Safe Return Doubtful

This is a stunningly presented book with breathtaking photography and awe-inspiring descriptions of the decade of cycle touring undertaken by a retired teaching couple from the north of England.

Rather than opt for the sort of retirement most people do, Pauline and Hugh embarked on physically challenging adventures that took them to such far flung places as Tierra del Fuego, the Pamir Highway, the Bolivian Altiplano, Munda Biddi and the karst mountains of Laos.

We cycled away from our home in late September 2012. So, where were we going? We weren’t sure – where the road took us.. We had thoughts of reaching China or Mongolia. What happened would depend upon encounters on the road, the whim of the embassies that deliver visas to aspiring tourists and our own health and fitness. We proceeded with optimism and eagerness, a thirst for exploring the unknown and a love of wandering through the world.

Most times we read of such antics of derring-do they are from intrepid adventurers that it is difficult to see as role models, but this seemingly normal Cumbrian couple give a new perspective on ‘retirement’. In addition, the writing is also very accessible and easy to read. Not only is the reader motivated to get out of their chair and see some of these places for themselves, but also to write about it.

The book is organised chronologically, starting and finishing in South America, to where they flew in 2010, just a month into retirement, to ride almost 10,000 kilometres meandering across the Andes mountain chain. In March of 2020 they managed to get on board one of the last flights out of Colombia, after a four month ride there, as the pandemic closed down travel.
This is a book that can be appreciated from the armchair, enjoying the anecdotes and vivid descriptions of different cultures and wild places, or indeed, how I prefer to see it, as a guide book to probably more than a hundred rides around the world.
The book’s 390 pages may be a little much to be taken on all at once. My recommendation would be take on the ‘bite size’ chapters, about 30 pages or so, in each sitting, and on completion the book then becomes an interesting reference, to be dipped into using the convenient Index in the appendix.

Here’s a clip..

When Aslam was asked for his best piece of travel advice in an interview with a travel company, this is what he came up with: ‘I was leading a group recently and we went through a particularly demeaning and rigorous security check in an ethnically troubled part of China, which included having the soles of our feet scanned and having to remove all battery-powered items from our hold luggage. “I find it helps,” said one of the women in the group, “to remember that this isn’t a holiday, it’s travel. They’re both wonderful, but they are different.”’ This connects with the way we feel about travel by bike – it’s not a holiday, it is travel. It is these links in the chain betwen the ‘destinations’, and the encounters that it leads to, that make it something very special.

My GoodReads score 5 / 5