(A four minute read).
Acting on a whim is all very well, but what if most of those whims end up as mistakes. Injury, running out of money, ending up back at square one. When do you stop acting on a whim, and actually make a plan?
Halleluiah, I think I might have reached that stage!
Previous travel whims have seen me start a ride from the UK to Spain, on a not so adequate bicycle, and with far too much luggage. I rode a hundred miles a day for four days, severely strained an achilles tendon, had to take the train the next four hundred miles, and it took a month for me to be able to walk again properly.
I thought it would be a great idea a few years later to walk and run from the UK to the Greek island of Crete. It was only a couple of thousand miles. What could possibly go wrong? I ran out of money, then earnt some money in Normandy, ran on, too fast, and ended up rupturing a ligament in my knee. Again, I could barely walk. Fortunately, I had enough money to buy a coach ticket to Munich via London where I had found two weeks shopfitting work for a Timberland store. I spent the two weeks limping, but got the work done.
There are quite a few more stories like this, and thankfully quite a few successful whim stories. Like the time back in the year two thousand and one when I decided to hitchhike from Geneva to Damascus. (I have an e book about this trip).
It took three months. I found work on a boat in Turkey which eventually funded the coach from Ankara to Damascus. Success!
So, of the most recent whim. Let’s cycle from Plymouth to Switzerland and along the journey write about the “Fifteen plus One” talk that I intend on giving on the 9th February 2026 at 11.00am in the Duke of Cornwall Hotel, Plymouth, Devon, UK.
The Fifteen, are the fifteen people listed on the UK’s missing persons site for unidentified bodies in the Devon and Cornwall area. The plus One, (“Some Mother’s Son”), is the story of an unidentified gentleman that was found in a field in Tregantle, just West of Plymouth in 1982.
You can read more about the Fifteen on a previous post, here:
https://buymeacoffee.com/m25roundabout/mystery-revelation
And the appeal to try and find out the identity of “Some Mother’s Son” is here:
https://buymeacoffee.com/m25roundabout/the-first-appeal-behalf-some-mother-son
And on giving you these two links I feel pretty sure that I need to organise my blog/website in a better way. I will continue with the buymeacoffee for a few more weeks, in which time I hope to have found a more efficient way of sharing this story and information with you.
So, this most recent whim already sees me halting the cycling for at least a couple of weeks. I need to earn some money and to consider a new bicycle, (for the second time in three days). I left Plymouth on Wednesday on a severely roughshod bicycle that I bought a number of years ago in France, for three euros. I bought it from a charity called Emmaus, where part of their work is teaching the young and disadvantaged to repair bicycles. They have a huge warehouse in Normandy, full of bikes and bike parts. I bought two new inner tubes for five euros and hey presto for a grand total of eight euros I was up and cycling.
From Plymouth, on my old steadfast bicycle, it was about forty miles to an Air BandB near Totnes. The bike just made it. I just made it, and I thought, no, not again, not another failed whim.
But the next day, Totnes Bike Hub came to the rescue. The Hub was opened in September 2021 and is set up as a Community Interest Company, (a CIC). Any surplus money made by the shop is invested in community activities to ensure they reach as wide a range of people as possible. They service bikes, repurpose bikes, sell bikes, lead bike rides and run bike repair classes. What a brilliant set up.
They assessed my bike. It was basically condemned. The front wheel was wobbling, the back axle was seemingly broken, the crank not far from failing. I could only use seven of the twenty-one gears and going downhill I had to keep putting on the brakes for fear of the back wheel seizing up and causing a not needed or non-wanted spectacular break down.
So within about an hour, and handing over seventy pounds I had donated them my bike for spares, (there must have been something they could use) and been given a slightly small but totally up together safe and functional replacement.
I had started the day thinking my journey was already over. But after that hour, I realised Switzerland was still possible. I just need to make a plan, and not just rely on good fortune. I need to preordain my good fortune.
So, what from now? Some work and then a more appropriate bike, because this new one is too small. It has served me very well though. I want to be as comfortable as possible on a ride of around seven hundred miles with a lot of hills and mountains to climb. I want to travel as light as possible, so no camping, just hotels and Air BandB’s. I want to be accident free, so plan the journey, exercise properly, eat and drink properly. I want to cycle up a really high mountain, not to say I climbed it, but so that I can freewheel all the way back down again. What a gift that will be.
And what a different type of whim this is turning out to be.
More news next week!