I’ve had a few requests to explain ‘One World’ in a little more detail so for those of you who have got no idea what our next expedition is all about, here goes…

I’ve been secretly planning ‘One World’ for as long as I can remember, certainly for the past 7 years. However when I started having the idea I had neither the skill nor the understanding (not to mention the means) to even contemplate launching into such an adventure. I wouldn’t go as far as to say that every single trip I have done henceforth has been specifically as a training exercise for ‘One World’, but I would say that every trip has developed my knowledge and understanding to a level whereby I am now capable of organising and undertaking such a journey. Well actually let it be known that Katie is in fact the queen of research and organisation. She is the undisputed master of the white board, the sticky post-it note and the list!!! Over the past couple of years she has helped seal up the cracks in the project and we now have a fully watertight and floating vessel, a crew, a destination and all we need now is for someone to help pay for the fuel!

The project itself is pretty simple in its concept… to go from the North Pole (geographic) to the South Pole (again geographic) using exclusively human power. It’s a 30,000km, 3 year journey where Katie and I will man-haul (that’s walking/skiing across the Polar Regions pulling a sledge with all your kit in it), ocean row and cycle our way around the world. In fact this video will probably give you a better idea of what we are trying to accomplish.

Why go only from the North Pole to the South Pole and not right the way round? A question I have been asked almost as many times as: Why? Well the latter I’m not going to answer just now, not least because if you think about it and I mean really think about it and you still need to ask the question, the chances are you won’t understand the answer. On the other hand the answer to the first question is easy, money! Some people are either born with, or develop a gift for being able to raise sponsorship money. Unfortunate I’m not one of those people yet and as it stands we can’t find anybody willing to invest the funding for a 6 year expedition.

We know of a number of similar projects that people have either already completed or are in the midst of being organised but to our knowledge nobody has ever accomplished or even attempted this journey. If you know of any we would love to hear about them and by the same token if you want to know more about our project feel free to drop us a line.

Tarka

Tarka and I have been working full time on the One World expedition for 17 months now, along with the additional help from a team of 10 others. In 2009 the workload will increase to unbelievable amount and the team of people involved in project will stretch to over 150. So now seemed the only time to get out on an adventure. Without an adventure to re-fuel us it can become extremely hard to stay positive and motivated in the long hard sponsorship battle.

So in four weeks time we are off once again. No financial sponsorship involved, no world first to attempt, no intense logistical planning needed, just a pure adventure for the fun of it!

We are heading off to cycle 8000km, from the tiny African country of Djibouti, down the east cost of Africa to South Africa, in a little over 3 months. Why Djibouti? Well the fact that we had never heard of it was as good a reason as any.

In order to make the journey more of a challenge we have decided to leave our fancy bikes at home, wait until we arrive in Djibouti and buy a couple of old heavy steel bikes from the locals, which will more than likely have no gears AND no brakes!!!

We will be traveling through a total of 8 countries (Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland and South Africa) and do our best to capture some of the incredible landscapes and cultures we’ll pass.

We will need to cycle 110km a day in order to cover the distance in the time we have, which on a good bike and on a good road is no distance at all. However the quality of roads and the quality of the bikes will play a healthy part in the daily mileage we actually achieve. We will be giving our saddle soars a 7 day rest from cycling when we cross into Tanzania in order to climb Africa’s highest mountain, Kilimanjaro (5895m).

Although this is more of a holiday than a ‘Primal Journey’, it does have its place in our training schedule. Its important to be accustomed to repetitive workloads, One World will be a colossal psychological battle above everything else.

We would like to thank our long-term sponsor Mountain Equipment for stepping in and providing much of our technical equipment for the journey.

Don’t panic… we will regularly updating the site, right here with stories, photos and videos of our adventure as it unfolds.

Katie-Jane

Thanks for all the great responses about the new website, we have had some fantastic feedback. We have been doing our best to make as many changes as possible. Some of you have asked about leaving messages. I have fixed the message board and you can now leave messages and comments by clicking on ‘Comments’ at the bottom of this page. We are also still getting a few questions regarding email updates, so if you want to receive an email whenever we update the website simply click on the envelope icon in the sidebar of this page and enter your email. Incidentaly we are looking to update the site at least once a week.

In our last post we talked about some of the training trips we have been on this year in preparation for One World. If you read that post you would be forgiven for thinking that all our training is carried out in exotic locations around the world. So I thought we would also mention the innumerable days of training that fill most of our schedule here in the Devonshire hills.

Training consists predominantly of tyre pulling in preparation for dragging our pulks across the Arctic and Antarctic. This is normally done with 3 large car tyres in tow. To better simulate the broken jumble of ice in the Arctic we drag the tyres through the forests with a 20kg pack attached to each tyre. Normally you only get about 5 feet before the tyres get jammed on a root or between two trees and you have to carry and manoeuvre the packs and tyres through the undergrowth. It’s exhausting work and not very conducive to covering any great distance. In contrast, to simulate the Antarctic we tend to go out onto the moors and just keep on going! Occasionally we also bring out the tractor tyre!!!

Circuits and weight training are also a regular part of our training days to help strengthen our backs and arms. Much to Katie’s hatred there is inevitably a healthy amount of running for general fitness. Now that One World has been delayed and we are still on the eternal uphill struggle of sponsorship and logistics, not to mention making a living! We are currently only able to dedicate approximately 2 hours a day to training; however this will gradually increase again in the build up to our departure to between 6 and 8 hours a day.

Tarka