Plans & Prospects 2023

On the road
If you’ve seen the OxBikes pre-loved bike depot here at college, which
aims to address the city’s high demand for bikes and its termly bike
waste problem, you’ll be pleased to learn that Wolfson DPhil student
Pedr Charlesworth is one of the brains behind the operation. Here, he
tells us how his global cycling adventures shaped his approach to the
annual cycles of academia and work and his involvement in OxBikes.
DPhil Materials Science, 2020
How reading The Moods of Future Joys by
Alastair Humphreys in my first year of
university shaped my direction
My first cycling trip was when I was
doing my undergraduate degree in
Bristol. I was half-involved in the cycling
team but more committed to my
DJ-ing at the time - until I overheard
a conversation on a bus between two
mates talking about how one of them
went cycling through Norway over
the summer. I liked the idea, did some
research, and settled on Sweden for a
slightly less hilly adventure. On this trip,
I read a book called The Moods of Future
Joys by Alastair Humphreys about how
the author rode around the world for
four and a half years and never took a
plane. At the time, I was on my first little
three-week cycling holiday.
That book started my cycling snowball
and by the time I came to the end of
my undergrad, I didn’t know if I wanted
to go on to do a PhD anymore. I hadn’t
found anything I was incredibly passionate
about in chemistry, and I felt like I’d just
be doing a PhD without any meaningful
thought or direction. So I spent the third
14
year of my degree working, and teaching
lectures in the mornings and evenings as
part of a special course I was on, which
meant I had enough money to travel for a
little while.
My idea was to try to ride a bike from
London to Sydney in 12 months. It all
got cut short because of COVID-19, but
until that point I was very locked into
a 12-month mindset, as many of us are
through education and work. I thought
if I was going to travel, I’d give myself a
year. Everything was all blocked out and
planned. But when I got about six months
into that trip, my mindset really started to
shift as I travelled through Central Asia.
Meeting a kid called Jake from Montana
in Khorog, Tajikistan
Well into my travels by now, I was in
the ‘stans, a congregation of mountains,
stepped grassland and desert tucked
between India, Russia and China.
Overlanders, people who travel by car,
motorbike or bike, come here with a
partner or a few friends for a oncein-a-lifetime
trip after a great deal of
preparation and with all the right gear.
It all revolves around a route called
the Pamir Highway, which is part of
the journey that people do to get to
Mongolia. It was on this well-travelled
route that I met 17-year-old Jake, who
had spent the summer working on his
parents’ farm before flying from Montana
to Kyrgyzstan on his own. With only
three previous motorbike rides under his
lean teenage belt, he bought a bike from
a Scottish guy at a market for $1,000
and decided to ride all the gnarliest
routes without a care in the world.
He was just a kid with a motorbike
and no safety measures other than a
spanner (which wasn’t even adjustable).
When I asked him what he would do if
something went wrong, he said he’d just
figure it out. He’d ask for help, he’d find
a hostel, he’d find a solution. And I just
loved his mentality. Here we all were,
with our expensive bikes, pre-planned
routes and backup plans and there was
Jake, saying he’d just figure it out. Maybe
that’s a luxury only a 17 year-old boy can
afford, but it really revitalised a feeling in
me of just letting things be.
When I came back to the UK, I
appreciated so many things but I also
had a different sense of this block-year
university and grad scheme thinking we
have. I fall straight back into it some
ways when I’m here, but I do think that
experience with Jake, and a few other
moments on that trip, allow me to bring
a different perspective to my life in this
highly organised society that we live in.
I feel less fear of the unexpected, more
open to strangers and unpredictable