Adventures of the Broken Hearted – Genesis of the Commonwealth Challenge

Basically this is a retelling of the tales from previous expeditions and trips, so for some of you the stories will be familiar. But without retelling these tales it would be a difficult task to explain my motivation for taking on the commonwealth challenge.

So this tales begins September 2009….

My return from the 2009 Cycling For Charity Expedition was supposed to be my last. Reaching Istanbul was going to signal my final miles in the world of cycle touring. On my arrival home the bike would become a Sunday pastime. I would then begin the search for the supposed “real job” and give up my interests in challenging adventures.

Strangely I was actually quite excited about my return home. It would mark the end of a difficult year. Life was starting to look good again. The successful completion of the expedition exemplified this. We had successfully completed all our goals, raising nearly £3000 for CHAS and also filming and producing an excellent documentary of the trip.

However the return to Glasgow proved to destroy this buoyant moment of happiness and bring me crashing to a terrible low. It started when I got home. I entered the room to find everything that was “us” was gone. All traces of her had been removed and all that was left was me. She had moved out. This is how I found out the relationship was over. Five years over without her even saying goodbye. Not even the indignity of a text message. This was not the return I had envisaged. Everything stopped.

Love and adventure did not mix well.

My “adventurer” side of my personality persuaded me that it was best to take the “manning up” approach. You could understand my surprise when I realised I had been wrapped in a duvet and crying for a number of days! Manning up hadn’t worked.

I had also missed the memo sent out giving clear instruction on how to handle this situation. Surely this would have been encouraging me to charge out into to the single life and trying to get my hands on as a high number of the opposite sex as I could.

Since I missed this vital information my solution didn’t follow that well trodden path. Nope this wasn’t for me, my mind had different plans and I didn’t really have much control over them. Instead during the madness that ensued outside of the safety of the duvet cover world I had somehow booked a flight. I had raided my saving and secured a massive five week holiday from work. Without so much consideration “I” had picked a random world destination.

Deep inside something decided that I needed a journey to clear my mind. I needed to gain perspective on the things that were important to me. I needed to be away for Christmas, from familiar ground, just from here. I was miserable. So off to the airport I went. I was going to go to India. Trying to cycle to Everest base camp seemed the logical thing to be doing.

To be continued…..