EPISODE 60
Whole Lotta Plov: Lessons in Global Kindness
What happens when you trade the comfort of a predictable life for an open-ended ride across the globe? You might just find yourself eating a whole lotta plov. In this episode, guest Tom Bruce recounts his journey pedaling across Europe, the Stans, China, and the United States with little more than basic gear and a healthy dose of curiosity. While navigating sweltering deserts, topping high-altitude mountain passes, and overcoming language barriers, Tom discovered a beautiful truth: when you allow yourself to be vulnerable, the world steps up with incredible warmth. From Romanian farmers sharing sausages and homemade wine to well-meaning Tajik hosts clearing away his dinner just to cook him yet another fresh batch of plov, this conversation is a reminder of our shared humanity. Now a physics teacher, an author of six books about his bicycling adventures, and a bikepacking event organizer, Tom reflects on his round-the-world journey as a life-changing event, a testament to the power of letting go of rigid plans, trusting the kindness of strangers, and discovering that the world is far more generous than we are often led to believe.
Episode Transcript
Tom: Having seen so much of the world was great, because it makes a bit more sense now. You hear about all these countries ending in Stan and how they’re awful places and how you don’t want to go there because you’re going to get kidnapped and all this sort of thing. I mean, there are areas, I’m sure, where you need to be careful, but they were the friendliest people I’ve ever met. I just remember thinking that almost everyone in the world is a good person.
Gabriel: You just heard Tom Bruce, who in 2011 set off on a bicycle from his family home in Cheshire, England, to see how far he could get if he traveled east. He spent nights in people’s houses all over the world, slept in yurts, camped with nomads, ate delicious food ranging from Tibetan stew to a whole lot of Central Asian plov, drank homemade Georgian wine, and even got a police escort through a forbidden city in China. In under a year, Tom made it around the globe through Europe, the Stans, China and the United States in a journey that changed his life. Since then, he has published a book about his round-the-world trip as well as five others. Thanks to his fitness from the trip, he has taken up bikepacking racing. Most importantly, he regularly pedals with his wife and children through town to get ice cream.
Sandra: You’re listening to The Accidental Bicycle Tourist. In this podcast, you’ll meet people from all walks of life and learn about their most memorable bike touring experiences. This is your host, Gabriel Aldaz.
Gabriel: Hello bicycle touring enthusiasts! Welcome to another episode of The Accidental Bicycle Tourist podcast. Today we continue our streak of community recommendations. Listener Tracy from Alabama made me aware of today’s guest, Tom Bruce. Tracy loved Tom’s debut bestselling book, titled Every Inch of the Way: My Bike Ride Around the World. Tracy wrote to me, “One day he up and decided to postpone continuing to work and just go across the world on a bike alone. To me, that requires a lot of bravery and daring.” So, sounds like there are a lot of adventures to be discussed on today’s episode and I look forward to hearing them. Tom Bruce, thank you for being a guest on The Accidental Bicycle Tourist podcast.
Tom: Thank you for having me. It will be great to talk to you.
Gabriel: So, setting off to cycle unsupported around the world must have been a big moment. Can you share some of your background and the lead-up to that fateful day that you said in motion?
Tom: Yeah, sure. So, it’s looking back quite a long time now. I think I did it when I was 24, I turned 25 and I’m now 39. So, 14 years ago. So basically, I did a degree at university and then I moved in with my girlfriend. She was still finishing her degree, which meant that I had kind of a relatively cheap year of rent and things, which allowed me to save some of the money that I spent on the trip.
Gabriel: What did you study in the university and where was that?
Tom: So I did mechanical engineering as an Edinburgh.
Gabriel: Okay. I also got my degrees, I guess, in mechanical engineering.
Tom: So I actually picked Edinburgh more for the place than the university, even though it’s a great university. I wanted to be in Scotland.
Gabriel: Oh yeah, great city as well, Edinburgh.
Tom: I knew I needed to do it then because you get busy with other things and that was the time to do it for me for sure. Initially I wanted to see the world, I wanted to travel. I liked cycling, so I thought I’ll try cycling and see how far I get. But I didn’t really plan to cycle around the world to begin with and then I started reading other people’s books. So I read books by lots of different people, including Alistair Humphries, who was probably the main inspiration, I think.
Gabriel: I think Alistair Humphries was the inspiration for a number of around-the-world journeys and he started from the UK. And you did as well, right? Where specifically did you set off from?
Tom: So I set off from my parents’ house, actually, which is in Cheshire. I ended up going the wrong way to start with because I thought I’d better start from the coast if I’m going to go around the world. So I cycled to the coast of Wales, which was, obviously that was going west rather than east, which is where I was heading most of the time. So I went west, got to the coast and I started really in Aberystwyth, I suppose, in north Wales. I didn’t really have a huge amount of planning done before I left. In fact, my passport was still in one of the embassies in London when I left because I had to pick it up on the way past because I was so last-minute with everything. Yeah, I just thought I’d see how far I got. To begin with, I was kind of thinking, well, I’ll try and go around the world. But if I don’t, I’ll just do a long ride and see what happens. Then I guess the more I got into the ride itself, the more I wanted to do this unbroken chain around the world, which is why the book’s called Every Inch of the Way. So I didn’t want to skip any bit of land the whole trip. And then I headed down to the English Channel.
Gabriel: And you picked up your passport on the way.
Tom: I did. I can’t remember which embassy. It might have been Azerbaijan, I think. I got an email from them when I was in Wales saying, oh, your passport’s ready for collection. But by the way, we’re closing for something like a 10-day national holiday and we’re doing that in two days time. So you’ve got to get to London from Wales. So I ended up doing the biggest day of the whole trip on about the second day. Got all the way to London.
Gabriel: That made you feel even stranger for having cycled the other way first because you immediately had to backtrack.
Tom: Yeah, exactly. It was nice. It was a good part of the route, actually, going through Wales. It’s a very beautiful place.
Gabriel: Oh, yeah, I’ve cycled a bit in Wales and it’s, yeah, beautiful.
Tom: Yeah.
Gabriel: And did you feel like you were doing something brave and daring at the time? This is what Tracy has ascribed to your voyage. How did you feel when you set off?
Tom: I mean, I’ve done quite a few sort of small trips and things. Looking back on it, maybe I was a bit naive at the time. I kind of… I didn’t feel particularly scared. I just thought I’d just see what happened.
Gabriel: Well, if you had no planning behind you, that is a bit naive right off the bat.
Tom: Yeah, there was a small amount of planning. I had a rough idea where I’d go. But actually, to be honest, not having a plan was kind of a good thing. I’ll come on to that later, because cycle touring is so unpredictable and there’s so many different factors. Having too much of a plan would have been a problem, I think.
Gabriel: Oh, yeah. Having too much of a plan is definitely a problem. I always say there’s a sweet spot between having no plan at all and having too much of a plan because if you plan too much, that doesn’t survive the first day, basically. So, yeah, you need to be flexible. And your girlfriend was okay with this? How did she react?
Tom: Well, she’s still with me now. She’s my wife now. So I guess…
Gabriel: Okay, good.
Tom: I mean, I don’t think she was thrilled for me to be away for so long, but she came and visited me a couple of times on the trip. She came out to Turkey in America and we kept in touch pretty well.
Gabriel: Nice. So let’s hear then about some of your initial adventures. You’re heading east, so that means you have to first cross pretty much the European continent.
Tom: Exactly, yeah. I got the ferry across the France and then I sort of headed diagonally across France, heading towards the source of the Danube. I went into Switzerland, into Germany, around Black Forest, got to see that and got to the start of the Danube. Then I just followed the river all the way pretty much through Europe until I got to Bulgaria, but it’s a great route. The Danube is such a great cycle route.
Gabriel: That’s a well-marked and well-traveled route.
Tom: Yeah. And so many capital cities to see as well. Going through Europe was amazing because I started off kind of in cultures relatively similar to the UK, although obviously France and Germany are different in many ways, similar sort of wealth. And yeah, as I went east, I noticed obviously people had a bit less money, but community became more of a thing. And people were more willing to sit down with me, have a chat with me, share what they had, I shared what I had. It was much more social, I think, made me reflect on community and how maybe we’re losing a little bit in the developed world.
Gabriel: Being a bicycle tourist in England or Germany, nobody looks twice at you.
Tom: No.
Gabriel: It’s so common. But once you get out even a bit further into Eastern Europe, then it becomes something a little bit more of an attraction. And I think it only becomes more and more of an attraction as you go further east.
Tom: Yeah, exactly.
Gabriel: You go from not being noticed at all to being the center of attention.
Tom: People in villages in Romania don’t lock the doors. They just go into each other’s houses. Everyone knows everybody. This is so different from what I’m used to. So it was lovely. He was really nice to see that.
Gabriel: So is there one story in Europe that comes to mind that has to do with this community or sharing in some way?
Tom: I spent quite a lot of my time on the River Danube riding with a guy called Nino. I forget where it was. I met him now, but somewhere close to the start of the Danube section. We rode all the way to Turkey together and we split in Istanbul. One day it was in Romania, a really beautiful part. I think we’d left the Danube by that point. We got to this farm, found a nice field, thought we could put the tents up. So we put the tents up and then we saw this farmer coming over to us. And we were a bit worried, thinking, is this guy going to ask us to move or camping on his land? But actually, he just brought loads of sausages and some homemade wine, I think. And he just wanted to sit with us and we sat down, cooked some food. I had a hip flask with me with some Talisker whisky from Scotland. He absolutely loved that. He thought it was the best thing he’d ever had. We had a really nice evening. We couldn’t speak to each other because we didn’t have any common language, but we could communicate. Have you ever heard of a Point It book? I don’t know if people still use them now because we’ve got phones?
Gabriel: Oh, well, some episodes ago, the guest was Alan Stillman…
Tom: OK.
Gabriel: Who was the founder of QwikPoint. If this is what a Point It book is, it’s these visual guides that you just point to.
Tom: Yeah. So there’s loads of pictures and you just point at things and it works really well. Using that to communicate a lot, like all the way, really, apart from in the English speaking countries.
Gabriel: Wow, that’s a cool connection between guests.
Tom: Big thing in Eastern Europe was the dogs. Hacks of wild dogs was quite scary. I had an ultrasonic dog deterrent. It makes like an ultrasonic noise, which worked most of the time. But then it broke at one point. I accidentally… You press a button and I pressed the button and I accidentally let go of it. And the thing hit the dog. So the dog ran off. And then it smashed. So I didn’t have it anymore.
Gabriel: Well, it deterred that dog.
Tom: It was working well up to that point. Turns out the best thing to do with dogs is if you get a stick and attach it to your bike, a big, long stick, I just put it on the pannier rack. And then if they start running at you and just got off the bike, put the bike between me and the dogs, hold the stick and throw stones at the dogs. And that seemed to work. I didn’t get bitten, luckily, but it would have been very easy to have got bitten, particularly in Serbia. I remember Serbia was particularly bad.
Gabriel: OK. And then you got to Turkey and things really did start to change even further at that point.
Tom: Yeah. So obviously, there’s a huge cultural change when you get to Turkey, because you’re moving from Europe to Asia, really, and from, I guess, historically Christian countries to a Muslim country and all the architecture changes, your mosques and the prayer call and things, which is really interesting. So, yeah, the first part of Turkey was getting to Istanbul, really. And then I was there for maybe a week or so, getting visas for onward travel. So at that point, I had to change my plans because I couldn’t get into Iran. I couldn’t get a visa from the Iranian embassy being British at the time. So I ended up going through the Caucasus and into Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan instead, which was good, actually. Yeah, I did want to see Iran, but I think I got just as much out of the other route.
Gabriel: That meant you went through a part of Russia at that point.
Tom: So I went along the Black Sea coast, the northern coast of Turkey. And then I went through Georgia and then Azerbaijan. And then I got the boat into Kazakhstan.
Gabriel: Ah, the boat, that’s how you avoided Russia.
Tom: Yeah, I couldn’t get into Russia either. Again, you can’t apply for a Russian visa unless you’re in Britain, apparently.
Gabriel: Oh, OK, because I was going to say, in 2011, I guess things were a little easier between Russia and the UK, but you just hadn’t planned to do it.
Tom: Yeah. So another part of the trip that I wanted to do, which I’ve now done since was Mongolia, but I couldn’t get into Mongolia either because to get into Mongolia, you have to get into Russia to cross a small amount of land which cut off Mongolia for me. The only alternative would have been sending my passport home, waiting for ages while they process the visa and then getting it posted out again. But I didn’t have time. So I ended up getting to China instead of Mongolia for that reason as well.
Gabriel: From previous guests that have gone to the Stand, the things that they report is two things. One, the difficulty of the terrain and two, the amazing hospitality of the people. So do you have any experiences along those lines from your time there?
Tom: Yeah, absolutely. Talking about hospitality, actually, I think the country that was the most hospitable the whole trip was Georgia. So just before I got to the Stans, actually, but Georgia is an amazing country. It’s only small, but the people there are so friendly. Honestly, you finish at the end of the day and there’s a crowd of people, all of whom want to host you and they’re kind of fighting over the opportunity. It’s great. The food there is amazing and they’re just such friendly people. That was great. I mean, that sort of thing did carry on, though, in the next few countries as well. Until I got to China, because I think in China, people are much more reserved about foreigners still, so it’s more difficult to connect up to that. Everyone in every country in all the Stans were kind of really, really friendly, really wanted to come meet me.
Gabriel: And did you take on some big climbs?
Tom: Oh, yeah, yeah. So after Azerbaijan, the Caspian Sea ferry is a really unpredictable thing in itself, actually, trying to get a ticket for it. It’s very random. I ended up getting one after about four days, I think. You just sort of have to wait until they’re happy to take you on one of the boats because they take cars across on like transport ferries. The first bit was flat, but it was a big, massive desert crossing in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. I don’t know who, if anyone had ever crossed that, but I know lots of people have done it now and potentially people have done it before me, I don’t know. But I had no way of finding out. I did a lot of research and trying to read blogs and reading books and things. And I don’t know of anyone who did it before I did it. And now it’s a quite well used road. But when I did it, it was a bumpy track, a hard pack from the lorries crushing the sand down, but just breaking bumps like that all, you know, over and over and over again, bump, bump, bump, about, I don’t know, a thousand kilometers or something. And it was hot. It was like 50 degrees Celsius.
Gabriel: 50?
Tom: Yeah. I didn’t know how much water I’d be able to get. This was summer in the desert in Kazakhstan. So it was very, very hot. I ended up taking something like 23 litres of water on my bike. I bought it all from a shop in Aktau on the Caspian Sea coast. And just the bike was twice as heavy as.. I was trying to steer it and get used to the way it was really difficult. But in the end, it turned out actually there was plenty of opportunities to get water because there’s quite a lot of truck stops for the lorries just in the middle of the desert. Oasis, points, whatever.
Gabriel: Right.
Tom: So yeah, that was good. And then that ended up joining on the Silk Road and takes you through the amazing old trading cities like Samarkand and Bukhara, which are just architecturally the most amazing places I’ve ever been to, I think. After Uzbekistan, I got into Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. So I followed the Pamir Highway into the big mountains, the Pamir Range, which was probably the most spectacular scenery on the trip. Obviously, big climbs, altitude problems, lots of off-road, bumpy bits and cold.
Gabriel: What altitude problems did you have?
Tom: For me, nothing too bad. I got obviously shortness of breath, headaches, straining to into climb up to – I can’t remember how high it was now, maybe four, four and a half thousand meters, probably.
Gabriel: Yeah.
Tom: A few people I was up there at the time actually did have some problems. A guy had to come down really quickly because his arms and his face all swelled up because of the altitude. I did get stung by a bee up there, though, that was quite scary because it wasn’t the same as English bees. It hit my head there and then my whole face swelled up.
Gabriel: Oh, right between your eyes.
Tom: Yeah, I couldn’t see for a few days because my eyes were so swollen…
Gabriel: Oh, my gosh.
Tom: To the point where I couldn’t open them. So I had to sort of stay in a hotel for a couple of days while it went down.
Gabriel: So you’re not allergic or anything. It just was in this spot.
Tom: Not that I’m aware, no.
Gabriel: Wow.
Tom: It was pretty scary because I didn’t quite know what was going on. I was lucky it was near a hospital there, actually. So I went to the hospital. They looked at it and gave me some medicine and it sorted out in the end so I could carry on.
Gabriel: What was the condition of the road back then?
Tom: It wasn’t bad, actually. I mean, a lot of it wasn’t tarmac. It was kind of hard pack, gravelly stuff, but it wasn’t bad. There was one bit where I had to go over a mountain pass on like a sandy track, which I had to push quite a lot of. But compared to the desert I had just been through before, it was quite easy in terms of the condition of the road, actually. Yeah, I just really enjoyed that section. It was great. And lots of other cyclists heading the same way at the same time. So you meet loads of people in the Pamirs.
Gabriel: Yeah, we’ve talked about on the show how the Pamir Highway seems to be almost the most popular destination more than some of the other ones that you might think of. It’s only become even more popular now than when you did it.
Tom: It’s amazing because you start like I say in Samarkand, which is one of the most amazing cities you could ever visit. And then you’re straight into the mountains and it goes from kind of a desert wasteland, kind of big rocks and sand everywhere to like lush valleys and big raging rivers and snow-capped peaks and big lakes. So it’s just stunning. And then you get into Kyrgyzstan, where it’s almost like Mongolia in terms of the big grassy pastures and the yaks and everything. So yeah, brilliant road. Really, really cool place to go.
Gabriel: Cool. OK. And then on to China.
Tom: I ended up going back into Kazakhstan through Almaty and then cross the border near there into China. And then it was completely different. The main thing I remember feeling, first of all, when I got to China, was I’m really pleased to have some really good food again, because Central Asia has got many strengths, but I would say the food is not one of them. They got this meal that they all eat called plov. I don’t know if you’ve heard of plov? It’s basically rice cooked in oil with bits of vegetables and meat in. And if you have it once or twice, it’s OK. But it’s pretty much the only thing you can get for days and days and days and days and days.
Gabriel: Plov is not a good name for a dish.
Gabriel: While plov may not sound so yummy, the word originates from the Persian polow, meaning rice cooked with meat and spices, which also evolved into the better-sounding pilaf and pilau variants across different cultures.
Tom: I’ve got a story about plov, actually. I was riding through, I think it was in, yeah, it was Tajikistan. I got to this little village at the end of a long day. I’ve been eating plov for weeks and weeks on end without anything else, really, because it’s so cheap in all the roadside cafes. You can get a portion of it for almost 50p or something at the time. So it would be… made sense for me to do that. So I got to this village at the end of the day and I found a little shop that sold pasta and pasta sauce, like tomato sauce. I was like really excited about having something different. So I cooked it up in my tent in a little stove and then some people came over from my nearby house and said, “You’ve got to come and speak to us.” So I went in and I took my pan with me and then they said, “You can’t eat that,” and they were going to cook for me instead. So of course they cooked a big meal of plov. Well, I’ll keep the pan for the morning and have it for breakfast or something. But the lady had a very kindly washed up my pan and disposed of my pasta for me.
Gabriel: Oh, no way!
Tom: I wouldn’t get to eat.
Gabriel: What is this? Give this man some plov!
Tom: So they were being really kind and thoughtful and generous, but yeah, had a bad effect in the end.
Gabriel: Oh, that’s funny.
Tom: But yeah, anyway, into China, it was just, you know, amazing opportunities to eat some really good food again, so noodles and rice. One of the first places I went was a Urumqi, which is a massive city in the middle of the desert in China. It was just as you cross the border from Kazakhstan. And there you’ve got street food and kebabs cooking on the roadside. And it was great. But yeah, interesting place, that area of China. You’ve probably heard of the politics of what’s going on there with the genocide against the Muslim people who’ve come over from Kazakhstan.
Gabriel: Sadly, yes.
Tom: They’re trying to resettle Han Chinese from the west of the country into the east. And they built these cities and we went to one. And it was almost entirely uninhabited. I reckon five percent of the houses or flats had people living in there. And they’re trying to fill it up, but no one wants to live there because it’s in the middle of a desert and there’s nothing there. They just built these massive, massive cities. That’s a very strange place. So that was a bit of a shock to see. And lots of military presence as well, because it’s kind of on the edge of Tibet.
Gabriel: Interesting. You said “we.” Were you riding with somebody else at this point?
Tom: Yeah. So in Urumqi my cousin, Phil, met me there. He flew out and we did the whole of the Chinese leg together. So we had about two months of writing as a pair, which was great.
Gabriel: Oh, OK.
Tom: Basically, I crossed China then at the coast of China was the end of the Asian leg. So we went through the desert for probably two or three weeks following this new road they were building. So there’s a huge amount of development going on in China, more so now than then probably. But this road was a kind of four-lane motorway linking Urumqi to the rest of the country. But there was hardly any traffic on it. And we just basically rode along the hard shoulder of this road they were building. It’s a bit raised off the sand and underneath there’s loads of tunnels, some like circular pipes and some are quite big kind of rectangular concrete. I guess it’s to let the water go under the road. I think if it rains heavily or something.
Gabriel: Yeah, that makes sense.
Tom: I remember there was a sign like a black-and-yellow sign. And it turned out every time you went past one of those sign, there was a tunnel underneath it must be marking these pipes. And it was every kilometre or so, there was something like that. Yeah, so it’s dead useful for a place to sleep, to be honest. It was just putting the tents up and it was kind of warm and sheltered from the weather and it’s great. We often slept in the pipes under the road, but then one time we went down to try and find somewhere and we came across all these workers were building the road, living there and they must have lived there for months and months on end, just in the middle of the desert. And they were just cooking food in like these big steel drum things.
Gabriel: Right. Yeah, the 55-gallon drums.
Tom: Yeah, so they were dead friendly and they kind of shared the food with us and had a beer and it was really interesting to see that. So anyway, we crossed the desert for quite some time, a few weeks. And then we got to that city I mentioned, actually, the one which was almost empty. And that was coming into the foothills of the mountains that lead to Tibet. So there’s Qinghai province north of Tibet, which is very similar in terms of its culture and what it looks like. A bit lower down, but not much. So we went into Qinghai province. We couldn’t get into Tibet for the political reasons and things that we Qinghai was great. And it was very, very different from the other bit of China. It was kind of Buddhist monasteries and big lakes and everyone’s eating the dumplings that you might associate with the Buddhist culture. So that was really interesting. We went through a little city called Turpan, which was below sea level in China, which was extremely hot. They grow grapes there, so we ate a lot of them. But then we had another strange experience in the city there. The name of the town is Dalingha. I think I did some research afterwards, and it’s about the same population as Oxford in the UK. So I think it’s about 100,000 people living there. It turned out that foreigners weren’t allowed to go into the city at all. We cycled in and we were met by some police at the hotel we went to. So actually, we tried to check into one hotel and they said, “You can’t come here,” and they pointed to a different one. So we went to that one and it was my hotel just for foreign business people who go there for work and you have to stay in this hotel. And we were told, you’re only allowed there for one night and you’re going to get a police escort all night and then we’re going to take you away the next day. But one of the policemen could speak English. It was really great, because he’d never seen anyone but a Chinese person. So he just wanted to talk to us. They took us out to a bar and they gave us an escort. They had this electric police car with the siren. So they put the siren on and drove us round. It was one of their favorite places. It was just a completely surreal experience. Went to two different restaurants because they were two police when they both liked different ones. We had to go to both of them. And then they took us back to the hotel and we had a night sleep and then they escorted us out and waved as we cycled off. It was very strange. But really kind people again, just living in a different world.
Gabriel: And do you know why foreigners are not allowed there?
Tom: We were cycling across that road and there’s loads and loads of army trucks going past all the time. And I suspect there’s something to do with the Tibet situation. I don’t know.
Gabriel: In 2026, foreign travelers may spend the day in Dalingha, but overnight stays in the city. And much of the surrounding area are still strictly prohibited. This is because Dalingha serves as a key military hub, strategically located close to the People’s Liberation Army’s vast and rapidly expanding nuclear missile deployment area in Qinghai province.
Tom: We were a bit worried all the time about being arrested, to be honest.
Gabriel: There are probably not a lot of people who had gone through those regions before you either. I mean, I’m sure somebody had, but that was also uncharted territory.
Tom: It certainly felt like the people that hadn’t really seen any Western people before.
Gabriel: No. Amazing.
Tom: Yeah, it was great. That was kind of halfway through China. There was still quite a lot of it after that. So I got a Rohloff hub on the back of the bike, which was brilliant. But one of the spokes ripped part of the hub shell off and basically wrote the wheel off and obviously Rohloff is not a place you can get stuff very easily in China. So I ended up bodging it and I wrapped a bit of a spare chain around the hub and connected a spoke onto the spare chain, which worked for a bit. And then Rohloff were great and they posted out a new hub shell to Xi’an, which is the terracotta warrior city. So I ended up rebuilding my wheel in Xi’an with Phil’s help in a hotel room…
Gabriel: Wow.
Tom: Which involved both putting all the spokes in, lacing them, tensioning them, but also rebuilding the hub itself and taking all the gears out and putting them into the new hub shell.
Gabriel: Wow, so they only sent the shell out.
Tom: Yeah. So I kept the rest of the hub, but I had to take the old shell off the old hub. And I replaced that with the new shell and then reattach all the spokes and tension the wheel. So I had like an egg-shaped wheel for the rest of the trip because I’m not a wheelbuilder, but it worked.
Gabriel: That’s impressive, you were able to do that at all, to be honest.
Tom: I just followed the instruction manual they sent.
Gabriel: It’s interesting. I hadn’t heard of before people just getting the shell and an instruction manual.
Tom: They were kind of sponsoring me in a way. I got the hub free for the trip.
Gabriel: Oh.
Tom: So to begin with, I think I paid for the cost price of the hub and then they refunded it to me after I’d written the book and sold enough copies that they thought they’d have enough exposure via my trip. So that was good.
Gabriel: Okay.
Tom: They wanted to help as well, because I was obviously working with them, which is why they were so willing to send stuff out and give me the instructions of how to fix it.
Gabriel: Did you have other sponsors?
Tom: The frame of the bike was given to me by a British steel frame company called Sanderson and I got a camera off Olympus. I just wrote to lots of people, see what I could get for free, basically. I got a free ferry crossing across the Channel, but yeah, nothing major.
Gabriel: So, hey, if the frame survived the trip around the world, that’s a big thumbs up for this Sanderson.
Tom: Yeah, I still got the frame.
Gabriel: Oh, cool. I’ve never heard of Sanderson, but I just think 1,000 kilometers of washboard and, you know, whatever else you put it through, that’s impressive.
Tom: It was perfect. After that, it was very different, very industrialized. Lots of cities that all felt very similar. So we did get a bit bored at that point, actually. And it was very polluted as well. There’s lots of smoke from the coal-powered fire stations. So we ended up every day covered in black soot.
Gabriel: Oh.
Tom: Yeah, it took a long time to actually find a point of the coast we were allowed to access, but when we got there, we got a picture by the sea and then went to Beijing and had a few days in Beijing, which was great. Had a nice time there, and then flew to San Francisco.
Gabriel: Beijing – San Francisco. Okay, so the next leg was the United States crossing.
Tom: Yeah, yeah. I was originally planning to do the Canadian border, but because of the time of year, because I had to delay the trip a bit in the first place, I couldn’t do that because it was middle of winter. So I ended up doing the southern states instead, which was great.
Gabriel: Ah, okay. So did you follow Adventure Cycling’s Southern Tier route, or did you just kind of made your way?
Tom: We, again, I say we, as another companion at that point, my friend Harry came out for that section of the trip. I had another companion for a couple of months, which was good. There were some places we wanted to go to. So we wanted to see the national parks. We started in San Francisco, headed down the coast road, and then went into Yosemite. And there’s a big pass there called Tioga Pass, which is absolutely beautiful road that goes over really high mountain pass. I think we only just got over it before the first snowfall season. So we’re pretty lucky. I think maybe just a week or so before the road shut. And then we got down into Death Valley, which was cool. It was just a nice temperature, really. Yeah. Then I think we followed route 66 for a bit just to see some of the cool history there and New Mexico and Texas, the diners and things was good. I went to New Orleans and all to see the kind of the blues music. I really liked Louisiana and New Orleans. That was a really cool. Great city, that was. It was shortly after the hurricane.
Gabriel: Oh, Katrina.
Tom: Yeah, whole neighborhoods had been washed out and they hadn’t rebuilt them. And then we wanted to follow the southern bit of how we went through as many of the states who went to Alabama, Mississippi and then cross Florida.
Gabriel: So you actually went through Alabama.
Tom: Yeah, we did. Yeah, only briefly because it’s very small, isn’t it? But I think it was a day maybe.
Gabriel: Is it that small? I don’t know. I don’t think Alabama is that small.
Tom: Maybe this section, maybe we clipped part of that. I’m not sure how it works.
Gabriel: Oh, OK. OK, OK.
Tom: Is it quite long and thin, though? It might be quite tall but not very wide. I can’t remember.
Gabriel: I think all of those states are hundreds of kilometers wide, each one. Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia.
Tom: Yeah, but it was good. We liked Alabama.
Gabriel: Tracy is happy to hear that.
Tom: I remember that section was great. It’s all kind of the wildlife because we’re going through the swamps and big rivers and sorts of alligators and things.
Gabriel: To clarify, Tom and Harry crossed the narrow bit of Alabama, a stretch of coastline around the city of Mobile and Mobile Bay that separates Mississippi from the Florida panhandle.
Tom: Me and Harry had a close encounter with a bear in Florida as well, which was interesting. We didn’t really know much about bears, but it was in the winter and it was on this campsite that was closed, but the caretaker said we could camp on it, but watch out, there might be a bear because they’d seen one a few days ago. So we camped there and there was a bear on the campsite and I think it was really hungry. So I went over to put our rubbish in one of the bins. I just saw these two massive white circles in the sky. What’s that? And then I put on my torch. Oh, it’s a bear! And then I couldn’t remember whether you’re supposed to play dead or make loads of noise. And I think it depends on whether it’s a grizzly bear or a black bear or… I can’t remember.
Gabriel: There’s one of these little sayings about it. Like, “If it’s brown, lie down.”
Tom: Is that what it is?
Gabriel: “If it’s,” well, obviously I can’t remember it, but “if it’s white, say goodnight” or something. But that doesn’t help. That’s a polar bear. Anyway, I don’t know what it is for black.
Tom: I don’t even know what bear it was. That’s the problem. So anyway, Harry came over to and we just ended up making loads of noise and it ran off the tree. It just ran off and went straight up a tree. And I’ve never seen anything like that the way it moved. It was amazing.
Gabriel: What about the people there in the United States? Any, any fun people stories?
Tom: We had a lot of experiences with churches and people from the church who wanted to kind of speak to us and see what we were doing. We ended up having a nice Thanksgiving meal. I think it was in Texas with a church who were kind of just putting it on for anyone who was passing, really. So that was great. We met loads of people there. So there was probably 20, 30 people there all kind of getting together, people who didn’t really know each other. So I think it was probably for people who didn’t have a sort of a family unit. And us, we were homeless. It was a slightly strange experience, actually, because they were very, very religious. And my friend, Harry, is Christian, quite heavily religious. He goes to church regularly and I’m not, I don’t really have a religion myself. So we were talking about it quite a lot afterwards. From that visit, they were trying to sort of get me to come around to their way of thinking. And it was difficult, that one, actually, because like I couldn’t. Yeah. I’m not sure we really clicked because they didn’t sort of agree with my lack of religion in a way, whereas Harry got on with them better. So that was interesting. In the Deep South, there was a lot of people like that. There was also people who, there was a lot of hunting, I remember, of deer. So I remember we got invited to a barbecue from these people who had been hunting, which was brilliant. They had all these different animals they’d been hunting that day. And then we had venison steaks that were cooked on the barbecue, which was really nice. New Mexico, which I really loved. There’s a really kind of open, remote place. We went to Roswell. You heard of Roswell, the place where the UFO was supposed to crash?
Gabriel: Yeah.
Tom: And people believed in aliens, which is great. So shortly after that, we were put up by this really nice lady who again wanted to hear what we were doing and had a really nice hospitality there. And I’d say in America, actually, the hospitality was probably better than it was in the west of Europe. And I think people were more open to kind of help and a bit more friendly and sort of outgoing than some of the European places we went to.
Gabriel: One thing that people are generally pretty open about is if you’re asking to camp on their land or something like that. Did you do a lot of camping?
Tom: Yeah, most of the time we were camping almost every night. A lot of it was just wild camping. Yeah, we did stay in people’s gardens now and again, actually. And sometimes they just said, “Do you want to sleep in the garage or whatever?” So we did that too. Right.
Gabriel: Or sometimes you might even get a meal, you know? They might say, oh, come in.
Tom: That happens. Yeah. I mean, America is such a big country and the states are all very different.
Gabriel: For sure. It’s a big change when you go from California to Florida.
Tom: Yeah, exactly. And it did feel like we were moving across a big kind of range of cultures.
Gabriel: You did the whole of the U.S. with your friend, Harry.
Tom: Yeah, that’s right, yeah.
Gabriel: This is interesting. Maybe it’s a good time to ask the question, because when we do these listener recommendations, I always ask the listener what’s one question you would ask? And interestingly enough, Tracy’s question is the following. How did you deal with some of the psychological issues such as loneliness and the anxiety of not knowing when you’d see your family again or even if you’d complete your journey? One immediate answer that’s coming up is that you actually had riding partners for multiple legs.
Tom: Probably more than half of it, I’d say, because there were two plan writing partners, which was Phil and Harry. So, China and America. For Europe, a lot of it was with the Swiss guy, Nino, who I just met on the road. And then a guy called Paul from the Netherlands. I cycled with him for quite a lot of the Pamir section and the bits before that. I was alone for a lot of it as well. But I actually quite liked the solo cycling, too. I liked it just as much as being with somebody else, I think.
Gabriel: But did you have these feelings of loneliness at any time?
Tom: I did a little bit, particularly the bit that was the hardest was probably when Laura came to see me – Laura’s my wife now – came to see me in Turkey when she flew home again after that. I was on my own. I remember that. And I was quite anxious about the desert crossing that was coming up as well, you know, in the Kazakh and Uzbek part. So that bit was a bit low and it was raining every day as well, which wasn’t great. Then I got to Georgia and Georgia cheered me up, so it was OK.
Gabriel: Yeah, I guess that’s the double-edged sword with a visit like that. It’s great to see your partner, but then the day comes when they leave and there you are all alone again. “What am I doing here?”
Tom: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you kind of have normal life for a week and then you’re back to it. So yeah, that is a bit of a challenge, but I’m really glad she did come to see me because it would have been the best part of a year otherwise.
Gabriel: And what about the other part of the question? Did you ever feel like you may not complete the journey? You said you’d just set out to see how far you could get. But so far, it seems like you had pretty smooth sailing, I mean, considering the scope of it.
Tom: I was lucky, I think, in many ways, because I think it’d be much more difficult now with all the political situations that’s going on. When I did it, it was, the world was much more stable, I think. I don’t think I ever thought that I wasn’t going to do it, actually. I don’t know. To begin with, I wasn’t that fussed about doing it. So I didn’t really think about not doing it. And then I got to the point where I’d done enough that I thought, actually, maybe I probably will do this now. Yeah, I didn’t really ever feel like I wasn’t going to. The only problems were sometimes kind of getting through a country in time for the next bit. So visas have limited dates and I had the flight to catch and that sort of thing. Me and Phil were fighting illness quite a lot in China, actually. We got food poisoning pretty horrendously at one point. So that slowed us down and we were kind of thinking that we’re going to get to Beijing in time for the flight. We were OK, actually. Again, maybe I was a bit naive, I don’t know. Doing it when you’re young is probably easier than doing it when you’re older, because you probably don’t think about what could go wrong so much.
Gabriel: Yeah, that’s right. Sometimes it’s good to have less experience.
Tom: Yeah, exactly.
Gabriel: From Florida, where did you go next?
Tom: So Florida was the end. I called the East Coast of America the end and flew home. That was it.
Gabriel: OK.
Tom: And that felt strange, getting to the East Coast of America. I kind of felt really happy I’d done it and I just didn’t know what to do myself.
Gabriel: Right. Well, that’s the other thing after you’ve been on the road for probably a year or something.
Tom: About a year.
Gabriel: Then you kind of expect to get up and carry on doing the same. And then suddenly it’s like, oh, wait a minute, I am not supposed to ride my bicycle today.
Tom: I always wanted to put a limit on the time I was away because I know people struggle to come back from that sort of thing. Any longer, it would have been too long and too difficult to get back into a normal life again. Going from cycling every day to a nine-to-five job is quite difficult. But I did manage to settle down relatively quickly, actually.
Gabriel: You did get a job and you ended up getting married and having kids. Can you talk a little bit about that and how cycling still fit in with with all of this?
Tom: Professionally, in terms of my career, doing the PhD afterwards was a good move because it was quite flexible. And then I started going to teaching, which’s a good choice. I really like it, ’cause I’m a physics teacher now. It’s got the benefit that it’s good for sort of a family life, because you have time off at the same time as kids. But also you get these long holidays, which I can carry on doing adventures in. I feel like it’s a worthwhile job. I don’t get bored of it. I feel like I need something like that to do. I think if I’d have been sat in front of a computer for the rest of my life, I’d have gone mad. Yeah, in terms of family, like Laura has always been really good at kind of supporting the cycling obsession that I have. It is an obsession. Yeah, I guess I just have to fit it in around the family now.
Gabriel: How many kids do you have and what are their ages?
Tom: I’ve got three. So I’ve got Harry, who’s seven. I’ve got Toby, who’s five and Hannah, who’s nearly two. But I do it with them now as well. So my kids are all coming with me now on different setups on the different bikes. I’ve got got various ways of attaching them.
Gabriel: Yeah, so trailers and the tagalong.
Tom: Yeah, it’s the tagalong. You heard of the Shotgun seats? They’re really good.
Gabriel: Yeah, we’ve bought one and we’ve yet to install it. So you recommend the Shotgun?
Tom: Yeah. I mean, I’ve actually just taken apart my around-the-world bike to get the hub and everything and put it on a tandem instead. So I’ve now got a tandem with it, which is small enough for my seven-year-old. We’ve done a couple of tours, but the one we just did was 160 kilometers over a weekend. So that was great. And he’s really getting into it. So hopefully I can carry that going.
Gabriel: He’s the stoker.
Tom: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Power.
Gabriel: Oh, that’s great that you’re involving your children. It sounds like Laura herself is not interested at all, but very supportive.
Tom: She’s not a cyclist, really, but she does come with us. We bought an e-bike a while back, which I used a lot for carrying the kids around. She rides that. Me and Laura did a tour in Tuscany as well, actually. We did a nice, more relaxed version of a tour going to vineyards and things. She does like it, but she’s not obsessed like I am.
Gabriel: So one interesting thing that came up when you mentioned sponsorship was, did you always have the idea to write a book about it? Most people, they set off on the journey. And then later on, they think, oh, I could write a book about it.
Tom: Yeah, I always knew I wanted to, yeah. I kept a diary every day and made a quite detailed note so every day of the ride so that I could remember all when I got back.
Gabriel: And what was your plan for getting it published or promoted?
Tom: I didn’t get it… So, I self-published it and I didn’t really promote it much. I don’t know, it just seemed to sell quite well and people seemed to like it. I wouldn’t claim to be a great writer, but people just like the story. I don’t know.
Gabriel: Good for you!
Tom: I did try to promote it a bit in terms of, I put it onto some forums and I got some people who read books and write reviews professionally to do that. Amazon, actually, is the company that I publish it through and they’re actually very good at publicizing the things that you’re selling through Amazon. Once a few people have left good reviews, it seemed to spiral a bit. And for a few years, it was selling really well. And then it’s still selling quite well now, even though it’s quite an old book now. I guess I got lucky there, I don’t know.
Gabriel: Was it the success of the book that inspired you to maybe have other adventures and write other books? How many books have you written now?
Tom: There’s six books, but really three major ones. They’re the three are quite short, Kindle-only books. I went back and cycled across Mongolia again with Phil. So I wrote a book about that and that was on a fat bike, which is cool. Yeah, to get across the sand. And then I did a trip, another trip with Harry, the same guy again, in Himalayas, which was across the highest road in the world. Or I think they claim it’s the highest road in the world. And there’s some debate on which actually is the highest, but it was high anyway.
Gabriel: High enough.
Tom: It was absolutely amazing road, though. That was a great trip, that. I did that one is more of photo book. So I took a really good camera with me and took some nice photos for that one.
Gabriel: I guess the best way to purchase your books would be through Amazon or?
Tom: Yeah. If you just go on to Amazon and just search Every Inch of the Way or Fatbiking Across Mongolia, if you find the first one, Every Inch of the Way, there’s links to the others from there as well.
Gabriel: Okay. And we can put a link in the show notes. And then what about Instagram?
Tom: Yeah, it’s just @tombrucecycling. The same as my website. I don’t spend ages publicizing things. I put cool posts up when I do bikepacking events or stuff, but I’m not really into self-promotion that much. I’ve always found it a bit awkward, actually.
Gabriel: This shows that you had good experiences with both Phil and Harry, because they were both willing to do other tours with you. And that’s not always the easiest thing.
Tom: No, it’s not.
Gabriel: Some people may be friends and then they discover they don’t click on a bicycle. So had you ridden with them before?
Tom: I had, but nothing big. Multiple day trips, but nothing more than a week or so. They’re both very easygoing people, both very selfless. They knew that with the big trip, it was my trip and I had my own agenda and my own plan and they were happy to go along with that to a certain extent, which was really great. It was all on my schedule, because I had the round the world trip planned before and I said, you want to join me for any of it? The other trips we planned completely together though, and they were much more a team planning session. You know, there were bits where I guess we probably wound each other up a bit, but it was never nothing serious. The most difficult thing is when you’re tired and one person wants to stay in bed a bit longer and the other person needs to get going and that’s always going to be difficult no matter who you’re cycling with, I think.
Gabriel: What’s a fun adventure from each of these books, the Mongolia and the Himalayas?
Tom: I think the Himalayas, the scenery was just something else that’s just amazing, but the big part, that was the massive climb up to the big pass. It took more than a day of climbing up to 5,300 meters maybe, so serious altitude. That was just incredible, the scenery and the physical effort and the mental battle of getting over that hill was great.
Gabriel: But a day, that’s impressive. I would have expected it to take more than a day.
Tom: It was a day and a bit.
Gabriel: Well, okay, wow.
Tom: You were already pretty high. You’re starting from 3,000 meters, maybe I don’t know.
Gabriel: Okay.
Tom: So we started in a place called Chandigarh, got to Shimla, which is, I think Shimla was where the British used to go in the winter. The British government used to go over to Shimla and it was a very colonial place. And then after that, it just, each pass goes up and it goes down a bit less than up again and a bit down a bit less and you slowly climb up to very high altitude. The last pass was a monster. That’s the main memory of the India trip, just battling against altitude and mountain passes, but it was just stunning. Oh yeah, then Mongolia, just an incredible place. The thing I remember about Mongolia is there’s no fences. You can cycle for two weeks and you don’t come across a fence. It’s just open land and people don’t own it. It’s this nomadic existence that people have. They just go and put their home wherever they want and herd their animals everywhere and they just move on when they’ve eaten all the grass. It’s just a really cool place, totally different culture from anything I’ve seen. Did feel like complete freedom and going back in time a bit, which was amazing. There have not been anywhere else like that, I don’t think.
Gabriel: And there in Mongolia, you also get invited.
Tom: Yeah, into the yurts. So that was great. Got very different food there. So some people hate it and some people like it. So there’s this basically fermented mare’s milk, which is made into like a solid white bar and I liked it actually, but Phil hated it. Absolutely detested it and had to eat it, he wanted to be polite. So we’ve got a lot of that giving us loads of kind of meat stews and things. Not many vegetables because they don’t seem to grow many vegetables in Mongolia, it’s just all meat really.
Gabriel: Interesting twist to take fat bikes over there.
Tom: Yeah, I had a fat bike already. I kind of bought it thinking I would want to take it to Mongolia. We did cross part of the Gobi desert, which obviously having wide tires on the sand is really good. And I think I also, in the back of my head, thought it’d be quite good for, I don’t know, for a future book, having a fat bike in Mongolia.
Gabriel: You got the title right there.
Tom: I definitely would go back to Mongolia again if I could. Although I worry that it might be more developed when they go back.
Gabriel: I think so. I was a little sad to find out that United Airlines has just recently started a flight to Ulaanbaatar and I just thought, oh, no.
Tom: Yeah, that’s the end.
Gabriel: That’s the end.
Tom: Ulaanbaatar is already getting quite developed, isn’t it? I think, but there’s still the remote places are completely untouched though and I’m sure they will be for a long time, hopefully.
Gabriel: If you want to go to Mongolia, go now. Yeah. Well, what other consequences did your around-the-world trip have besides the book and the, I don’t know, fame maybe is a bit strong word.
Tom: Yeah, it’s not fame. It’s a cool thing to talk about. Yeah.
Gabriel: How else did your life change afterwards?
Tom: I think it’s just a different outlook. Having seen so much of the world was great, because it makes a bit more sense now. You hear about all these countries ending in Stan and how they’re awful places and how you don’t want to go there because you’re going to get kidnapped and all this sort of thing. I mean, there are areas, I’m sure, where you need to be careful, but they were the friendliest people I’ve ever met. I just remember thinking that almost everyone in the world is a good person. I didn’t have any issues, really. The only thing that happened was my phone, which was a pretty rubbish before smartphone style phone, was stolen in China in a hotel. But that was it. That’s the only thing that happened. I just finished the trip thinking great things about the world and how it’s such a great place and don’t believe the news. And I guess I’ve got this sort of underlying satisfaction still. I’ve done something really cool a while back. So I don’t really feel too much pressure. And I guess practically it’s given me a lot of fitness as well, which I still am benefiting from. So I’ve done a lot of cycling racing since. I’m really into bikepacking now. That’s my thing really. So I did some ultra-endurance bikepacking events now.
Gabriel: Oh, really? Have you done any of the big international ones?
Tom: No, unfortunately not. The biggest one I’ve done is the Highland Trail in Scotland, which is a big international one, which loads of people go to and I’ve done that one three times now. Okay.
Gabriel: How long is that one?
Tom: It’s 900 kilometers, or 550 miles. It’s a difficult 900 kilometers, you know. So a lot of carrying your bike through Scottish bogs and things.
Gabriel: Yeah, Scotland is unforgiving. Also that you can have serious weather in Scotland. Oh, that’s cool.
Tom: The Highland Trail is great for my situation because you can do an event like that in five or six days and you get a lot out of it and it doesn’t take too much out of family life. So that’s my thing now, really.
Gabriel: It’s become such a popular thing, these bikepacking races.
Tom: Well, I’ve got my own event as well now, which is set up in North Wales.
Gabriel: What?
Tom: Yeah. Alan Goldsmith is the guy who sets up the Highland Trail and there’s a guy called Chris Ellison who’s set up the Dales Divide. I don’t know if you’ve heard of the Dales Divide?
Gabriel: Yes.
Tom: Yeah. And then mine is called the North Wales 400 and between us, we’ve set up the Triple Crown in the UK.
Gabriel: Whoa.
Tom: Triple Crown in the US is obviously a bit more of a thing, but we’ve now got the UK Triple Crown. So it started a couple of years ago. Last season was the first season that it was running really. It was really exciting actually. So there’s the events that are on specific days, but you can ITT them anytime you want. So there was a guy who was leading it right up until the last couple of weeks for December and then Dickie Hibbert is the guy who won the Triple Crown last year, went and finished off with my event in the middle of December in the rain in North Wales. Alex, he was the other guy who was winning by about, I think it was about an hour or something over three events. So it’s dead exciting to watch it. It’s really good. Yeah. My plan is to do it next season. Do all three.
Gabriel: I’m amazed that you’re able to organize this from scratch basically.
Tom: I mean, I lived in North Wales for a while. So I kind of knew the area well. Found a cool 400-kilometer route, which I actually use as a training ride for the Highland Trail. So I didn’t really plan to do anything with it other than that. And then I thought, actually, this is really good. It’s a good route. I like it. So I set up an event and publicized it a bit on various bikepacking websites, including the bikepacking.com, the big one in America. They’re really good at sort of supporting people. So they put it on a page and first time I did it, I think 40 people were interested and then 60 the next year. And I’ve had to close entries at 80 this year because I don’t want it to get any bigger than that.
Gabriel: My geography knowledge of Wales is limited, but I do remember there’s the Snowdonia area and Mount Snowdon.
Tom: Yeah. So it takes you to the summit of Mount Snowdon, which is the highest point in Wales.
Gabriel: Yeah. I’ve been there. Oh, it’s beautiful. It’s very lush and now this race takes you up to the top of Mount Snowdon.
Tom: Yeah. When it comes around, it will be all over the British websites. So there’s Dotwatcher, which will have a live feed and you can watch the riders go around. And it’s also on bikebacking.com as well.
Gabriel: And what time of year?
Tom: It’s the August bank holiday weekend every year, which is the last weekend in August in the UK.
Gabriel: Maybe the weather is better than other times.
Tom: The first time I did it was fantastic. When the first two years of the actual event were horrendous, absolutely awful, thunderstorms and terrible rain. But then last year it was bone dry and really quick. So I think it’s crossed for another dry one this year. We’ll see.
Gabriel: That’s exciting.
Tom: Although I have to be careful about calling it a race.
Gabriel: Oh.
Tom: Obviously it is a race, but it’s not a race because none of the events have insurance. The way I publicize it, I say here’s a suggested route you could do at a certain time, but then that’s what all the bikebacking events are, aren’t they?
Gabriel: And then 80 people show up.
Tom: Maybe the Mountain Races now. I think Nelson Trees, the guy set them up, he’s got full insurance on them. He charges, you know, hundreds of pounds to race them. Whereas this is free. So it’s completely different scale.
Gabriel: Oh, I see. So Nelson set up the Silk Road Mountain Race, but he also set up the Atlas Mountain Race.
Tom: And there’s the Hellenic as well, I think.
Gabriel: The Hellenic as well.
Tom: There’s three. They look amazing, but a bit too much of a commitment at this stage, I think for me.
Gabriel: Yeah. This guy Nelson must be amazing to set all of this up.
Tom: I met him on the Highland Trail maybe eight years ago. Yeah, we rode together for a bits of it.
Gabriel: Okay. So he was participating in it.
Tom: Yeah. I think this is before any of the mountain races as well. So he was telling me about his plan to set them up there.
Gabriel: Oh, that’s amazing. And now he’s done it. Well, that was an unexpected twist to your story. I wasn’t expecting you to have your own race of the Triple Crown and everything. I think that’s a big consequence from your trip.
Tom: Yeah, and without the fitness that they gave me, I never really be able to do these sort of things. The only other thing, I’ll leave you with, is like I said, I didn’t really have much of a plan when I did this. I didn’t really think that I was doing anything particularly amazing. Anyone really can do this sort of thing if you want to. If you’ve got enough motivation, you can do it. You don’t need to be particularly fit because you get fit as you do it. You don’t need thousands and thousands of pounds to spend on a bike because you can just do it on any or bike really. And I was lucky I had the Rohloff ub, but if I hadn’t had the Rohloff hub, I’d have just put a bike together with cheap gears. You obviously need to have the time. You need to be lucky that you can have enough money to do it, but it’s a very, very cheap way to travel. And if you’ve got that, pretty much anyone could do this sort of thing. Yeah. And it’s a great way to see the world.
Gabriel: The transcript for this episode is available on The Accidental Bicycle Tourist website. I welcome feedback and suggestions for this and other episodes. You’ll find a link to all contact information in the show notes. If you would like to rate or review the show, you can do that on your favorite podcast platform. You can also follow the podcast on Instagram. Thank you to Anna Lindenmeier for the cover artwork and to Timothy Shortell for the original music. This podcast would not be possible without continuous support from my wife, Sandra. And thank you so much for listening. I hope the episode will inspire you to get out and see where the road leads you.
Gabriel: You don’t remember the name of the city, off-hand?
Tom: It’s in my book. It’s been a while since I’ve read my book.
Show Notes
Tom’s books, including his best-selling Every Inch of the Way: My Bike Ride Around the World, are available on Amazon.