Author: Laura Moss
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Solo travels as a woman in Africa and Asia: interview with Helen Lloyd
This interview is part of a series in which we interview certain people featured on the database of long distance cycle journeys (LDCJ), which records individual bicycle trips over 10,000km in length. For more details, click here. [divide] Helen Lloyd spent a couple of years cycling through Africa, tracing the west coast before heading through…
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Digging for gold in Australia
This morning, a man with an eye patch unrolled a map on our breakfast table and showed us where to dig for gold. I kid you not. We’d first spotted this chap – let’s call him One Eyed Bruce – rummaging through a bin a few yards away. We had spent the night at a…
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Farewell to Asia
And so we bid farewell to Asia. It is nine months since we first crossed the Bosphorus under stormy skies to enter Anatolia. Nine months since we left Europe behind. Nine months since we last went to a Lidl. After nine months of inching our way across Asia, it is time to say goodbye to…
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Sleeping in bike shops and temples
We have just arrived in Malaysia, truly Asia. We had made our way down the western coast of Thailand, taking a couple of days off to enjoy the beaches and catch up on admin in Krabi. This part of Thailand is a tourist honeypot, something we welcomed as a change from the usual routine. Two…
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Update from South East Asia
After the efficiency and obsessive cleanliness of Japan, it was with a certain amount of trepidation that we entered Vietnam. I’d wanted to come here for years, but wondered whether the craziness of the traffic and the inevitable attention we’d get as a couple of white cyclists would make it too stressful to enjoy the…
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Communicating without language
In the middle of a cafe shack, somewhere in the Vietnamese jungle, Tim mimed pulling his trousers down and squatted on the floor. The two lady cafe owners fell about laughing, then shook their head and shrugged. They clearly had no idea what we were talking about. We’re getting nowhere and I’m desperate. Let’s just…
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Life on the road: strip washes and car parks
A few nights ago, we slept in a disabled toilet. Don’t get me wrong, it was a nice disabled toilet (although alas, no Dyson Airblade), but it was still a toilet. It was pouring down in Korea and it was the driest, warmest place we could find in the grounds of the museum we’d chosen…
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Cycle touring for 16 years…and still going
This interview is part of a series in which we interview certain people featured on the database of long distance cycle journeys (LDCJ), which records individual bicycle trips over 10,000km in length. For more details, click here. [divide] Lorenzo Rojo has been cycling around the world for an incredible 17 years, covering 190,000 km so…
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Choosing what to do with your life
Picture the scene. We are outside the main train station in a Japanese city, all glass and steel and impeccably clean. There are hundreds of commuters streaming past: impossibly skinny women wearing impossibly high heels and immaculate men in immaculate suits. I, meanwhile, am sitting on the pavement in my temporary role as Guardian of…
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Legally blind – and cycled the Americas
This interview is part of a series in which we interview people featured on the database of long distance cycle journeys (LDCJ), which records individual bicycle trips over 10,000km in length. For more details, click here. [divide] This may be the most inspiring story you’ll ever read. Christi Bruchok and Tauru Chaw are both registered…
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Your name in lights! (for a donation to our charity)
Ever fancied having your name in lights? Well, now you can. Make a donation to our charity – JDRF – in the month of May and we will produce a personalised photograph of your name, as in the image above, as a thank you. JDRF funds research to find a cure for Type 1…
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India: land of the magnificent moustache
Facial hair has become quite a feature of our bike ride. Not mine, I hasten to add, but Tim’s, with his bushy ginger beard attracting an enormous amount of attention wherever we go. In India, many people greet him by asking ‘Ali Baba?’ and since Turkey, he has been asked countless times if he’s Muslim.…