The Arctic Rider

Hi everyone, So exactly 6 months today I'll have started my journey to the Arctic and, all going well, I'll be sitting by my tent in Dover chomping down on some food having ridden the 360 miles from my hometown Whitley Bay. St Mary's Lighthouse, Whitley Bay It is all starting to get very real that I'm going to Nordkapp and the Arctic Circle. I know in no time at all I'll be on my bike, all packed, zooming down the motorway towards the continent. I've still got a lot of details to plan and work to do before I set off. I'm trying to remind myself that even though my trip has some very serious aims, I have to make sure I enjoy the ride. I've already written a blog about my details of first day ( click here to view) but there are still even more details to plan. The first is how I'm going to link up with all my biker buddies along the route from Newcastle to Dover. If you are interested for joining me for any part of the ride please drop a c...

Hi everyone, Welcome to the latest edition of my blog for Arctic Ride 2014 - A 6,000 mile solo motorbike adventure to the Arctic Circle to raise money for brain-injury charity Cerebra and to raise awareness for disability rights. To help multiply the impact of my trip to the Arctic I've been looking for companies to partner with me on Arctic Ride. To date I'm being supported by Newcastle Rider Training, North East MotorCycle Racing Club (NEMCRC) , Nomad Biker , Allinson's Photography , A-Plus Racing , and NEfit . All of these companies have been helping me by using their expertise and experience, or by providing funds for the 6,000 mile trip. With it being November, and winter pretty much here, the season for biking is almost much over. Due to this, and the expense of Christmas fast approaching, my hopes of getting any more sponsors on board before the new year are pretty low. Over the past weeks I've been sending out letters, emails, and tweets to local comp...

Greetings to another Arctic Ride 2014 blog, In this post I'll be talking about contingencies plans for my trip. For those of you that didn't follow my 2011 attempt to the Arctic, I had a crash just over a week into my trip near a town called Ornskoldsvik in northern Sweden. I hit a piece of metal that was lying in the road. Somehow I didn't come off the bike but my Kawasaki took the full force blowing my tyre and denting my wheel rim in the process. After my crash in Sweden June 2011 I got recovered back to Ornskoldsvik only to find it was Swedish bank holiday weekend meaning I couldn't get a new tyre and wheel for 5 days. This wait was nearly a quarter of my whole trip which made making it to Nordkapp and home in the time remaining impossible. The crash in 2011 is an example of thing that go wrong which can't be avoided but I'm going into this trip more well prepared for if something happens again. First of all, I've noted down when all the pu...