This will be the first in a set of blogs about how I started and went about planning.
Why or I want to?
Before even setting off people kept asking Why? Like this is the most important question. I do wonder if we have been socially engineered to always question with why and not just accept people like to do things. Personally I always wanted to travel, especially after I made the decision to live in Denmark for a time. I guess the answer is more because I want to.
I would love to say that I had the courage to step out the door and set off. But with a fear of failure, running out of money (not such a great past with control) and generally not confident, I would be lucky if I left the house let alone travelled.
I’ve done a couple of three week trips, but nothing of an undetermined length. The first involved jet setting across America but mainly visiting different cities and a national park. This essentially involves dropping into a hostel, meeting some people and drinking! Not really a way to engage in the country as a whole. The other time driving around Sweden and Norway camping. But these always felt a bit short and not enough time to really get into a place and culture. Plus the carbon impact of flying or driving is something we all need to move away from.
How(ish)?
How to overcome fear and leave my comfort zone? I guess it starts with a little bit of moving away from society conformance, I’ve always felt like I need to keep proving myself and that meant falling onto the career ladder. This comes at a price and is usually at the expense of free time, energy and also brings stress.
It all started in 2016 when I was getting bored with my job and my life and was thinking of moving on to another company. However, I decided to read a book by Professor Steve Peters called The Chimp Paradox. A recommendation from one of the farmers my old employer works with. I only got 6 chapters in but that was enough to help me understand what was going on upstairs. I seriously recommend this book to anyone. The book shows that we still have a part of us left over from our evolution which essentially creates our fear and anxiety.
Whilst it does constrain us it can also help us, hence the paradox. Some reflection later I realised I stopped taking opportunities because of the risk of failure. Therefore I vowed to start taking opportunities which came along and with that I found myself moving to Denmark the following year.
Moving to Denmark proved a complete reset. If you’ve never lived and worked in another country, do it. It gives you a chance to really look at yourself and workout what is important to you. Your personal values get challenged and you have the chance to add, change or remove values and incorporate new ones from your host country.
But now I was back to a similar problem, the career ladder, just one more year, a bit more experience. A further opportunity and finally a promotion, which saw me move back to the UK bringing my time in Denmark to an end. But still no closer to travelling. I thought let’s do this job for two years and then quit. More experience under the belt and more cash for travel, surely this is a good thing? I could feel the career ladder trap start catching me again. Well we all know what happened next, the Pandemic came along and into lockdown we went.
But still no closer…
This turned out to be a bit of a blessing. Whilst I was toying with the idea of travelling round the World, the method was not settled. Flying was out, it was too damaging to the environment. I had already started to travel more by train across Europe including spending two days to get to Barcelona. So, I thought travelling by train, bus and a bit of hitch-hiking would be a low cost and impact.
However, I remembered I had met some cycle tourists in Denmark and thought that might be a nice idea but had anyone done it before? This was when I stumbled upon Alistair Humphries books, Moods of Future Joy. His journey round the World. This sealed the deal and lead me down the path towards cycle touring round the World.
Whilst in lockdown an outline of a plan was hatched, an experiment of a few weeks cycling in Scotland was undertaken and then it came time to announce the plan. This would hopefully make me stick to the plan and execute. I’m happy to say it did and I am now slowly starting the journey one crank at a a time.