Greg Yeoman’s first long-distance cycling journey, from Nottingham to Athens, was cut short when he fell off his bike in Germany and broke his arm – although it did take him five days to realise how serious the injury was, during which he carried on cycling through the Alps and into Austria. He was heading for Greece to join the crew for the first sea trials of a reconstructed 2,500-year old trireme, and a broken arm would be more than just an inconvenience, so he headed home with a sore elbow but with his taste for adventure now keenly developed. After a more successful trip heading south over the Pyrenees, he teamed up with Kate for the ride across Russia from St Petersburg to Vladivostok. 10 years later he returned to ride from Murmansk above the Arctic Circle south through Karelia to St Petersburg.
Between these two expeditions, Greg developed a career in adventure travel with one of the UK’s foremost tour operators, organising and leading cycling holidays in various exotic locations around the world. After a decade of providing other people with exciting journeys, he decided it was time to take part in another big expedition himself and accepted Kate’s offer to join the Great Australian Cycle Expedition.
In 2003 Greg headed to Antarctica and was able to complete a ride there witnessed by some Gentoo penguins. This only amounted to a few hundred yards and doesn’t begin compare in any way with Kate’s hugely impressive plans, but it did mean that Greg had achieved his ambition of cycling on all seven continents. In 2011 he organised a solo ride from John O’Groats to Land’s End in the UK, raising money for the MS Society.
Greg has also written a book about the trans-Siberian journey, called ‘Riding into the Sunrise’.
Details of all of these trips and others can be found on his website www.red-line.moonfruit.com. Follow Greg on Twitter @redlineExped.