15 Questions for Helena and Mike on Their Return From the 'Arran to Athens Ride for Resilience' Project.

M = Mike Snyder

H  = Helena Woodvine

1.  Let’s start with the biggest question:  Why exactly did you do this trip?

M:  Well, for a number of reasons:  I’ve traveled through Europe a few times, but usually by bus or train.  The saddle of a bicycle just offers an intimacy that high-speed transportation doesn’t.  So I really wanted to see Europe on that level of connection.  Also, I suppose that I am a country boy at heart and the bicycle is a ticket back to the land between all that sprawl.  And, most importantly, I really wanted to use the trip to raise awareness and action for ‘resilience building’ and the Transition Movement.

H:  For me, I guess I went on this trip for three reasons.  The main reason, really, was to have fun and go on an adventure.  I was excited and interested in what the challenge of a trip like this would do to me emotionally, mentally and spiritually.  Although I have traveled a little in the past, I had never truly set myself against the elements nor had to rely solely on myself and my own physical and mental strength to get me to my destination.  I was a little afraid that I wouldn’t be able to make it, that I wouldn’t be physically strong enough, or that I actually wouldn’t be able to cope with only a bike, a tent and one change of clothes.  However this fear made me even more determined to go on the trip as I felt I would feel a great sense of accomplishment if I actually made it to our destination.

The second reason was to escape my city life in Edinburgh.  I felt like I had become a bit stuck in a routine and wasn’t really sure where my life was headed.  I felt that leaving it all behind for a while and focusing on a new challenge and finding some stillness and silence would help me gain a clearer picture of my hopes for the future.

Then, like Mike said, the third reason was to attempt to raise awareness about resilience and the power of community.

2.  Could you tell us a bit more about the project?

M:  Sure, we were calling the project the ‘Arran to Athens Ride for Resilience’.  Rather than have people support us by donating money to a charity we asked them to ‘donate action’ by committing themselves to a particular set of environmental/community building actions for the duration of the three-month ride.  We got 120 supporters who dedicated themselves to 650 ‘Resilience Pledges’.  We are still working on the numbers, but right now we estimate that the project could have saved a maximum of 350,350 lbs of CO2 (the equivalent of removing 260 cars from the roads in the UK each year) and £31,113.  So we are very excited about that.  To read more about the project you can go to www.justpledging.com/rideforresilence where we have a blog and lots more information.

H:  In Edinburgh both Mike and I had been heavily involved in a Transition group, Transition Edinburgh South (TES).  The group’s main focus is looking at ways in which we can locally tackle issues of climate change and peak oil from a bottom up approach.  Whilst working on projects for TES I learnt how important it is to feel part of a community and that by the pulling together of minds and spirits we really can make things happen.  We thought creating a pledging project would really fit with the ethos of the organization.  The ten pledges were designed to cut carbon emissions, cut personal costs and bring about greater awareness of a more meaningful, mindful, lower impact way of life.

3.  And where exactly did you go?

H:  We started at Brodick Bay on the Isle of Arran in western Scotland.  After cycling around the Island we got the ferry back to the mainland and cycled through Glasgow, up into the Highlands and back down to Edinburgh.  We then got another ferry, this time from the port town of Rosythe (near Edinburgh) to Zebrugge, Belgium.  We went across Belgium on canal paths and back roads, skirting the larger cities and then followed the Muese River into France.  From there we passed through Reims and the Champagne region (in full harvest), rural Burdundy, Dijon, and south through the farms of the Rhone valley to Provence where we stayed for a few days with some family friends.

From Provence we rode through some of the Alps, passed the Grand Canyon du Verdon (the largest in Europe) and then dropped all the way down to Nice on the Côte d'Azur.  We followed the coast through Monaco, the Italian Riviera, and Cinque Terre National Park, before turning inland towards Pisa and Florence.  We then cycled through the vineyards of Tuscany, through Siena and the mountain lakes of Lazio into Rome.  We crossed the Apennine Mountains over to the east side of Italy and caught a ferry from Brindisi (on the heel of ‘the boot’) to Greece.

In Greece we did a bit of a circuit around the Peloponnese peninsula and visited a lot of the ancient sites:  Olympia, Sparta, Mystras, Mikines, and Corinth, before our final leg took us across the small strip of land between the Korinthiakos Sea and the Saronikos Sea at last into Athens.  We finished the trip on November the 12th in Monastiraki square right below the ancient Acropolis, 2,700 miles from where we had began in Brodick Bay.

M:  That about sums it up.  I should also say that we only had a rough idea of the route before we left... all of the different sites that we wanted to see and the areas that we wanted to avoid... then we just played a sort of ‘connect the dots’ on the map as we went along.  But that was really the best part of the adventure:  finding our way as we went and not knowing what lay around the bend.

4.  Where did you sleep at night?

H:  We got five cheap hotels, three paid campsites and stayed for a few days with my parents’ friends in Aix En Provence in southern France.  The rest of the time (70 days or so) we ‘wild camped’.  Carrying our tent in our panniers, we were able to stop and look for a place to sleep in whatever space we could find:  forests, fields, back yards, olive groves, old industrial sites, under orchards and behind churches.  We even spent one night on top of a disused railway bridge.  We tried to find places that were quite discrete but this wasn’t always possible.  However, we usually managed to find fantastic camp spots and luckily we were not harassed or challenged by anyone for the whole trip.  When we reached Athens we found a place to stay on the Couch-Surfing website.

M:  As Helena said, we spent about 90% of our nights ‘wild camping’.  I love that aspect of this sort of travel- finding a new place to call home every night.  I think that it rekindles a sort of connection to the land, that has been denied us in an age when wilderness has been grossly disfigured and the land subdivided by countless imaginary borders.  We end up feeling further disconnected, like we don’t ‘belong’ anywhere.  Wild camping subverts that cultural perception a little bit, I think.  Of course we make sure to leave the place we camped in better than we found it and we take care not to disturb anyone or get into any danger.  There is always a bit of risk, but to this date I have never had a problem.

4.  What did you eat?

M:  Calories, calories and more calories.  You can’t get enough of it on a trip like this.  Whatever food offered the most calories is generally what we went for:  pasta, cheese, desserts.  Despite that I still lost about 20 lbs (off of my 150 lb frame) and was bone skinny by the end.  Not ‘good weight loss’ though... I mostly loss muscle off of my back and chest.  It is just hard to keep the weight on with that level of exercise (at least 6 hours a day, every day).  But, again, on the upside, it is an excuse to eat pretty much whatever you want in whatever quantity you want... your stomach is just acting as a furnace at that level of exertion.

H:  We ate lots of things.  We mainly consumed copious amounts of bread, cheese and wine (oooh and lots of Ouzo in Greece).  For breakfast we ate muesli with powdered milk, cereal bars or bread and brewed a cup of tea.  We also found Nutella about three weeks into the trip and ate about three huge jars of it.  For lunch we usually ate bread and hunks of cheese, with a few tomatoes or apples thrown in for good measure.  We also carried a huge supply of peanuts and raisins and a bag of sweets for when we felt the need of a sugar rush.  For dinner, we mainly ate freeze-dried pasta or rice dishes, with bread and extra veg’, then topped it off with sweet biscuits, cakes and wine for desert, whilst playing cards in the tent.

We were able to find quite a lot of growing fruit en route; picking apples and pears in Belgium and France and then juicy oranges in Greece.  We also did go out to eat a few times, although we mostly cooked all of our meals on the little camp stove we brought along with us.  We did stop and get coffee quite a lot.  I guess coffee along with wine was our main luxury.

5.  What would you say were your biggest challenges?

H:  I thought that the biggest challenge for me would have been climbing the mountains, but although that was difficult, I came to really the love the challenge of exerting myself and working hard to make it to the top of the hill.  It was wonderful to get that sense of satisfaction at the top.

A huge challenge, however, was just trying to remember to appreciate everything and really live in the moment.  It is so easy to forget that, even when you are doing something amazing.  Sometimes I would get tired or I would get really annoyed and I had to remind myself what a once in a lifetime opportunity this was.  Before I set off I thought that this trip would bring me closer to my spiritual self, and at times I felt a bit disappointed with my thoughts whilst riding or with my behaviours in certain situations.

Losing to Mike constantly at cards was also a challenge!

M:  The physical element of a trip like this, I think, is surprisingly not the most difficult aspect.  The greatest challenges are always internal.  Certainly overcoming the inertia to rise every day, day after day, and get back on the bike, despite the weather and the aches, is a challenge, as are the long stretches of silence and the sometimes-unchanging landscape.

But, to echo what Helena was saying, the biggest challenge, I think, is continually maintaining focus on the magic of the experience as it happens.  Something like this is so special, you know, it is a once in a lifetime thing... you don’t get to pass this way again.  So just keeping the mind ever present to the adventure of life at hand and continually finding the humor and grace to offer thanksgiving for both the beauty and the hardship that comes along is really the challenge.  As it is in day-to-day life, it is so easy to lose yourself in your thoughts and fears and obsession with ‘getting to the next stage’.  So rather than focusing on what is next, on ‘becoming’, the challenge is just ‘being’ where you are in any given moment.  And this is especially difficult when you are wet tired and hungry on a bike trip!  But it is also difficult when you are bored, over-stimulated and over-worked in ‘real’ life.  Again, I think this is the challenge that we all face.  

6.  What did you think about during all of that time on the bike?

M:  You know, a lot of that time in silence is thought-less.  There must be hundreds of unaccounted hours there, but for the life of me I can’t think of what filled my head.  A lot of it, I guess, is just ‘flow thinking’:  watching the world go by and attending to your mind as it darts its attention from place to place.  You might think that you come out of a trip like this with some sort of profound ‘philosophy of life’ but it isn’t really like that.  In fact, I think that it is very difficult to say right now what sort of impact this trip has had on us.  It is probably something that will only become more apparent as the years go on.

When I was thinking about something in particular it was usually about my relationships and how thankful I am for the people that I have in my life (and especially for Helena as a partner on this trip).

H:  Wow this is a really difficult question.  I thought about so many things, some thoughts were probably quite boring and some possibly profound.  Often I was just thinking about the scenes around me.  Probably my most overriding feeling was one of wonder; I was always awe-struck that my legs could take me so far.  I was constantly amazed to see the scenery change before my eyes.  One moment a mountain, the next a valley, the next rows and rows of vineyards….

I thought about the weather and the vast expanse of sky above my head, and I thought about sleep.  I thought about food and water and where we might get food and water.  I thought about my family and friends back home and I thought about being right there in the moment, with Mike, feeling, knowing how lucky I was to live this life and being grateful for all the opportunities I have been given and all the wonderful people I have had the chance to meet.  I thought a lot about the traffic, (especially trucks) and I thought about trying not to get run over (although maybe I didn’t think about this as much as I should have).  I probably thought even more about Mike’s safety than my own.

I did not think about work.

7.  What did you miss the most?

M:  Beer probably!  All of that wine was great (!), but by the time we were in southern Italy, I was beginning to long for a proper pint.  So that was number one, I suppose.  After that I missed catching up on the news, private reading time, and of course my friends and family.  Things that I did NOT miss:  the northern weather, showering, and the computer! 

H:  Right, beer.  Ha!  You did complain about not having any beer.  At first I didn’t miss anything.  It was so liberating being free from the confines of everyday society.  By the end however, I did begin to miss sleeping in the same place for more than one night and not having to constantly be on the move.  On that note, I also missed getting a good night’s sleep in a pair of Pajamas, under a feather duvet.  When we reached Rome, I began to miss my family quite a lot too.

8.  Did you ever get lost?

M:  Yeah (sheepishly), once or twice.  But on the whole it wasn’t too bad.  Both of us have done quite a bit of hiking in the past, so we are accustomed to watching the sun and the moon and the breeze and the lay of the land... and that helps a lot to maintain a heading, as do well detailed maps, which we had.  And, again, so long as we were going in more or less the right direction, it really wasn’t possible to ‘get lost’.  Ha.  I think that life is like that to some extent:  there are no ‘wrong roads’ in life, only ‘scenic routes’.  We wind up in the same place eventually anyway.  So we never worried too much. 

H:  We only went completely out of our way one time on the whole of the trip.  We were heading towards Florence and started following road signs instead of looking at the map. Bad idea! I think we went 8 km out of our way.  The problem with navigating in Italy was that the roads don’t often have specific names or numbers, just a sign pointing you in the direction of the next big city.  So without really knowing what road you are on or where exactly you are going it is easy to wind up on the kind of road you don’t want to be on as a cyclist (a motorway), or miss a small town that you are really looking for, or get completely turned around and heading the wrong direction!  It was pretty confusing.

There were few other minor mistakes, particularly navigating through larger towns.  But on the whole, nothing major.  A lot of the signs in Greece were written only in the Greek alphabet, so that was kind of hard at first.  But we got used to it.  I was pretty confident with Mike’s map reading skills before the trip, but now I don’t doubt them in the slightest.

9.  Along those lines, what was your worst day?

H:  Well, we do have one story about being caught in a humongous electrical storm.  It was the middle of the night.  It was so bad that we had to abandon our tent.  We ran and hid under a railway bridge fearing for our lives… there was lightening everywhere... the tent blew away…. everything got wet.  Yes, that is a long, sad story…

However, my worst day was two days after that.  We had arrived at a rundown town, still wet, and we needed to dry out everything as we were about to cross over a high mountain pass.  No one could speak English, there were no launderettes and it took us several hours to find a hotel.  We did eventually find one strange little dry cleaners that offered to dry our sleeping bags and clothes.

In the morning we went to collect our gear only to find that it was all still wet and smelling of some strange chemicals!  Worst of all, our feather sleeping bags, rather than being drier, were completely sodden and lying crumpled in the corner of the shop.  The poor lady, it wasn’t really her fault.  I don’t think that she understood what we had wanted... but now it was still raining, we had wet clothes and (potentially ruined) sleeping bags, which we had no way to replace, and we still had a mountain pass to cross in order to make it to a ferry, which we had pre-booked.  I think it was the last straw.  I had tried to stay positive through all the rain thunderstorms and the horrid little town...  but when that woman handed back my limp, soaking sleeping bag, my tears began to stream!   I think that was my lowest point in my morale on the trip and it stayed low for several days after.  It is really hard to pull yourself up again after you have let go.

M:  I think she said it all.  That was horrible... first the storm and then the ruined sleeping bags.  Usually I can have a laugh at misfortune... but I was pretty upset about all of that.  We did get them back into some usable shape eventually... but it was pretty uncomfortable.

10.  And what would you say was your best day?

H:  I couldn’t possibly say what my best day was.  Each day was different and most of the days were fantastic; almost all of them of had life-changing quality.  It’s easier to say which days I didn’t like, as they were few and, thus, easier to recall.

If I had to pick however, the day that sticks out most in my mind is our first day in Belgium after stepping off of the ferry.  I think it was then that it really hit me:  I was going to be cycling non-stop for 10 weeks, through four countries and covering almost 3000 miles.  I couldn’t believe we were actually going to be doing it!  My heart, my spirit, felt so free. I was so excited about the adventure ahead.  This was it!  All of the planning, and all of the hard work, and we were here and cycling and it seemed the easiest thing in the world.  Hopping on the bike and setting off for anywhere, no time frames, no work, no responsibility other than to ourselves and making the most of every moment.  That day in the grand scheme of things wasn’t super exciting, but it was the first real day of our adventure and I couldn’t have been happier or more content.

M:  Well, like Helena said, it is just so hard to pick.  But if I had to, I would probably say that it was a particular day that we had in Tuscany... the road was so quiet and smooth and the sky was warm and blue.  We were just riding along through the rolling hills without a care in the world.  You can’t buy that kind of freedom.

11.  Any ‘favorite places’?

M:  There are so many!  The Isle of Arran was stunning:  the stony peaks and its gorgeous coastline.  I liked the rolling countryside of Flemish Belgium with church steeples peeking out of the valleys and the landscape like a patchwork quilt of forest and field.  The forested hills and hollows of Burgundy, France were lovely and really reminded me of my Appalachian home.  I also loved the quaint villages that dotted the dry hills near the French and Italian Riviera, with their flowers, and their bright red roofs, and their little winding lanes.  The cypress groves and vineyards of Tuscany, Italy were out of a storybook.

H:  The Grand Canyon du Verdon in France was awesome!  It had the most spectacular views the whole trip, I think.  So that needs to be up there as one my favourites.  I also really loved the Peloponnese mountains in Greece:  passing by quaint villages and goat herders who seemed to be stuck 200 years in the past.  I thought Siena, Italy was an amazing little town.  We only spent a few hours there, but I fell in love with the winding cobbled streets, twisting in and out but somehow all converging into a huge circular opening in the historic centre. I also loved staying with friends in Aix en Provence.  They live in a beautiful house and we spent four days, lazing in the sun, exploring the town and eating wonderful food, so I cannot leave that out.

12.  What were some of the biggest surprises?

H:  I think Greece in general was a bit of a surprise for me.  Firstly, for the majesty of its mountains and then also for all the historic sites we visited, but also how all the small villages seemed to be stuck in a time warp.  The way of life seemed much simpler and more in harmony with nature:  Farmers with their goat herds and bells climbing into the mountains, women in traditional orthodox attire washing clothes in a wash tub on the porch, old men sitting, sipping strong coffee and smoking a pipe, homemade wine and oranges being sold on the side of the road.

I was also pleasantly surprised about the weather.  Although we did have a few days of rain and cold and it was pretty grey for most of journey through Belgium, on the whole the weather was better than we could have hoped for.  We very rarely had to set our tents up, or take them down in the rain, and we had a month of wall-to-wall sunshine whilst cycling from Provence, France to Tuscany, Italy.

I was also quite surprised at how easy the cycling became.  I struggled quite a lot in the first few days over the hilly coastline of Arran, and I found I got really worn out after only a few hours riding.  However after a couple of weeks, my stamina improved drastically and my lung capacity grew.  I stopped using my inhaler completely and felt I could cycle and cycle.

M:  Well, one of my best friends from high school, Darrell, and his girlfriend Lena were able to come along with us for almost 1,000 miles of the trip, and that was a really special surprise for me.  They were really great company and it was nice to share the adventure with more riders for a while.

I was also surprised by how little repairs that we had to do on the bikes... outside of some tweaks here and there they were really OK.  The roads were far more hilly than I thought they would be, with many gradients steeper than 15% and a few in the 20% range (in Arran and Italy)!

Lastly, I was surprised by how often we were speaking in a foreign language.  Its not that I mind at all... it is just that our French is pretty bad and our Italian non-existent.  Despite that, I would say that we spoke in English maybe only 15% of the time.  Except for Greece: almost everybody we met there spoke English!

13.  Anything you wish that you had or hadn’t brought?

M:  Nope!  We packed ultra-light (only two mid-sized rear panniers each) and from my perspective we couldn’t have been happier.  I only brought one change of clothes, a simple, one-pot cooking set, basic tools to fix the bikes... that sort of thing:  only exactly what we needed and nothing more.  We saw a few other riders burdened down with unnecessary extra gear and ‘comfort’ items and it looked like it was far more of a pain than what was worth.  Really, I think that the greatest part of a trip is being freed up from all of that stuff; just living a slightly more elemental life.  All of that junk will be waiting for me when I get home anyway.

That being said, I couldn’t have done without done without my journal and pen, my one ‘town shirt’, and the camera... and every rare now and then I did start thinking about what jeans might feel like..

H:  Mike, I know one thing you didn’t need to bring, your silly red cycling cap.  Having said that, there are a few things I perhaps didn’t need to bring, like my eyeliner, a pink belt and a small amount of conditioner and coconut oil; for making myself feel a bit more presentable when we stopped to go exploring in towns.  However, apart from Mike’s cap, we used every single thing we brought, so the short answer is NO, there is nothing I wish I hadn’t packed.

The only thing I think was perhaps less than perfect was our cooking equipment.  The stove was fine but the titanium cooking pot was a little too small for the two of us. Our Teflon sporks both snapped and weren’t long enough to stir our food in the pot. We ended up buying a wooden spoon to cook with.  If I ever do anything like this again, I would like to invest in a larger cooking pot, and do more research into the best kinds of camping utensils.

M:  Yeah, you are right... I didn’t need that hat.  And you’re right about the pot too... I can get a little bit carried away with the lightweight thing sometimes.

14.  Now that you are back, do you have any more adventures planned?

M:  Ack!  We always have more adventures planned (smiling)! That is part of being a dreamer at heart I guess.  There are so many more places that I want to go and we are even starting to think about another bike trip:  from Athens onward to Egypt maybe.  But for right now I am really content to get back to work here with the projects that we have going in Edinburgh:  our Transition Town group, our jobs, earning a bit of money, and day to day life with our family and friends.  Finding ways to bring greater peace and connection into those relationships is the real adventure after all.  So I am really excited for that.

H:  At the moment, finishing up my PhD is my biggest priority.  However I would love to attempt a long distance hike in the not too distant future and am thinking about trying to hike the John Muir Trail in California once I am finished here in Edinburgh.

I would really love to do a cycle ride around Scotland or even the UK and maybe involve more people and try to do a similar type of project as this one, but more locally.  For example, perhaps cycling around to different Transition Towns in the UK and giving presentations and finding out what environmental projects are going on.  Maybe even visit eco villages, collectives and organic farms… attempting to create a UK wide resource network, linking environmental organizations, community ventures and like-minded people together.  The problems of Climate change and Peak Oil are real and we need real solutions now.  We need to pull together in any way we can, and I’d love to create an ‘adventure’ that can aid in this.

15.  Lastly, in one sentence, what would you say was the most important thing that you learned?

H:  We can all achieve so much in life just as long as we focus our minds and hearts on the vision, are dedicated, work hard and have the will power to keep going.

M:  The road takes you where it goes... one way or another... wear a helmet and meet what’s around the bend.