~ Field Notes ~
Bikepacking the Eurovelo 11 route across Estonia
The Eurovelo cycling routes are one of Europe’s best kept secrets. Waymarked by blue signs with occasional directions to the next town, the routes criss-cross European countries.
The entire Eurovelo 11 route is c.6500 kilometres, starts at Nordkapp (the most northerly point in Europe) and finishes at the southern tip of Greece, covering 11 countries on the route. It’s apparently referred to as ‘the Beast of the East’ (according to the official website) and completing it in stages is quickly becoming a personal goal.
Bikepacking expedition 3: first multi-day test ride for the Eurovelo 11 attempt
My third bikepacking trip is a test ride for a big multi-day trip I want to do later in summer that would see me riding all the way across Estonia following the Eurovelo 11 cycling route towards the end of summer when the weather has got a little cooler. It would be 500 kilometres (c.300 miles) so I will need to be used to spending multiple days out on the road.
1 year on from a complete life reset
I’m lucky for many reasons: Not just because I’m surrounded by people who put their own lives on hold to limit the impact of my near-fatal fall, but also how things turned out for me since my life almost came to an abrupt end some 12 months ago.
Nearly dying something you love
When I write this article, it doesn’t bring back terrible memories – they were wiped clean in the accident. But the pain comes from hearing your loved ones recounting when they were told that you’ll either die or spend the rest of your life with life-changing injuries or big personality changes; hit me harder than anything else I’ve dealt with in my entire life.
The 7 principles I follow for taking on physical challenges that intimidate me
82 years old and completing an Ironman triathlon. That’s a 2.4-mile (3.8-km) swim, followed by a 112-mile (180-km) cycle, and finishing with a 26.2-mile (42.2-km) run. Just think about that for a second longer.
It’s stories like hers that motivate me to keep going when the journey ahead seems impossible to move forward.
In the next few years, I'll be aiming to complete the Silk Road Mountain race, a 1700-kilometre continuous bikepacking race in Kyrgyzstan, and one of my biggest personal challenges since a mountaineering accident in 2019 almost permanently stopped me from doing things I love altogether.
There are the 7 principles that I use to fit training to previous adventures that I’ll use to get myself to the finishing line.
What it's like to take on the Devizes-to-Westminster canoe race.
It’s 3am and a voice calls my name from the darkness. It’s quiet at first, muffled by a scarf wrapped tightly around my head to keep me warm because I’m still soaking wet and bitterly cold.
“Chris – you’re steering us towards the bank”.
I groan, and think to myself “I’ve just fallen asleep again – how does this keep happening? The quiet voice is right, I have just knocked the steering handle of our 2-man kayak towards the mud bank. And if I don’t do something about it, we’ll collide and potentially put a hole in the hull, meaning we’d be out of the race.
On second thoughts, maybe that’s not such a bad thing..