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...

Hi everyone, Thanks for tuning in to my Arctic Ride blog. Just a quick update this week. I've really been pushing the boat out to local companies to try and get some more sponsors on board as getting to the Arctic by bike isn't cheap. Its like an investment and the old mantra of 'You've got to spend money to make money' and that principle applies to my trip. I'm able to offer companies brand exposure by having there logo on the bike, on this website, and through my documentary.  So far this bait has caught quite a few companies, see my sponsors page, and the support I've had from them has been great but so far only two have been able to offer me funds towards the budget of my trip. As a Project Manager by trade, you can imagine that I have managed the hell out of my Arctic project so far so I thought I'd share some of 'management' including the breakdown of the budget for my trip. So you can see I only have 5 different expenses for my...

Hi everyone, Welcome to the Arctic Ride 2014 blog. In May/June of 2014 I'll be riding my motorbike 6,000 miles in 3 weeks to the Arctic Circle and back to raise money for brain-injury charity Cerebra, and to raise awareness for brain-injuries and disability rights in general. The Suzuki I will take to the Arctic in 2014 People with a disability are in a very unique situation when it comes to prejudice and discrimination which a lot of people often forget and something I am very keen to raise awareness for. So why is having a disability unique when it comes to prejudice and discrimination I hear you ask... well let me explain. I'm a white male. Chances are I'll always be a white male therefore, in the future, no one is going to treat me differently for being black, for being Asian, or for being a woman. I don't consider myself disabled... but there is a chance that I could become disabled in the future and thus suffer prejudice and discrimination. That's how ...

Hi everyone, Welcome to another edition of the Arctic Ride 2014 blog. Thanks for tuning in. Regular readers will notice that this blog is being posted later than usual. This is because my work has whisked me off to Johannesburg in South Africa to attend the One Young World Summit.  Usually I post my blog on a Sunday evening ready for all to read on their Monday lunch break but as I’ve been packing and preparing for my trip this blog is being written from 30,000 feet and will be posted when I land and get some Wi-Fi. So this week has been another busy week. All the kit for my GoPro finally arrived so I am now able to vlog on the bike to keep you all up to date about what I have been doing! My first ‘proper’ vlog is below so give it a watch and let me know what you think! I’m using the vlog and filming around Newcastle as a practice for my trip. As I’ve said in previously blogs I’m planning to film my entire adventure to the Arctic next summer so that I can ...

Hallo. God Dag. Hvordan g å r det? I've just practicing my Norwegian! Although at the moment saying 'hello' and 'how are you?' is as far as I have got. Luckily English is very widely spoken in Norway so I should be alright, although I do want to try and learn some key phrases before I go out of politeness. The kind of things I am thinking of are: Hello. Do you Speak English? Can I camp for one night? Two beers please! (One for me and one for Brian) These phrases tend to be the limit to my vocabulary in most languages that I dabble in  which is mainly French, Belgian, Swiss, Luxembourgian.. OK just French! and a small bit of German, and Spanish. Anyway moving away from my cultural naivety its been another action packed week in the build up to my Arctic adventure. I've been working away on several aspects of the project, none of which have come to fruition yet, but in the middle of the work I came across something rather surprising. Basically, s...