The journey begins

Hey guys,

I have decided to cycle around the world. Um... I'm not sure where to begin. I suppose with my previous expeditions, if you can call them that. In July of this year I rode my bike from one end of the country to the other, a journey which took me just over a thousand miles and three weeks to complete. I camped most of the way, and were it not for some cheapo camping equipment I wouldn't have slept in a bed the whole trip. I can't even begin to explain how wonderfull the experience was, it was quite litteraly the experience of my lifetime, and I'm not ready to give up the cycling yet. As far as I'm concerned it would be a damn shame to stop now when there is so much more out there to see, and so much more road to ride. Heck I may never get another chance.

There are two routes open to me for this ride, I could either go at a reasonable pace, and have a travel experience, or I could aim to beat the world record, a difficult task, but one I believe I could achieve with proper training and preparation. The current record for Circumnavigating the world is held by Mark Beaumont, who completed his 18,297 mile trip in 194 days and 7 hours, which works out to about 100 miles a day.

The thing is I could probably get some corporate sponsors If I attempted the world record, and if I somehow found my way into the limelight it could be a lucrative journay. I'm not counting on anything, but who knows.

I'm going to start planning the journey right away, but will wait untill I get some experience to decide what kind of trip I will try to make it. To test the water I'm going to cycle outside of the UK for the first time in january of next year. At this point the catering industry will be quite slow, and I have a Eurostar voucher from my last birthday, which will help with the budgeting a little bit. I have some friends who are about to move to Valencia, and another who want's to travel to Barcelona, so they will be my destinations. The journey will take me over a thousand miles, so it will be similar to the Lands End-John O'Groats ride in terms of distance. I'll try to go at a much faster pace though, about 100-120 miles a day, but will also allow extra time to complete it incase that proves too difficult.

By the time I set off on that ride I hope to have everything ready as though I were setting off for the full slog:

1) Website
2) Training regime
3) New ultralight Camping equipment/Clothing
4) Some knoledge of country/language/culture
5) Fully planned route taking elevation into account

On top of this I'll have to start organising things for the full trip:

1) Organising sponsorship (contacting companies & media)
2) Planning route, and finding out about international travel
3) Doing research on others who have done similar trips