My Round The World ride (inc top blagging at Spa & The Ring)

My Round The World ride (inc top blagging at Spa & The Ring)

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neilski

Original Poster:

2,563 posts

234 months

Wednesday 4th April 2012
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To save the show off your bike thread getting bogged down with too many posts about this, I thought I'd better start a separate thread here, and to keep HereBeMonsters happy, here's a picture of me just as I was about to set off, back when everything was immaculately clean and neatly packed, a sort of opposite to now!



As mentioned, I've finally set off to cycle around the world on March 8th and so far have cycled through France, Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg and am now back in Germany to the south east of Stuttgart, heading for the Danube to follow to Eastern Europe and The Balkans before crossing into Asia via Istanbul.

Before starting out, I had a "wishlist" of places to see and things I'd like to do and have been ticking them off as I go but what I didn't expect is how things have turned out so far.

I left my parents house on the 8th, catching the Newhaven - Dieppe ferry on the morning of the 9th with the first planned stop being Brussels to see an old mate of mine for a few beers & a catch up.

Still reading? It gets more interesting, honest!

With this being PH, naturally I have an interest in cars so the next planned stop was at Spa-Francorchamps where I was hoping to blag a passenger ride if I could. After a particularly heavy night on the beers the night before with the Dutch BMW GS motorbike club, I eventually dragged myself out of my tent and over the massive hill to the circuit where I got chatting to a guy called Dominic who owns a very rare Westfield FW400, and who very kindly took me out for two lots of 5 laps.



The acceleration, braking & cornering of this thing were just mind blowing with only a GT2 RS passing us and later on an R8 on the long straight which we soon passed again once the track got twisty again. Everything else on track just seemed like it was pootling round in comparison.

Now that I had a taste for having my internal organs rearranged, my next planned stop was The Nurburgring, where I arrived 2 days later, just as a closed track day on the Nordschleife was coming to and end but before they opened up the track for the touristenfahrten.

As it was getting late and I needed a bed for the night, I thought my best chance of getting a lap the next day was to go to the Pistenklause and get blagging. At the Pistenklause I met a couple of guys with GT3s who offered to take me out and a pair of owners of a Radical SR3 RS which is raced by one of them's son.





The GT3 had 450bhp and some trick suspension but the Radical was something else, nothing else on track was anywhere near as quick other than on the long straight where it was undergeared as it was set up for racing on UK circuits.

After Liam Doran stacked his GTR and the day got red flagged it was back to the Pistenklause for dinner with the Radical guys then I bumped into the GT3 guys afterwards and joined them for more beers with Tom & Roy from Ariel, Chris Harris and cameraman / photographer Neil Carey who were shooting a video of the Atom V8 and Noble M600. Chris said to come along tomorrow and if there was time he'd try and take me out for a lap in one of them so the next day I kept popping backwards and forwards to where they were setting the cars up for filming and even managed to squeeze in a lap in this M3 in the meantime. It was a proper trackday toy with a stripped out interior, rollcage, harnesses & slick tyres and while not as quick as the previous days rides, was still pretty quick and good fun.




Having a dirty great bike with me with lots of bags and a solar panel on the back does tend to attract attention so I also got chatting to Adam (head of R&D) & Pete (MD) from Noble who were interested in my trip and were fine with me going out in the Noble with Chris which I did mid-afternoon once they'd finished working.



Once again, it was just incredible how fast it was. 650bhp & 1100kg and driven by someone who knows what they're doing and was definitely the highlight of my trip so far.




Lucky? I still can't believe it myself!

Edited by neilski on Monday 19th November 19:49

CoolC

4,213 posts

213 months

Thursday 5th April 2012
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Wow, what a fantasic trip to make, and with some top blagging skills to match.

Do you have a track of the route you've planned at all? it would be interesting to see.

Good luck with the trip, and I look forward to reading the updates here.

SingleMale

626 posts

167 months

Thursday 5th April 2012
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Fantastic bow Good luck and keep the updates coming.

Comfortably Dumb

1,237 posts

184 months

Thursday 5th April 2012
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Epic. Good luck.

Chris71

21,535 posts

241 months

Thursday 5th April 2012
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Awesome trip. Look forward to hearing more.

Minemapper

933 posts

155 months

Thursday 5th April 2012
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Let me know if you need a bed in Vienna. Might be able to arrange something for ya.

Epic adventure, btw.

Digga

40,207 posts

282 months

Thursday 5th April 2012
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CoolC said:
Do you have a track of the route you've planned at all? it would be interesting to see.
+1 That or a route so far map.

Great story and I wish you the very best of luck on your mission. thumbup

Watchman

6,391 posts

244 months

Thursday 5th April 2012
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The car stuff is really good (top blagging..!!) but I'm interested in your cycling too. Are you a regular long distance cyclist? Do any training before setting off? Any notable experiences whilst cycling? Did you ever try to hook-up with any mates go with or did you only ever want to go alone?

anonymous-user

53 months

Thursday 5th April 2012
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what a legend! do you have a forwarding address so we can send some haribo?!??!

neilski

Original Poster:

2,563 posts

234 months

Thursday 5th April 2012
quotequote all
CoolC said:
Wow, what a fantasic trip to make, and with some top blagging skills to match.

Do you have a track of the route you've planned at all? it would be interesting to see.

Good luck with the trip, and I look forward to reading the updates here.
Being a bit of a technophobe, no I don't but I use Google Latitude which only shows the last place I was at. If anyone can show me how to use Google Maps or similar to record waypoints I'd be happy to fill it in each day showing where I sleep or places I stop at that are of interest.

neilski

Original Poster:

2,563 posts

234 months

Thursday 5th April 2012
quotequote all
Minemapper said:
Let me know if you need a bed in Vienna. Might be able to arrange something for ya.

Epic adventure, btw.
Yes please. Drop me a line through my profile if it's something you can arrange. Cheers.

neilski

Original Poster:

2,563 posts

234 months

Thursday 5th April 2012
quotequote all
Watchman said:
The car stuff is really good (top blagging..!!) but I'm interested in your cycling too. Are you a regular long distance cyclist? Do any training before setting off? Any notable experiences whilst cycling? Did you ever try to hook-up with any mates go with or did you only ever want to go alone?
Good point. Maybe I should have posted the above in General Gassing and a separate thread in Pedal Powered more related to the trip.

I've always loved cycling since I was 14 when I got my first road bike and the trips have got longer and longer as I've got older. I've been to the Alps twice including doing the Marmotte, have done all three ascents of Mont Ventoux, ridden Raid Pyrénéen in 2010 and last year I rode from Windsor to the Midi-Pyrenees & back with full camping gear as a sort of warm up / practice run for my round the world ride. The toughest was undoubtedly Raid Pyrénéen as once we finised we rode back from the Mediterranean to the UK and did the whole lot in two weeks.

As for training, that took a bit of a back seat due to the amount of planning and preparation involved in getting this trip off the ground. I had to close down a business, get a flat up to a decent enough standard to be let, find a tenant and therefore become a landlord, put all my stuff in storage, sort out finances and mobile communications while I travel, buy everything I need to be able to live for the next 2-3 years using just what I can carry etc. the list is endless so I got out on the bike when I could but it was nothing like the amount of training I did for Raid Pyrénéen because I'm not against the clock this time.

Notable experiences, yes plenty but probably too many to mention for this thread. As for wanting to go with mates then of course I'd have loved my brother (who is also into cycling) or various mates to come along but it's not like going on a two week holiday so people who are willing to put their life on hold to cycle round the world for two to three years are few and far between!

If anyone wants to join me for a short stint then they're more than welcome.

mig25_foxbat2003

5,426 posts

210 months

Friday 6th April 2012
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What list of countries are you hoping to hit? We met a guy in Tajikistan who was trying to cycle from London to Sydney - top bloke, he made it about six months later! Make sure you keep this thread open as a blog - it'll make for an epic story!

GarryA

4,700 posts

163 months

Friday 6th April 2012
quotequote all
neilski said:
Being a bit of a technophobe, no I don't but I use Google Latitude which only shows the last place I was at. If anyone can show me how to use Google Maps or similar to record waypoints I'd be happy to fill it in each day showing where I sleep or places I stop at that are of interest.
You can 'star up' on google maps to record everywhere you've been.


Ghisallo

1,081 posts

177 months

Friday 6th April 2012
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Fair play to you, what a wonderful journey you are making. Really utmost respect (and envy!)

neilski

Original Poster:

2,563 posts

234 months

Friday 6th April 2012
quotequote all
GarryA said:
neilski said:
Being a bit of a technophobe, no I don't but I use Google Latitude which only shows the last place I was at. If anyone can show me how to use Google Maps or similar to record waypoints I'd be happy to fill it in each day showing where I sleep or places I stop at that are of interest.
You can 'star up' on google maps to record everywhere you've been.

Thanks for that. I think I might have got the hang of it and have created a route map of my journey so far which you can see here: http://g.co/maps/vjj5d

If it's not working, can someone let me know?

As of yesterday I've reached the Danube so I'll be following that all the way through Austria and Slovakia to Hungary before turning off for Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia and Bulgaria on my way to Istanbul to cross into Asia.

Once in Asia, the route is Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Timor Leste, Australia, New Zealand then Chile to Canada before crossing North America to somewhere in the east then I'll take a decision on where I fly to for the last leg. At the moment I'm thinking of either The Gambia or Sicily but I've got plenty of time to think about it!

neilski

Original Poster:

2,563 posts

234 months

Friday 6th April 2012
quotequote all
Here's my passenger lap in the Radical, now on YouTube:

http://youtu.be/6bv5o5Sy1EM

Yes it was fast!

Rob_T

1,916 posts

250 months

Friday 6th April 2012
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This is going to be a superb thread if you keep updating it. You could use it as the basis of a book. I'd buy it. I'm very envious, I would love to do this but with a young family it ain't gonna happen! Best I have is cycling down to Yeovil tomorrow (130 miles). Not quite in the same league, but I'm sure I can pretend Salisbury plains are like outer Mongolia!

Good luck and please keep posting...

CoolC

4,213 posts

213 months

Tuesday 10th April 2012
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I don't know if you do the whole Facebook thing, but I've just seen this from the group cyclingbuddy. http://www.cyclingbuddy.com/websites/where-is-the-...

A "challenge" to see how far they can get 10 drink bottles around the world.

Plus it keeps this thread on the front page wink

Raoul Duke

929 posts

162 months

Tuesday 10th April 2012
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Great thread fella, what an experience - will certainly be keeping up with the updates.
thumbup