Hello and welcome. My name is Matthew Blake and on the 29th April 2008 I left my home in Banbury, England with the aim of cycling around the world. To read all about my ride please click on any of the links across the top of the page.
30/07/10 - I got into Bogota two days ago. I'd wanted to get here as quickly as possible in order to get the camera fixed as quickly as possible (there's some logic in there somewhere) so I essentially did six days riding in four days, with the last day being a day of 12 hours 27 minutes in the saddle to cover 147.34 kilometres (average speed of 11.8kph - or in English 7.3 miles per hour) with a cumulative altitude gain of a little over 4,000 metres. Unsurprisingly, after dropping my camera off yesterday I've done the square root of bugger all since as my body gradually recovers.
22/07/10 - Wow. Quite simply wow. Since hitting the mountains over the last couple of days Colombia really has been on another level to a lot of the places I've been to. Really feel at home here and also a bit gutted that my digital camera is awaiting repair so I've not been able to take pictures. I'm in Medellin now and move onto Bogota in a couple of days time, but deary me it's beautiful here.
16/07/10 - Having spent the last 48 hours in a constant state of seasickness words can't express how glad I am to be back on dry land. I've not eaten in 2 days (so god knows what I've been throwing up) and am a bit of a zombie as such right now, but will hopefully perk up a bit for the ride down to Medellin over the next week.
05/07/10 - HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME! Double celebrations today as it's my birthday and I've also just rolled into Panama City yesterday so North America is conquered! The boat to Colombia is on Wednesday. 1st birthday in Trabson, 2nd birthday in Tokyo, 3rd birthday in Panama City...... I've been gone a long time.
25/06/10 - What's more frustrating than putting a shift in to watch the abject performance against Algeria? Putting a shift in to find that none of the local tv's have the satellite channel showing the England game and you have to watch 90 minutes of USA v Algeria and listen out for the odd mention of the England score. But ah well, I'll be able to watch the Germany game and I should also take the time to say 'bad luck' to France, but at least you've got Le Tour coming up and you have some contenders in................. oh, no, wait, you're terrible at that too.
In terms of the ride, I'm in San Jose and leave on Sunday. Fingers crossed I have a boat sorted to cross to Colombia on the 6th July, so I have 9 days to ride 900 kilometres - fun, especially as the 5th is my birthday. Shouldn't be too much of a problem but we'll see...
19/06/10 - You cycle all week to watch the game, the least the team could have done was show up! Anyway, the reason I'm actually updating - when I was going through Tegucigalpa I passed a serious road accident. It was on a 4 lane road, which had been closed down to one lane so traffic could pass, there was a guy dead on the floor with a motorcycle smashed up by his side. Quite a solemn scene and as I was passing there was a Police photographer taking pictures of the scene, the smashed motorcycle, the position of the victim etc. However, when he saw me coming he turned his focus to me - a big smile suddenly on his face - and started taking pictures of me as I rode past. This was weird enough given what was surrounding us but I got an e-mail from a friend in Honduras today - the picture of me on my bike was in the largest selling Honduran newspaper the next day! The caption by it apparently read 'this citizen carries all his belongings with him, really heavy indeed!' - bizarre but brilliant.
18/06/10 - The latest blog is now officially up - Spare A Thought For The Old Girl - and asks you to take a moment to think about how my bike feels in all of this. Other news - I had my front fork welded back together today (read the blog) and I've also hopefully got a route across the Darien Gap sorted! A friend of a friend is sailing the route and leaves on the 6th of July, it'll be close but I should be able to make it to Panama City so this is something I'm really hoping comes off. I'm fairly sure I've just built it up for a fall though...... Back on the road tomorrow, first to Granada then onto Costa Rica.
In Guatemala a storm washed away the bridge I needed - this picture shows us how me and the bike managed to get across
