The UniCyclist
Is it red or white wine with marmot?
It had been raining overnight. Normally I'd leave the tent to dry out in the morning sun before packing it away, but today I had people to meet. I shook the tent gently to remove some of the excess water. This most tender of tremblings caused yet another pole to snap. I can't believe this tent. I've known more robust meringues. When you arrange to meet someone off a train at 8am in the UK, you know that it's probably going to be 20 past before the heaving beast finally wheezes into the station...
Tea and cakes with OU student in Kitzbühel
The other day, in deepest Austria, I had a very English afternoon. I'd spent the day cycling from Bruck an der Grossglocknerstrasse – a nice, snappy name – up and over the 1250 metre pass at Thurn. From there it was a delicious twenty kilometre descent freewheeling all the way into Kitzbühel. Lodged in this famous, and famously expensive, ski resort was a real, live OU student. Students have been a bit scarce recently. In fact, the last one I met was Sasha in Prague over a...
A smartphone may be a smart move...
Next year I'll be better prepared. I'd foolishly expected Europe to be stuffed full of WiFi connections from which I could update my blogs or contact the OU students I was shortly to pass. I was wrong. In some places it would have been quicker to print off my latest Platform blog entry and post it to the OU. And in some countries that you'd expect to be technologically more aware - like Germany and Austria - it's been almost impossible to find the internet outside the cities, whereas in...
An exam in Vienna and then onwards to Austria...
I apologise for not writing sooner. The planetary science exam in Vienna went well, mostly because the examiners seem to have looked at my notes and limited their questions to what I'd scribbled, which was fortunate. This was followed by a lovely breakfast chat with Alexandra and Sarah from the OU's Austria office and then I was off once again. I left Vienna to head towards Graz, a place where I once lived for five years back in 1735, and where I still have a lot of friends. After three days of...
Mission impossible? Exam and residential school are drawing nearer
I shouldn't be writing this. I shouldn't be on my computer at all. I should be revising. In six days' time I will be in Vienna and I will be halfway through the examination for S283 Planetary science and the search for life. And then I will rue the time spent writing silly blogs when I could have been filling my head with the various methods of exoplanetary detection or the relationship between an orbit's eccentricity, its semimajor axis and its perihelion distance...
Missing out because I don't catch the news?
I'm currently about 3,500 kilometres into this trip, in the heart of the Czech Republic, 100 kilometres south-east of Prague with 300 kilometres until my next capital, Bratislava, in Slovakia. The legs feel strong, the bike is holding up and the sun continues to shine. The only thing is that I'm losing track of what's going on. Living in campsites with only the occasional hotel stay, and then with the TV news in a foreign language, I'm missing the big stories. When I...
What's more important, the biking or the degrees?
This plan always had to be flexible. If you look at my original route map on the UniCycle50 website, I should be heading towards Warsaw now. I'm not. I'm sat in Dresden, Germany, just over a day away from the Czech Republic and three days from Prague. With the post-Paris tent pole disaster and the ensuing delay it caused while a new one was delivered from Scandinavia to an accessible en route address, everything went a bit out of whack. As a result I planned my meeting in Berlin with The Lovely...
Beloved Berlin
I think I've found my future home. There have been some cities that I've visited and almost immediately wanted to live there, at least for a while. Seville was one; Porto was another. I'm not sure what it is. I think it's a vibrancy, a buzz, people clearly loving where they're living. But Berlin beats Seville and Porto hands down. If you forget the dull, posh bits of Berlin and enter the more fruity areas it's got mohicanned punks and dreadlocked hippies rubbing up...
Not much room at the German inn
I'd been warned that the route I'd been planning to take across Germany wasn't the most interesting. That's been mostly true although it's had its highlights, usually at the end of the day when I've found a campsite next to a huge lake that's had a restaurant on its shores selling nice, cold beers. The route, more or less direct from Amsterdam to Berlin, is mostly flat - not as flat as a pancake like in the Netherlands, but flat as, say, a deep pan pizza. But even when the scenery isn't as...
About The UniCyclist
Hi, I'm Steven Primrose-Smith, otherwise known as The UniCyclist – one bloke, two wheels, two degree courses, one portable university and 50 capital cities. Nice to meet you!
I'm 40-year-old full-time student with The Open University and University of Wales, Lampeter. I got my first degree in 2008 in Philosophy and English from the OU and I'm currently planning my dissertation for an MA in philosophy with Lampeter as well as working through the necessary modules at the OU to get a degree in maths and another in physical science. The aim, once all these courses are done, is to be a well-rounded private tutor covering as many subjects as possible. But that's three years away. I might get squashed by a truck before then.
For 15 years I was a technical author and internet software developer, but other jobs that I've been paid for include (in order, from age 14): delivering newspapers, stocking supermarket shelves, working in a video shop cum off licence cum sunbed centre, playing a synthesizer (with one finger) in an awful band called The Slaves of Circumstance, buying electronic components, playing a synthesizer (now with two fingers) in an even worse band called Tuco Talks, graphic design, laying out newspapers, writing computer games, selling software online, knocking up websites, performing comedy, doing voices for radio ads, writing magazine articles, teaching people how to improve their computer skills, writing comedy sketches and, most recently, maths tutoring.
I did my first cycling tour in 1994 when I had a week on very windy Orkney. Shortly afterwards I was working in Austria and only did the occasional weekend tour although I had many a tipsy day-ride with friends out into the vineyards south of Graz. It wasn't until 2007 that I decided to get a bit more serious when I did an 11-day tour of western Andalusia. But the longest ride to date - in 2009 - was from the Isle of Man to the Costa del Sol, through the UK, France and Spain, lasting 32 days and covering 2,688 kilometres. It was that ride that gave me the idea for this one.
Other things I love doing include playing my guitar and keyboard (now with more than two fingers, but still not all of 'em), sailing, walking in the mountains, running, swimming and cooking.
This life is damn short, and it can be snatched away at any given moment. Whatever it is you want to do, just do it. Don't hang around. In other words, literally or metaphorically, get on your bike!
To find out more about the ride, including the rough route I'm planning to follow, or to donate money to the charities I'm cycling for, please have a look at my website at www.UniCycle50.com. And if you have any questions or would like to meet up, please email me at steven@unicycle50.com. See you on the road!
UniCyclist makes the headlines
Follow Steven's progress as he hits the headlines...
- Blood Pressure Association
- Blackburn Citizen
- The National Student
- Lancashire Evening Post
- BBC
- Milton Keynes Citizen
- Lancashire Telegraph
- Action For Animals
- Granada Regional News (video)
