Paperback: 368pp

Publisher: Eye Books (Revised edition 2015)

ISBN: 9781903070888

Thunder and Sunshine

Alastair Humphreys

£9.99

Around the World by Bike – PART TWO

‘A ferocious challenge’

Sir Ranulph Fiennes

At the age of 24, Alastair Humphreys set off to try to cycle round the world. By the time he arrived back home, four years later, he had ridden 46,000 miles across five continents on a tiny budget of just £7,000.

Thunder and Sunshine is the sequel to the best-selling Moods of Future Joys. Here Alastair sails from Africa to South America, where he sets out to ride from the southern tip of Patagonia to northern Alaska. Crossing the Pacific, he cycles into a Siberian winter, carries on through Japan, China and, nearing the end of his journey at last, across Asia and Europe towards his home in Yorkshire.

Extracts

Chile

It was a sinking feeling to wake from a sweet dream and realise that, yet again, I had to tear myself away from new friends and security, leave it all, and ride away. My stomach lurched and I screwed my eyes in prayer, or rather, gave a stern talking to myself, before getting out of bed. I loaded my bike and returned to the road after saying another heartfelt thanks to another kind family who had been incredibly generous and welcoming to me, and who I would never be able to repay. Three months into this South American ride, yet the moving on never became any easier.

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Extracts

Chile

It was a sinking feeling to wake from a sweet dream and realise that, yet again, I had to tear myself away from new friends and security, leave it all, and ride away. My stomach lurched and I screwed my eyes in prayer, or rather, gave a stern talking to myself, before getting out of bed. I loaded my bike and returned to the road after saying another heartfelt thanks to another kind family who had been incredibly generous and welcoming to me, and who I would never be able to repay. Three months into this South American ride, yet the moving on never became any easier.

United States border control

“Sir, would you mind coming into the office, please?”

In his office he sat down at his computer on the other side of his desk with a grunt. He tapped at the keys for a few moments, scrutinising the screen in front of him and then asked: “Sir, could you please tell me why you have a visa for Iran in your passport?”

“Well, I thought it sounded like a nice place to bicycle through.”

Rattle, rattle, rattle on the keyboard. “And Sudan, sir? Lebanon? Syria? Pakistan? Colombia?” He didn’t seem convinced that they sounded like nice places to bicycle through. As he grumbled suspiciously I had a brainwave business idea: All those countries are incredible places with such a variety of history, culture, landscapes, food and wonderful inhabitants. There must be a market for ‘Axis-of-Evil Holidays plc’. I had the feeling that the customs guy would not be one of my first clients. He grunted at me a few more times and then handed back my passport. I was on my way

Uzbekistan

At the day’s end I sat by the road. I had a stomach ache from eating too much watermelon, drinking irrigation canal water, 40°C riding and inadvertent sunburn, because the tree I had lain beneath at lunchtime turned out not to have been a 100 percent UV certified tree. Storks stared at me from their scruffy nests, their beaks clattering like castanets as I waited for darkness to fall. In the dusty sunset two young boys in flip-flops and baseball caps stood in their donkey carts and thrashed the poor animals down the road in a wild, excited race, whooping at me as they passed. I raised my watermelon rind in salute.

quotes

‘A ferocious challenge’

Sir Ranulph Fiennes

reviews

‘Humphreys conveys his loneliness, wanderlust, grit and despair in a manner reminiscent of the great British explorers’

The Guardian

‘He undertook the expedition to find out whether he could write. Believe me, he can’

Geographical

‘What really comes across is his ability to get along with people from all walks of life and not to see anything as insurmountable’

Halfman, Halfbook

extras

ABOUT

Alastair Humphreys

Alastair Humphreys is a National Geographic Adventurer of the Year. He has cycled around the world, rowed the Atlantic Ocean and walked a lap of the M25 – one of his pioneering microadventures.

He is the best-selling author of 14 books, including Great Adventurers, which won the Stanford’s Children’s Travel Book of the Year and the Teach Primary Award for Non-Fiction.

He has written eight books for Eye including the best-selling The Boy Who Biked the World trilogy, a series of novels for 9–12-year-olds based on the real-life adventures he recounted in Moods of Future Joys, Thunder and Sunshine and Ten Lessons from the Road. His more recent The Girl Who Rowed the Ocean is a similarly novelised version of his transatlantic crossing.

He is a qualified teacher.

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