The Arctic Rider

Greetings! Welcome to another edition of the Arctic Ride 2014 blog. For those of you who are new to the blog basically in May and June of 2014 I will be riding my motorbike 6,000 in 3 weeks to the Arctic Circle and Nordkapp from my hometown of Newcastle upon Tyne all to raise money for brain-injury charity Cerebra . I've had another very busy week (I know I need a holiday right?) and not only has it been busy but rather successful. On Thursday evening I set off from my house around 8pm on what was a warm summer's eve with my destination the North East MotorCycle Racing Club (NEMCRC). I was kindly invited by Bruce Allinson to present to the club about my adventure. Parked up ready to chat to the NEMCRC committee After chatting with the guys and gals of the committee for an hour or so the club kindly offered me a place on their stand at the BikeWise show in Durham on Sunday 28th July to help promote my trip and get my my story out to the wider biking community. not on...

Hi all, Welcome again to my blog. If you are a new (or new'ish) visitor, be sure to check out the other parts of my site including 'What is Arctic Ride 2014', 'The Route', and 'Merchandise' along the top banner. Things in the Arctic Ride space are starting to come together and I've been getting busier and busier having meeting and putting a lot of time and effort into making this trip as success and this week has been no different. On Tuesday afternoon I had the pleasure of finishing work early (no, my employers weren't being kind but I started early to finish early) and it was a pleasure not only because it was 24 degrees and perfect biking weather but I was off to visit Jon and Phil at MPH Studios in Gateshead. I linked up with MPH Studios on Twitter and they very kindly invited me in to their office for a chat about how they can help with my trip as they were really interested in what I am doing. As hopefully you know by now I am videoing m...

Hi All, I hope you are well and enjoying the nice weather. So, once again I'm deviating from my Sunday blog to bring you a very special video message... Please watch this video as I really need your assistance to make something awesome happen and please comment on the video if you can. That's it for this blog. Look out for my next blog on Sunday. Please keep spreading the word about my trip. Twitter - 'Follow' @arcticride2014 Facebook - 'Like'  Arctic Ride 2014 YouTube - 'Subscribe' -  Arctic Ride 2014 Donations - With 100% going to charity Cerebra CLICK HERE TO DONATE Ride Safe, Gordon

Dear all, Thanks for tuning in! I'm very happy to announce that summer has truly arrived to the North East of the England. The weather has been perfect for riding, dry, warm (but not too warm) and, best of all, the roads are full of bikers. I don't live in Seghill but my iPhone thinks that I do This week has been another busy week. I'm still super busy at work and I've been busy planning Arctic Ride stuff as well as doing usual life things! In fact, on Tuesday I was so busy I had to fit my Arctic Ride stuff in between finishing work and visiting the physio about my hip. The only solution was to hook up my hands free kit (a sat nav holder and a pair of headphone) and do the call from my car on the drive from my work to the hospital. My call was with Stuart from Nomad Biker . Nomad Biker provide adventure motorcycle travel, survival, and hostile environment training for bikers and travellers and have kindly offered to put me through a course to get me ready for...

Hi everyone, Welcome to this week's blog. This week I went to visit my sponsor Newcastle Rider Training to have a chat with them about the kind of things we will be collaborating on as part of Arctic Ride. Rather than you all having to read what I was up to I made a vlog (video log). Also, this was meant to be a bike vlog but the car had to do after I had some bike issues (see video for details). I hope you enjoyed that wee video and seeing my face for a few minutes :) If you are thinking "wow that jacket looks awesome... I wonder if I can get it in a polo shirt, neck warmer or motorbike patch?!" well you are in luck, as you can buy them direct from my website (see the merchandise page ) with all profits going to Cerebra. Also this week I finally managed to get my panniers fitted and I managed to fix the indicator issue all by myself (2 man points for Gordon). Needless to say I'm a very happy biker and that almost all the mods done to the bike reading for t...

Hi all, I thought I would go against tradition and blog on a day that's not a Sunday. And the reason... well I'm excited, that's why. So over the past few weeks I've been stalking gumtree and ebay trying to find a bargain on some hard panniers to carry all my gear for my trip. I've got some throw-over soft panniers that I've had since I first started riding (2004) and as ace as they have been, its time to upgrade. I think I came to this realisation on my 2011 when the contents of the left pannier fell out on to the campsite grass where the bottom had split open. Needless to say the Ray Mears in me soon used some cable ties and string to patch it up but, in all honesty, I'm getting to old (lazy) for that shizz and need to get some hard panniers. Also the benefit of hard panniers is that your spare gloves don't get wet inside your panniers when its been peeing it down with rain in Norway for 8 hours straight (I'm only just realising now how much ...

Hi everyone, Wow... has it really been a week since I last blogged? Its been busy busy as always at my end and not only with Arctic Ride stuff but I've also been changing jobs at work (which means I have been doing double work) and its my wife's birthday on Tuesday (25th June) so I've been buying presents and hosting a party. Anyway, back to what you are all here to read about... ARCTIC RIDE 2014. Thanks to all those who have been viewing my blogs over the past months and to all of you who voted on my route over the past week, the response has unprecedented with 146 voters. It really motivates me to know that so many people are following and backing my challenge to the Arctic Circle. I had voters from all over the UK as well as France and the USA :) So... the results are in . Those of you who managed to tune in to last weeks blog will know there were two questions asked, which route should I take home? and which route would you like to take.? So for questi...