Tom
We arrived in Istanbul a
couple of days ago, cycling into this sprawling monolith of a city
along one of the two main routes against about 9 manic lanes of
rush-hour traffic, minibuses and not-so-mini-buses.
That experience recovered from, we have
again been enjoying the hospitality of a variety of city-dwellers
courtesy of the Couchsurfing Project website, which has again
demonstrated its increasingly invaluable efficiency in finding local
people in urban areas with the desire to help and host travellers - all
over the world.
Our arrival in the city marks the
completion of the European leg of Ride Earth. We have successfully -
albeit not without a couple of minor medical and mechanical hiccups -
crossed Europe, from England to Turkey, by bicycle; a journey of almost
exactly 5000km of pedalling, through 12 countries over 122 days of
trial and tribulation. The experience has been richly rewarding in so
many ways, and now I feel the need to take stock of how the last 4
months of submission to the whims of the world has affected my outlook
on life and how it has affected my future dreams for the expedition.
While there were many things about Europe
that I tired of - the familiar infrastucture, the recognisably Western
mode of thought and ugly signs of capitalism throughout - it’s also
evident to me now that the experience was crucial. In getting this
far, I passed a test that I suppose Andy and I had both subconsciously
set ourselves. We had said from the start that crossing Europe would
be a testing ground for our bikes and our equipment. What we didn’t
realise was that it would be far more of a test of our personal mettle.
Anything mechanical can be fixed with a
combination of gaffa tape, cable-ties and serendipity. The real
challenge was to adapt to not only the logistics of the lifestyle, but
also to open up in a spiritual fashion in order to learn from the
experiences, to transcend the programmed values and perceptions of
success and goodness in life - to tear away the fabric of the
capitalist, consumerist social climate that conditions us into a way of
thinking and desiring that does not belong to us.
This process was started by the decision
to make this physical and mental journey, although, thinking back to
summer 2006 when the idea began to germinate, I had no real idea where
it would lead. I still don’t, but at this significant point in the
process I can start to tease out the strands of meaning that have been
weaving themselves together.
The drive to uproot the foundations of my
life and to plunge into the real world - the whole world - came from a
growing discomfortable inkling that my life’s meaning was beginning to
take on hues and shades which, when I had the chance to think about
them, made no real sense in the context of my most fundamental values.
These were borne out of a childhood spent in a small rural community
in which the unity of the residents determined the overall happiness of
the small society, and agriculture, rural pursuits and ways of life
still held this unity together in terms of employment, social
interaction and village routine. Over time, I have watched this unity
begin to unravel, or at least take on a completely new form with very
different foundations.
It was most noticeable when I returned
home to Northamptonshire after completing my first degree at the
University of Exeter. When I was young, I played with my brother and
our friends down the road in the outbuildings of their family’s small
farm. In late summer, we would have great fun playing hide-and-seek
amongst the farm machinery, in the barns, upon growing haystacks.
Another farmer down the road would drive up and down on his quad-bike,
attending to scattered fields of sheep and to his extensive stables.
Some people had jobs in nearby cities and would commute there, but they
seemed to be the exception. We roamed around the local countryside,
through farmland and parkland, built wooden go-karts and raced them
down the main street of the village.
Throughout the summer months, there would
be regular community events; village fetes in which myself and other
children from the village primary school put on gymnastics displays to
country music, and seemingly hundreds of ‘coffee mornings’ (which were
really an excuse for me and my brother and our friends to explore all
the gardens of the village through games of hide-and-seek and fetching
lost footballs, and eating large quantities of cake baked by the
village women). As with most childhoods, our lives were carefree and
we took our rural surroundings and society for granted, as children do!
During my secondary-school days, I began
to lose touch with my village friends. At the age of 11, we all went
to town schools. My schoolbus took over an hour to weave through the
country lanes towards Kettering, where it deposited hordes of unruly
village children in the middle of the town. I was the only boy in the
village that year to go to the particular school my parents chose for
me and my brother. Thus, my childhood friends went their separate
ways, I made new friends who came from the town, and things continued
without reflection.
It was in this climate, during possibly
the most impressionable days of our lives, that we were subject to the
whimsical mentality of one of many central English post-industrial
towns. Our area’s industry was shoemaking, long since declined with
only a few traces remaining. The town centre has little to say for
itself any more, save for the usual run of franchises and big shopping
chains, interspersed occasionally with an independent store or two.
The town had been left with little identity to speak of.
That need for identity seemed to have been
transposed onto the remaining features of the town, which is now
defined by my peers in terms of its enigmatic pubs, kebab houses and
suburban districts. That’s not to say I don’t retain any nostalgic
attachment to Kettering - but it is my friends there, rather than the
place itself, that I miss the most.
I won’t elaborate too much on the details
of my adolescence as to do so would probably be a little
self-indulgent. I am trying, right now, to contextualise my current
outlook on the world, by including a little of everything that has
contributed to it. But to summarise, I would say that like many folk
coming into a town from the countryside to spend our teenage years -
not only at school, but also in social circumstances - I went into a
stage of intoxication with the world it offered. For example, I could
go out with my friends and participate in the almost-inevitable act of
under-age drinking without having to worry what passers-by thought,
because the scale of the town offered anonymity to me and to anyone
else who wished it. I could trudge down the Headlands into town at
lunchtime and have a McDonalds, go for a game of pool and be back in
time for afternoon registration.
I knew what it was like to live in this
kind of society and there were many aspects that appealed to me at that
age. But every night, I slept in my bed in my village home, which was
my real
home, and this was important as it meant I could see the town life for
what it was in a wider perspective. This also meant that I developed a
new appreciation for the countryside, which I could enjoy outside of
school-time, no longer taking it for granted. My part-time job mucking
out stables at the other end of the village, unglamourous though it
was, gave me solitude and time to reflect on these things. And so that
stage of urban intoxication was tempered and was not allowed to develop
into the driving force behind my life.
Finishing university, I had no real
direction in which to go. My degree, which like many of my generation
had been chosen out of the need to ‘go to uni’ rather than to engage in
passionate study of a subject, had been a success, because I had found
the determination to see the consequences of a questionable earlier
decision through to the best possible end. But I had no interest in
pursuing Computer Science further in academia or in the world of work.
All I knew, in these confused times, was that I had to figure out my
direction in life.
I didn’t consciously make any decision to
do so, but the result was that I lay low - living with my parents,
earning a few quid from the odd bit of freelance work and manning the
bar at the local hotel, making occasional excursions to work back in
Exeter or up at Edinburgh festival; but generally making a hash of a
good relationship and going through a period of extended and fruitless
soul-searching. It’s hard to admit. But rejecting the ’standard’
post-university route of a well-paid job in London under a graduate
recruitment scheme was never going to be easy, as I was finding out.
It was at about this time that the concept that is now Ride Earth
surfaced. I had been toying with various cycle-touring-related ideas
for a while. But one day in Edinburgh, I was in a bookshop on
Southbridge when I noticed a book entitled ‘The Adventure Cycle Touring
Handbook’. I wandered over to the Meadows and lay on the grass in the
sun, flicking through it. Then, in an unbelievable moment of
serendipity - this actually happened - my phone beeped with the sound
of an incoming SMS. “Mate. I have decided to bike round the world.”
It was from Andy. The implications were
obvious. The coincidence was impossible to ignore. Serendipity, luck,
coincidence, chance, fate, the process, going with the flow - all names
for the same thing - would be a major theme in the story from that
moment on. It’s a sure sign that you’ve finally found the true path -
there’s nothing supernatural to it. This was the moment when I took my
first tentative steps down it. These were the hardest steps, I think,
as I had to watch people I loved taking paths in different directions,
but by then there was no space to turn round and follow.
Back in my home village, I discussed with
my parents the way in which the place had changed. From its
grass-roots origins, the village was becoming increasingly one of
countryside retreats for well-to-do professionals in early-middle age
who wanted somewhere ‘nice’ to bring up their children. The village
fete no longer existed, as the village manor was sold by the
community-centred family who owned it, large gates were erected and
planning applications spewed forth for large housing developments on
the estate (which were duly quashed by the remainder of the community
who felt opposed to such effective ways to disrupt the unity of a
village). The village pantomime - in which all the village’s parents
used to annually embarrass themselves - also died off. The annual
litter picking season disappeared. Carol singers stayed at home on
Christmas Eve. The church community lost its long-standing and popular
vicar and went into a period of instability.
Thankfully, all is not lost for my home
village. There has always been some tension between the residents of
the ‘old’ village at one end, and those of the council-house estates at
the other - but incidents like the overthrowing of the huge housing
development applications showed that people could still unite together
when the need arose. Various regular social gatherings in the village
now act to bring newcomers into the community and to solidify the
spirit of the community as it now stands. My parents, who have lived
there for much of their adult lives, will no doubt have their comments
on the topic!
Having found a path to tread, I began to
see where it would lead. At the time, I knew that it was the right
one, but I couldn’t clearly see how I had found it. Now, looking back,
it is much clearer - and this is confirmation to me that I am going in
the right direction.
My experiences in Europe have shown me a
lot about the value of the community and living sufficiently without
excess. This is partly thanks to my quite minimalist lifestyle - I now
possess only what I need to achieve this journey, having sold
everything I own except my books and record collection - but it is also
a result of seeing the contrast between rural and urban society. and
the common features of each which have persisted throughout the
continent.
We have stayed with villagers in Romania
who have nothing but their small plot of land on which to raise and
grow enough food to feed themselves, and been welcomed as equals, fed
as equals and treated with the most warm and genuine kindness
imaginable, despite sharing no common language whatsover. A couple in
rural Hungary took in myself, Andy and 2 others who were travelling
with us. after we asked if we could camp for the night on their land.
They didn’t speak a word of English, and we about 5 words of
Hungarian. They lived the simplest life imaginable in their little
cottage, earning a small wage on a nearby equestrian centre. But they
treated us like kings and queens, wanting nothing in return but the
feeling of helping fellow human beings on their way. When we left the
following afternoon, they were both in tears.
If this sounds like the stuff of
storybooks, it’s not - in fact, this kind of thing has happened in
England (imagine!), Holland, Belgium, France, Switzerland, Austria,
Germany, Hungary, Romania and Turkey - in the countryside, in parts of
the world where mutuality still exists, where people help each other
because they want to help, not because they want money.
On the other hand, we’ve cycled into
cities small and large, spent hours in them, on our bikes and on foot,
and been unacknowledged and unnoticed by anyone.
We’ve been up til 3:30am trying to find somewhere to sleep before
giving up and sleeping under a tree in a park. We’ve been invited in
by a family in a slum town under desperate circumstances, fed and given
beds, only to be demanded money of the following day (and not an
inconsiderable sum either). What does this say about the way in which
city and country affect people’s mindsets, their attitude towards other
humans, and their sense of what is valuable and good in the world?
It’s not always like that, though - I hate
to make sweeping generalizations, so remember that this is nothing more
than an intensely abbreviated summary of the last 4 months on the road.
Seeing all aspects of society as we have done on our bikes, taking
rural routes as well as visiting urban centres, has highlighted some
fundamental aspects of human nature, and about how society is
influenced by the capitalist democracy that we seem to think is the
best answer to the problem of governing society.
From this point onwards in Ride Earth,
things are not as clear as we thought they might be. This is because
we have accepted the idea of fluidity in our travels, rather than
making a plan and sticking stoically to it. We are ready to
go wherever the world takes us from here onwards.
Lastly, I would like to recommend a book
which I have been reading recently. It has helped greatly to clarify
matters regarding social foundations, and has put my observations of
myself and the world into a wider context, from the point-of-view of an
author whose grounding is similarly community-based (although in a very
different set of social conditions on the Hebridean islands of
Scotland). It’s called Soil and Soul, written by Alastair McIntosh,
and it was given to us by JP of the WWF, who can be seen talking to us
in Episode 4 of the video podcast. You can get a copy here, and I would recommend it to anyone who has ever doubted the values on which our current society is based.
It’s not a monologue of extremism, either
- it’s a balanced set of observations that take in a huge range of
topics which are fundamental to the way we live, and more importantly,
the way that we should strive to live in the future.
