About me
I can’t remember when I first had the idea of cycling around the world – but it was early. Yet as one fellow cycle-loving friend said to me in late 2023 when I was thinking of making it into reality, ‘ahhhh, but we all dream of that, don’t we! It isn’t like we actually do it…’ Nothing like doubt to sew the seeds of resolve. After all, I’ve been stubborn and determined for even further back than I can remember that dream.
Me? I’m a late 40 something Scottish woman who has largely lived in Yorkshire and Cumbria these past years. Writer / poet, with three poetry collections to my name, and one work of hybrid travel writing. Photographer. Avid cyclist, mountain lover and fellrunner. Former environmental campaigner for organisations like Friends of the Earth and the Ramblers. And more recently an academic in the creative writing departments of universities in Lancaster, Cumbria, Leeds, Glasgow and Salford. A gay woman, which I only mention because I wonder how this will make my adventure different from the many people who have set out upon, and written about, such trips.
Taking on big projects is nothing new to me. I’ve already cycled across Europe on a creative project related to my doctoral studies: I had the idea to see if I could navigate a more sustainable way across Europe on my bike than Icarus managed (in a contemporary climate change context) on a Wednesday, firmed up the idea on Thursday and left the following Monday! I have climbed all the Munros (mountains over 3,000 feet in Scotland), and played a key role in the campaign to turn Scotland’s radical traditions on access to the countryside into law. My artistic practice has long been informed by my environmental commitments, and over the last few years I’ve developed Scree, an online guidebook to reimagining the Lake District Fells through literature and visual art (see www.scree.uk); this project provided the basis of Wordsworth House’s 2022 art exhibition courtesy of the National Trust in Cockermouth.
Yet this is, perhaps, on another scale. I’m not ashamed to say that I’ve had a difficult past five or six years. My Mum died (very suddenly) of cancer in 2020, during lockdown, not long after longstanding troubles in our very close relationship came to a head, and leaving much unresolved. I’ve been ‘diagnosed’ with complex PTSD as a result of events in childhood – my first memory was of a traumatic car crash – which has both been immensely challenging to come to terms with, and also life-changing. I’ve endured the intense isolation of solo lockdown; I can still remember how it felt when I first touched another human being again. And my career has been changeable as of late. I left an unviable post at the University of Cumbria in 2019 to go freelance, only for Covid to hit. The challenges of running a large international poetry festival in post-Covid times left me with severe burnout, and my most recent post at the University of Lancaster is sadly not being made permanent due to the financial challenges facing the sector. This latter news, combined with the second devastating relationship break-up in a few years, and the resulting consequence of having to sell my home were the less positive events spurring me onto this trip. It’s time to step away. Take time out from a very different kind of cycle which has become gruelling. Do something entirely different… for me. But these less positive reasons aren’t at the core of the project.
When I cycled across Europe, a friend commented on how remarkable it was that I was able to do this. I shrugged my shoulders, and replied that it was how remarkable it was that people held down the same job for many years! I do myself down, but this kind of trip isn’t remarkable. It’s just one of those things I’m able to do. After? Who knows. I’m sure I’ll be a somewhat different person. The best version of me, as my cousin said, undoubtedly.
My companion along the way will be my new friend Spike – a Thorn Club Tour Mk 4 bike! And ain’t she just a beauty…here she is in Halifax International Airport, ready for the road.
About the adventure
If you tied a belt around the equator, it wouldn’t turn the southern hemisphere into a pair of trousers and the northern hemisphere into a jumper. But you would need a 24,901 mile long belt, which is a bit longer than any belts in my cupboard. When I say that I plan to cycle around the world, I don’t in any way mean that I plan to follow the line of the equator, let alone the route of most ‘purist’ round-the-world trips, which includes far too long in the plains of Canada and the steppes of Russia for my liking. If I’m going to do such an adventure, then I need to be able to cherry pick, no? And cheat. Most definitely cheat. Pedaloes are out. Occasional trains, buses, ferries and planes are in. And so long as I wiggle my way to 24,901 miles then I am going to say that counts!
Halifax2halifax? As of late I’ve made my home in the Calder Valley, where Halifax is the main town. So when I turned my poet’s head to devising this trip, travelling from Halifax back to Halifax was a no-brainer. It already tickles me to imagine cycling my last leg back up the canal from Manchester, through Rochdale to Halifax, to finish my trip at the Piece Hall! Yet I’m also ready to admit that I might well not make it. If I get fed up or have had enough, I’m not going to be too proud to come home.
The provisional route? Cycling north and then back south through Nova Scotia then the ferry to Maine. Down the coast to Portland and inland through Vermont and other New England states to Albany. Amtrak train ride to Glacier National Park, Montana. North from there up to Banff and Jasper, and then back south west through the mountains to Seattle and the San Juan islands. The Pacific Coast highway in the USA, and then (mid September or so) fly to Lima.
From Lima I’ll take the bus up to Huaraz to save myself 4,000m of climbing, and will cycle south through Peru, Bolivia, NE Argentina, and down through Chile to Villa O’Higgins at the end of the Carrettera Austral. From there I will fly back to Santiago and Heathrow to spend Christmas with my Dad and elder sister in Buckinghamshire (yep, Christmas dinner in lycra. I’m rocking it).
Stage 3 involves flying to Hanoi, and cycling down through Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Thailand to Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia). Fly to Sri Lanka. Ferry to Southern India, and then out to Japan where all going well I’ll celebrate by 48th birthday for the second time (I have it on good authority that birthdays overseas reverse time, year on year. No?) #
From Japan I will fly to Armenia (as you do), and cycle through Georgia, Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Kosovo, Montenegro, and Bosnia across to Split in Croatia. From there a ferry to Italy, and a further ferry from Rome to Barcelona, across Spain and Portugal to finish my European leg in Lisbon.
From Lisbon I will fly to Angola, for a sub Saharan Africa portion also taking in Namibia, Botswana and Zambia (although even I am uncertain about this portion – it’s a step up in terms of challenge). Flight to southern Morocco, and cycle north to Tangier for a ferry to Spain where I’ll fly back home from Malaga. After this, the Rochdale canal in late November might feel like a little bit of a let down.
Yet it’s not only going to be to do with cycling. My own writing and academic research over the past 15 years has explored the writing of environmental and landscape change, and along the way I aim to seek out a poetry / poetics sufficient to the current environmental moment from the literatures and landscapes of the world I travel through, while devising my own poetics of cycling. A poetry sufficient to the current environmental moment is most probably impossible, but this doesn’t mean I might not try. I’ll also be writing this blog, have brought a pro quality bridge camera with me, and I’ll be writing my own poems too.
Thanks for coming along for at least part of the ride!
Lucy Burnett
Email: lucyburnett75@gmail.com
Please feel free to get in touch and to say hello.
Lucy's world bike adventure 