The Arctic Rider

Hi, It only feels like yesterday that is was a year until I was due to depart for the Arctic. That means it must have been this morning that it felt like it was 200 days to go, and now its only 125 days to go... I'm not looking forward to how many days it will be tomorrow (although judging by the way time passes it will be 124 days). I still have so much work to plan my trip but its feels like its really starting to come together. This week I've been working on the priority scenes for the filming of my trip. While I can't predict what will happen when I am away, having done solo bike trip before, most notably my last attempt on the Arctic, I have a good idea about the kind of things I'll be getting up to. By splitting this down I've put together a rather large 'to-do' list to keep the ball rolling on my preparations. Hopefully you were able to read my blog last week from Iceland (if not click here to read). I did a vlog while I was away also but I had...

Hi everyone, Welcome to my latest blog post for Arctic Ride 2014 - my solo 6000 mile motorbike ride to the Arctic for charity Cerebra. This week's blog is coming all the way from Iceland!!! And no I haven't started my ride yet (that's not until May) but I am getting acclimatised to the cold and looking at what I might be experiencing when I ride through Norway, Finland, and Sweden.  Contrary to popular belief Iceland's mainland isn't inside the Arctic Circle, only part of a tiny island of Grimsey north of the mainland has the Arctic Circle pass through it. However Iceland really lives up to its name, it's covered in snow and ice almost everywhere you can see even if its not been snowing for a few days! I've spent the last few days in the capital Reykjavik and its truly stunning. The country only has a population of 330,000 people and 110,000 of them live in Reykjavik so there it's plenty of space to look round and enjoy the scenery.  This is the view to ...

Hi everyone. Welcome to my Arctic Ride 2014 blog. In May and June of THIS YEAR I will be riding my motorbike solo, 6,000 miles from my hometown of Whitley Bay in the North of England to Nordkapp, Norway deep inside the Arctic Circle. Wow its been a month since my last blog (that's not like me) but I've been a busy chappy alongside the usual festivities of December. I hope that all my readers/followers have had a great Christmas and New Year and got everything you were hoping for! Also hears to 2014... have a great year. So whats been going on that you have been too busy to blog I hear you say? Well I had a non motorbike related holiday visited some new places around Europe with my wife Kirsty which has occupied most of my time. I did want to a blog while I was away but lack of WiFi mixed with fun things to do halted this. I know I must be more disciplined when I'm away on my trip to the Arctic. Protecting the Empire at Budapest Castle, Hungary I'm always kee...

Hi everyone, Welcome to my blog. For those new readers, my name is Gordon Stuart and in May and June of 2014 I'll be riding my motorbike 6,000 miles in 3 weeks to the Arctic Circle to raise money and awareness for brain injury charity Cerebra. Please use the navigation bar above to learn more about my trip. Well with winter being well and truly here there hasn't been much biking happening and not too much to update for the trip. This being the case I've been spending my time being creative. This weekend I spent an hour or so making the below info-graphic.... it started out as being 'Arctic Ride 2014 in numbers' but kind of evolved into numbers and words. In other news this week, I've had another win from twitter (I'm truly amazed at how much twitter has helped me for this trip). I've linked up with Auritech who are specialists in hearing defence (ear plugs to you and me) and make specialist hearing protectors for Biker, Water Sports, Shooting an...

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...