Seek Travel Ride

In this solo episode, I'm talking about post-adventure blues. The experience of coming home after a big journey and finding it so much harder than you ever expected. It's a theme that has come up again and again across three years of conversations on this show, and one I've been deliberately exploring with guests for the past year.
The prompt for this episode was a brilliant piece of research by previous guest Alee Denham of cyclingabout.com. Alee fed every transcript from Seek Travel Ride into AI and surfaced the seven biggest lessons bike touring teaches you across 170 podcast guests. The findings are genuinely fascinating and I'd really encourage you to go and read the full article here:
But when I read it, one thing was missing and it was dealing with post adventure blues.
In this episode I dig into why it might not have surfaced in the data, share what I've picked up when interviewing guests and beyond them, and lay out my own three-part hypothesis on why it hits some people harder than others.
Guests referenced in this episode include Steph Devery, Luke Grenfell-Shaw, Alastair Humphreys, Daragh Cronin, Mark Gresser, Claire Wyatt, Paul Edkins, Samer Abouhamad, Tristan Ridley, Madeline Hoffmann and Jesus Estrada.
And if you haven't read Alee's previous article ranking the top cycling destinations by podcast guest, that one is worth your time too and you can check it out here.
This episode is brought to you by Old Man Mountain. Old Man Mountain make expedition-grade bike racks built for real adventures — tough, versatile, and designed to carry a serious load wherever the road takes you. Check them out here:
Find out more about the Bikepacking Campout here.
Check out the Manzanita Cradle from Old Man Mountain
Support the show
Buy me a coffee!
I’m an affiliate for a few brands I genuinely use and recommend including:
👉  CycPlus– ePumps (enter code STR for 5% off!)
👉 Zorali 
👉 Helinox 
👉 Ombraz 
Follow us on Social Media!
Instagram - @SeekTravelRide
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Seek Travel Ride Music Playlist available now on both Spotify or Apple Music

What if the whole point of racing ultras wasn't the race at all? Claire Stevens is a surgeon and ultra cyclist who rides for the experience of pure presence in wild places.
She has lined up for events such as the Indian Pacific Wheel Race, Silk Road Mountain Race, Race to the Rock, Rhino Run and GB Duro. 
We get into what happens to your senses when you push into the night, what it actually feels like to cycle in the huge mountain landscapes of Kyrgyzstan, the flooded river crossing at Race to the Rock that nearly went very badly and the experience of rolling into Uluru at sunrise. 
There is also a genuinely wonderful amount of time talking about birds.
Be sure to follow Claire's future adventures via her instagram - @surgeonabike
Other guests mentioned in this episode:
Katrina Hase 
Seek Travel Ride is a podcast about cycling adventure, ultra endurance cycling and the stories of people who ride to experience the world.
This episode is brought to you by Old Man Mountain. Old Man Mountain make expedition-grade bike racks built for real adventures — tough, versatile, and designed to carry a serious load wherever the road takes you. Check them out here:
Find out more about the Bikepacking Campout here.
Check out the Manzanita Cradle from Old Man Mountain
Support the show
Buy me a coffee!
I’m an affiliate for a few brands I genuinely use and recommend including:
👉  CycPlus– ePumps (enter code STR for 5% off!)
👉 Zorali 
👉 Helinox 
👉 Ombraz 
Follow us on Social Media!
Instagram - @SeekTravelRide
Facebook - Seek Travel Ride
YouTube - @SeekTravelRide
Seek Travel Ride Newsletter
Leave me a voicemail message

Seek Travel Ride Music Playlist available now on both Spotify or Apple Music

Rebecca Gross has been sending updates from the road all year and  After cycling from Austria to Australia across something like 30 countries this is the final one!
In this update Rebecca talks us through cycling theTassie Traverse, a relatively new bikepacking route running from Hobart up to Launceston through the Highlands and along the east coast. She covers a detour to Maria Island (wombats everywhere, no cars, highly recommended), a night in a tent that was decidedly not waterproof, a private waterfall at sunset after the worst day of the whole traverse, and a Huntsman spider making a last-minute appearance on her handlebars on the final day into Melbourne.
She also reflects on what it feels like to come home after a year on the road and why the whole thing already feels like it happened to someone else.
This episode is brought to you by Old Man Mountain. Old Man Mountain make expedition-grade bike racks built for real adventures — tough, versatile, and designed to carry a serious load wherever the road takes you. Check them out here:
Find out more about the Bikepacking Campout here.
Check out the Manzanita Cradle from Old Man Mountain
Support the show
Buy me a coffee!
I’m an affiliate for a few brands I genuinely use and recommend including:
👉  CycPlus– ePumps (enter code STR for 5% off!)
👉 Zorali 
👉 Helinox 
👉 Ombraz 
Follow us on Social Media!
Instagram - @SeekTravelRide
Facebook - Seek Travel Ride
YouTube - @SeekTravelRide
Seek Travel Ride Newsletter
Leave me a voicemail message

Seek Travel Ride Music Playlist available now on both Spotify or Apple Music

In 2018, at 24 years of age, Luke Grenfell-Shaw was given a stage 4 cancer diagnosis and told he had months to live. Within weeks, he also lost his brother John in a freak accident. Most people would have pulled the covers up. Luke signed up for a half marathon, hopped on a stationary bike in the hospital ward, and started planning to cycle from Bristol to Beijing.
On 1 January 2020, Luke set off on a tandem bike. Over the next few years he rode 32,000 kilometres through 30 countries, with more than 800 different people taking a turn on the back seat. Some were strangers he met on the road. Some were friends and family. One was a puppy named Tarzan. The ride became the award-winning documentary A Life in Tandem, which you should watch immediately after listening to this episode.
In this episode we talk about:
- What it feels like to be diagnosed with stage 4 cancer at 24
- Why Luke chose a tandem over a solo bike and what that decision changed
- The science behind exercise during chemotherapy and what the research now says
- Dev, the Indian man who turned up in jeans, hadn't ridden in three years, and became Luke's longest-serving stoker
- The brake failure at 50mph on a Kyrgyzstan mountain pass that ended in a medical clinic 
- Tarzan the puppy of Uzbekistan (fate: unknown but probably fine)
- The post-adventure blues, identity after big goals, and what it means to turn 32 when you once didn't expect to see it
- Luke's definition of a 'canliver' and why he prefers it to 'cancer survivor'
- What it means to be a professional trail runner representing Great Britain, and what comes next
Luke Grenfell-Shaw is a professional trail runner representing Great Britain, adventurer, filmmaker, and speaker. His d
This episode is brought to you by Old Man Mountain. Old Man Mountain make expedition-grade bike racks built for real adventures — tough, versatile, and designed to carry a serious load wherever the road takes you. Check them out here:
Find out more about the Bikepacking Campout here.
Check out the Manzanita Cradle from Old Man Mountain
Support the show
Buy me a coffee!
I’m an affiliate for a few brands I genuinely use and recommend including:
👉  CycPlus– ePumps (enter code STR for 5% off!)
👉 Zorali 
👉 Helinox 
👉 Ombraz 
Follow us on Social Media!
Instagram - @SeekTravelRide
Facebook - Seek Travel Ride
YouTube - @SeekTravelRide
Seek Travel Ride Newsletter
Leave me a voicemail message

Seek Travel Ride Music Playlist available now on both Spotify or Apple Music

Daragh Cronin is 40 days into his solo cycling expedition from Ireland to Everest Base Camp, and I sent him four questions via Instagram to find out how it's actually going.
He talks about the send-off from Cork that genuinely blew his mind, how it compared to the low-key departure for his West Africa ride, and why the first two weeks on the bike were so much harder than he expected. He gets into the reality of solo wildcamping for the first time, hitting big milestones across Europe, and a very special stop in Germany to see the man he cycled more than half of Africa with.Daragh's route to Everest Base Camp is also currently under a cloud with the war that's broken out in Iran putting his planned route through Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Oman into doubt. He doesn't have answers yet. Istanbul is where it gets real.
You can also watch the new Daragh YouTube video  on our Seek Travel Ride channel.
Here's the link to Daragh's Africa episode .
Follow Daragh via his instagram @roaminwithCronin for his latest updates. 
Donate to his fundraiser.
This episode is brought to you by Old Man Mountain. Old Man Mountain make expedition-grade bike racks built for real adventures — tough, versatile, and designed to carry a serious load wherever the road takes you. Check them out here:
Find out more about the Bikepacking Campout here.
Old Man Mountain
Big thanks to Old Man Mountain for supporting this episode of Seek Travel Ride.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Support the show
Buy me a coffee!
I’m an affiliate for a few brands I genuinely use and recommend including:
👉  CycPlus– ePumps (enter code STR for 5% off!)
👉 Zorali 
👉 Helinox 
👉 Ombraz 
Follow us on Social Media!
Instagram - @SeekTravelRide
Facebook - Seek Travel Ride
YouTube - @SeekTravelRide
Seek Travel Ride Newsletter
Leave me a voicemail message

Seek Travel Ride Music Playlist available now on both Spotify or Apple Music