A 66-year-old British adventurer has completed his third round-the-world bicycle trip, and his 11th if motorcycling is included.
Nick Sanders MBE rode more than 19,000 miles (30,000km) east from Amsterdam, spending nine months starting in September last year. He completed the journey on an electric bike and is now waiting for Guinness World Records to approve his attempt as the first person to circumnavigate the world by electric bike.
“The trip itself wasn’t as strenuous as cycling around the world,” Sanders said. Cycling Weekly“I know this because I did it in 1981 and 1985.”
“The point of doing that is [this time] “It’s not to prove that you can cycle around the world. I know you can, and there’s nothing big about that. It’s more about the fact that you can ride an e-bike. I think an e-bike is a vehicle that any normal cyclist can use. I think it’s the perfect vehicle to get people who don’t cycle to cycling.”
Sanders planned a route and followed the Earth’s vector lines across Europe, the Middle East, India, Southeast Asia, Australia, New Zealand and North America. He initially ran 100 miles a day, but as he said he felt better and lost 20 pounds, he increased his distance to 112 miles.
Sanders has ridden a Yamaha Wabash RT electric gravel bike all around the world in all sorts of conditions. “It’s just a regular production model,” he says. Cycling Weekly.
(Image courtesy of Yamaha/Nick Sanders)
Sanders recalls that one of the toughest parts was traveling through the Middle East. “I didn’t have a battery to get me across the Middle East,” he said. The adventurer was unable to deliver a power source for his bike when his flight to Tel Aviv was canceled following the Hamas-led attacks on Israel in October.
“We rode across Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the UAE to Dubai without a battery. It was hard work, the bike was heavy and it was 48°C but we did it.”
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Sanders mostly stayed in hotels and guesthouses during his nine months but was exploring other accommodation options: “I did a lot of camping in Saudi Arabia and slept in the bush every night in Australia,” he said.
A former semi-professional cyclist, the adventurer currently holds the world record for circumnavigating the coast of England in 22 days, which he achieved in 1984. But in recent years his main focus has been exploring by bike, having circled the world eight times and travelled across the Americas.
So what got him back on the bike in his mid-60s? “Bicycling is my first love. It always has been and always will be,” Sanders explains. “Physiologically, when I’m on a bike I feel good. It makes me feel good. It’s the same with a motorbike, but it takes time.”
“I think age has worked in my favour quite a bit so far. I see myself as the Ranulph Fiennes of motorcycling,” he laughed. “Who knows? I’ve got another 20 years of riding to do.”
