Last September my fiance and I packed up our hectic London lives and jumped on our tandem bicycle to circumnavigate the Northern Hemisphere without flying. I’m afraid our reasons for not flying are entirely indulgent. We don’t think that airplanes are the devil and aren’t trying to save the world. Nor are we hardened explorers out to make our mark. We simply thought that traveling without jumping on and off planes, in and out of sterile airports, would be a bit more interesting. That inkling has proved to be a massive understatement. 11 months in and I am a huge convert to the slow travel movement. Our average speed around the world is 3mph. The world is bigger, more intriguing, more welcoming and more awesome the slower you travel through it. And that isn’t just for those looking for an epic adventure. There’s a slow means to take the world in on everyones doorsteps. I hope that some of our tales help inspire people to do so.

So far we have cycled from London to The Pyranees, walked across Northern Spain, sailed across The Atlantic, hitch hiked on boats down the Caribbean, bused across Venezuela and Colombia, sailed to Panama, bused to Mexico and cycled from Mexico to Canada. We now find ourselves in Japan, having just spent 11 days on board a 65 000 tonnes container ship across The Pacific. We’ve now got 9 months to travel overland around Asia before picking up our tandem on the edge of The Black Sea and cycling back into London.

Our trip is essentially lots of mini adventures stuck together. We have tried to make our means of travel as enlightening as the experience of actually traveling through somewhere. In most cases we have found that the means of traveling can actually be more important than where you are: It completely changes your perspective as well as how strangers perceive you.

When you are an unexpected visitor or don’t comply with the norm you immediately open yourself up to your surroundings. Rather than being intimated by you, locals are intrigued and want to be part of the adventure. The world is on your side. On our fully loaded tandem, even the most inhospitable dusty backwaters of middle America became havens of smiling, bemused and welcoming faces. When we arrived in a Moroccan fishing port on a 1930s sailing boat we were quickly befriended. The locals wanted to know why 5 Westerners we were on a dilapidated old boat in a fishing port. Consequently they gave us tours of the town, took us to the local watering holes and gave us a huge insight into their culture. Similarly when hitch hiking on banana boats in the Caribbean we saw a long way beyond the sandy beaches of the tourist resorts. The locals weren’t used to seeing white folk in their parts of town and so welcomed us in, escorted us around and cooked us BBQ chicken feasts.

Traveling slowly has allowed us to see the best of the world and its people. It forces you to embrace the ‘nowheres’ of the world, leaving the tick list of the well trodden path to faster moving folk. The more time you have and the less things you must see the more open you are to unknown experiences and people. I hope you enjoy reading about some of them on the next leg of our trip!