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

[Jayfish]

Neil, on a scale of 1 to 10 how does the Spa and Nurburgring blagging rate now?

[neilski]

They're still two of my favourite places of the whole trip even though they seem a lifetime ago now.

[JuniorD]

Incredible stuff, as always.

[Baldinho]

Amazing thread, only discovered it last night. Do you ever get sick of cycling?!

[neilski]

I have the odd crap day where it might be raining or a permanent headwind or 100km+ of nothing but desert but generally speaking I do enjoy it or I wouldn't be doing it.

[Baldinho]

What a fantastic life experience. Beats my 100 miles a day, packed like a sardine, on my South West trains commute!

[B1G GK]

Is there a timescale or place where you will finish, or just keep on going until you whenever?

[neilski]

Back home to England in time for Christmas 2015 is the plan.

[Psimpson7]

You hitting Australia's east coast at any point?

Amazing thread. One of the few I read every post in.

[neilski]

Psimpson7 said:

You hitting Australia's east coast at any point?

Amazing thread. One of the few I read every post in.

What, including this one back in January this year?

neilski said:

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!

So in answer to your question, yes, the east coast was on my route albeit only as far north as Sydney but it was 10 months ago and I'm heading home now via the Americas & north Africa.

[Psimpson7]

crap, how did I miss that! lol must have missed some of the posts I thought I had read!

sorry. maybe I will read it again now

[Gruffy]

You may have already been asked this but do you have any plans following the ride? Back to the old career/new career/another ride/adventure travel circuit/book etc?

[neilski]

I've made it to Trujillo on the coast for a few days of warmth before heading back into the mountains for the final push to Ecuador but my bike has developed a problem. Does anyone want to guess which part has failed? Should be easy.

[soad]

Must be similar to this...too much abuse.

[yellowjack]

neilski said:

I've made it to Trujillo on the coast for a few days of warmth before heading back into the mountains for the final push to Ecuador but my bike has developed a problem. Does anyone want to guess which part has failed? Should be easy.

The Shimano hub that you waited a month for?

[neilski]

Yep, the freehub body has stopped going round, effectively turning my bike into a 27 speed fixie. Fine going uphill or on the flat, not so great on a 55km descent offroad.

I should add that the hub body has remained crack free so my skills as a master wheelbuilder are not in question.

ETA: It's still under warranty but CRC are quoting 15 working days to get a new one to me and my Peruvian visa has already expired. Not good.

Edited by neilski on Friday 7th November 17:22

[Watchman]

I recently learned a bit about freehubs (trying to eliminate a noise from somewhere). I'm sure you know already that they're not complicated although they can be fiddly. Can you disassemble and see if you can work it free?.. or do you tend to err on the side of caution and not risk breaking it further? Given your relative lack of resources, no-one would blame you for leaving it alone.

What sort of tools do you carry with you?

[neilski]

I know how to remove the freehub providing it takes a 10mm allen key and not anything bigger but once it's off there are various tools for taking it apart and putting it back together that I don't have. I also don't have the lockring & cone spanners needed to remove the axle but I might be able to persuade a bike shop to let me use their workshop if they have these.

The problem is if anything inside the freehub is properly broken then I won't be able to fix it anyway. As you can imagine, Peru is a bit basic for bike spares and doesn't really stock stuff like 36 hole XT hubs. I might get lucky and find another Shimano hub with the same freehub body that I can use but I have no idea which hub models have the same freehub as an XT hub and don't want to buy several to strip down only to find out they're all different.

I don't suppose anyone's coming to Northern Peru or Ecuador in the next few days?

[Leithen]

Worth trying to get something going on twitter/facebook with Shimano?

[neilski]

Gruffy said:

You may have already been asked this but do you have any plans following the ride? Back to the old career/new career/another ride/adventure travel circuit/book etc?

At the moment I have lots of ideas but I'm keeping a completely open mind. I'd quite like to work from January to October 2016 before setting off again on another trip but only about six months next time then maybe enter into a cycle of six months work, six months travel but I'll see how it goes.