To Moscow (by bike)

When I first decided that it would be great to take a year off I thought about a few options, going to Africa with VSO, driving around the world etc. For some reason though I was inspired by a book (“Johnny Gingers’ last ride”) to cycle as far as I could get. When I first looked at a map – Bejing seemed like a nice place to head for, but I had also thought about Africa and other routes. It took some time until I decided that I was going to head for China, by way of Mongolia and Russia, but once I had a plan it seemed simple to me – get a bike – load it up and off you go!

I decided that it might be a good idea to see what long distance cycling was like so in the Summer of 2002 I bought a new bike, and cycled to Derby from Milton Keynes back via Oxford. That trip all went well and with a couple of other practices and after buying some suitable bags and refreshing my camping equipment I found myself on the 21st April 2003 outside my house in Milton Keynes with a bike.

I had spent the last week packing all my things up to empty the house, putting stuff in the loft and in storage, and I found all I now had in the world was attached to my bike.

It was at this point that I discovered on the hardest parts of my plan – actually leaving. If you are leaving by train or plane or any other scheduled service there is a timetable for leaving that is easy to follow. I found getting on my bike and having slowly pedal myself away from my family and friends a very hard thing to do. After a couple of metres I really wanted to look back but apart from the instability of the bike I knew I’d never leave if I did that.

I let myself have a final look back when I got to the end of the road as I turned the corner and then that was it, the only way I was going was forwards, I had a year ahead of me and a lot of road to cover.