The Dom way round: July 2012

Sunday, 8 July 2012

HU meeting

Rain, mud and bikers. What a great weekend. Just got back from the HU meeting in Ripley. Another great time meeting up with other adventure bikers and hearing stories of people's travels around the globe.

I did a talk (which in all honesty didn't go well as I tried to cover too much and never really got to grips with any of it) but Heidi managed to win the "most travelled bike" competition. I'm so pround of her!

Heidi lined up in the bike competition

The weather wasn't kind but it most certainly could have been worse. It actually cleared up on the saturday but I think the weather put a few people off and numbers were down on last year.

I've pick up a few ideas on where to travel too next and I got some advice on my writing which I hope to move onto the next stage within the month. I spoke to Ted Simon and he's looking forward to getting my manuscript so I'd better get on with it...

Sunday, 1 July 2012

Going to the HU meeting...

I lied about going to Scotland. The weather was so bad here that we just didn't bother. Tom did turn up however and it was good to catch up with him.
I'm off to the Ripley HUBB meeting this weekend and am doing a presentation on my trip. It's hard to cover the whole thing in 45 minutes and I've got a powerpoint with 250 pictures on it. I'd better try to cut it down - or talk quickly!
I can see the light at the end of the tunnel with regard to my book. I'm only a few weeks away from being happy enough with it to ask for some help. It's taken a year to get this far, but I'm almost pleased with what I've produced. I'll be getting in touh with the The Simon Foundation at the end of July and will hopeful work on it over the summer holidays.
Am definitely going to Scotland in the summer. I promise - even if its raining.

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!!!