My Round The World ride (inc top blagging at Spa & The Ring)
Discussion
Sorry about the lack of updates since August but I've had very little access to wifi and have been saving my mobile data for other stuff.
The good news is that I've now reached Sydney, 27,875km since the start of the trip.
I'll try and get some more photos up once I get wifi which may not be until New Zealand which I'm flying to towards the end of next week. What I can say though is that Australia is awesome, if a little big!
The good news is that I've now reached Sydney, 27,875km since the start of the trip.
I'll try and get some more photos up once I get wifi which may not be until New Zealand which I'm flying to towards the end of next week. What I can say though is that Australia is awesome, if a little big!
z4chris99 said:
So very impressive,
Where do you sleep?
how many miles do you do a day?
hows the bike holding up after 30,000km?
been joined for part of the trip by anyone?
A mixture of wild camping, campsites, people's houses, backpacker hostels and cheap guesthouses.Where do you sleep?
how many miles do you do a day?
hows the bike holding up after 30,000km?
been joined for part of the trip by anyone?
A typical day at the moment is 80-100km which is much less than in the past when I might typically do 130km or more. It all depends on how hilly it is so at the moment, NZ is pretty hilly whereas SE Asia & Australia were pretty flat. Longest day was 225km.
The bike's done pretty well considering. It's had new rims front & back, new spokes & a new hub at the back, new chainrings, cassette & bottom bracket, about 4 or 5 chains and 2 sets of pedals.
I haven't been joined by anyone from the UK but I have cycled occasionally with others I've met along the way with the longest being a fellow Brit I met in Kyrgyzstan, travelled with him for a month through Kazakhstan & China then met up with him again in Perth & cycled to Melbourne with him.
BoRED S2upid said:
Have you had much media interest? A couple of emails to the American media could see you on local radio or TV and donations rocket.
I was in the paper a couple of times in Australia and have been on various UNICEF and British High Commission / Embassy social media channels but not that much really.
http://www.coastalleader.com.au/story/1965346/ridi...
I've reached the end of my third continent, Oceania (which was awesome) but have reached a bit of a stumbling block and am now camped out indefinitely at Sydney airport. To keep costs down, a friend of mine who works for an airline has got me a bargain price on a standby seat from Sydney to Santiago but the downside is it's spring break in the US and after two nights sleeping on the floor at the airport I'm still being told the one flight per day I can take is fully booked for the next five days, not allowing for any full price bookings next week....
Edited to add: I'm flying on a US based airline and can only fly their routes so I'm flying Sydney -> USA -> Santiago.
Edited to add: I'm flying on a US based airline and can only fly their routes so I'm flying Sydney -> USA -> Santiago.
Edited by neilski on Friday 4th April 10:35
I realise I've been a bit slack lately when it comes to updates but having just sat down for the past two days to go through my photos I seem to have taken about 12,000 so going through them all, picking the best ones, uploading them and copying the image tags was always going to take a while....
I'll skip Europe for now because it was so long ago but might get around to uploading the pics one day.
Georgia:
Apologies to anyone on a mobile.
I'll skip Europe for now because it was so long ago but might get around to uploading the pics one day.
Georgia:
Apologies to anyone on a mobile.
Kazakhstan Part 1 - September:
Peeling carrots for Plov.
There were enough to feed an army!
Plov. A Central Asian dish mainly consisting of meat, rice & carrots.
Traditional Kazakh housewarming. The three Brits are guests of honour.
Any ideas?
My friends' van. They drove this all the way to the Chinese / Kazakh border before turning back for Kyrgyzstan. It's now in Afghanistan being used as an ambulance.
Cooking a traditional British meal for our hosts. We made cottage pie followed by apple crumble and they loved it.
Probably my most remote camp of the whole trip.
300km of dirt roads to Beyneu.
Some rare tarmac.
An Abu Dhabi Sheikh had a falconry camp in a remote part of the Kazakh steppe.
Preparing the dinner.
Dinner with the Sheikh.
Saying goodbye.
Well brewsted!
Peeling carrots for Plov.
There were enough to feed an army!
Plov. A Central Asian dish mainly consisting of meat, rice & carrots.
Traditional Kazakh housewarming. The three Brits are guests of honour.
Any ideas?
My friends' van. They drove this all the way to the Chinese / Kazakh border before turning back for Kyrgyzstan. It's now in Afghanistan being used as an ambulance.
Cooking a traditional British meal for our hosts. We made cottage pie followed by apple crumble and they loved it.
Probably my most remote camp of the whole trip.
300km of dirt roads to Beyneu.
Some rare tarmac.
An Abu Dhabi Sheikh had a falconry camp in a remote part of the Kazakh steppe.
Preparing the dinner.
Dinner with the Sheikh.
Saying goodbye.
Well brewsted!
There are hundreds more photos from Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Australia & New Zealand to follow when I get time. In the meantime, this is what's been happening over the last few days....
To keep those of you without Facebook up to date, I did eventually reach Santiago from Auckland via Sydney, Cairns, Tokyo & Atlanta. Not the quickest or most direct route you're probably thinking? You're telling me!
Reason for such a convoluted route was a friend at a US based airline offered me a cheap flight to Santiago providing I got myself back to Sydney as I could only fly their routes so the original plan was Sydney -> Los Angeles -> Atlanta (their main hub) -> Santiago.
This was a bargain price and one I couldn't really overlook but what I didn't know was that they only have one flight per day out of Sydney and this was to Los Angeles, it was the end of spring break in the US and the start of the Australian school holidays. Not an ideal time to be flying when my cheap ticket means I'm flying on standby...
With 50kg of luggage in tow, leaving the airport without a trolley or in a taxi was never realistic option and with the prohibitive cost of taxis, local hotels and left luggage, I had no real option but to sit tight at the airport and wait to hear if my name got called out each morning for the already oversold flight. Due to the priority system the airline used (employee first, then ex-employee / retiree then friend of employee, all then sorted by joining date) I was always absolute last in line for a seat and most days only one person or no-one got on from the standby list.
So after 6 nights in Sydney (5 nights sleeping on the airport floor & 1 at a friend's) it became fairly obvious that it would take about 30 people to miss their flight before I'd be allowed to board so I bit the bullet and bought a one way ticket to Tokyo (via Cairns) with another airline so that I was in with a chance of catching a standby flight straight to Atlanta but had 5 other options available to me if the Atlanta flight was full.
I arrived in Tokyo at about 8pm, after left luggage had closed for the day but did manage to leave my trolley with a couple of other travellers while I went to enquire about the price of a room at a local hotel masquerading as a hostel. As it was a hotel and not a hostel as advertised and they wanted $65 for the room it was back to the airport and my trusty Therm-A-Rest for another night sleeping on the cold, hard tiles. At least I had an armed policeman watching over me this time for my protection!
Once left luggage opened the next morning and I saw I could leave all my stuff there until the afternoon for about a tenner I couldn't resist the opportunity to catch a ten minute train ride and spend the morning exploring Narita, visiting a temple, some botanical gardens and eating sushi. I've never been to Japan before but have wanted to go for ages so this was too good a chance to pass up, and not somewhere I'd expected to be a few days earlier.
Getting out of Tokyo wasn't as simple as just presenting my passport at the check-in counter, they wanted to see my onward or return ticket from Chile. Erm.... "But I'm not flying out, I'm cycling out, that's why I've got a bike. I'm going to ride to Argentina...." "Well I'll need to check this with my supervisor." Two supervisors later and they want to know I've got the funds to buy a ticket and merely showing them a credit card will do.
That was the easy bit! Next, they said it was an extra $150 US to take my bike on the plane (which I knew about) but because my bike counted as a third piece of luggage it would cost an extra $200 on top of the $150 as my luggage limit for the ticket I had was only two pieces. By this point the clock's ticking but there was no way I could afford to stump up another $200 on top of what I'd already paid for the ticket to Tokyo so in a moment of panic, I raced off to find the clingfilm man to get my two cheapo shopping bags with all my panniers in lashed together to form a single piece of luggage, all for the princely sum of Y1000 ($10).
The one good thing to come out of all of this was my final flight from Atlanta to Santiago was a business class seat so I got to indulge a bit on the champagne, red wine, fillet steak and cooked breakfast plus I had a fold flat bed. The other flights I've taken on this trip have all been with the cheapest budget airline possible, even taking an empty water bottle through security and filling it up at a water fountain before boarding so you can imagine how much of a luxury this was!
Finally in Santiago....
....for a much needed beer!
To keep those of you without Facebook up to date, I did eventually reach Santiago from Auckland via Sydney, Cairns, Tokyo & Atlanta. Not the quickest or most direct route you're probably thinking? You're telling me!
Reason for such a convoluted route was a friend at a US based airline offered me a cheap flight to Santiago providing I got myself back to Sydney as I could only fly their routes so the original plan was Sydney -> Los Angeles -> Atlanta (their main hub) -> Santiago.
This was a bargain price and one I couldn't really overlook but what I didn't know was that they only have one flight per day out of Sydney and this was to Los Angeles, it was the end of spring break in the US and the start of the Australian school holidays. Not an ideal time to be flying when my cheap ticket means I'm flying on standby...
With 50kg of luggage in tow, leaving the airport without a trolley or in a taxi was never realistic option and with the prohibitive cost of taxis, local hotels and left luggage, I had no real option but to sit tight at the airport and wait to hear if my name got called out each morning for the already oversold flight. Due to the priority system the airline used (employee first, then ex-employee / retiree then friend of employee, all then sorted by joining date) I was always absolute last in line for a seat and most days only one person or no-one got on from the standby list.
So after 6 nights in Sydney (5 nights sleeping on the airport floor & 1 at a friend's) it became fairly obvious that it would take about 30 people to miss their flight before I'd be allowed to board so I bit the bullet and bought a one way ticket to Tokyo (via Cairns) with another airline so that I was in with a chance of catching a standby flight straight to Atlanta but had 5 other options available to me if the Atlanta flight was full.
I arrived in Tokyo at about 8pm, after left luggage had closed for the day but did manage to leave my trolley with a couple of other travellers while I went to enquire about the price of a room at a local hotel masquerading as a hostel. As it was a hotel and not a hostel as advertised and they wanted $65 for the room it was back to the airport and my trusty Therm-A-Rest for another night sleeping on the cold, hard tiles. At least I had an armed policeman watching over me this time for my protection!
Once left luggage opened the next morning and I saw I could leave all my stuff there until the afternoon for about a tenner I couldn't resist the opportunity to catch a ten minute train ride and spend the morning exploring Narita, visiting a temple, some botanical gardens and eating sushi. I've never been to Japan before but have wanted to go for ages so this was too good a chance to pass up, and not somewhere I'd expected to be a few days earlier.
Getting out of Tokyo wasn't as simple as just presenting my passport at the check-in counter, they wanted to see my onward or return ticket from Chile. Erm.... "But I'm not flying out, I'm cycling out, that's why I've got a bike. I'm going to ride to Argentina...." "Well I'll need to check this with my supervisor." Two supervisors later and they want to know I've got the funds to buy a ticket and merely showing them a credit card will do.
That was the easy bit! Next, they said it was an extra $150 US to take my bike on the plane (which I knew about) but because my bike counted as a third piece of luggage it would cost an extra $200 on top of the $150 as my luggage limit for the ticket I had was only two pieces. By this point the clock's ticking but there was no way I could afford to stump up another $200 on top of what I'd already paid for the ticket to Tokyo so in a moment of panic, I raced off to find the clingfilm man to get my two cheapo shopping bags with all my panniers in lashed together to form a single piece of luggage, all for the princely sum of Y1000 ($10).
The one good thing to come out of all of this was my final flight from Atlanta to Santiago was a business class seat so I got to indulge a bit on the champagne, red wine, fillet steak and cooked breakfast plus I had a fold flat bed. The other flights I've taken on this trip have all been with the cheapest budget airline possible, even taking an empty water bottle through security and filling it up at a water fountain before boarding so you can imagine how much of a luxury this was!
Finally in Santiago....
....for a much needed beer!
Thanks for the kind comments about the photos. I've recently got into instagram and am very slowly (It'll probably take months!) uploading my best photos of the trip. For those who use it, my feed is:
http://instagram.com/neilchurchard
http://instagram.com/neilchurchard
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