posted 01 August 2007 06:59 PM               

This amazing young man, who rode from John o'Groats to Lands End at the age of 15 and hasn't stopped endurance cycling since, sets out from the Champs Elysees on Saturday and embarks on a gruelling 18,000 mile journey which will take him through 20 countries in 210 days. He has to cycle between 90 and 100 miles a day - the Australian leg will be through the heat of their summer and the Asian leg takes him through the political 'heat' of Iran and Pakistan. The physical demands will be so great that he will have to force feed himself 6000 calories each day. He has to carry everything he requires with him and this includes laptop, GPS, phone, digital audio and video recording equipment etc. so that he can assist in the production of an on-line documentary on the BBC website... www.bbc.co.uk/pedallingaround

I was priviledged to attend his publicity launch in Glasgow last Sunday ( www.gmpay.blogspot.com ) which was attended by his sponsors, supporters and representatives of the charities which will benefit from his record attempt. Doug Scott, mountaineer, was there in person to register support and to thank Mark for his efforts on behalf of Community Action Nepal which is one of the benefitting charities. He spoke very earnestly of the admiration he has for Mark.

In order to put the physical demands of this marathon cycle into some sort of context, I think you you have to get on a bike and start pedalling. I went to the gym the other day, set the bike on the easist setting and only managed (with some considerable effort) to clock up 7.1 miles in half an hour of non-stop pedalling. I am still recovering and do not intend to do it another 2534 times!

The press wagon is beginning to roll out 'up here' - newspapers have been featuring the story and BBC Scotland have given a fair bit of air time to it. However, I suspect that until Mark is on his way home, those of you in more southerly latitudes will hear little about his journey. I certainly intend to exploit the geographical potential - the Internet will provide the opportunity for my current pupils to engage with Mark as he travels and I also hope to be able to raise some money for his charities.

Please do have a look at the links, support his charities if you feel able but above all, once he is on the road, follow his progress and maybe drop him a line. He would like that.

P.S. I will keep 'raising' this - bad form or not - as I know that a lot of forum readers are off on holiday.

posted 01 August 2007 08:17 PM               

Well, how exciting - his route shows that on the 25th July (stop number 1) he was practically on my doorstep! Have posted about this on my blog - hope thats okay!

posted 05 August 2007 09:55 PM               

As you will no doubt have gathered, I am very excited to be associated with this journey even in my modest capacity as Mark's 'old geography teacher' according to his website. I am currently hatching a plan for some school-based support and can tell you that this morning at 7am( note - Sunday in the holidays!!), I was on an exercise bike along with some pupils, staff and parents in our school gym. I will let you know where this leads.

posted 06 August 2007 02:08 PM               

Val (if you are not already) you should get the school (pupils, staff and parents) to 'cycle' 18,000 miles in the same time frame (100 miles per day? e.g. 20 people cover 5 miles per day) and stick flags to the exercise bikes of the country that Mark is in at the time, take photos, keep a blog of your progress...and don't try to cycle the 18,000 miles by yourself!

posted 06 August 2007 03:13 PM               

Day 2 and Mark's almost at the Belgian border.

posted 19 August 2007 12:11 AM               

Mark is now in the Ukraine, well on target to reach Istanbul next weekend. If you link to the web diary at www.artemisworldcycle.com , you'll see that it has been an eventful week. A lot more media is now becoming available on both the Artemis and BBC ( www.bbc.co.uk/pedallingaround ) sites - there are for example, audio recordings and quite a number of photos taken in week one. I have been in contact with the BBC team who are flying out to Istanbul to meet up with Mark next weekend and they should be bringing back video footage which Mark has taken which will also be uploaded. In the meantime I have also been summarising events and making some comments on the geography (and history!) of places he's passing through on www.gmpay.blogspot.com . The last couple of days across southern Poland have had the benefit of high resolution imagery and some of the aerial views have been fascinating. I am really looking forward to the geography of the next leg - Iran, Pakistan and India.

posted 26 August 2007 10:24 PM               

At school we have launched a cross curricular project which involves a) the school community cycling 18,000 miles on the exercise bikes in our fitness suite to raise money for Mark's charities and b) departments across the school doing two lessons each with first year on some aspect of Mark's journey. Geography will lead but already we have promises of lessons from History, Mod Langs, Art, Physics, Biology...

posted 01 September 2007 07:36 PM               

Our Junior School have sent a tiny bear on a key fob out to join Mark. A very techno savvy member of our junior school staff has set up a Voki on her school blog. Pupils will be researching and studying the
countries Mark is cycling through but a virtual bear (whose real life persona is
with Mark) will do the talking! http://hsd-juniors.blogspot.com/

Finally,in an effort to 'spread the word' about the journey and do my bit for GGIP at the same time, I sent a speculative piece to TESS (Scottish edition) last week. They published it yesterday. The 'G' word is used 4 times in just a few column inches. That must be a record for TES!
http://www.4shared.com/file/23347615/a108ca3e/TESS_Mark.html

posted 14 October 2007 02:19 PM               

Mark is now cycling his way across the Ganges Plain between Delhi and Lucknow. After a couple of very difficult weeks in Pakistan - mainly as a result of police insistence that he had to have a 'personal escort' for most of the way. This often translated into aggression/ intimidation and overnighting in police cells instead of camping or guesthouses. He was stoned by onlookers in Quetta and deliberately knocked off his bike. All of this coupled with problems of obtaining food left him pretty much exhausted mentally and physically by the time he reached Lahore. The BBC caught up with him there filming for the documentary which they are making and he spent two days of recuperation before heading off across the Indian border.

He has now, for the first time in a fortnight, been able to post something directly to his web diary on www.artemisworldcycle.com and those of us who are more closely associated with his venture are heaving collective sighs of relief.

If you haven't 'got into' the journey yet, why not take some time over mid term to have a look? I'm even doing the geography for you at www.geobloggingwithmark.com ! On which subject, I have had some very nice emails from complete strangers who are following the blog and saying things like they 'didn't know geography could be so interesting'. Grist to our collective mill, I'd say!

posted 06 November 2007 11:52 PM               

We had a visit to school today by Doug Scott (Everest mountaineer) in his capacity as one of Mark's supporters. He spoke a bit about climbing Everest and then gave us a very good insight into his charity, Community Action Nepal which is one of the charities which Mark is raising money for. Before he spoke, I was given the task of doing a 'story so far' presentation about Mark's journey. I have uploaded it to 4shared.

posted 16 January 2008 09:56 PM               

Mark is now just a day's cycle west of San Antonio in Texas and all being well now hopes to complete his circumnavigation of the globe in under 200 days, knocking more than 76 days off the record.

Media coverage is poised to roll out once he gets back to Europe and this will include a TV documentary in which our school's involvement should feature. As the ETA in Paris looks like coinciding with mid term, I reckon I will try to be there.