Hardcover: 233 pages

Publisher: Eye Books; Reprint edition (6 April 2009)

ISBN-13: 978-1903070628

Product Dimensions: 12.7 x 1.3 x 17.8 cm

Ten Lessons From the Road

Alastair Humphreys

£9.99

Alastair Humphreys spent four years traveling around the world on his bicycle, a journey that covered 46,000 miles and five continents. During his trip he gave motivational talks and received thousands of emails to his website in which people asked what kept him going through the low-points on his journey. Collected here are the sources of Alastair’s inspiration, including affirming quotes, insights, and unique photographs. As this inspirational resource shows, the lessons he learned while on the road can be applied to any goal in life. Inspirational for those looking to break from the mundane – brief yet captivating life lessons and suggestions from an experienced writer of two other books, Humphreys’ engaging, sometimes brutal, sometimes comic style is above all a call to arms… The first great adventure of the new millennium.

Extracts

Quitting is not an option (but failure is)

Congratulations! You’ve overcome the pessimism and inertia. You’re in motion. The hardest part is over. But getting out on the road and beginning the journey does not mean the difficulties are over. Nothing worth doing is achieved lightly and there will be plenty of rough patches ahead. You need to be able to balance a hunger for success with a  sanguine, uninhibited approach to the possibility of failure.

Think like a Goldfish

Although we need to think big and bold in coming up with our goals, it’s not a good idea to think too often about the far-off destination. I found the journey to be far more manageable if I adopted the memory span of a goldfish, thinking only about the next minute step I needed to take to keep moving in the direction of the ultimate destination. If we only think as far ahead as the next faltering step, every journey is manageable.

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Extracts

Quitting is not an option (but failure is)

Congratulations! You’ve overcome the pessimism and inertia. You’re in motion. The hardest part is over. But getting out on the road and beginning the journey does not mean the difficulties are over. Nothing worth doing is achieved lightly and there will be plenty of rough patches ahead. You need to be able to balance a hunger for success with a  sanguine, uninhibited approach to the possibility of failure.

Think like a Goldfish

Although we need to think big and bold in coming up with our goals, it’s not a good idea to think too often about the far-off destination. I found the journey to be far more manageable if I adopted the memory span of a goldfish, thinking only about the next minute step I needed to take to keep moving in the direction of the ultimate destination. If we only think as far ahead as the next faltering step, every journey is manageable.

quotes

reviews

“The prose in this book is fairly sparse, there are excerpts from his world adventure and a series of inspirational statements all overlaid over some truly stunning photos and it is littered with Alastair on his travels too. It is short and to the point and has some important lessons for those contemplating where to go next in their lives”

Halfman, Halfbook

extras

ABOUT

Alastair Humphreys

Alastair Humphreys is a National Geographic Adventurer of the Year. He has cycled around the world, rowed the Atlantic Ocean and walked a lap of the M25 – one of his pioneering microadventures.

He is the author of 14 books, including Great Adventurers, which won the Stanford’s Children’s Travel Book of the Year and the Teach Primary Award for Non-Fiction.

He has written eight books for Eye including the bestselling The Boy Who Biked the World trilogy, a series of novels for 9–12-year-olds based on the real-life adventures he recounted in Moods of Future Joys, Thunder and Sunshine and Ten Lessons from the Road. His more recent The Girl Who Rowed the Ocean is a similarly novelised version of his transatlantic crossing. It was shortlisted for the Stanford’s Children’s Travel Book of the Year.

He is a qualified teacher.