Welcome
Long Way Home (for Jacqui) and Following the Sun (for Etienne)
A cycle tour through South Africa, India, Nepal, China, South East Asia and Australia
Once upon a time... an Aussie girl called Jacqui, set out to cycle 2,800km from London to Budapest by following the Rhine and the Danube through seven countries. She thought that this was going to be the biggest cycle trip of her life ever (ever, ever).
Her boyfriend Etienne, a Belgian chap who’d cycled with her, though not for the full journey, passionately spoke about doing an even Bigger Trip. For instance from Norway to South Africa, or from Argentina to Alaska.
On first hearing about this plan, Jacqui thought: 'yeah right, how about from here to the moon!?' but unwisely replied: 'Wow, that would be amazing...' She also thought it could be rather dangerous, but from then on the seed was planted, so the 'fantasy' cycle trip became reality and was quickly baptised as ‘the BT’, or ‘theBigcycleTrip’.
So here we are ready to leave. However, with a 1st of November 2009 starting date working out for both of us, it became pretty clear that the Northern Hemisphere was out of bounds as Norway or Alaska would be far too cold (as would the moon!) However, theBigcycleTrip kept growing in our minds and started to take shape around Etienne's dream of 'a whole year of sunshine', and Jacqui's aim to reach her family in homeland Australia by Christmas 2010.
We will be updating this website along the way with blogs, a route map and some photos. If you find any of our stories provide just a few moments of escape during your day, are informative or even slightly entertaining, we hope you can support us in raising funds for
in under developed countries through the gift of bicycles.
a charity supporting sustainable transportation
