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around the world in eighty days. mark beaumont. bantam press paperback 397pp illus. £14.99

phileas fogg and his companion, the bizarrely named passepartout, were allegedly the first to circumnavigate the globe in 80 days, based almost entirely on misinformation. jules vernes' hero bet half his fortune with fellow members of the reform club that such an expedition was possible after arguing over an article in the daily telegraph. this had stated that, with the completion of a new railway section in india, round the world travel had received the final piece in the jigsaw.

departing britain's capital city on october 2 at 8:45pm, along with his french companion (the previous incumbent having been dismissed for bringing shaving water two degrees below that demanded by his employer), the plan was to arrive back in london by the same time on 21 december, later that same year. 'around the world in eighty days', first published in 1873, would scarcely have become a subsequent classic had things all gone to plan along the way. aside from being pursued by a scotland yard detective, rescuing a young indian woman and missing more than one ferry connection, fogg was to discover that the railway connection on which the entire affair was based, ended fifty miles from where the telegraph article had stated.

in the true style of the fictional adventurer, fogg simply hired an elephant and carried on.

it's fairly common knowledge, even by those who have yet to read jules verne's narrative, that phileas fogg and passepartout succeeded in winning their wager after they thought they'd lost it. this, however, only after realising that, by travelling eastward, they had crossed the international date line and gained a day, but only after spending £19,000 of his personal fortune in the process.

the sole comparisons between fogg's journey in the late nineteenth century and that of adventurist, mark beaumont, concern the direction of travel and the number of days over which travel was undertaken. phileas fogg's £20,000 bet with members of his club, was reckoned to be the equivalent of just over £2 million at the time of beaumont's epic cycle; mark had an unspecified amount of commercial sponsorship, but i seriously doubt (hope?) that it reached such heady proportions.

mark beaumont originally gained fame (if not fortune) by cycling round the world in 2008 and subsequently remained in the limelight by attempting to row across the atlantic as well as successfully riding from cairo to cape town in the record time of a shade over 42 days. circumnavigating the globe in eighty days, however, was an undertaking of altogether gargantuan proportions, requiring as it did, an average of 240 miles per day. and strategically, the cycle ride required planning for three days of flights between continents and two days for contingencies.

planning to ride 240 miles per day is one thing; actually achieving it is an entirely different affair. in order to test the waters, so to speak, beaumont and his support team, considerably greater than fogg's solitary companion, factored in a prologue of riding round the coastline of britain. for those who have just turned a whiter shade of pale at the very thought, beaumont appears to have considered the round the world trip after having become a tad disillusioned with his place on the sidelines.

"...I had met and interviewed hundreds of athletes. The truth of the matter was that by the end of Glasgow 2014 I was utterly inspired and inevitably jealous: I wanted to be doing what they were doing, not asking the questions."

once again, the dutch koga cycles provided a suitable carbon fibre road bike, while investment fund specialists artemis once again claimed top billing on his altura clothing. for though beaumont does not mention the total cost of the project, it's unlikely to have been completed on a shoestring, requiring as it did two camper vans containing professional video and support crews on each continent, as well as the engagement of individuals able to smooth progress through the vicissitudes of europe, russia and china. back home, there were others handling the communications, social media and public relations aspects of the trip.

while the bike ride itself was not without its difficulties and obstacles, hiccups in the quest for sufficient sponsorship almost put paid to the grand depart from paris at the beginning of july 2017. aware of his own potential deficiencies in the almost professional vocation of raising sponsorship, mark engaged the services of an un-named individual who proposed to work effectively pro bono in raising a large proportion of the monies required.

"He asked a foundation to pay for his salary... leaving him free to raise the rest of the £500k [...] the only catch was, he didn't raise a singe penny." suffice it to say, the money was eventually raised.

the exploratory ride around the coast of britain proved that attaining and repeating an average 240 miles per day in the saddle, was not going to be as straightforward as it seemed on paper. but the british ride did expose more than a few deficiencies in the support strategy. however, since that was the object of the exercise, the learning process was better undertaken on home soil than miles from anywhere in outer mongolia.

around the world in eighty days was effectively split into four parts: paris to badaling in china, before air transfer to perth, australia for the second stage to invercargill on the southernmost tip of new zealand. part three took him across the pacific by air to anchorage in alaska, from where he rode across canada to halifax, nova scotia. part four brought him by air to lisbon for the final leg north to paris, arriving in 78 days, 14 hours and forty minutes.

mark beaumont, as well as being an apparently obsessive adventurer, is a more than competent raconteur and narrator, but even he struggles a smidgeon over the course of eighty days. the build-up: fundraising, planning, publicity and the round-britain trip makes for compulsive reading, along with the opening days across western europe. due to the immensity of the russian plains and the difficulty of navigating a rudimentary road network, the chapters concerning much of leg one are not only entertaining and often enlightening, but likely to have you reading 'just one more chapter'.

however, given that beaumont's principal job across all 78 days was to climb aboard his bicycle at silly o'clock each day and attempt to cover the ubiquitous 240 miles, it's rather obvious that he wouldn't have had a great deal about which to write. thus, by the time he reaches australia and new zealand, the story begins to become just a bit too much same old, same old. this is not to undermine the immensity of beaumont's successful undertaking; the very thought of riding 240 miles in one day is scary enough, without repeating the exercise for another 77 days, but it would be a seriously committed cyclist who could pretend that describing a series of consecutive long days in the saddle makes for compulsive reading.

and with little change from 400 pages, i fear the book might just have erred on the wrong side of too long. nonetheless, it's a book that many ought to read, cyclists or not, if only to gain an appreciation of just what an intrepid human spirit can achieve when his/her mind is set. many might question the whole point of attempting such an undertaking in the first place; yes, ultimately it might be more about mark beaumont, than any potential relationship to everyday life. but in the process, he raised a substantial sum of money for charity and provided a target at which others might aim. after all, mount everest was first successfully conquered in 1953 and nowadays features an almost endless queue waiting to ascend to the summit.

friday 7 september 2018