Category: Microadventures
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3 More Big Bike Trips (& 1 Microadventure) You Can Read For Free On This Blog
Happy New Year! Some more holiday reading material for you today, particularly if you’ve enjoyed reading the free serialisation of my first book Janapar. Blogging from the road is something I’ve done since the beginning of my travels. The stories that follow have been written and published from the road itself over several years of bicycle adventuring – from roads in Arctic Scandinavia, Canada & the USA, Europe, and most recently my home country, England, which is perhaps the most unusual tale of the lot. To make reading them in sequence easier, you’ll find navigation buttons after the end of each instalment (just after… Continue reading →
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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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These are the things I love about wild camping
Daylight is already failing, turning the glass-like waters a majestic purple. Steep crags reach up behind the coast, and the tallest peak, still snow-streaked despite a run of dry days, is edged with orange by an invisible sunset on the far side of the island. For an hour I’ve been scanning the roadside verges for trailheads, for gaps in the undergrowth, for patches of unused land behind the trees, but I still haven’t found the place I’m looking for. Continue reading →
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Microadventure: Swim to an island. Sleep on it.
I’m on a train, speeding north from London for an event tonight in Kendal. It’s the fourth in a run of film screenings I’m doing over the next two weeks. I’m knackered. My body-clock is trashed. And I’m wearing the same clothes I was wearing in my sleeping bag last week on an island in the English Lakes that I swam to with two friends, Al and Ferg. It was a foolhardy plan, concocted by three blokes desperate to justify why they weren’t spending Valentine’s Eve with their other halves. At least the plan was a simple one: swim to… Continue reading →
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A different kind of tour — of Taiwan’s bicycle industry
I’ve started to receive a steady stream of PR emails thanks to my blog’s more-or-less decent visitor numbers over the years. These emails usually go straight to the spam folder (sorry PRs!), but a recent one caught my eye: “As part of your ongoing and deliberate transition to celebrity bike tourist,” it asked (not at all ironically), “would you be interested in participating in a tour of the Taiwanese bicycle industry?” Hold on — an invitation to the centre of the bicycle-making universe? Hell yeah… Continue reading →
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Microadventure: “The island that died for want of a telephone”
It was a promisingly sunny afternoon as we dashed down the quayside in Cleggan and threw our bags aboard the ferry for Inishbofin. After a yawnsome four-hour drive from Dublin, this sudden burst of excitement and panic ensured we would keep our appointment with Dermot by a hair’s breadth. Half an hour later, the ferry safely in port and another gaggle of American tourists off to roam the island for the afternoon, Dermot beckoned us down a slippery flight of stairs to the water’s edge where a small powerboat was tied up. No sooner had we arrived at Inishbofin, a… Continue reading →
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Howies Microadventure Competition — The Winning Videos
Just got a note through to say that this video I made (with some of Andy’s camerawork) has been selected by Howies as one of the four winners of their micro-adventure competition! Yay! [vimeo]http://vimeo.com/28991462[/vimeo] What does this mean? Continue reading →