Tuesday 2 December 2014

Dick "Icelandick" Phillips

In an earlier blog post I mentioned a man by the name of Dick Phillips (of the Rough Stuff Fellowship), who in 1959 crossed the Sprengisandur by bike. He and his three colleagues travelled from Stokkseyri to Akureyri.

Thanks to Al Humphries, I managed to get in touch with Dick Phillips and spent a highly entertaining hour talking about his experiences and what we're planning. Dick has spent the past 50+ years organising and running guided tours of Iceland, often to some of the wilder and more remote spots. Between times he's been a font of knowledge for people like me.

Through Dick I've learned about what our proposed route might actually entail. He described the landscape, his own experience of crossing the interior (river fording using shoelaces tied together) and Horace Dell's exploits.

Brilliantly, Dick has amassed a large selection of now out of print maps. Some of these show old routes used by horse-traders and sheep-herders which probably haven't been used by more than the odd person for decades, if not longer. Apparently some of them date back to their use in the 1890's, when the East-Fjords were better populated and the routes linked farms and homes (now all abandoned).

Dick was delighted that we were attempting our route, and even more so that we were shunning the roads and well-trodden trails. However he did suggest that these disused routes might be a good basis for our own path. Apparently they follow the natural lie of the land, they needed to be accessible by horse (so are probably okay for bikes) and they are likely to have cairns in some places. I briefly thought about complaining that this defeated the spirit of being off-road. But decided that this man's experience was considerably more valuable than my pride!

I wont bore you with much of the rest of the conversation, except to say that we both share a love of cartography, in particular of geological mapping. Yes-yes-yes. I'm a geologist. Get over it.

It's also worth noting that Dick sells his maps for about £7 a pop. Which is something like £20 less than Stanfords. He sells them for "the price they should be", with little consideration to maximum profit. So not only is he a fascinating man, but also one who is generous with his time and encouragement. I'm looking forward to speaking to him again once I have the maps spread out in front of me.

Monday 24 November 2014

An Adventure vs A Challenge

Twitter is awash with Adventurers isn't it? People who have (for the most part) done extraordinary things, but who proudly and wonderfully claim it wasn't the thing they did that mattered, but the experience of doing it. There are loud proclamations of independence, of freedom and of corporate distrust. It's fascinating.

Amongst all of that, I've begun to feel like a bit of a fraud. Here I am talking about something I haven't even done yet! Cheekily, I'm looking for sponsorship and encouragement from people who've done simply ridiculously tough and life-changing things.

So I think it's important to draw a distinction between those amazing individuals, and lowly old me.

I wrote a blog in 2005/2006 when my wife and I jacked everything in, sold our house, got a clapped out camper van and meandered off into Western Europe for the better part of a year. We left with no real direction, no plans and our only known goal was to be in Chamonix some time in early December 2005 so we could run a chalet (without doubt the cheapest way to do a ski season, and great fun too).

We went on that trip because our jobs were sucking the life out of us, and I was almost certainly going to have some kind of itchy-foot induced breakdown. We wrote a blog because postcards and phone calls are expensive and my handwriting is shit. Our families read it to keep track and see what we'd been up to.

What an amazing time we had. Those days will live forever in my memory as some of the best of my life.

This isn't like that.

I'm not even sure that this qualifies as an Adventure at all. It's not really about being footloose, lost, free or wild.

Perhaps a better term is 'a challenge'. I've previously called it an adventure (I probably will again), because to me it seems pretty adventurous. But really it's a sustained ordeal, with known start and end points. It's the latest in a succession of cycling challenges I've been setting myself over the past few years. I want this to be difficult, nearly impossible. It might even be more rewarding and educational if it actually turns out to be impossible!

Don't get me wrong; it's not a race. We're going to one of the most beautiful places on earth, a place I've been to before and fallen utterly in love with. But also don't mistake this for a moralistic eco-crusade, or think that I'm trying to find the inner me. I am not Bernard Moitessier. I am not especially spiritual or deep. And I have no intention of jacking in my life and job to become an Adventurer living off $5 a day and blogging about it.

So. If I'm not an adventurer, then I'm either a challenger (which feels like I should be in a boxing match) or a masochistic tourist! Either way, a couple of weeks of hardship in a fatbike doesn't quite contend with riding around the world, packrafting the Ganges, climbing above 8000m or walking the Sahara. In my mind that's adventure, this doesn't quite qualify.

Anyway, I can get adventure anytime I want. I just have to sit in a large cardboard box with my 4 year old son, and we can be anywhere, doing anything we want.


Thursday 20 November 2014

It's Worth Doing This

At the moment this adventure seems to be all about trying to market the idea as hard as possible. We've dreamed up what we modestly think is a great plan, which ticks the box of being simple to describe, yet mercilessly hard to do. And now it's all about getting the message out there.

Of course we don't have to do that. We could just go about getting over excited, and then quietly get it done next summer. But...

1. We're poor. Not in the truest sense of the word poor obviously. That would be insulting to most of the rest of the word. What I mean is that we live very comfortable middle-class lives, but struggle to find the money to undertake a needlessly frivolous adventure such as this. Of course this is why Jesus invented the credit card. But if we can find sponsorship, interested parties and backing; then so much the better (I'm not holding my breath!). However despite that, it's really not for our financial ease that this awareness stuff matters. Which leads me to;

2. The MNDA (that's ALS if you're across The Pond). You've probably seen Benedict Cummerbund or Tom Hiddleston getting cold and wet in the name of this charity. Well, in a roundabout sort of way, we're doing the same thing. And any amount of publicity, retweeting, sponsorship, Facebook big-up-ing etc etc can only help to raise awareness, and so help us to raise money. I'm not trying to convince you that we're doing this solely for charity, I doubt anyone is daft enough to believe that. But that doesn't preclude using this to do good things.

But it's more personal than that. Earlier this year my father-in-law passed away from MND, and it's one of the most unpleasant ends I can imagine. He managed to maintain his dignity throughout, which is not always the case, and fortune granted him a relatively swift denouement. He was a good, generous man, and a loving husband, father and grandfather. If we raise nothing more than a fiver toward researching the cause and eventual cure for MND, then we've helped to make the world a slightly better place.

So please, share this, +1 it, re-tweet it, Facebook Like it, use a loudhailer or just leave a comment telling me I'm a chump. But don't just skip on by.

Awareness is everything.


p.s. There will be a JustGiving page soon. But we're just getting the ball rolling a bit faster first.

Tuesday 11 November 2014

Could it still be a first?

The more I look into this idea, the more I begin to think that this could be a first.

Yes, the interior highlands were crossed in the 1930's and 1950's by crazy cyclists. However, the Horace Dell was specifically crossing of the interior only (his diary shows he got a lift to the start), and the latter was a North to South crossing by Dick Phillips across the highlands; there's no mention I can find of starting and finishing at the coast, and even then that it was the furthest point. Not that I'm attempting to do any disrespect to the endeavours of both of those 

The first solo crossing on foot, furthest North to South (NtoS) from Rifstangi to Kötlutangi unsupported, was apparently only completed in 2007. Which is very recent, and seems to suggest a few things to me:

1. If the first foot crossing NtoS was only 7 years ago, then the first bike crossing (which is surely going to come afterwards) may well not have happened yet.
2. Even if a bike crossing has happened, they probably used the roads and tracks. Most sane people would.
3. Even if that (possibly fictional) bike crossing didn't used tracks, was it unsupported, or did they use huts/hostels etc?
4. Was that (now highly fictional and not extremely dubious) bike crossing furthest NtoS?
5. Even if all of the above happened, was it on Fatbikes?
6. Perhaps I'm not taking this seriously enough.

Is it possible, even slightly possible, that no one has ever done this before? When you add up the factors above, the likelihood of it having been done previously (feel free to rule out point 5 as ludicrously prescriptive) shrinks considerably. 

We live in a world where firsts are measured by minutiae and most of the great challenges are done. Our legacy is to find variations on the great achievements of previous generations. Has this variation been done yet? It seems like such an obvious one I feel it must have been...

But wouldn't it be awesome if it really was a first?

A bit about us

If you're reading this, and I feel very much like I might be speaking to an audience of one, then you're probably a little curious about me and John. No? Oh well, never mind I'll tell you anyway.

We’re just two pretty ordinary guys from Bristol in the UK, who have a desire to do something a little different and challenge ourselves. We’ve both been mountain biking for decades, and have experience in climbing, mountaineering, distance riding and trekking. 


Tom Vincent - Geologist
Age: 37
Tom, by John: Engineer, Geologist and Raconteur; A psychopath at heart, Tom enjoys sourcing strange meat for his homemade burgers and wielding an axe on the pavement outside his home.
Special Skills: Bad ideas, avoiding childcare for extended periods at any physical cost, looking out of the window at stuff, swearing.

John Fitzgerald - Accountant
Age: 29
John, by Tom: John enjoys pretending to be in the middle of a work-out when you arrive at his house for a pre-arranged visit. He also likes Polka music and taxidermy.
Special Skills: Liking bad ideas, finding elaborate excuses not to propose to his girlfriend, recovering from back surgery.

NOTE: I'd like it on record that the comment about John's girlfriend is his, and I bear no responsibility for this disclosure. Since he's currently confined to the sofa following the aforementioned back surgery, it shouldn't be too much of a challenge should she wish to beat him up about it.

Wednesday 5 November 2014

Inspiration and awe

So it looks like our North South crossing has been done before. That's okay, it doesn't make the challenge less by knowing that far more daring and adventurous people went before us. The challenge lies not in it's singularity, but in getting off your arse and just doing it.

That said, it's worth noting that we wont be following the various interior tracks as many adventurous people do crossing the Sprengisandur (the desert in the interior of Iceland) each summer. We'll be following in the footsteps of Horace Dell and Dick Phillips and the British Rough Stuff Fellowship... In short; making life hard for ourselves!  

Anyway, here's a truly excellent short film on the subject of crossing the interior of Iceland.

Horace and the Rough Stuff Fellowship




Tuesday 4 November 2014

The Plan.

As it turns out, my wife approved. What's more my friend John agreed to join me.

Then work gave me the time off (the Director being a keen mountain biker). Then Alastair Humphreys* told me it was a good idea. Then another friend offered to try and get me a deal with a biking magazine to write it up.

So, before I knew it... I found myself here. With a plan.

What is this plan? Why, it's simple.

John and I ride a couple of Fat Bikes from the northernmost tip of mainland Iceland to the south coast. En route we cross the Interior Highlands and where possible** we stay off road and be unsupported***. The route is approximately 500km and we'd expect it to take about 2 weeks. We hope to go in late August early September next year, and we'll be raising money for the Motor Neurone Disease Association (think of this as one humungous Ice-Bucket Challenge!). We're going to try and draw as much attention as possible, so feel free to spread the word. Cheers!




* http://www.alastairhumphreys.com/adventures/transiceland/
** Icelandic law states that if there is a highway we must use it. But for much of the interior, there wont be any highways...
*** Hiding in a bunkhouse and/or accepting a hot meal from a kindly soul doesn't count!

Monday 3 November 2014

The spark.

Hold on a minute. I've just had a brilliant idea.

[I bet my wife wont let me]

I could combine an epic bike ride, with a Fat Bike.

[I bet no-one will be able to come along anyway, what's the point...]

Two birds, one ridiculously cool stone.

[I've always wanted to go back to Iceland]

I could go to Iceland. I could go back to Iceland and try to ride across the notoriously desolate and beautiful interior.

[By jove, I think he's got it!]

I wonder what my wife will say?

The catalyst...

I needed a challenge.

It's the onset of winter. It always makes me restless.

In winter you go to work in the dark. You come home from work in the dark. The lights are always on in the office. Clothes are wet, cycling is cold and your bike gets clagged up with grime and muck.

If you don't have a plan to get through winter... you might not get through at all.

I needed a goal, an image of something sunny, light and beautiful. Something to make me train. To make me get on my commuter bike in horrible weather and ride to work. To make me get up at 5am on the weekend and do a training ride before the kids get up. And that kind of impetus needs a decent goal.

[God, I'd love a Fat Bike]

The seed...

For a long time I've looked at Fat Bikes online and in magazines, and thought to myself [that looks awesome, I must have one]. But this thought is immediately followed by several more thoughts in quick succession:

[Seriously?! You live in the middle of Bristol... There's not a lot of sand or snow]
[You'll look like a complete tool on the trails]
[You'll have to sell one of your current bikes in order to meet the "S-1 rule"]


So, I clicked off the webpage and went back to work.

[Fat bikes look like fun]
[Fat bikes look like fun]
[Fat bikes look like fun]
[I must have a Fat bike]