Representative image of a typhoon alongside British adventurer Sarah Outen cycling past the Little Red Lighthouse in Manhattan during her round-the-world expedition in March 2015. Credits – Wikipedia
Three years after graduation, in April 2011, she departed from Tower Bridge, London, on a journey she termed London2London: to traverse the entire northern hemisphere using only a bicycle, a kayak and a rowing boat.
‘The trek was as much an emotional test of resilience as a physical one,’ she said. That was just the first chapter: Outen had made the first voyage, still an undergraduate at her Oxford college. Later, Outen wrote about the experience in her book Dare to Do.
Her narrative today inspires young people to achieve big ambitions, a fitting legacy for an adventure that began with a commitment to make something of grief and concluded with a roaring audience welcoming her home to London.
In reality the earth had other plans, and the adventure would eventually take four and a half years and over 25,000 miles. In theory, it was a simple plan. Outen would kayak over the Channel, cycle through Europe and Asia, row across the Pacific, cycle again through North America and ultimately row the Atlantic back to Britain. She thought she would get the full circle done in about two and a half years. Her history, on record at St Hugh’s College , where she rowed for the college boat club before her first ocean journey, spans the complete arc from student rower to round-the-world explorer.
