The Plan.....? & The Challenge

The last week has been spent at my fathers house putting in serious thought as to what i'm going to do for the next little while. Knowing that you have every opportunity in the world to do whatever you want leaves you with a hell of a lot of options. I do know that my plans once I leave the UK include couch surfing and WWOOFing my way around Europe. But that's about as far as i've gotten, due to the fact that as soon as I make a decision something will happen to change it.

While I'm in the UK i'm determined to see as many of my friends and family members as I can. However a year of travelling, especially in countries like Peru, Bolivia and Laos has skewed my rational of prices. A 12 hour bus ride should cost no more than $20, accomodation should cost no more than $7 for a private room and meals should work out to roughly $5 for two people plus drinks.

With these prices in my head I couldn't justify public transport costs in the UK. Hence the challenge has arisen. I am going to attempt to ride all the way from Stourbridge (Birmingham) to Willingham (Cambridge), down to Stortford (Hertfordshire) then potentially down to London, over the space of about a week, stopping at various friends houses along the way. I am fully aware of how ridiculous this is and thus will accept any betting on how far I make it before saying sod it and just taking the train down to London (although from Stortford doesn't count, as i'm probably going to be out of time by then as I want to make it to London before the weekend). If anyone lives within a reasonable distance of this let me know and I might just add you in. Leaving out the leg to London this is 151miles - or for those playing along at home that is 241km. So approximately 50km for each day i'm actually riding.

Proposed Route

This does sound doable.... until you realise the last time I rode a bike was in Argentina almost a year ago, under much different circumstances (read drinking). With this is mind dad and I are going to do a test ride on Saturday, if all goes well then I'm on my way.  If it doesn't go well i'm not going to do it and will look like a total pratt.  Watch this space kids.

                                         If i know that I just put my mind to it, I can ride a bike!