blog post toda<\/a>y published on his personal site, Tom reflects on the trip, the “homecoming,” and prospects for future cycling expeditions. Here’s an excerpt from his blog:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
I rode into my small vil\u00adlage in the East Mid\u00adlands, one thou\u00adsand two hun\u00addred and twenty-two days after cyc\u00adling out of it, whoop\u00ading with the recog\u00adni\u00adtion of every stick and stone, fol\u00adlow\u00ading Tenny on her bicycle past the park gates, round the tight bend which it was always so easy to over\u00adshoot, down the leafy hill on which my brother went over the handle\u00adbars of his BMX aged 8, past the first houses and the spring\u00adwa\u00adter trick\u00adling from the wall and the dingy old pub I never went to and round the bend to the third house on the left, which a long time ago I used to call\u00a0home.<\/p>\n
What a fant\u00adast\u00adic\u00adally absurd feel\u00ading to have gone so far without ever hav\u00ading had a des\u00adtin\u00ada\u00adtion, and to end up right back where I began! It was the first time since leav\u00ading that I\u2019d arrived some\u00adwhere on my bike without the com\u00adfort\u00ading know\u00adledge that I would soon pack my belong\u00adings back into the pan\u00adniers and ride off again on another stage of my journey.<\/p>\n
There was no wel\u00adcom\u00ading party, no TV crew, no local reporter, no home\u00adcom\u00ading cel\u00adeb\u00adra\u00adtion of what I\u2019d done. An oppor\u00adtun\u00adity missed for some cheap pub\u00adli\u00adcity and a couple more news\u00adpa\u00adper clip\u00adpings for pos\u00adter\u00adity? Def\u00adin\u00aditely. It would be easy enough to spin the story of Ride Earth towards the heroic. \u201cLocal Lad Sets Off To Cycle Round World, Comes Home Mar\u00adried\u201d, would run the pleas\u00adingly con\u00addensed head\u00adline of a short fea\u00adture some\u00adwhere in the depths of the Har\u00adbor\u00adough Mail. The art\u00adicle would skim the crests of my travelogue\u2019s waves, sand\u00adwiched between a story about a baby born in a car park and a page of prop\u00aderty\u00a0ads.<\/p>\n
My mum was chop\u00adping veget\u00adables on the other side of the glass of the kit\u00adchen win\u00addow and my dad hadn\u2019t got home from work yet. Just another day \u2014 another day com\u00ading to a close in this sleepy vil\u00adlage which con\u00adtin\u00adued to crawl slowly through the ages while politi\u00adcians squabbled on TV and the plun\u00adder and van\u00addal\u00adism of the planet con\u00adtin\u00adued to blend seam\u00adlessly into every\u00adday existence.<\/p>\n
Just as well there was no fan\u00adfare. In any case I con\u00adsidered Tenny\u2019s achieve\u00adments of the pre\u00advi\u00adous two months to have hugely out\u00adweighed mine \u2014 a sens\u00adit\u00adive city-girl from the Middle East sud\u00addenly thrown into a world of heavy traffic and high prices and sneak\u00ading into fields to sleep under can\u00advas for days on end, with me pot\u00adter\u00ading along in the role of porter and navigator.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s time for me to stop think\u00ading about the next big trip.\u00a0For one thing, my atti\u00adtude to cycle-touring needs a ser\u00adi\u00adous tune-up; no longer will I pedal furi\u00adously away in search of a com\u00adpleted check\u00adlist of coun\u00adtries that sound inter\u00adest\u00ading, or of adding more zeros to the num\u00adber of kilo\u00admetres I\u2019ve cycled. My last rel\u00adat\u00adively far-out expedition, to Mon\u00adgo\u00adlia, epi\u00adtom\u00adised my chan\u00adging approach to rid\u00ading a bike in for\u00adeign lands.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I need to put some\u00adthing back into the great hot-pot we call soci\u00adety, which is still a hor\u00adribly con\u00adfus\u00ading place where noth\u00ading that any\u00adone does seems to bring civil\u00adiz\u00ada\u00adtion for\u00adward to the fabled plat\u00adeau of uni\u00adver\u00adsal peace and plenty. Trav\u00adel\u00adling has raised more ques\u00adtions than it\u2019s answered \u2014 I feel that I under\u00adstand even less the intric\u00ada\u00adcies of the human and nat\u00adural worlds, now I know first-hand how bemus\u00adingly vast and com\u00adplex they are.[…]\u00a0<\/p>\n
[…]\n
With the opu\u00adlent lux\u00adury of hind\u00adsight, I have come to believe that the value of a bicycle jour\u00adney is the abil\u00adity to slow down and get as far away from the high\u00adways as pos\u00adsible, in order to escape the rush and exper\u00adi\u00adence the calm\u00ading of the soul, and to bet\u00adter appre\u00adci\u00adate the hon\u00adest good\u00adness that the the world will pile upon you and inspire you to pile upon oth\u00aders. (Unfor\u00adtu\u00adnately, such sen\u00adti\u00adments aren\u2019t likely to sell many\u00a0books!)<\/p>\n
[…]\n
So is that it for adven\u00adture and exer\u00adcise and dis\u00adtant lands? Like hell it is! There\u2019s an ever-growing list of fantasy exped\u00adi\u00adtions I\u2019d love to tackle, and it\u2019s good to feel that to at least attempt any one of them is well within my cap\u00adab\u00adil\u00adity and cur\u00adrent level of reck\u00adless\u00adness. But that\u2019s a blog post for another time\u2026<\/p>\n
Photo courtesy of http:\/\/tom.ride-earth.org.uk<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A British cyclist who lived for years in Armenia…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tstyn_error":""},"categories":[10,5],"tags":[18237,18236,12051,12052,18235,18234],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48479"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48479\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}