Category: Big Adventures

I really should write something. It’s been weeks. Yesterday was a complete non-event. I spoke to Andy on the ‘phone and we wished each other a happy one year Ride Earth anniversary, whatever that means. That’s right – at 12:30pm one year ago on the 17th of June 2007, I was riding away from my home and into the unpredictable world, eager to sample all it could offer! Continue reading →

Remember, if you will (or read if you’ve recently joined us) back to October 2007; a memorable month for all the wrong reasons. The loss of two bank cards and the disintegration of Andy’s rear wheel led to our bicycle voyage being becalmed in Istanbul for one whole month as we waited for replacements to arrive. As we finally departed that great metropolis in mid-November, I found myself wondering if I’d visit the city in the future in a more positive manner, or whether I would eventually find some place to make my home for more than just a few… Continue reading →

Last night I revisited the venue in Yerevan where Andy and I gave a presentation back in February. Common Ground is the project of a local NGO to provide an open forum for interested people from all backgrounds to discuss today’s issues and attend presentations in English. The organiser, an Armenian woman who grew up in Manchester, England, introduced the event for this evening — a showing of Al Gore’s Oscar-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. Continue reading →

It’s spring again (in Armenia, at least — still snowing in England, I’ve heard)! The last of the ice melted away a couple of weeks ago, and all over the country grass and leaves are emerging from flower-beds and trees. Winter is finally behind me. Sitting in my standard-issue former-Soviet-Union flat, complete with regular water failures, no heating or gas, and dodgy wiring, I can relax. Continue reading →

Believe it or not, I finally left Yerevan on my bicycle on Sunday 2nd March 2008. I pedalled south for 70km, through the Ararat region, and camped in a field after dark opposite the factory of a company called ‘Abit Ltd’, which amused me slightly. At 7am the following morning I was on the road again. I began to climb East, away from the Ararat plateau and up into the mountains. Continue reading →

I’ve been in Yerevan for about three weeks and the hold-ups continue. My friends here like to joke that by the time I finally get this deep-winter sleeping bag and pedal south towards Iran, it’ll be spring and I won’t need it any more! That may turn out to be the case, but in the meantime it’s still well below freezing by day and by night, and I’ve heard reports that temperatures in the deserts of not-too-far-away Turkmenistan are still approaching minus thirty — even the nearby Iranian city of Mashhad is currently experiencing nighttime lows of minus twenty-five, according to… Continue reading →

We knew that as we headed out of Europe and into the Middle East and Central Asia, we’d be cutting through as much red tape as we would snow and ice. So maybe it was a good idea that we’d expected it, as international bureaucracy is becoming a bigger pain in the proverbial than a brand new leather saddle! Continue reading →

After a week of relentless and sometimes masochistic cycling covering almost 500km, we arrived in the snowy Georgian capital of Tbilisi on New Year’s Eve. At 2 a.m. Continue reading →

It seems far longer than 6 months — but at the same time it feels like we left yesterday! It’s an odd feeling, but I think I can pin it down to the fact that we have removed almost all trace of routine from our lives. I begin each day with little real idea of what will happen. Usually (but not always) I’m pretty sure it’ll involve some cycling. Today was no exception, but we were using our bikes to get around Trabzon, rather than having a long day’s slog on the road. In the previous 4 day’s cyling, we’ve… Continue reading →

We’ve spent three weeks since leaving Istanbul following the Black Sea coastline. Yesterday we completed the very hilly northern stretch, arriving in the peninsular town of Sinop. It’s a charming place with some of the friendliest people we’ve met in Turkey so far. Already we’ve been fed lunch, dinner, breakfast and lunch again, taken clubbing, given baklava to take away with us, and lent a fishing boat to sleep on. To round things off, today’s weather has been gorgeously sunny and even warm enough to spend the day exploring in only a T‑shirt. Continue reading →