- Casually mentioning to my friend Rob that I was a bit peckish 13 hours into a triathlon then watching him sprint ahead of me (not hard at the point), locate a Mars Bar, unwrap it and stand at the roadside holding it out for me.
- That first car that pulled over on an M4 slip way which, after a night in a bush, hours of walking and hours more of sticking out my thumb in futility, made my day and kick-started my adventure.
- The “Kyrgyz Cowboy” who came to our rescue on horseback, ferrying us and our kit across the icy torrent of a glacial flow. On our return journey through his valley, he gave us a hearty meal that our calorie deprived bodies were all too ready for.
- The sight of so many friends, family and well-wishers waving banners and cheering our arrival as Thom and I stumbled to his house on the Isle of Wight having cycled, swum and run from London.
- My friend Jon surprising me with a cake on my birthday whilst in a North Wales climbing hut. It was a tiny supermarket own-brand Angel cake and utterly brilliant.
- Thom saying sternly “Pull yourself together!”, or words to that effect, as I scrabbled around at the edge of a Kyrgyz crevasse. I was annoyed at the time but pleased in hindsight.
- Finding out that our hosts in Beijing had gone out specifically to buy bread, jam, knives and forks so that we would feel more at home. We preferred chopsticks and the unrecognisable but it was a lovely gesture nonetheless.
- The guy who stopped his car and freely gave over a bottle of water to quench the thirst that Laura and I had worked up over 90-miles of cycling around a desert island without enough water of our own.
- Getting picked up from the roadside in Richmond, where I sat miserably in a top hat supposedly travelling around the world, and taken well out of the driver’s way to the ferry terminal at Southampton.
2 Comments
Laura
May I add waking up at 5am in the middle of a silent desert and setting off across the dunes under the light of a full moon? (you don’t have to publish this, purely enjoying the nostalgia)
Tim Moss
Published and enjoyed!