The Dom way round: I'm a Jupiter's Traveller

Saturday, 8 October 2011

I'm a Jupiter's Traveller

Believe me, I'm as shocked, bewildered, confused and scared about that title as anyone.

My own personal badge!

On Thursday night I went to launch of the Ted Simon Foundation. Set up to help travellers spread the word, the foundation was launched, up the road from my house, at the Coventry Motor Museum. I'd already decided to go along and support the event (after all Ted Simon was going to be there) but then I found out more about the whole adventure and decided to apply to be a "Jupiter's Traveller".

Bascially the foundation supports people, who have travelled, (not necessarily on a motorbike) to record their thoughts and experiences and share them with the world. Or as it says on the website:

The Ted Simon Foundation believes that individuals of good will, moving among foreign cultures and making themselves vulnerable to the beliefs and customs of strangers, have great importance in promoting world understanding, and even more so when they can distill the essence of their experiences into a form that can be absorbed by many.

http://jupiterstravellers.org/

I applied explaining what I had done and that I was trying to write a book about my experience. Amazingly I was accepted and on Thursday night the fourteen of us who are the first cohort were announced at the launch. There is a blog page on the website and I think soon there will be more details posted there.

So hopefully now it means I will get some help in writing/editing/ publishing my book. A scary thought indeed. It also means I have to pull my finger out and do some writing. I have already written two chapters and got some positive feedback from people about it. But since starting work again I haven't written a thing. That needs to change. A lot of people are putting their time and effort into me, let alone their faith. I'd better pay them all back and produce something that encourages others to travel.

This new adventure I'm about to embark upon is a thousand times more frightening than just riding a motorbike around the world. That was easy.

This is the bike Ted Simon rode around the world on in 1973

1 comment:

Angela / Daryll8 October 2011 at 18:16
You are my hero.
Daryll
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Hello

Hi. My name is Dom and in July 2010 I rode a motorcycle (partly) around the world. I started in Alaska and headed for Panama. It took me 6 months and I covered 21,000 miles. I then shipped my bike from Panama to South Africa. I returned to the UK for February and in March 2011 I flew to South Africa. Starting in Cape Town I took three months (and 9,000 miles) to get to Nairobi.

As well as riding a bike I stopped off and did some voluntary work along the way. In Mexico I worked on a turtle rescue project for two weeks and in Costa Rica at a Sloth Sanctuary for three weeks. In Cape Town I taught for three weeks in a Primary school in a township.

In North America my wife, Tracy, came out for three weeks and also joined me for two months in Central America.

I returned to the UK in June 2011. Although I'd kept a blog (obviously) throughout the trip I honestly had no desire to try to write a book. But that changed. Within days of getting home I started writing. Then in Autumn 2011 I found out about The Ted Simon Foundation and applied to be a Jupiter's Traveller. Unbelievably they accepted me and I starting a whole new, and much more frightening, adventure... Trying to write a book about my trip.

'Gone Riding' was published in November 2013. Signed copies are available direct from me at www.domgiles.co.uk. The book is also on Amazon where you can also get the kindle edition. There is lots more information about my trip and the book on my website where you'll find links to my Facebook page and Twitter account.

I now use this blog to write about my current bike trips. In 2013 we went to Scandinavia for the summer and in 2014 we went to Romania. Summer 2015 was spent solo around the Balkans. In July 2016 I went to Poland, the Baltic and Finland.

In the summer of 2017 we went to Northern Spain and France and in 2018 we went to Ireland.

I sold my bike in January 2019!!!