shipped the bike from the United Kingdom. From there, she motorcycled to Canada and Mexico and back to the US before shipping her bike to Sydney, Australia.

In Sydney, she spent eleven months working as an architect before motorcycling across Australia. In Townsville, Queensland, she had an accident which left her hospitalised for two weeks. Afterwards, she travelled to Singapore, where she spent 6 weeks replacing important documents and gear after they were all stolen; then she travelled into Asia. In Thailand, she collided with a dog and recuperated with a local family who fed her the remains of the dog she had crashed into. At the time of the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, the entire Punjab state was closed. Beard forged the necessary permit to get out of the Punjab region and travelled into Pakistan before riding back into Europe via Turkey. She arrived in the United Kingdom in 1984, having travelled 35,000 miles (56,000 km). In doing so, she became the first Englishwoman to motorcycle around the world.

When Beard returned from the trip, there was a lack of interest for what she had accomplished, as she stated in an interview: "After I got back and nobody was interested in what I'd done, I just shoved everything into the back of the garage. I just kind of moved on with my life."

Her 2017 autobiography Lone Rider chronicles the circumnavigation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elspeth_Beard 

A great many equestrian travelers could say they were inspired to take to the saddle because of the exploits of someone who rode before them. However John Beard is the only horseback traveler whose journey can be directly linked to the influence of the famous Buffalo Bill Cody. Beard determined as a child that he wanted to see the Wild West from the back of a horse after a visit to Cody's legendary Wild West show. Yet it was to be more than sixty years after seeing the flamboyant American showman before Beard, and his wife Lulu, finally mounted their dreams. Setting off on a matched pair of horses, Black Diamond and Black Fairy, the Beards left to discover the long cherished equestrian quest of the author's youth. Their mission in 1948 was to ride the length of the Old Oregon Trail. What followed was a 2,500 mile odyssey from Oregon to Missouri through a vast sea of weariness, thirst, hunger, hardship, and danger as the aged equestrians rode down the trail of their pioneer forefathers. Amply illustrated with photographs, "Saddles East" is more than a mere tale of adventure, it is the romantic story of two pilgrims of the sunrise riding back into the morning of their youth, hunting for America's yesterday with everything they own on the backs of their faithful horses.