“𝑻𝒐 𝒎𝒂𝒌𝒆 𝒂𝒏 𝒆𝒏𝒅 𝒊𝒔 𝒕𝒐 𝒎𝒂𝒌𝒆 𝒂 𝒃𝒆𝒈𝒊𝒏𝒏𝒊𝒏𝒈. 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝒆𝒏𝒅 𝒊𝒔 𝒘𝒉𝒆𝒓𝒆 𝒘𝒆 𝒔𝒕𝒂𝒓𝒕 𝒇𝒓𝒐𝒎.” – 𝑻.𝑺. 𝑬𝒍𝒊𝒐𝒕

That’s a reflection that seemed fitting at the recent end of a 25-year stint in my working life, and it feels apt in terms of my ambition to be a round-the-world cyclist too.

This latest new beginning is a big one. I’ve cycled several multi-day rides to date, but the longest of them was ten days. My journey across Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan will be at least four times as long, and spread over about two months.

It’ll be a long time to be apart from my family – particularly our beloved 12-year-old who’ll turn 13 while I’m away. And it was the toughest of goodbyes at the airport this morning. The consolation, I keep reminding myself, is the happiest of reunions to look forward to.

Flying out to my start point is to retrace the steps I’ve taken to get to that point, and much of today’s flight path has directly tracked the route I cycled from home to the east of Turkey, particularly from the eastern edge of Austria. From Graz, the flight headed out over Hungary, and straight over Szeged, where a bike shop came to my rescue back in 2019 following a rapid succession of punctures on the Great Hungarian Plain. Then over Romania – tracking slightly south of my ride over the Carpathian Mountains (where I nervously acknowledged the large warning signs to ‘beware of the bears’ and avoided a close – and mismatched – encounter as I hauled my way up the Transalpina, the country’s highest road). Next came Bulgaria, and a flight path teasingly close to the Black Sea resorts of Varna and Burgas through which Thomas and I wended our way last summer; and finally the far west of Turkey, where we ground out a crossing through Kirklareli and Çorlu in a shadeless furnace where the temperature breached the 45c mark (the seasonal average being some 20c lower)!

The flight I’m on now will reunite me with Trabzon, where November’s end will become Wednesday morning’s beginning. It’ll be the launchpad for this most exciting of adventures.

Thanks very much to everyone who’s donated so generously to my fundraising for Alzheimer’s Society already. If anyone else would like to donate, I’d be hugely grateful for your support. My fundraising page is here: 

https://www.justgiving.com/page/centralasia2025