I’m just your average 19 year old student. I prefer jeans to a suit and my alarm clock gets a good bashing in the morning.

To say that cycling from London to Beijing has always been my dream might be pushing it (the first time I got on my bike I went straight into a very prickly tree) but I’ve always been fascinated by traveling.

Although I was born in the UK, I spent 9 years in Brussels attending an international school where I got to meet up with people from around the world. This has inspired me to try and discover the world by spending 6 months on the road. At school I began to cycle more through the forests outside my home and journeyed everyday to school and back, even in the most extreme situations. This habit continued when I returned to the UK although with significantly more flat tires and often in pelting rain.

The idea behind this journey came a long time ago when my dad made a passing remark about someone, who had hardly any experience of cycling, managed to cycle from Beijing to London. I then thought, “If she can do it then so can I”.

Now, many years that brief remark has become a reality.

To travel using pedal power offers so many advantages compared to other mediums of transport. You are able to really discover countries and the people within them instead of a whistle stop tour through the places on glossy images offered to tourists.