In his first book, Moods Of Future Joys, Alastair Humphreys takes us on a fascinating and emotional journey across Europe and through the hot desert climates of Eastern Africa. Along the way, we discover that Alastair is not just a young man in search of adventure, but a humble explorer in love with both the open road and a young woman named Sarah, whom he left behind in his home country of England in order to participate in this epic cycling adventure.

When Alastair reaches the city of Cape Town, South Africa at the end of Moods Of Future Joys, you might be fooled into thinking that this is the end of the young man’s cycling expedition. But Moods Of Future Joys was really just the beginning and Thunder & Sunshine contains the true meat of Alastair’s story about his bike ride around the world.

In this second book about his two-wheeled travels, Alastair begins by boarding a sail boat in Cape Town and spends the next several weeks slowly crossing the Atlantic Ocean with a crew of strangers. Upon arrival in South America, Alastair catches a bus to the southern-most city in the world (Ushuaia) and begins pedaling north.

Cycling through Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador and Columbia, Alastair spends his nights in South America camped out under the stars; battles raging headwinds during the day; and is invited into the lives of countless individuals who want nothing more than to share their home with the young traveler and to help him in whatever way they can.

When Alastair makes it to Ecuador, he is forced to decide whether he wants to cycle through the reportedly dangerous Colombian nation or skip over the region entirely in order to play it safe. In the end, Alastair decides to give Columbia a try, and is so very pleased with himself after making this decision, as the country turns out to be one of his favorite places in all of South America.

After tackling this Southern-most continent, Alastair rides north through Central America and into the United States.

Apart from the novelty gawping value of being in the land of plenty, cycling through American towns and villages was actually quite boring. In most places in the world you can see people working outside, either in the fields or on the carcasses of old vehicles. People sit outside their homes to peel potatoes and watch the world. Families chat in the street. Roads are busy with farmers and their animals or children walking to school. Street vendors and windscreen-cleaning boys liven up the streets. There is always something to look at, always someone to greet, always children waving at you. But America was an insulated, insular, inside world. Nearly everybody was in a car, and those few not in cars avoided catching my eye in case I decided to blow them away with a big-ass gun. Everywhere was quiet, so finding my way through towns was difficult as there were few people to ask directions from. Drivers waiting at traffic lights were scared if I approached their vehicle to check my route. Some people refused to look at me, even when I asked a simple question like, “Is this the way to Amarillo?” Some quickly wound up their windows as I approached. One family car even gunned its engine and darted through a red light to get away from me. I sought out a mirror to check whether I had suddenly become more hideous than usual.

After cycling up the Pacific Coast of the United States, Alastair continues cycling through Canada with a friend from back home, stopping along the way to take part in a short canoeing adventure, before reaching the city of Anchorage, Alaska.

From here, Alastair crosses over the Pacific Ocean and lands in Magadan, Russia, a remote village on the eastern-most edge of the Asian continent.

In full winter apparel, Alastair and another friend from home then spend the next several weeks pedaling their heavily-loaded bicycles down the frozen “Road of Bones” in temperatures that ranged from -20 to -40 degrees Celsius.

When Alastair witnesses the death of a man inside a burning building, we begin to see the emotional toll the trip is taking on the young adventurer. Suddenly, the safety and comforts of home sound more appealing and questions begin to surface about the true purpose of riding a bicycle around the world.

I often wondered how long I should ride for. I could ride for ever and not see all that I wanted to see, but the law of diminishing returns suggested that every day on the road I learned less and experienced fewer new things than the day before. But when should I stop?

After surviving the brutally cold weather on the Road of Bones in eastern Russia, Alastair spends a good month or more cycling through Japan and then continues west across China towards his home in the United Kingdom.

By this time in Alastair’s story, the purpose of the bike ride seems to be less about discovering new things and seeing new sights, and more about appreciating the little things in life, contemplating the purpose of the trip overall (and life itself), and getting back home as quickly as possible. It was, however, the little things that Alastair experienced during this leg of the journey that fascinated me the most.

One day, I discovered that a mouse had built a nest in my pannier overnight. I felt sorry to move him and his house, but he had built his house on my house and I wasn’t planning on stopping. I carefully moved the intricate ball of woven grass over to a bush and left him in peace.

As Alastair points out, cycling around the world is both a blessing and a curse. While you have the time to sleep in late and the freedom to go wherever you so choose, these same things (which are so often desired in our busy modern lives) can become your worst enemy out on the road. Bicycle travel not only allows you to see people and places that you would likely never get to see or experience while sitting in the comfort of your own home, but the experiences you have while traveling through foreign lands often times challenge you to think differently about the way you go about yours days, the way you treat other people, and the way you interact with yourself.

While cycling across Uzbekistan in the final few chapters of the book, Alastair describes a crippled boy he saw walking down the street.

On the steepest part of the pass I overtook a crippled boy limping slowly up the hill. He was sobbing with frustrating, leaning on his stick and hoping that somebody would give him a lift towards wherever it was that he wanted to go. I wished him luck as I pedaled past with my limbs all functioning fine and enough cash in my pocket to buy myself a bus ticket if I wanted to. He smiled at my greeting and paused briefly to watch me riding up the hill away from him. Sometime later he found a lift. As the vehicle he was in drove past he gave me the thumbs-up sign through the back windscreen. I grinned and returned the gesture. Unfortunately the lift was only for a short distance, as about an hour later I overtook him again. He was limping bravely onwards and once again as I pedaled past, legs spinning easily. I wished him good luck again and he gave me an encouraged smile, but he still had a long walk ahead of him.

I thought for a long time afterward about why I had not given that boy the money to flag down a Tashkent-bound bus. Certainly if he had been a stranded Western backpacker I would not have thought twice about helping him. In fact I would actively have wanted to do so. But I had spent so much time in the last four years trying to persuade people that I was just an ordinary human being and not a millionaire redeemer miraculously arrived in their lives with cash to throw at all problems. I recoiled from the common preconception that all Westerners were rich and led effortless, hedonistic lives thanks to their nations’ thieving colonial eras and dastardly foreign policies. Instead I tended to swing too far the other way. I did not help people when I could so easily have made their day better by slipping them a banknote or two. At times it was hard to find the appropriate balance.

I experienced the unpleasantness of traveling in areas where well-meaning tourists before me had handed out pens and goodies to children or had paid too much for things thinking that they were doing a good thing. I witnessed the aggressive begging by people who saw demanding money from foreigners as an easier option than working. I wanted to interact as much as I could with all that I encountered, but I did not want to upset people’s stability for the sake of a short term fix. Instead I tried to be decent to people, to smile and to talk with people about the realities of our different lives. I wanted to be just another decent human rather than a Victorian squire doling out alms that would not really solve any problems. But as I pedaled away from the struggling crippled child who I had not helped, I wondered where I wanted to position myself on a scale that runs from interfering do-gooders determined to help the Borrioboola-Gha tribe whether or not they actually want helping along to the other extreme of a war photographer who can take a picture of a dying child, feel a thrill at snapping a prize-winning photograph, and walk away.

It is these sorts of challenges (and not just the challenges of physically mustering a loaded bicycle around the world) that Alastair continually encounters and must come to terms with as he cycles across the globe.

As Alastair quickly makes his way across Asia and through the Middle East while navigating through a complex maze of Visa applications and near criminally archaic bureaucracy, the author finally enters Europe and makes for the mad-dash home on his busted-up bicycle.

The world was getting hectic and rich and grumpy once again. I must be nearly home.

During this final leg of the trip, Alastair reflects on his journey. What exactly had he learned? What was the purpose of it all? Had he really changed as an individual? And what laid waiting for him in the future?

My biggest question, however, was not about the purpose of his journey or about what the young adventurer might have taken away from his experiences on the road. But instead, “What was to become of him and his girlfriend, Sarah, of whom he had left behind more than four years prior?”

While Sarah had been featured prominently in Alastair’s first book, Moods Of Future Joys, she played a much smaller role in Thunder & Sunshine. But was her absence from this second text due to the fact that the young author’s feelings for the girl had waned? Or was he simply holding back, his humility and desire for privacy dominating this aspect of the story that floated so obviously in the background of his mind (and my mind too – as a reader).

I’m not exactly sure what the answer is. I don’t know why Alastair failed to mention Sarah until page 94 of this second book or why he felt the need to leave so much of his story with her out of the two texts entirely.

While my questions about Sarah may forever go unanswered, I have a feeling the truth my lie in one of the lessons we learn from travel itself. For it so often seems that sometimes we need to cycle around the world into order to discover who we truly are and how we want to be, and other times a 46,000 mile journey on a two-wheeled bicycle does nothing but make us realize that the thing we want most in life was right there within our grasps from the very beginning.

My Rating: 10 out of 10

Click here to purchase Alastair Humphreys’ Thunder & Sunshine.

Learn more about Alastair Humphreys by visiting his website at www.alastairhumphreys.com.

About The Book

In December of 2010, I (Darren Alff) traveled to Peru and spent the following five months exploring the cities, deserts, jungles and ancient sites of this friendly South American country.

With only a few words of Spanish in my vocabulary upon arrival in Peru, I managed to travel about the country, interact with the locals and capture (with my camera) a small speck of the beauty, color and culture that is so unique to the Peruvian nation.

Mystical Peru is a eBook containing a collection of my favorite photos from my travels in Peru. The images you will find in the book are of people, places, animals, food, vehicles and more! There is no story to the book – just photos! Page after page of photos from Peru.

What Areas Of Peru Are Featured In The Book?

Mystical Peru is a collection of photos from my travels in the Peruvian cities of Lima, Nazca, Arequipa, Puno, Cuzco, Puerto Maldonado, Ayacucho, Huancayo, Cerro de Pasco, Huaraz, Trujillo, Mancora, Chiclayo and places in between.

In the book you will see the mysterious Nazca Lines, the floating islands of Lake Titicaca and the ancient ruins of Machu Picchu. You will also get to see the terraced farms of Colca Canyon, the jungle animals of Puerto Maldonado and the glacial mountains outside the city of Huaraz.

Here are some sample photos from inside the book:

Why Is The Ebook Free?

When I returned home from my travels in Peru, I had a hard drive filled with photos and no one to share them with. Rather than posting them online in a gallery that may or may not be seen, I decided to edit the pictures and arrange them together by location in this free eBook.

In other words,  I put this book together in order to give:

• Armchair travelers a chance to explore Peru without actually traveling there themselves.

• Those considering a trip to Peru the ability to see which parts of the country might be of most interest to them.

• Individuals who have already been to Peru an opportunity to reflect upon their own adventures in this beautiful South American country.

To download your very own copy of Mystical Peru for the whopping price of zero dollars and zero cents (in other words… FREE!), just click the download button below.

Mystical Peru is delivered instantly as an Adobe PDF file, so as long as you can view PDF documents on your computer, smart phone or tablet device, you should be able to view this eBook without any problems. You can download Adobe Reader for free through this link.

Please bear in mind that Mystical Peru is 158 pages long and nearly 37MB in size. Depending on the speed of your Internet connection, it may take a few minutes for the download to complete. Please be patient!

Tell Your Friends & Family About This Book

If you know of anyone (a friend, family member or co-worker) who might be interested in this free photo book from Peru, please direct them to this page or share this article on your favorite social media website!

Let Me Know What You Think!

Please leave a comment below and let me know what you think of the book. Which is your favorite photo? Where in Peru do you want to travel to the most? Or leave a comment and tell me about your own adventures in Peru.

There are dozens of books written by individuals who have traveled around the world on a bicycle, but none of these books captures the full round-the-world bicycle touring experience quite as well as Alastair Humpreys’ “Moods Of Future Joys“.

The first of two books about Alastair’s 46,000 mile bicycle touring adventure, “Moods Of Future Joys” not only encapsulates the raw sights and sounds associated with round-the-world bike travel, but does so in such a way that is at various point, honest, humble, and heartbreaking.

Just two weeks after starting his tour and setting out across Europe from his home in London, England, two commercial airliners crashed into the World Trade Center buildings in New York City and the world as we knew it was forever altered. While Alastair’s original plan was to cycle across Europe and then pedal through the Middle East, this drastic turn of events on September 11, 2001 led to Alastair changing course and taking a sharp turn to the south, where he then spent the next several months slowly making his way through the hot desert sands of Africa.

While on his journey, Alastair has heart-warming encounters with local people, frighteningly sleepless nights under the stars, and wild and wooly adventures with friends from back home who come out to visit him at various stages of his journey.

While I myself have spent several years riding my bicycle through dozens of different countries all around the world, I could never truly capture the feeling and emotion of the road as well as Alastair has so beautifully done in this book. His descriptions of the people he met, the experiences he had, and the heartbreak he felt along the way is both deep and contemplative in one moment, and laugh-out-loud funny in the next.

While “Moods Of Future Joys” deals only with the first half of Alastair’s round-the-world bicycle touring adventure, the text is a must-read for any bicycle tourist, arm chair traveler, or adventurous soul. By the time you finish the book and pull into Cape Town with Alastair and his busted up touring bicycle, you’ll be leaping out of your chair for book number two (Thunder & Sunshine) and anxiously awaiting the second half of Alastair’s incredible round-the-world adventure.

My Rating: 10 out of 10

Learn more about Alastair Humphreys by visiting his website at: www.alastairhumphreys.com

My new book, Stretching For Cyclists, is finally finished… and you can grab a copy this week only for the super low price of just $4.95 USD (or get it for FREE with your purchase of The Bicycle Traveler’s Blueprint (more details below)).

As someone who rides a bike, you probably know that you should be stretching your muscles on a regular basis. But I’m betting you either don’t stretch often enough, are unsure which muscle groups you really need to be working, or you’re stretching in a way that is causing pain and damage your body.

What Can You Expect To Learn From This New Book?

Even if you are a seasoned cyclist who stretches on a regular basis, the information inside Stretching For Cyclists will help you to:

• Reduce the tension in your muscles.
• Increase your range of motion.
• Promote circulation throughout your body.
• Prevent common cycling-related injuries, such as muscle strains and tears.
• Increase your speed, power and agility on the bike.
• And perform at your very best.

Stretching For Cyclists is a 31-page eBook that not only tells you:

• Why it is so important that you stretch on a regular basis.
• The best times of day to stretch.
• The proper way to stretch (without hurting yourself or causing damage to your body).
• How to stretch your entire body in record setting times.

… but the book also introduces you to 15 stretches you can perform on a regular basis to help you make the most of your cycling-specific stretching routine.

Click here to read more about Stretching For Cyclists and/or get a copy of the book for yourself.

Who Helped To Create The Book?

While I’d like to take full credit for putting this book together, I have to admit I did have some help.

My father, Dr. Steven Alff, D.C., helped me figure out which cycling-specific stretches to include in the book and provided additional research for the anatomy-based information that can be found throughout the text.

Prior to becoming a Doctor of Chiropractic, Dr. Alff worked as a Corrective Exercise Therapist at the Veteran’s Hospital in Sepulveda, California where he spent much of his time working with spinal-cord injury patients. While at the Veteran’s Hospital, Dr. Alff designed a stretching and exercise system to be utilized by wheel-chair bound Veterans, which was circulated to all of the Veteran’s Hospitals in the United States. It is no surprise then, that my father was able to help me create the cycling-specific stretching program outlined in Stretching For Cyclists.

And who is that beautiful woman on the cover of the book?

That’s my friend Caroline Gleich – a professional skier, sports model and design consultant. Apart from being a part-time cyclist, Caroline spends most of her time in the outdoors – either skiing, stand up paddling, trail running, or growing vegetables in her backyard garden.

Caroline not only graces the cover of Stretching For Cyclists, but can be found on 15 additional pages throughout the text. Pages that look a little something like this:

Why Did You Write This Book?

The reason I put this new book together is because readers here at Bicycle Touring Pro have been asking for it. People just like you have been sending me emails for the past several years and saying:

Do you stretch before your bike rides? If so, what stretches should I be doing?

- Trey Kobler -

Are there any stretches you recommend I do before I go on my upcoming bicycle tour? I want to make sure I am in shape and prepared for my trip.

- Alan Smithe -

You should really think about creating a book for cyclists that is all about stretching. How to stretch properly… what stretches to conduct… etc. I know that information is something I need, and I think others would benefit from it as well.

- James Hammond-

Well guys, you asked for it… and here it is!

How Can You Get A Copy Of The Book Right Now?

I wanted to do something super special for the launch of this new book, so this is what I’ve decided to do.

If you want, you can get Stretching For Cyclists this week (and this week only) for the super low price of just $4.95. This is a launch-week special. On November 7, 2011, the price of the book will go up to $6.95. But you can get the book today for less than five dollars and have it delivered to you electronically in a matter of minutes!

Or, you can get Stretching For Cyclists for FREE with your order of my wildly popular book about long-distance bicycle touring, The Bicycle Traveler’s Blueprint.

Either way, you get a copy of my new book, Stretching For Cyclists, and inside that book you get all the tools you need to start your own cycling-specific stretching routine right away!

So, what will it be?

Please share this article with anyone who might be interested.

The Lonely Planet’s guide to Cycling Britain features a total of 29 great rides through three different countries: England, Scotland and Wales. While the book does not provide long-distance cyclists with a straight route from one side of Britain to the other, the book does give you information on more than 5,000 miles worth of rides in some of Britain’s most scenic, historic, and interesting places. If you are planning a trip to Britain any time soon, the Lonely Planet’s guide to Cycling Britain is one resource I highly recommend.

Like all of Lonely Planet’s cycling guidebooks, Cycling Britain contains a large color map of the three countries covered in the text: England, Scotland and Wales.

A little further into the book, the three featured countries are broken down into eight main regions (see the image below).

Each of these geographic regions is then broken down even further – each region listed with some basic information about the area, a few color photos, and a ton of detailed info on the various cycling routes in that particular area.

Once you’ve decided on the region you most wish to visit, flip through the pages until you find a ride that looks enjoyable and fits your schedule. The rides inside Cycling Britain vary in length from short day trips (only a couple hours in length) to much longer, multi-day adventures (such as the 20-day, 1051.2 mile trip from Land’s End to John’s O’ Groats).

After finding a desirable ride, you’ll see that there is a ton of information provided for you about the route you will soon be traveling. Each route in the book contains information on how to get around the area (by bus or train, etc.), some basic history of the area, detailed cue sheets which give you turn by turn directions (shown below on the right), elevation charts for your ride (shown below on the left), and some brief information on the people, places and things you will surely encounter while out on your bike ride. You’re even provided with GPS coordinates, which you can use to more easily navigate your way along your desired route.

For the most part, Cycling Britain is made up of hundreds of pages of detailed route information. These various routes are broken down into eight main sections and these sections are:

• London
• Southern England
• Eastern England
• Central England
• Wales
• Northern England
• Scotland
• Land’s End to John’s O’ Groats

At the end of the book there is even more information. Here you will find some basic information about bicycle touring, what to carry, how to pack, weather to watch out for, etc. There’s also a small section listing some basic bike repairs you may need to perform while out on the road and a small section dealing with stretches you can perform and medical safety procedures that should be taken in the event of an emergency.

Like all of the Lonely Planet guidebooks, Cycling Britain is an impressive resource for those wishing to spend some time cycling their way through the featured land – Britain. The book is well-designed and the ifnormation is easy to follow.

The only negative to Cycling Britain is the book’s overall size. While the book itself is really not all that large or heavy, the book contains so much information that you probably won’t want to carry the entire book with you while you’re traveling. In most cases,  you’ll only be using a small portion of the book once you get out on the road. So, my advice is that you buy the book, photocopy the pages you need in order to complete your trip by bike, and then carry those pages with you on your travels. This way you don’t have to carry the entire book around with you, but you will still benefit from having the photocopied pages with you while you are out there on the road.

If you are planning a cycling trip in England, Scotland or Wales, be sure to pick up a copy of the Lonely Planet’s guide to Cycling Britain. The 2nd Edition was published in July of 2009 and can be purchased brand new for $24.99 USD or £15.00 UK. The cost is much less if purchased through Amazon or similar online retailers.

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