Photo courtesy Sarah Outen.
Sarah Outen’s round-the-world journey is now solidly underway, with Outen averaging about 150 km (95 miles) per day astride her bike “Hercules” as she wends her way through eastern Europe. Even a bout of food poisoning in the Czech Republic couldn’t dampen Outen’s enthusiastic outlook for long. Her
blog describes bucolic scenes of horse-and-cart farming in the Ukraine, the happy surprise of a night’s lodging with a generous German family, and a “rest night” spent longing for earplugs in a noisy Polish hotel.
Meanwhile, Roz Savage’s solo row across the Indian Ocean has been stymied by an unfortunate series of mechanical problems. Savage’s
blog chronicles the rough start. In late April, salt water began contaminating her automatic water-maker, which can cause catastrophic failure of the machine. Since she was just 20 miles off the coast of Australia (though she had rowed 350 miles from her original launch point), she got a tow back to shore to fix the problem. Last week she headed back out to sea. After just one day, she realized her boat’s battery power was failing. So once again Savage got a tow back to land for another round of repairs. Since May 4, Savage has been rowing away again, jokingly aspiring to be—if not Captain Courageous—then at least Captain Competent. Tricky weather conditions have made for a lot of slow, frustrating days so far, but the gorgeous scenery helps.
Photo courtesy Roz Savage.
Photo courtesy www.sarahouten.com
On April 1, British adventurer Sarah Outen set off on her 2 ½ year, 20,000-mile journey around the world. Using a kayak, a bicycle, and a rowboat, she will circumnavigate the globe under her own power. It took her just four days to get from the Tower of London to France, though the English Channel crossing was tricky. “Full of ships, it is a notoriously busy shipping lane, meaning that we needed an escort boat to trail us—and get in between us and the big cargo ships and ferries honking North and South,” Outen wrote about the kayak crossing in an April 4 blog post. “It was cold, dark and rather rougher than we expected.”
Outen will be land-bound for the next 7,800 miles or so, as she cycles across Europe en route to Eastern Russia. Then she’ll row across the North Pacific to Vancouver, B.C., where she’ll hop back on her bike for another cross-continental trek, this time to New York. Then it’s one last ocean row across the Atlantic and back to London. Follow along on her
blog as Outen spreads the word that women can do crazy adventures too.
