A bit about me

Hellooo!

Here's a little bit about myself.

Born and bred in Shropshire, I spent a lot of my early years running through fields next to my home with siblings and anyone else crazy enough to tag along.

Wee adventurer in the making!

Grown-up Shropshire ladies :)

I was lucky enough to spend an incredible four years living in Edinburgh whilst studying for a degree in Environmental Geoscience. While I was there I spent plenty of time trying not study, instead filling my time with bar work, musical theatre and open mic nights. It was also where I developed an interest in triathlons (where I found there can be fun in combining three sports into one, so I didn't have to be mediocre at just one) and this in turn led to a passion for cycling and touring.

Instead of looking for a job when I graduated in 2013, I spent my remaining pennies on a secondhand touring bicycle, and headed off to Italy for a three week tour to celebrate completing my degree. A love of touring and travelling, meeting new people and exploring was born in those three short weeks, and since then I've spent the most part of the last three years planning and completing various adventures.

Bergamo 2013

Outside the church at Ghisallo, Italian cycling mecca on the hill top from Bellagio, 2013

I lived in Bordeaux for four months working as an au pair, to improve (with variable success) my french, and joined a choir and cycling club while I lived there.

At the end of 2014 I took up the offer of an old school mate: she was planning to cycle from Melbourne back to Shropshire, and would I like to join her for part of it? Hells yes I did! We spent a whirlwind 3 weeks pedaling from Singapore, up the Malaysian peninsula to Bangkok, sprinting away from mad barking dogs, getting drunk on beaches, and not getting passports stamps resulting in near imprisonment...all in all, a fantastic adventure!

Tarmac quickly becoming sand roads in rural Thailand

In 2015, I completed my first long-distance solo tour - a coast-to-coast ride across Canada, which was why I started this blog! I took a lovely old family teapot with me, and spent three and a half months meeting relatives for the first time, eating a lot of poutine and frozen desserts, and making friends along the way. Catching glimpses of bears, moose, elk roaming through towns, and the odd coyote (I think, they looked very wolf-like!) was spectacular.

I've since joined the 'real working world' (I know, never thought that would happen!!) working in Shrewsbury for a local environmental consultancy, but I used this as a good excuse to get to know my home county some more.

So I used a chunk of my leave to do an ultra run around Shropshire. Although the shortest challenge so far, it was by far the toughest: I've never had to prep more physically for an adventure before, and it was truly the most difficult thing I've attempted - 145 miles of running over 6 days.

And that's me up to date so far...I'm currently planning and scheming more adventures, and always game for trying something new. My hope is to spend this next year exploring more of the home nations - now that I've explored my own backyard, it's time to hop over the fence and see what's in the fields beyond...