Category: Big Adventures

After an impromptu and most welcome day off at Kathy and Dick’s house near Arcata (thanks Warmshowers!), we stocked up with 4 days’ worth of food supplies in Eureka and set off down the monotonous highway. The lands here were flat, but the skyline to the south suggested that a dramatic change was just ahead: the steep and tangled ridgelines of the Lost Coast. Continue reading →

If the northern half of the U.S. Pacific Coast had been one of timber trucks, small towns and persistent rains, the southern half would tell a very different tale. Continue reading →

I wasn’t sure how to bring up the subject. It seemed a thorny one, fraught with emotion. So I took the only approach I really knew, which was to speak my mind and deal with the consequences later. Continue reading →

I finished up the last of the pancakes, washed my plate, strapped my helmet over my Buff and set off along Highway 101 under a clear blue sky. It was shortly after sunrise and the air was clear and chill. A pickup truck zipped past on some early-morning errand, but all else was quiet, still and serene. I’ve always loved this time, just after dawn, riding through a world more or less entirely my own as the rest of civilization still drifts between slumber and the insistent tug of the daily routine. Continue reading →

Ben and I left Portland at lunchtime on the 9th day. The departure was a tough one. We rode south-west into a fresh onshore breeze, clouds collecting in the distance, stopping briefly to look at the Spruce Goose and fill up with water. The wind grew stronger, and after a couple more hours’ battling we pulled into a roadside cafe in order to take a break and fish for a sleeping spot. “You must be the cyclists!” Stuart accosted us halfway through a bowl of quite excellent clam chowder. He was in his sixties, white haired and bespectacled. He was… Continue reading →

I did no prior research about this trip prior to my arrival in Vancouver just over a month ago. Although it goes directly against the principles of the Information Age, I much prefer letting the process of travel bring some small element of knowledge and understanding to a more or less blank slate, rather than just Googling everything in advance. But this is America, for gawd’s sake. How could I fail to have a generous handful of precopceptions? I grew up in Britain, a nation that founded the New World and continues to feed on its culture and ideology today.… Continue reading →

Erin and Nick instantly reminded me of my younger self and Andy; two good friends, fresh-faced and idealistic, intoxicated with the new-found freedom of life on the road in a wealthy and developed corner of the world. The summer of 2007 and that timeless four-month adventure across Europe remains one of the most enjoyable, chaotic and memorable times of my life. Continue reading →

“Ben.” I lay on my back, staring upwards into blackness. Water dripped steadily from the heavy branches above, pounding repetitively on the fly sheet of my new 1‑man tent, invisible and paper-thin. The shelter felt small. Inadequate. “BEN!!!” A brief pause. Some muffled movement from his pitch a few metres behind my head. Then, groggily: “What?” “There’s a bear outside.” Continue reading →

Down at the Serpentine Swimming Club one January morning, as the last handful of bright pink bodies struggled back into their thermals and began the post-swim ritual of uncontrollable shivering, a chap named Roger made a memorable observation: “Once you’ve s‑s-swum the winter season at the S‑s-serpentine, you’re s‑s-suddenly immensely liberated! B‑b-because you know that whenever you encounter water, as long as it’s still liquid… you can go for a s‑s-s-s-swim!” Continue reading →