We didn’t just wake up one day and decide to throw it all in and go travelling. When Liam and I first met, we spoke about doing a big adventure together. We called it ‘riding around the world’, although we quickly realised that if we actually wanted to have a good time on our trip, we’d have to rein in the mileage ambitions!
We’ve also been focused on building our lives together, trying to build careers, our relationship and our home. Neither of us are risk takers, so stepping away from earning an income for a year felt like a big thing for both of us.
I never took a gap year, too keen on progressing from one step to another, from school to undergraduate, to a PhD, to a job… Growing up in rural Wales before remote and hybrid working became common place, I was acutely aware that if I took my foot off the gas it would be quite hard to break back into the job market. I also put a lot of expectation on myself with my academic past; I had high expectations of myself. I threw my energy into building my own base, a home and a career, but never quite finding a role or company that was a good fit. From a PhD to a patchy CV and feeling a bit lost, it’s a good time for me to take a step back and gain a new perspective.
Liam had a more adventurous upbringing, moving from France to the UK to Portugal. He the split his final year at university to pursue his dream of becoming a professional cyclist. Sadly, the greasy roads of Belgium triumphed when he ended up lying in the back of an ambulance with a broken femur. He spent 6 months working as a guide in Girona before starting on a graduate scheme. 8 years or so later, he’s at the same company just chugging away, occasionally swearing at his code.
So we’re not ‘dirt bags’ or ‘bikepacking bums’ or ‘influencers’. We’re stepping away from our 9-5s, so naturally, there is never a good time to do this. We realised this and decided that we needed to draw a line in the dirt. We decided turning 30 would be a good thing to aim for. ‘Thirtieth birthdays on the road’ we pledged. Then along came COVID and our birthdays passed at the tail end of the first lockdown.
A few months down the road, Covid brought an opportunity for Liam to take voluntary redundancy with a severance package. We thought this would be enough money to go travelling on, so he put in an application. Unfortunately, I had a chronic back problem which had been getting progressively worse and I didn’t think my body was in a place to go sleeping on the floor for 12 months. For that, I needed to be around for rheumatology appointments and seeing the physio. And so Liam withdrew his VR application and I endured the sleepless nights from the comfort of my own mattress.
A significant event along to road to our trip plans was after an anniversary. We had wild camped on the Mendips and were daydreaming about our trip on the way home. Having got home, showered and turned on the laptops, Liam shouted down the stairs that he had found his ‘round the world bike’. A rigid, single speed downhill mountain bike called a Stooge Scrambler. He was like a child at Christmas and by lunchtime a pre-order was placed. When the bike arrived he was even more like a child at Christmas. The bike made riding so playful for him again.
Fast forward a few years and Liam rode his rigid single speed to victory at the Highland Trail 550. Not bad for a heavy beach cruiser! I’ve learned how to manage my back, Liam’s project at work is nearing a milestone and they’ve agreed to him taking a year’s sabbatical. The extra time gave us an opportunity to save more money and refine our trip ideas, and thanks to Liam’s big effort in Scotland Mr Stooge gave us a second frame which we’ve built up as my touring bike. We’ve gone from around the world to along the Andes.
The final piece of the puzzle was to work out what to do with our home, and when a friend was in need of somewhere to live with a similar timeline a rental agreement was struck.
So there we have it, we’ve de-risked and saved up. Now we just need to take the plunge. We’ve spent the weekend decluttering, sorting through the bike cupboard and clothes, earmarking what to try and sell, give away and sadly throw away. I’m quite surprised at how much emotional value I have assigned to these inanimate objects and certainly taken by surprise at how hard it is to leave our first home. My first house and our home together, these walls have held so many memories. Except for the kitchen wall, which we demolished to build a kitchen-diner. The house is transformed and so are we. The end of one chapter and the beginning of the next.
