Lucy Roberts

Bicycle Odyssey - Around the World in 800 Days Lucy Roberts

When Lucy came across an advert for 'vegetarians to cycle round the world' she answered simply because she met the dietary requirements. Thus she found herself part of a group of people of varying degrees of eccentricity, who, as became apparent a few days into the trip, all had wildly differing ideas on what 'cycling round the world' meant. Over the next two years Lucy pedalled 30 000 miles with these strangers who became her closest companions. They thought they were being kidnapped, broke a shoot-on-sight curfew, one got held up by the world's most incompetent bandits and another got run over by the slowest-moving vehicle on the road. They were put into a trance by Indonesian dancers and accidentally became a star attraction in a Thai brothel. They stood on glaciers and gazed past mountain-tops to the infinite blue beyond, while eagles flew by so close they could hear the wind in their feathers. They learnt to trust in strangers, live in the present and say 'thank you' in 13 different languages.