Below are a couple of videos and a photo slide show about his mammouth trek. He’s got a book and DVD about the expedition coming out in the new year but until then you can follow him on twitter here or on his website here.
Video about broken GPS and using printed maps from Google Earth!
Oli is cycling from Lords, the home of cricket to some horrible tiny outpost called Brisbane, it’s in a small unimportant country called Australia!
England and Australia contest a series every 18months to two years for possibly sports smallest trophy-the Ashes. It’s played alternatively in England and Oz. We won the last one and this next one is in Oz. To get there Oli cycled from England down to Kenya playing cricket all along the way and then flew to India and is now in Thailand heading south through Singapore and on a cattle boat over to Darwin in Oz! It’s a great trip and he’s a top bloke.
“Borge Ousland has more than 20 years’ experience with record-breaking Arctic and Antarctic expeditions. He was the first person to complete a solo expedition to the North Pole without re-supplying, and the first to cross the Antarctic continent alone. He is still the only person to have accomplished both feats. Borge is an accomplished author, and a renowned photo and film photographer who has received several international awards for his expeditions and films.”
The man is a legend and a true polar hero.
On Midsummer’s Eve, Borge Ousland and Thorleif Thorleifsson sailed from Oslo. Their mission: a daring attempt to sail through both the Northeast and Northwest passages during one and the same season. Can their trimaran survive the challenge of ice-filled Arctic waters, and make the passage before the onset of winter? Follow them here on twitter and here on their site.
I’ve met Rob a few times now and he must rank as one of the nicest people I know. He’s got a real gentle demeanor but behind his eyes you know there is a determination of steel. This is a guy who looked at a map and wanted to get to the end of the earth. He chose Madagan in Russia and met up with his friend from teacher training college Al Humphreys and cycled through Siberia in winter camping rough at minus 40degrees. From here he left Al and headed south through the jungles of Papua New Guinea, did a loop of Australia, cycled through Afghanistan, was robbed at gunpoint, caught malaria and met his wife to be.
I emailed Rob when I was about to cycle through Afghanistan and I followed his advice and route from the Khyber Pass to Kabul and then north through the Salang Pass to Mazir-Al-Sharif. He’s also been a great help along with Al Humphreys in planning the Siberian part of my next trip. Since finishing his trip Rob has written a book, had a six part National Geographic documentary made about his trip, walked a lap of the M25 and walked the length of Israel. You can follow him on his website here and his twitter here.
These are four videos highlighting the issues with cycling through cities, through Siberia and on your own:
Al is the reason I started doing these trips and has been a constant support throughout. One of my best mates Tom Hopgood met Al in a campsite in South America chatted to him for a bit and didn’t see him again and yet when Tom came back it was this that we talked about for an entire night in the pub in North London. If a scrawny Yorkshireman could cycle round the world then Tom and I could do London to Cape Town easy. We’d climb a few mountains on the way to spice it up too. That’s how the idea for my first trip came about. Tom had to pull out because him Mum and girlfriend told him to (he says it was because of work but we all know Tom!). So I set off and learnt the most valuable lesson I’ve ever learnt. I can make do. It doesn’t sound too special but knowing that pretty much whatever happens I can deal with it makes living from day to day on a bike pretty easy. I e-mailed Al a couple of times and he gave me two bits of advice that I’ve lived by on the road:
1) The hardest part of any trip is getting out your front door.
2) You can only quit after you’ve had a good nights sleep, a big breakfast, the road is flat and the sun is out. And only if you’ve got something better to go back and do.
Al cycled from Yorkshire to Cape Town, sailed in a yacht race across to Rio, cycled from South America to Alaska (including having to Kayak down a river through a forest fire) cycled through Siberia in winter, down the length of Japan and home via the Stans. It took him four years and he’s written two great books about it: here and here. He’s also written a table top book on Ten Lessons from the Road.
Helen is an amazing girl who’s currently cycling from England to Cape Town down the west coast of Africa and is planning to cut across the Congo to Rwanda and then head down south through central southern Africa. To be honest, it’s a route I’m really jealous of! The Congo facinates me and I wish I could have spent more time there. She’s also already paddled up the Niger River and been to Timbouktu on this trip!
Now the main thing that most of you will notice is that she’s a girl. She’s a girl cycling through Africa on her own. Suicide? I don’t think so. I know that being massive and beardy helped me out in lots of situations but it also got me into trouble and made me more of an intimidating traveller. I think Helen has got the best of both worlds in that she’s done some of the trip with other people and struck out on her own for most of it. I reckon she’ll get to see alot more of the amazing hospitality in Africa than I did and have a better time as a result. Is she in danger-maybe. Is she in any more danger than I was? Probably not. Good on her I say-we need more like her. We’re not on this planet to sit in fear behind double locked doors.
Mark Cooper is currently running 50marathons in 56days. He’ll cover over 1300miles from Amsterdam to Barcelona and is raising money for the Headway Group. It’s always great to see people pushing their limits and seeing how deep the well goes and Mark is definitely doing that!
This is my first Follow Friday. I know I’ve stolen the idea from Twitter but I’m going to try and showcase one person a week who’s out on an expedition at the moment that you can follow either via twitter or their website.
Today is all about Johnny ‘Sticky’ Budden. Sticky is a professional Parkour Athlete or free runner. According to the oracle that is Wikipedia, “Parkour is the physical discipline of training to overcome any obstacle within one’s path by adapting one’s movements to the environment.” Basically is amazingly impressive combinations of running up walls, backflips of buildings, jumping through objects and basically defying the laws of gravity. Sticky has decided to do this from the northernmost tip of Britain, John O’Groats, to the spiritual home of Parkour, Paris. That’s over a thousand miles of free running. He’s doing this to raise money and awareness for the Motor Neurone Disease Association.
