World Tour
On the final day of March 2019 we set off from Telford, Shropshire to circumnavigate the World on our bicycles. We planned to cycle 24,000 miles and cross more than 30 different countries.
5 Years and 1 global pandemic later we returned to the Arc de Triomphe, Paris on the 26th May 2024 to complete our circumnivation of the world by bicycle.
The stories below document our journey around the world. You can also find our route and stats here.
Good things come to those who wait. Today we said goodbye to the snow with a very beautiful bike ride. When we got to Tanchang I was absolutely full of joy – the pedals turned effortlessly!
In Guazhou there were lots of colourful stalls. It was quite a cool town actually, just a place on route, not particularly well known and we definitely didn’t see any tourists.
I must admit, we are quite bored of the snow and ice now. We keep thinking we’ve made it past the worst, but we’re just not there yet. We’ve been hiding in a hotel for 4 nights due to the recent snowfall, today we decided we’d ride 60kms (40miles) to the next town.
We cycled uphill until the sun broke through the clouds and suddenly the day turned into one of the best days of the trip. At the top of the pass, over 9000ft we prepared to descend into the biting wind.
Remember Shandan where we tried to cycle, but found it too icy? On this day we tried a different hotel, as ours was expensive. We went to Shandan Hotel which was closed. This sweet man gave us directions to a new hotel, then....
The highest we’ve been on the trip so far. Thankfully the Chinese roads made this feel quite easy. Typically in China the climbs are slow and steady over many miles.
So we made it to Yongcheng after 2 extra nights in Shandan due to bad weather. Yesterday we tried to leave Shandan in hopes that once we left the town the roads would be fine. Well the roads were treacherous!
Arriving at the Great Wall was an emotional experience. Everything flooding in at once – the excitement of it, the scale of the trip, the gratitude to Stew for organising our world cycling tour.
In China they use different hand signals for numbers. At first we were so confused when staff in shops were giving us these odd hand gestures.
We’ve been cycling this barren section of land since August. You can really see the scale of it on the map. I’m quite shocked looking at it. I couldn’t be more ready to leave this behind now.
Well this town cheered me up so much this evening! Chinese towns and cities are fabulous at night. They’re all so beautifully lit up…and can you spot any litter?
We’ve been quite fascinated by this since Uzbekistan. In Asia we’ve been watching people sit in this deep squat position for extended periods of time. I’ve tried to pick up photos along the way and this is the best I can get without being too intrusive.
It’s impossible to get across how frustrating I’ve found some interactions in China. What I’d like to do is write the F word until the character limit fills up, but I’ll try explain…
We made it across 200 miles of dessert in only 2 days thanks to a 100 mph joy ride from the police yesterday evening. When you think about you getting a ride with the police you probably imagine it’s a very serious and professional experience…
I can’t believe we hit this milestone and didn’t even notice – 7,200 miles. That has absolutely flown. If Stew’s calculations are correct this puts us at 30% of the trip complete.
Hitting a road closure in China has the potential to be a total pain! We turned up to this large blue sign today, which was blocking the one road we wanted to take.
For us, the border crossing at Khorogos, China, was slightly uncomfortable, but overall a breeze. It took about 1 hour and here's what went down!
One thing that changes in China is cutlery; we’re now using chop sticks. Luckily we were already somewhat familiar with the chopstick and could manage a meal.
So yesterday, police checks did get quite annoying. We went through 2 police checks easily, then the third – nothing major but we had to be escorted through this section.
As I said in a previous post, I’d describe the border crossing as slightly uncomfortable, but overall a breeze. China is, in my opinion, the only country following a decent protocol at borders.
Okay so there are a lot of police in Xinjiang. I don’t have pictures of them for obvious reasons, but in this picture you can see the blue banner at the end of the road, that’s a police check point.
We breezed through the first three days finding hotels for £15 and £20 then some floor space for free. I realise now just how lucky that floor space was.
We woke up in darkness at 07.30. We’re now GMT+8, a 2 hour jump after Kazakhstan. We headed out at 09:00 in our winter cycling gear head to toe – leggings the lot!
The border I’d describe as thorough and slightly uncomfortable, but overall a breeze. China is, in my opinion, the only country following a decent protocol at borders. Well, with the exception of them going through our phones...