500km from Victoria to Port Hardy It’s been a gentle re-introduction to the life of cycle-touring. A week has passed and so have 500km. Now we’re in the north of Vancouver Island, in a small town called Port Hardy – it’s ‘where the road ends and the adventure begins’… Hope you enjoy the photos… a [...]

It’s been a relaxing first week in Canada. Most of my time has been spent with friends who live in Victoria on Vancouver Island. We’ve been sight-seeing on the south of the Island – wandering around Victoria and the fabulous British Columbia museum, visiting Nanaimo and Sidney and going to Salt Spring Island. I haven’t [...]

It’s been a lovely week staying with friends on Victoria Island, British Columbia. We’ve had relaxing days visiting the various sights the southern island has to offer. Yesterday we went for a walk round Butchart Gardens, which are really beautiful, even for someone who knows none of the names of the flowers…

The Plan Evolves When you’ve spent nearly 2 years cycling through Africa, the 4,400km Great Divide Mountain Bike Route (GDMBR) doesn’t seem that far. A relatively short cycle through the US, from north to south. The Great Divide trip was supposed to be a ‘holiday’. A break from work between Big Adventures. (Yes, I have [...]

My Thorn bike made it the 25,000km to Cape Town. Just. It needed a makeover well before that, but it always seemed, ‘just a little further’. So I kept delaying the inevitable repairs. And so I finished the trip on a bike that looked like it had just been pedalled across a continent. Which it [...]

  Well, what is there to say about a pair of black leggings? Pretty standard stuff. Black. Leggings. Nuff said? But these are not just any black leggings… these are Icebreaker leggings . So, ‘what does that mean?’ you may well be asking. That means NO Stink - just one of the sales points for Icebreaker [...]

My first impression, before I’d even got the new Icebreaker top out of the cellophane packaging was, ‘Wow! That’s bright!’. I have the cranberry colour top. Pink isn’t usually my colour. But I’m open to trying new things and my usual preference for black is really a bit boring. Icebreaker clothing is not new to [...]

Before I left England, I had envisaged being one of the toughest sections of my Take On Africa bike ride would be crossing the Sahara. I expected extreme heat and long lonely stretches of road with nothing to do but cycle and not much to look at either. I thought the fierce sun would be [...]

I had no plans for the weekend, but the forecast was for sunny skies. That idyllic English summer day that occurs so rarely! So whatever I chose to do it was going to  be outside. I chose to bike the South Downs Way. The South Downs Way is a long distance off-road route of 100 [...]

When I first received the MSR Pocket Rocket stove, I couldn’t quite believe just how small it is. The red plastic storage box it comes in is tiny… Think five triangles of a Toblerone bar and that’s it. I’m pretty sure this Pocket Rocket stove is going to last longer than any chocolate bar though! [...]