I came rather late to this party. Anna Hughes cycled 4000 miles around the coast of Great Britain in 2011 and this book – her account of that epic journey – was published in 2015. I only discovered it late in 2025, but the time gap doesn’t matter because the things she focuses on – the landscapes, the weather, her personal highs and lows, are as valid now as they were then.

Each day of the 72 days of her journey is a separate chapter, but far from being a repetitive turn-of-the-pedals account Hughes’ fluent and easy (I suspect deceptively easy) style ensures the reader looks forward to each new day, eager to discover what the next miles bring.

What appealed to me most was the number of times I found myself nodding vigorously in agreement with her descriptions of places and experiences I know myself. Although I’ve hardly cycled any of the coastline I’ve visited a lot of it on foot or by car, and my times spent in the hills and mountains means I can share Hughes’ exhilaration – and exhaustion – with making progress through the landscapes and the weather, good or bad. There are days which just flow by and you feel you could go on for ever, and then there are days when you just don’t want to set off and your morale stays at rock bottom all day.

I was amused reading the five days she took to ride from Minehead to Plymouth, a journey which walking the South-West Coast Path has taken me forty! And I sympathised with the twelve consistently unpleasant days as she cycled round the coast of Wales: that country has been like that for me too. I have a strong feeling that if Anna Hughes and I were to sit down to fish and chips in a pub somewhere with her book in front of us we would still be comparing notes and sharing experiences at closing time.

So belated congratulations on your achievement, Anna. I enjoyed the ride!

The author is well-known and successful in the world of endurance cycling – people who cycle 200 or more kilometres a day, day after day, across continents, grabbing a few hours sleep here and there, eating what and when they can, for nothing more than the possibility of posting a better time than anyone else, or just the satisfaction of finishing.

The book is not really about Emily Chappell riding and winning events. It is about how someone overcomes the psychological and physical challenges of endurance beyond reason; how to summon the will to keep going when every muscle and nerve is shouting at you to stop.

It is also about bereavement and personal loss.

The book resonated strongly with me and I would like to write a proper appreciation of it. I hope I can do that sometime, but I shall have to read it again before I do and I have to wait for the right time.

Title: Africa Solo
Author: Beaumont, Mark
Published by: Bantam Press
Year: 2016
First published: Bantam Press, 2016
Date reviewed: 01.17
ISBN: 9780593076330

It’s 2015 and Mark Beaumont’s back on his bike. Round the World – done it. North and South America – done it. Then a break from the bike to attempt the transatlantic rowing record – not done it because the boat capsized and the team nearly died. Then marriage and a child, which would lead anyone to re-evaluate their life objectives. But if you’re committed to being a professional adventurer rather than an accountant you’ve got to have a plan. Mark doesn’t tell us what his Big Plan is (though he does say it won’t involve rowing), but breaking the record for cycling the length of Africa from Cairo to Capetown seems to be a part of it.

If you had all the time in the world you might be able just to get on a bike in Cairo and pedal off to Cape Town with very little preparation. You’d expect to run into all sorts of problems; visas, customs, border crossings, dodgy food, armed military check points, route finding, bike maintenance, gratuitous low-level hostility, robbery, maybe even being taken hostage. You wouldn’t expect to break any speed records and realistically you probably wouldn’t get very far. But the modern adventurer looking for a record time lives in a different world of meticulous planning, fixers, security guards, wifi, social media, sponsors and documentary film makers.

Mark doesn’t describe his ride as a journey, it’s a race: a race against time not other competititors. So the book is not really a travelogue of the countries he rides through, more a tunnel-vision view of Africa from north to south. To quote cycling writer Andrew Curry,

“Racers spend their time looking at the wheel in front of them, not the landscape on the side of the road.” Andrew Curry, “Isadore”; Rouleur magazine #67, 2016.

He describes his ride day by day and country by country. During the day he is focused on the road, the bike, his own physical and mental state, the weather, the road conditions, the kilometres ridden and the distance still to go. At the end of the day it’s finding somewhere to sleep, food, recovery. If this sounds repetitive, in some ways it is but it is certainly not dull for the reader who shares Mark’s highs and lows.

For me the book really came alive in the last 1000 miles or so when with the end metaphorically in sight Mark throws everything into huge daily distances as he hurtles towrads the finish.

Books like this are often described as “inspiring”. I admire Mark for his persistence, single-minded dedication, endurance, fortitude and other great qualities, and of course for his achievement. But personally I’m not inspired to copy his ride or try something similar. These days I couldn’t cope with the discomfort and pain, the lack of good food, a warm shower and a comfortable bed. In my cycle touring days I at least had the (sometimes dubious) benefits of old-style Youth Hostels. But as an example of what an extreme endurance cyclist can achieve – “Chapeau, Mark!”

“A wonderful, gritty expedition book”, writes Chris Bonington on the cover of Andrew Greig’s “Summit Fever”. Much as I like that book I don’t agree with Sir Chris’s use of ‘gritty’ to describe it. But “Walking the Amazon” is a wonderful, gritty expedition book. It’s gobsmackingly, mindblowingly, jawdroppingly gritty. It’s an amazing, astonishing story of endurance, dogged persistence and determination. For Ed Stafford to call his journey a ‘walk’ is a massive understatement – it was a hack, slash, squelch, wade, swim, paddle, stagger, sweat, drop epic. He nearly starved. He could have drowned, or been eaten by a caiman, or killed by a snake, or died from any one of a myriad of tropical diseases, or been shot by indigenous tribes, drug runners, or illegal loggers.

But he didn’t, and he wasn’t. He survived. It took him two years and four months, over 8000 kilometres, and in doing it he achieved the first complete journey on foot from the Pacific to the Atlantic via the whole length of the Amazon river, much of it through jungle where almost certainly no human had been before. Whether you like walking or not you should read this book — it will open your eyes to a world you couldn’t have imagined.

It’s probably a safe bet that not many people outside the USA have heard of John Wesley Powell, but he and a motley assortment of backwoodsmen and adventurers made one of the great exploration journeys that helped open up the American West.

In 1869 Powell led a ten-man expedition in four boats which eventually achieved the first navigation of the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. Powell himself was a one-armed Civil War veteran interested in science, especially geology, which he taught at a minor college. Described as a natural leader he was a complex character, physically and mentally strong and determined, vain, and not above stealing the credit from others. Some of the others he knew already, some he recruited for their back-country skills (which some of them in turn may have exaggerated). The boats they used were clumsy, heavy, broad-beamed but strong, unmanoeuverable and completely unsuitable for the conditions they would meet. No-one on the expedition had ever taken a boat through white water rapids before.

Despite all this the expedition was finally successful, although not all the original ten made it to the end. Nor did all the boats. By the time the survivors finally emerged from the chaos of the Canyon they were near starvation. Their remaining supplies would have perhaps lasted just another two days.

Dolnick has researched his tale thoroughly, drawing on contempoary and later sources including the first-hand accounts of Powell and some of the others. Although the account of the journey itself is basically one rapid after another the story never palls and the individual characters begin to emerge. Into the day-by-day account Dolnick interweaves commentary and analysis from modern white-water riders (mostly astonished that anyone survived), discussion of white-water techniques, the technology of the boats (hardly any), and the historical background. He also covers Powell’s own history in some detail, including an account of how Powell lost his arm at the battle of Shiloh. His account of the battle itself is vivid and horrific, bringing out the futility, chaos and carnage of one of the first major battles of the Civil War. Dolnick quotes one historian: it was

just a disorganized, murderous fistfight, a hundred thousand men slamming away at each other. … The generals didn’t know their jobs, the soldiers didn’t know their jobs. It was just pure determination to stand and fight and not retreat. … It was the first great modern battle. [Shelby Foote]

You’ll have to make up your own mind whether to admire the men’s courage, despair at their foolhardiness, or both. Read the story, and along the way you’ll learn a little about white water and the jargon of the rapids: holes and eddy fences, boils and pillows, whirlpools, haystacks and rooster tails. You can imagine manhandling heavy boats through violent waters on a meagre diet of rancid bacon and damp flour, and share the explorers’ genuine fear that the next rapid waiting round the bend might be an unavoidable two-hundred-foot vertcal drop to their deaths.

Subtitled "Up the Yukon Without a Paddle" this book is one of those "We wanted to get away from it all and although we hadn’t a clue what we were doing we somehow managed to survive" stories. And frankly it’s a miracle they did, ‘they’ being Dorian Amos, his wife Bridget (‘Bridge’) and their dog Boris. I lost count of how many times Dorian nearly froze to death, drowned, or could have died from usually self-inflicted injuries, actual or potential.

The problem is that I found it hard to care. I’m sure the Amos family are perfectly pleasant people, and they seem to have been accepted by the generally taciturn citizens of Dawson City near which they have made their home, but Amos’ writing isn’t up to conveying much of the personalities and emotions in their story. By the way, when I say "made their home" I mean that literally. They built their own timber cabin in the forests of Canada’s Yukon Province. He tries, but whether it’s canoing across half-frozen rivers, crashing dog-sleds, or driving his skidoo into the the icy water of the Yukon River, the tone is all the same.

Before they left England they went on one of Ray Mears’ Woodlore Wilderness Bushcraft courses. This was enough for Mears to write a foreword in which he guardedly says "[Their] adventures have both horrified me and made me laugh, truly ignorance is bliss". He must have despaired at times.

And that’s about it. They survive. They have a baby. Thay love each other, and they love their new life.

It’s not clear whether this is an example of vanity publishing, but it has many of the hallmarks. The author mentions he is dyslexic [p49], but the editor shouldn’t have missed so many persistent and annoying errors – "sheaf" instead of "sheath", "burgh" instead of "[ice]berg", and so on. My copy’s a second edition so the mistakes should have been spotted and corrected.

Title: The Man Who Cycled The Americas
Author: Beaumont, Mark
Published by: Bantam Press
Year: 2011
Date reviewed: 06.11
ISBN: 9780593066980

There is not so much adventure in “The Man Who Cycled The Americas”, although it was certainly a challenge. On this journey Mark cycled the length of North and South America, from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. But there was an added twist: he climbed the highest mountain in each of the two continents – Denali (aka Mt McKinley) in Alaska and Aconcagua in Argentina. Of the so-called ‘Seven Summits’ (collectively the highest mountain on each continent) Denali is the third highest and second only to Everest in difficulty; Aconcagua is the second highest.

The two climbs, more or less bracketing the beginning and end of the book, certainly rate as adventures. Beaumont is not an experienced mountaineer, but he was strong, fit, and adequately trained. Both mountains proved as difficult as their reputations predict and success was hard won. He describes the mental and physical challenges well and holds your attention throughout.

The cycle ride, in contrast, lacks the excitement of his round-the-world ride. On that journey he was effectively alone, suffering extremes of temperature and weather, coping with misfortunes, dealing with whatever the journey threw at him from his own resources (with help from Mum over the phone). This time his trip was sponsored by the BBC, who made a three-part series about it. Carrying a laptop, satellite phone, web camera and GPS, with regular live link-ups with radio and TV programmes, his journey was much more regulated. There were back-room trouble-shooters and safety advisers, contacts to meet, suggestions for interesting places to visit and report from.

Beaumont doesn’t labour the point but it’s clear he found the lack of freedom and independence on the road frustrating. He still has good stories to tell and there are certainly highs and lows, but apart from the climbing it’s just a bit more monotonous and lacks the excitement of his previous book.

I don’t want to belittle his achievement in any way. It was certainly a great challenge and he deserves praise and credit for it. But the best adventures are those you have on your own or share with others in the same situation. When freedom and self-reliance are taken away the experience is inevitably dulled, and I think this happened on this journey. The book is still worth reading for Mark’s descriptions of the countries and cultures he passes through, and like his earlier book this one is mercifully free of the pedal turn-by-turn that cycling books can turn into. So congratulations again, Mark, and I’ll look forward to the next challenge!*

* Mark has joined Scottish explorer Jock Wishart in a team of six to row 450 miles through the Arctic with the aim of reaching a former location of the North Magnetic Pole. Mark has been asked to join the expedition by the BBC to be both a cameraman and an oarsman. More on Mark’s website.

This was my second long-distance cycling book in three months: partly co-incidence and partly because the author, Mark Beaumont, had been on television with a three-part series about cycling the length of the Americas* and this book was on prominent display (and three-for-two offer) in the travel section of Blackwell’s bookshop. I’d enjoyed the television programmes so I thought the book was worth trying. Having read it I realised I missed the TV series about this round-the-world ride which Mark did in 2007/08.

The two books (the other is Tom Kevill-Davies’ book “The Hungry Cyclist“) are rather different. Mark’s objective was to break the World Record for the Fastest True Circumnavigation by Bicycle, which in Guinness Book of Records terms means a minimum of 18,000 miles without backtracking, and passing through at least one pair of antipodeal points. He succeeded in a time of 194 days 17 hours, covering 18,296 miles averaging about 100 miles a day and breaking the previous record by an astonishing 81 days.

But while Kevill-Davies could travel at a leisurely pace making the most of the people he met and relishing the variety of food he was able to enjoy, Beaumont had to be focussed on distances and timings. He was on his own for almost the whole journey, and although there were short interludes when he spent time with other people he found himself in a state of mind where much of the time other people were a distraction. Needing to control his time on the bike and the miles covered, his calorie intake and resting/sleeping time, and suffering increasingly from physical wear and tear he couldn’t cope with anything else.

In fact despite his astonishing achievement Mark didn’t have a very good time. His bike broke down several times, he crashed twice and was mugged once, he had stones thrown at him, he was ridiculed and abused by his police escort in Pakistan and sworn at in American cities. Crossing the Australian outback at a time of year when the winds should have been behind him he instead had to battle for days on end into gale force headwinds. He had saddle sores for much of the journey. He often couldn’t find enough of the right kind of food to keep him going, and when he did it sometimes made him ill (a penalty for being a vegetarian, so not used to eating meat). His mental strength must be exceptional for him to have kept going.

There were a few good times when conditions were favourable and the miles flew by. There were occasions when, as Tom Kevill-Davies found, strangers were extraordinarily kind. And above all there was his support team at Base Camp, better described as Mum back home in Scotland, acting as messenger, counsellor, quartermaster, webmaster, travel agent, PR manager and fixer. Her story is included briefly as an Appendix.

Although the book is an account of a six and a half month bike ride it isn’t dull or repetitive; rather the opposite. You want Mark to succeed but you know he’s never far from potential disaster so it keeps your interest right up to the last push up through Spain and on to Paris for the finish. The publishers claim it gives interesting insights into the cultures through which he passes and this is true to some extent, but the views are seen with the tunnel vision of an obsessed cyclist who can’t afford to stop, talk, or detour. Most people, I think, would be a bit bewildered by Mark on the road, and he says more than once that he would like to go back and see more of some places without the pressures of the ride.

For me, though, this is most of all a story of amazing endurance and single-minded achievement. Mark tells us how he’s feeling through it all, but I don’t think it really explains how he managed to get back on the bike day after day and put himself through another 100 miles of punishment. It’s possible that a future cyclist, lucky with ideal weather conditions and route selection, completely reliable equipment and physically hardened against the injuries which afflict cyclists might beat Mark’s record, but I hope not, at least not for a long time. He deserves his place in the Guinness Book of Records.

* The book about this journey, “The Man Who Cycled the Americas” was published in 2011 and my review is here.

What a pleasant surprise this book was! Despite its messy and rather old-fashioned cover I picked it up in the bookshop because I like cycling and I like food, the two topics which are its raison d’être. Expecting another read along the lines of “I’d never ridden more than 5 miles on a bike before but I found this great little restaurant in Seattle”, I’m glad to say I was not only wrong but drawn in and captivated by the unfolding story.

In 2005 Tom Kevill-Davies — hereafter “Tom” — gave up his job in advertising (bear with me here) to spend two years cycling first across then down through the USA, Central America, and the north-western parts of South America before taking a succession of boats down the Amazon to Belém, then back on the bike to cycle to Rio de Janeiro. He did this, he explains, to search out “the perfect meal”. Before you groan in despair, it doesn’t take long to realise that it’s not so much the perfect meal he’s looking for but whatever may be the best the local culture can provide. Not the perfect meal so much as really good local food cooked by people who know what they are doing and who enjoy other people’s enjoyment of what they produce.

Starting out on this epic road trip as a self-confessed novice (the first chapter is called “All the Gear and No Idea”) Tom had to learn how to be on the road, sometimes camping, sometimes sleeping rough, sometimes paying for a cheap room, always looking for something good to eat.

Anyone writing a book like this has the problem of selection. It’s not what to put in, it’s what to leave out. The last thing anyone wants to read is a day-by-day pedal-stroke-by-pedal-stroke account of 750 days in the saddle. Cyling across the plains of the American Mid-West is, lets face it, going to take a few weeks and is going to be boring. Tom appreciates this and spares us the detail, but he gives us a lively account of his experiences of cowboy culture and cuisine, not to mention overdosing on turkey in the self-proclaimed turkey capital of America. He does selectivity well.

Full marks too for not being precious. Tom does describe a few meals in restaurants that might make it into the guide-books, notably an all-you-can-eat brunch buffet in Banff Springs which, half-starved on arrival, he manages to make last over three hours. But most of the food he describes is from street vendors or roadside cafés or cooked for him by strangers who appreciate his interest and enthusiasm. He does try to get into The French Laundry in California which enjoys the reputation of having the best chef on the planet but despite being wait-listed for four days he doesn’t get lucky.

As any solo traveller knows, the people you meet are important. Whether it’s just for human contact or for more urgent things like help and assistance, food and shelter you need other people on a trip like this and it helps if you yourself are a likeable person. Tom must be, because so many people go out of their way to help him, whether it’s in his quest for that special meal or when he’s in difficulties – tired, cold, wet, exhausted. “The kindness of strangers” has become a cliché* but there are so many examples in this book that it has a powerful feel-good effect.

I can’t close without mentioning that Tom also gives recipes, usually a couple at the end of each chapter. These try to be ones anyone could cook at home and are of course taken from episodes in his story. So if you want to know how to kill, pluck, gut and cook a guinea-pig Ecuador-style, look no further. Although to be fair most of the recipes are easier and less likely to deter the squeamish.

So is there anything to criticise in this book? Not really. Although Tom describes bad times when he felt lonely, bored, depressed, miserable, cold or ill I suspect he and his editor have been deliberately upbeat in minimising the space devoted to such episodes. Maybe I’ve been seduced by the romance and the lure of such an adventure; having the guts to do something which I don’t think I would have done even at his age (see below), and other readers will find the book tedious. I hope not. It may not be great literature, but it reads well and in my view it is a good story of a great adventure. As one cyclist to another, “Chapeau, Tom!”

PS. The Hungry Cyclist has a website, and as I write he is eating his way up the Mekong River. One final question: why so coy about your age, Tom? I can’t find it mentioned anywhere, though I have a niggling suspicion it was given away once in the book!

* “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” is the last line from Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire”.

For many British people there is a blank period of history covering the decade and a half from the end of the Second World War. In south-east Asia the Federation of Malaya, as it was then, gained independence in 1957; Burma (now Myanmar) in 1948. Along with other countries in the region these fledgling independent states were under constant threat from Chinese-backed insurgents, and the former colonial powers retained various grades of forces in the region to counter the communists.

"Four Wheels and Frontiers" is set against this background. Roy Follows and his buddy Noel Dudgeon were part of the Malay Police, and had commanded various special units of Malay and Chinese forces in counter-insurgency operations. They were well experienced in the jungle, and had learned the skills needed for survival.

An idle conversation in 1957 about their forthcoming return to the UK on leave the following year developed almost casually into the crazy idea of driving home in a US-built Willys Jeep that they found in a Chinese-run scrapyard in Johore.

And so it was that on 1 February 1958 they set off from Johore. The Jeep was loaded down with spares, with rations acquired over the previous months in the time-honoured military fashion of requisitioning more than they needed for their official jungle operations, and with other bits and pieces bought in the no-questions-asked street market in Singapore known locally as the Thieves Market.

Their journey covered over 13,000 miles through jungle, over mountains and across deserts. In those difficult and nervous times maps were hard to come by, and most of their navigation was with the dubious help of very large-scale wall maps. Far from being gung-ho, though, Follows’ account is matter-of-fact. I had to keep reminding myself of the historical context and the conditions they would have found. There was very real danger of them being captured or shot — their overnight stop in a police compound in Thaton, Burma was interrupted by a gun battle a few streets away, and crossing northern Pakistan they were ambushed by Pathan rebels and held overnight. Follows does not play down these incidents, but is content to report them without embellishment.

Similarly, I had to keep reminding myself of the kind of roads they would have been following for most of their journey. Forget tarmac; think boulders, swamps, river crossings. Not surprisingly the Jeep suffered badly. There is a constant theme of breakdowns and repairs. They would lash up whatever they could from their stock of spares, and were generally able to keep going until they reached somewhere with a mechanic who could fix the latest crop of problems.

The places on their route through Malaya, Thailand, Burma, India and on through Pakistan and Iran are redolent of the era of exploration and empire: Rangoon, Moulmein, Mandalay, the Irawaddy and Indus rivers, Quetta, Bam. From more recent times the Burma Road, along part of which they drove, is well-enough known at least by reputation, but who now remembers the Ledo Road, which joins the Burma Road to Northern India, built between 1942 and 1944 by 28,000 US soldiers and some 35,000 locally-recruited workers (according to Follows — other sources give different numbers) at the cost of thousands of lives?

Inevitably the bulk of the book is devoted to the earlier part of the journey. Once they cross the Bosphorus it only takes a few pages to get to the English Channel, where, arriving at Dover, an officious customs officer confiscates their camera.

Did I enjoy reading this book? The answer is yes, and no. The "matter-of-fact" style of writing is disappointing. It is a shame that the two protagonists don’t come across as individual personalities: Follows says very little about their feelings; the reported exchanges between the two travellers are terse and clipped and deal only with the matter at hand. Nor is the Jeep itself established as a character. I suspect that Follows would see such a thing as inexcusably sentimental, but a book needs characters and the poor Willys Jeep, by turns battered, bruised, abused and nursed along, might have fit the bill.

On the positive side, I unreservedly admire their achievement, their determination and endurance. Follows has included plenty of black-and-white photos which help evoke the conditions and, with examples of official documents, the spirit of the times. Some of the incidents he describes are delightful: I loved the way that arriving in Burma without any currency they set up a roadside stall selling cigarettes and army socks to get the cash to pay for a ferry crossing. And the curious events in Darjeeling where they were invited by the proverbial man in a bar to form a "rescue mission" for an American expedition stranded in Nepal while allegedly hoping to film the yeti. Money, apparently, would be no object. They agreed in principle, but delays over visas meant they called it off. Later events showed the whole thing was probably related to an ill-fated CIA-backed uprising in Nepal against the Chinese.

Readers hoping for an exciting adventure tale will, I fear, be disappointed, but this book is interesting for its albeit low-key historical content and is sure to appeal to car and rally enthusiasts.