![]() This is certainly a little late, but worth blogging about even after the fact. On the 3rd June (just 1 day after returning to the UK from expedition in China) I was extremely honoured to run with the Olympic Torch along the stunning North Coast of Northern Ireland. I'd first found out about my nomination at the start of the year,whilst still in the mountains of Northern China. A teacher has put my name forward after I gave a tour of Belfast schools, encouraging kids to get outside and get active. I must admit that initially I felt quite detached from the whole thing. The email came through while I was sitting by a roadside in a remote area of Shanxi province watching snow cling stubbornly to the few brave (and bare) trees that dotted the hillside. I was less than a quarter of the way through the toughest journey of my life, and the idea that in a few months I would be jogging through a small Irish village carrying a flaming hunk of metal while hundreds of people cheered seemed remarkably alien. At that stage I didn't even know about the white jumpsuit, but I imagine I would equally have struggled with that. As the months passed however and I happily found myself still alive on the other side of a rough winter, news of the build up for the Olympics filtered through, and I had time to ponder the whole thing. I'd be carrying a flame which would pass through the hands (not literally) of 8000 inspirational people, travelling the length and breadth of the UK and ending up in the Olympic Stadium to mark the start of one of the biggest moments ever in British Sport. That, I figured, was pretty cool.
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Here's a quick sneak peak at some montage footage from my New York to Hong Kong cycling adventure last year. I cut it over a weekend in the summer to have something to show at my talks about the journey.
I still (shamefully!) haven't properly watched through the majority of my footage yet as I jumped headfirst into the Walking Home From Mongolia expedition, but I'm looking forward to working with it in the summer of 2012 when I get back to the UK. This clip is extremely low-res as I'm uploading it from a hotel room in China and is a combination of footage from my secondary handlebar-mounted camera, and two or three brief clips from my primary. The real thing will all be HD! Hope you enjoy, please do let me know what you think [To view the full post, click here] ![]() Arriving back on U.K soil after 14,000 miles It’s now been 2 months since I finished cycling, and inevitably I have itchy feet. I’m being kept more than busy but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t regularly wake up disappointed to not be out under the stars. So what better time to find the adventures waiting on my doorstep? Following in the footsteps of some real bona fide adventure bloggers who champion the ‘micro-adventure’ idea such as Al Humphreys and Tim Moss, I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s plenty of scope for something exciting to be done over the course of a few days or a weekend. The much-anticipated Royal Wedding came along last weekend and I can honestly say I was absolutely thrilled. Not about watching the wedding of course, I’d rather eat off my own leg, but rather the fact that it provided a 4 day holiday for most of the nation. The perfect chance for a micro-adventure, but what to do? |
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