I felt compelled to write to your organisation after spending several days cycling from Dover to the East Midlands, having just arrived from continental Europe. My intention was to make this journey as enjoyable and safe as possible, rather than to cover the distance in the minimum possible amount of time. Naturally therefore I looked to the National Cycle Network, in search of off-road and quiet routes through the country.

Flickr photo by tom.ride-earth.org.uk

May I, then, congratulate you on having constructed one of the most comprehensive cycling infrastructures that I have come across during my bicycle travels in 34 countries.

The UK’s cycling provisions stand out for many reasons. The first and most obvious is that they exist. From a global perspective, this immediately puts the UK far ahead of the game. Given everything I’ve seen here, from long-distance routes spanning Britain in her entirety, to urban awareness schemes in almost every significant settlement, to safe cycle-paths between particular amenities and points of interest, it’s difficult to understand why the system is on the receiving end of such constant criticism in the media. I guess people don’t realise how lucky they are!

Continue reading this letter @ Ride Earth – Tom’s World Bicycle Travel Blog

Cappucino

Trav­el­ling with a part­ner drastic­ally changes the dynamic of bicycle tour­ing. I can’t deny I’ve enjoyed this rel­at­ive hedon­ism, because I am pas­sion­ate about food and cook­ing when I have the oppor­tun­ity to par­take of it, and these are three of the culin­ary spe­ci­al­it­ies of Italy, which also remain very afford­able as long as you avoid the tour­ist hot­spots — which on a bike trip is rel­at­ively easy.

It’s been a wholly dif­fer­ent exper­i­ence, in fact, this final ride. In all hon­esty, I’d made up my mind to put my own desires and ways of doing things to the back of my mind. This was to be Tenny’s trip, not mine – I’ve spent plenty of time explor­ing Europe in the past, so it was my job to gently coax her through the pro­cess of trav­el­ling to Eng­land and enjoy­ing the exper­i­ence of get­ting there by bicycle (and carry all the luggage).

She is still very much find­ing her feet, and it’s been quite a test, as we’re not well matched in stam­ina or exper­i­ence, but after a month I can feel that she is begin­ning to adapt, and to learn the les­sons I learnt when I star­ted out; the biggest of which is that the point of trav­el­ling by bicycle is not to reach a des­tin­a­tion, but to watch the world unfold on the way there. For someone like her who has only ever boarded a vehicle in anti­cip­a­tion of reach­ing the end of the jour­ney – and that’s most people alive today – it’s actu­ally a far more dif­fi­cult adapt­a­tion than it sounds.

Stealth-Camping in Puglia

We’ve wild-camped a few times, which is some­thing Andy and Mark and I never did in West­ern Europe (aside from one night in a coun­try park on the out­skirts of Hunt­ing­don). Back then, we had developed a highly refined pro­cess of giv­ing local people the oppor­tun­ity to help us find a field/shed/garden/garage to sleep in, which was a great way of get­ting ourselves into all sorts of unusual situ­ations, and we were all very much on the same wavelength when it came to want­ing to do that.

Continue reading this article on Tom’s Blog, Ride Earth.

As a guy on your own, it seems you very quickly slip into a target-oriented kind of stupor. Sure, this equals large dis­tances covered and for­mid­able chal­lenges over­come. Man’s indom­it­able spirit, and all that. But this time – for this last, envi­able stretch of footloose free­dom between here and the fin­ish line – I’m determ­ined to slow it all down as much as possible.

Pit stop during one of Tom's adventures / photo by Tom

Many times I’ve often found myself day­dream­ing about what it would be like to ride home through Europe. Now Tenny and I find ourselves at the port of Bari in south­ern Italy, Europe’s giant open-air museum.

I must admit I was sur­prised to find that sum­mer is still very much in full swing here – so much so that many of the res­id­ents are escap­ing the heat and humid­ity in other parts of Italy or abroad. Today’s a sticky 36-degree day, and the nar­row streets are hot and quiet, shut­ters drawn, park­ing spaces empty.

Continue reading this article on Tom’s blog, Ride Earth.

Sleeping under the Saharan stars / Flickr photo by tom-ride-earth.org

Andy and I managed to procure product sponsorship for most of our major pieces of equipment, and this article will explain how we went about it, and what worked and what didn’t. I hope that it will save you some time and increase your chances of success.

But before deciding whether or not to pursue sponsorship for your trip, you need to decide whether your time would be better spent working in a full-time job to earn the equivalent amount of money. Seeking sponsorship is an intensely time-consuming, frustrating and regularly disappointing process, for which you will need skin like old boot leather, the persistence of black shower mould and absolutely no hobbies or significant others to attend to.

Continue reading this article @ Tom’s World Bicycle Travel Blog

Packing in Moscow / Flickr photo by Tom Allen

Choosing to travel exclusively by land meant that the excursion was really much more than just a bike ride in Mongolia. It was also an opportunity to spend a few days watching the world go by, and to experience one of the world’s great train journeys – the Trans-Mongolian from Moscow to Ulaan Baatar (and back). There was also the logistical challenge of it all – anyone who’s been to the Caucasus will know that the borders are in something of a pickle.

96-hour train journey back to Moscow

Having no need to visit any Siberian cities on our return leg, we took a coupé (a 4-berth compartment) on the direct train to Moscow from the Mongolian capital. As luck would have it, nobody else was booked in the same compartment, so we had no issues with our luggage – a bike box, 3 drybags, a pannier, two bar-bags and six wheels were all safely stowed away with room to sleep.

Not long into the 96-hour journey I began to crave company…

Continue reading this article @ Ride Earth – Tom’s World Bicycle Travel Blog

This, my first ever bike trip, was about trial-and-error, climbing the steep learning curve of our inexperience. It was the most fun I’d ever had on a bike, or ever have since.

Until, that is, I took my bike to Mongolia.

Tom in Mongolia / Flickr photo by ride-earth

The last few weeks of riding have fulfilled the desire that inspired the very conception of Ride Earth – to ‘take mountain-biking to it’s logical conclusion’, as we originally put it. One of the intrinsic attractions of bicycle-travel is the feeling of liberty, to go at your own pace, under your own steam, on a route of your choosing, but in practice you are generally limited to roads or tracks, be they paved or unpaved. Out on the vast steppes of North-East Asia, it is possible to take a bearing to the next settlement and then to quite literally follow the compass.

Continue reading this article @ Ride Earth

It was 10 days before we reached the next settlement. During that time, we rode swooping forest singletrack and dragged our bikes up impossibly-steep scree slopes. We pushed through axle-deep swampland and camped by the most pristine lakeside I’ve ever set eyes on. We found Mongolians on horseback and others who had driven huge ancient Russian off-road trucks cross-country, carrying numerous families to a natural hot spring for a few days’ camping. We spent two full days hiking along a valley floor of dry gravel and wading across channels of meltwater from the mountains above. My feet started to disintegrate from several days spent in permanently wet boots. We got completely lost and finally found our way out onto the vast, pock-marked, marshy plain to the west of the Khovsgol basin. This had been some of the most interesting and challenging adventuring of my life.

We planned to visit another settlement at the far end of the plain, but instead we spent two days lost amongst the hillocks and small lakes, unable to find a way through the tangle of rivers and sand pits and marshes in this rapidly-changing landscape in which nothing corresponded to anything we’d seen on a map. Faint tracks disappeared over newly-eroded riverbanks and into spontaneously-appearing patches of desert. We trudged through the worst of it and otherwise ground the gears between gers and timber-built dwellings, asking in quiet desperation for the way out of the labyrinth and accepting invitations to drink milky tea (without salt in this region) and eat bread and freshly-churned butter.

We spent the evening attending a family gathering quite literally in the middle of nowhere, where vodka combined with a cyclist’s metabolism and a severe lack of resistance to the effects of alcohol to produce a variety of interesting effects. This dip into Mongolian society, sparse as it is, was for me the final piece of the picture of Mongolia that I had been looking for in order to go home satisfied with the experience I’d had here.

Since the last photo essay proved so popular, here’s another! I’ll be writing the trip up in more detail over the next few weeks.

Leaving Home / Photo by Tom Allen

We left our guesthouse in Moron and headed north for Khovsgol. Tourist season hadn’t started and things were still very quiet. And cold.
Horses are losing favour to motorbikes as a form of cross-country private transport in Mongolia, but horsemen are still a fairly common sight.
The reach of the Soviet Union’s building projects spans an unimaginably large swathe of Eurasia. Relics like this can be found from the Bering Straits to Eastern Europe.

On the rails / Flickr photo by Tom Allen

Behind the city skyline, a range of low mountains is silhouetted against the sky. They will be my target for the day. Tonight I’ll be sleeping under the stars – an invigorating prospect. I’ve spent about 5% of my life camping and I never tire of it.

It was a 15-day overland journey just to get here. It’s funny to think that for many, 15 days would be a year’s worth of foreign holidays. On the ferry from Trabzon to Sochi, I tried to work out how Russia fitted into my concept of the world. I’d never been before, but I’d spend the best part of two years living amongst the fallout of the Russian century, with all its faded grandeur, reminiscing of the days of denial and plenty, and the folly of post-Soviet opportunism.

Continue reading this article @ Ride Earth – Tom’s World Bicycle Travel Blog

Travelling light / Flickr photo by Tom Allen

For what seemed like an eternity, Tenny and I had been looking forward to the day when we could turn the key one last time and pedal off together towards new lands. Circumstances had not been kind, and Tenny had gone to Iran to seek out a sports injury specialist to diagnose her knee pain, which had been persisting since the New Year. Free of work and alone for several weeks, I’d decided to use this window of opportunity to do something I’d been dreaming of doing for years – exploring Mongolia on my bike.

Continue reading this article @ Ride Earth – Tom’s World Bicycle Travel Blog

Europe.. it was so lovely / Photo by Tom Allen

I had two days off during those 5 weeks of voluntary sleep-deprivation. On the first, I got up at 5am and went for an epic mountain-bike ride in the foggy Pentland hills. On the second, I wandered into Blackwells’ bookshop, bought the Adventure Cycle-Touring Handbook and spend the afternoon reading it on the grass in the Meadows

It was the first time I’d heard of people travelling across entire countries – continents even! – by bicycle. Until that day, I’d thought that my idea to cycle to Croatia to visit a mate was seriously far-out!

Continue reading this article @ Ride Earth – Tom’s World Bicycle Travel Blog