Not my next adventure I hasten to add, but it is someone’s;

Hello, I stumbled across your site whilst researching this famous pilgrimage route.

My name is James Anderson. I am an extreme sportsmen and adventurer and next summer I plan to run from Canterbury to Rome in aid of charity. I have enjoyed looking through your website, it seems like you have had some amazing times out on the road!

I was wondering if I could have some more information in regards to the route you took when you cycled the Eurovelo 5. I intend to run between 20-25 miles per day. I understand you managed to get to Athens in 30 or so days. My time scale to get to Rome is about 8-10 weeks. Is this realistic? I have run several marathons before and plan to carry a light to medium load of 8-10kg of equipment to use for camping or is there adequate accommodation along the route?

From reading your blogs I answer most of my questions! But It would be nice to hear from you personally and maybe have some advice on fundraising etc

Thank you for your time

I look forward to your reply

James Anderson.

Hi James

Thanks for the email and your interest…

I’m by no means an extreme sportsman – just a small-time adventurer…. So the extent to which I can advise you is limited I think!

First of all, I didn’t go all the way to Athens, only as far as Brindisi in southern Italy. I stopped when I hit the Adriatic (which was always the plan). If you look at the list of summary statistics, you can see that I averaged 110 kilometres a day so that’s about 70 miles a day. Obviously on a bike you can cover a much longer distance but, having no knowledge whatsoever about running let alone running marathons, I would guess that running 20-25 miles a day would seem reasonable. It took me about 30 days to get to Brindisi and I was in Rome after about 25. I bit of mental maths would say that running there in 8-10 weeks would seem a reasonable assumption.

As for the route, well, I never had a detailed route. I knew the general route of the Eurovelo 5 and occasionally I was able to follow local cycle routes – for example across Switzerland and down the Rhine in France – but apart from that, I just made it up from day-to-day. I found a place where I either know or thought there would be a campsite and set off in the general direction. I always managed to get where I aimed for although on several days I was in the saddle for a long, long time!

Accommodation? Loads of it! The only place where I had issues was in northern France but I was trying to stick to campsites. If I had had the money to stay in a hotel every evening, I would have had no problems whatsoever. 

And finally fundraising! I didn’t raise that much in the great scheme of things (around £600 I think). The fundraising was an afterthought, not the reason for doing the cycle in the first place. I just set up a Just Giving page and then emailed everyone I knew who might be interested in sponsoring me. There were some notable omissions from the list!!! You certainly get to find out who cares enough about you to donate money to a charity on your behalf.

Good luck in your efforts. Let me know how you get on.

Best wishes

Andrew