Before the pandemic, Simon Parker was riding high in life. But when the UK lockdown plus loss of work and income was followed by the death of a close friend, it re-awakened an old anxiety disorder. So he decided to ride it out—by cycling 3,500 miles around Britain.
2020 is a year most won’t forget. As the pandemic unfolded across the world and Britain began its first lockdown in March that year, journalist Simon Parker’s life was thrown into disarray. His career in travel journalism seemingly disappeared, his financial situation was precarious, then news came that a close friend had died.
He could feel a long-term anxiety disorder rearing its ugly head. Travel and exercise had always been his go-to therapies, and, in between lockdowns, Britain was still navigable. That idea was the seed for what would become a 3,500-mile cycle ride around Britain: a journey as much about the people he met as an internal journey through grief and anxiety.
Cycling south from Scotland’s Shetland Islands to the Scillies in the south, and traversing Britain’s east coast on his return leg, the end result was Riding Out: A Journey of Love, Loss and New Beginnings. He tell us what he learned as he cycled around his homeland.
“By March 2020, it felt like I was riding the crest of a wave in my personal and professional life. I’d spent 10 years working my way up and doing all the things I’d dreamt of doing—traveling the world, working for dream publications, and I’d just secured an exclusive with Roger Federer for the BBC. I remember sitting in Cape Town with the sun on my face interviewing Federer, feeling happy and proud because everything was going the way I wanted it to.
Then within three weeks, my life spiraled out of control as the pandemic took hold. Everything fell apart around me. I lost a close friend, lost a whole year’s worth of work and had to spend my life savings to keep a roof over our heads. My partner’s work was also greatly affected.”
“Like many people in Britain, I started to suffer from what I can only describe as a mental health crisis. I had palpitations that felt like my heart was going to burst through my chest, pounding headaches and frequent breathlessness. And awful insomnia —I was lucky if I could sleep for a couple of hours. It was this feeling of not being able to catch my breath, and felt bereft, almost grieving for a life that had been stolen.”
“We’ve never experienced something quite as extreme as a pandemic. It was unique in that it affected the entire world—it wasn’t as though I could just go someplace else to escape it.
In other scenarios, for example, political upheaval or a natural disaster, there was sometimes somewhere else we could go to try and make a living. But I felt trapped in a country that I’d spent not-a-huge amount of my adult life in, because I’d been traveling around the world, and it felt strange.”
You can sit at home and be distracted by so much nonsense—mobile phones, internet, rolling news, podcasts… When was the last time you sat on your own and started to re-order the muddled state of your mind?
“Anxiety for me is an obsession with the future and an obsession with the past—but an inability to remain grounded in the present.
I needed to do something, which is why I decided I’d cycle around Britain, first along the western coast from Scotland to Cornwall, then after a break, the eastern coastline back up to Scotland. I’ve done long bike rides before and this would keep me traveling and working.
It pushed me to be grounded because the pandemic reiterated how life can change in an instant—that could also be a bereavement, or going to work and getting fired. I gained a better appreciation for making the most of what’s happening today because I don’t have a huge amount of control over tomorrow, next month or next year.
I know that can sound trite, but it’s a cliché for a reason because it’s probably one of the greatest life lessons. Although I hated how the pandemic tore up my life and spat it out, it did make me slow down. I didn’t want to be away all the time; it made me think about who I want to spend my life and time with.”
“I think there’s a universal, timeless appeal of being on a journey—just the nature of moving from place to place gives you purpose, especially in this fast-paced world.
You can sit at home and be distracted by so much nonsense—mobile phones, internet, rolling news, podcasts. They’re all taking you away from where you naturally are. When was the last time you sat on your own and started to re-order the muddled state of your mind?
Whereas on a bicycle, you can’t afford to be too distracted—you’ll end up ploughing into a hedge or taking a corner too fast or getting hit by a car. The very nature of going off on a journey seems to slow me down and make me appreciate the present. Being at one with the wind, rain, sun and sound of birds has a strange ability to re-order the complicated things in our lives—it did for me.”
“In the book, I hope I drive home just how much being outside and being physical can be such a tonic. I wanted Riding Out to be a rallying cry that exercise is the best pharmaceutical that we have available to us.
I’ve dabbled with all sorts of stuff over the years, but exercise is the one thing I’m not ashamed to be addicted to. However stressed I am, I push myself to go out for a one-hour bike ride or a half-hour swim—and every time, I feel better. It really is the best medicine.”
“One of the biggest themes that came up on this journey was innovation and how people survive. In Orkney, you had all these crafts people and food and drink producers who were used to visitors buying their products. But with the pandemic shutting them off and no tourism, they created a website, orkney.com, to sell their products. Most had never sold anything online.
I feel the pandemic made a lot of people see that life isn’t about the accumulation of money and ‘stuff’. Our financial and economic society was broken into a million pieces, and people realized they could wake up and put their time and energy into things that didn’t necessarily make lots of cash, but did something for the community.
I suspect some of us have returned to old ways, but for almost two years, many people turned to things that made them and their community feel better. Like the gin maker who thought, ‘How can I use my product and distillery to make my community safer?’ So he made hand sanitizer out of a sense of civic responsibility.”
“I met so many people who told me, ‘I just felt like I had to do this.’ There was the farmer in Shropshire who had a big patch of land he hired out for events and his wedding. Now cancelled, he was probably losing hundreds of thousands of pounds.
Then, during the pandemic, he woke up one night and thought, ‘I’ve got to do something. I have all this space and I have to help people.’”
For all the issues I came across, such as overtourism or lack of investment, I realized that Britain, geographically and aesthetically, rivals everywhere else on the planet.
Next day, he jumped into his digger, dug a big hole, and started piling up all the earth to make a natural amphitheatre. He did this because he felt his local community needed some form of entertainment, that they needed to feel alive in a time when it was a struggle for some of us to feel that way.
Time and time again, I met people willing to put their lives on hold so their local community could flourish and prosper and feel some degree of normality.
“For all the issues I came across, such as overtourism or lack of investment, I realized that Britain, geographically and aesthetically, rivals everywhere else on the planet.
I’ve been to 120 countries and seen some of the most epic landscapes, but the unique thing about Britain is we have a little bit of everything… in short distances. We have beautiful beaches. We have wild open moorland. We have jagged mountain tops. We have archipelagos of islands that seem like they’re in the middle of the ocean but are a couple of hours from the mainland.
This journey showed me that it’s vitally important that we try and look after it. On a personal level, I saw that I don’t have to travel to the other side of the world to have big adventures.”
“It’s refreshing to have your beliefs challenged, for example, when I met someone who’d chosen not to get vaccinated. It felt good to listen and see where they came from.
That conversation also made me realize I don’t have to have an opinion on everything. It’s OK to say, ‘I don’t know’. Social media can make you feel like you always need an opinion, but the trip really changed my relationship with those platforms. It’s so polarizing—now I just want to be a sponge for other people’s thoughts. That’s the kind of journalism I want to do.”
“Whether I like it or not, there will be challenges in my future. I will lose people I love, and I’ll have to deal with that, but I now know what might help me, even in some small way. My next book is linked to this, of the different ways we cope with mental health.
With all that’s happened over the last two years—the death of my close friend, the curveballs throughout, and the uplifting moments—I have this blueprint that will allow me to deal with whatever’s thrown at me next.”
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Simon Parker’s book Riding Out: A Journey of Love, Loss and New Beginnings is available now and his UK speaking tour continues until the end of 2022. You can also follow him on Twitter and Instagram.
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Meera Dattani is executive editor at Adventure.com and an award-winning freelance travel journalist, with an interest in food and cultural heritage, wildlife, conservation, identity, and decolonizing and modernizing travel. Based in London, she has written for publications such as National Geographic Traveller, BBC Travel, Lonely Planet, Condé Nast Traveller, and Travel Weekly.
