Category: Big Adventures
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Microadventure: Past Journeys, Lost Memories & Future Projects (Part 4)
This is the final part of an account of touring the Netherlands and the UK by recumbent bike. Start at the beginning. Two things surprised me when I woke up in a damp polo field in Cambridgeshire. Continue reading →
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Microadventure: Naivety, Uphill Battles & Small Victories in Adventure Travel (Part 3)
This is Part Three of an account of touring the Netherlands and the UK by recumbent bike. Start at the beginning. In pitch darkness I pedalled away from the port, waving goodbye to the three Londoners I’d met on the ferry. Decked out in woefully inappropriate attire — tweed, a trilby, a tie-dyed T‑shirt — they had been cycling around the Netherlands on clapped-out old bikes piled high with cheap supermarket-bought camping equipment. Not a Brooks or Ortlieb logo could be seen among them as they wobbled off, and I felt suddenly jealous of them for reasons that I could not identify… Continue reading →
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Microadventure: Touring the Netherlands on a Recumbent Bike (Part 2)
This is Part Two of an account of touring the Netherlands and the UK by recumbent bike. Click here for Part One. I gingerly lowered myself onto Challenge Bikes’ ‘Hurricane’ recumbent touring bike, lay back against the full-size padded seat, and swung the pivoting handlebar assembly towards me from its resting position. For a vehicle that looked like a deck-chair on wheels, it absolutely felt like sitting on a deck-chair on wheels. (I don’t know about you, but I’d choose a deck chair over a bicycle saddle any day. Yep, even over a Brooks.) Continue reading →
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Microadventure: A Very Laid-Back Bike Trip (Part 1)
The last time I saw Holland was a day in late June 2007. I saw Holland disappearing in my rear-view mirror, the Belgian border drifting beneath my bicycle wheels as I crossed a river somewhere south of Maastricht. (I didn’t actually spot the border crossing itself, E.U. Freedom of Movement being the luxury that it is.) That was the last time I saw Holland – until last week. Continue reading →
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Farsi Friday Week 26: Halfway to Persian fluency? (نیمه راه به تسلط به فارسی؟)
The video above was filmed on the 1st of July this year; six months to the day after I made a New Year’s Resolution to become fluent in Farsi in a year. این فیلم اول ژوئیه ساخته شد، دقیقاً شش ماه بعد از اینکه قول دادم در مدت یک سال فارسی یاد بگیرم. If you’ve read the original series of blog posts, you’ll remember that I was starting pretty much from scratch. I knew most of the alphabet and could get through a few basic greetings, but not much else. اگر مقالههای اصلی مرا خواندهاید، یادتان خواهد آمد که تقریباً از ابتدایی داشتم شروع میکردم.… Continue reading →
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From The Cutting Room Floor #4: Cycling from Aswan, Egypt, to Wadi Halfa, Sudan
This scene recounts all the chaos of a classic experience which all who head down Africa’s east route will negotiate: the weekly ferry crossing of Lake Nasser, from Aswan (of Dam fame) in the south of Egypt to the tiny port of Wadi Halfa in northern Sudan. Deep within the historic region of Nubia, this is the only overland route between the two nations, who are still unable to agree on who actually owns the inhospitable tract of empty desert in between. The ferry sails just once a week, and tickets can only be procured by visiting the agency in… Continue reading →
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From The Cutting Room Floor #3: Life On The Road (in 01:52) [VIDEO]
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/57023486[/vimeo] The funny thing about this, the third in the series of deleted scenes (#1 and #2), is that it encapsulates better than anything else the day-to-day camaraderie that occurs between bicycle travellers and the people with whom they come into contact. Demonstrating this today is the inimitable Andy and a group of Georgian fishermen selling their wares on the roadside. Continue reading →
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From The Cutting Room Floor #2: Quite Interesting Sleeping Arrangements
The second in this series of Janapar bonus video clips will raise a smile with many cycle-tourists. For some of the best two-wheeled travel tales derive from overnighting under the most unlikely of circumstances. On this particular evening, Andy and I found ourselves kindly gifted the use of a small-town football field changing room somewhere in rural Turkey, in which I had the chance to demonstrate my highly sophisticated sleeping system to the camera. This scene didn’t make the final cut for a similar reason to the first clip: there was a limited opportunity to encapsulate the six months for… Continue reading →
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From The Cutting Room Floor #1: The One Where Tom Puts A Hole In His Face
One of the tragedies of art is how much perfectly decent stuff is chucked away. The 300 hours of footage I shot for Janapar is a case in point. The finished film is 79 minutes long, so for every minute of footage I shot, another four hours were binned. (Admittedly, plenty of it was shite, but a lot of it wasn’t.) Beginning today, then, I’ll be bringing the best of this extra material back to life. For those who’ve seen Janapar, these clips will explain a few things glossed over in the main feature. For those who haven’t seen it, they’ll… Continue reading →
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The Weave Of The Ride (or, Janapar from Andy’s point of view)
In the summer of 2007, my best mate Andy Welch and I set off from my front door. We’d called our expedition ‘Ride Earth’, and were all set to cycle round the world. But the experiences that followed changed all we thought we knew about, travel, adventure and cycle-touring. Weave Of The Ride, Andy’s own account of that eight-month journey from England to Armenia, offers an alternative perspective on the story that ends with Ride Earth’s disbandment and the beginning of two new solo adventures. In this guest post, Andy goes into detail about his new book. Continue reading →