The Challenges: These ain't no rules

First of all, let me be very clear. This is an attempt to cycle around the world - a proper, genuine, full-on circumnavigation. For the official round-the-world cycling world record there are a set of rules but I find them to be unsatisfactory for my purposes (you have to cycle just 29,000km and you're allowed to fly between continents) and who wants to live by a set of rules anyway? Also the only world record I'm likely to be breaking is slowest circumnavigation of the planet ever.

As a guide to my journey I have come up with the following set of challenges. These are not rules set in stone, they are just targets I would like to achieve. They are in order of importance, so the last few don't matter as much as the first.

Challenge #1: Circumnavigate the planet.

Challenge #2: Do so using only my bicycle (or perhaps bicycles) overland and boats over water. No planes, no buses, no trains and DEFINITELY NO CARS.

Challenge #3: Pass through antipodal points. For those of you scratching your heads, that means points on opposite sides of the Earth, like Spain and New Zealand. If you think about it, this is a pretty good way to ensure a true circumnavigation, because otherwise you could just walk around the North Pole and call it a circumnavigation.

Challenge #4: Visit all of the inhabited continents. I'm not ruling out the uninhabited one either.

Challenge #5: Cycle at least 100,000km.

Challenge #6: Cycle through most of the countries in the world. This one is a little tricky and it doesn't matter too much if I don't achieve it. It also depends how you define a country but for these purposes we will take the UN member states as a guide, there are 193 UN states and so to have visited most of them I would need 97. That is a hell of a lot of border crossings. I think to make it a round number I will aim for 100 actually. I like round numbers. Cycle in 100 UN member states.

Challenge #7: Return with more money than I start with. The only reason I want to do this, apart from the obvious, is to prove to all the 'I'd love to do that but I can't afford it' crowd that you jolly well can afford it.

SPECIAL BONUS CHALLENGE: Find 'the one.' I'm putting this in writing here and now at the start of the trip. If I find that special someone who makes me go weak at the knees and who is worth settling down for, then all those other challenges can and will become obsolete, null and void. I want to cycle around the world but I'm under no elusions that, as my friend tells me, love conquers all. I'm just saying is all, so if I end up getting married in Armenia (believe me it has happened to other world cyclists) nobody can say I failed.

It doesn't look that big when you look at it like this

Poster in Copenhagen which summarises my thoughts on my use of motorcars during this trip

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