We are Mary Thompson and Peter Root. At 5.00pm on the 12th July 2011 we got the boat to France with loads of stuff and two bikes. We’ve created this website to document our adventures along the way.

I sat down one day and jotted down some thoughts on why exactly I want to do this. Usually I wouldn’t feel a need to justify myself, but, I mean come on, around the world by recumbent bicycle and skateboard?

Alfred Henry Tipper (1867-1944), cyclist and showman, was born on 12 July 1867 at Sale, Victoria, second son of Thomas Tipper, a grocer from England, and his Irish-born wife Catherine, née Chadwick. Alfred claimed to have been abandoned by his parents at the age of 2 and brought up as a ward of the state. In his youth he worked on a dairy farm and also acquired a considerable knowledge of mechanics. He took up competitive cycling in the 1880s, during the early stages of the boom in that sport.