Hi! My name is Claire
I’ve been trying to think of a profound, serious ‘about me’ paragraph, but honestly that’s not really my style. The long and short of it is that I love riding bikes. Road bikes, commuter bikes, gravel bikes, mountain bikes, you name it. Bikes are awesome. They give freedom and adventure and fun. Riding bikes has helped me explore foreign lands, climb mountains, race silly distances and see parts of this country I would never have seen otherwise.
I also like to run. Mostly with my dog Aoife. So there will be brief interludes on two feet instead of two wheels, but the spirit will remain the same.
Longish Distance Clara is designed to share some of my adventures with you. Whether it’s getting out for 45 minutes in the morning just to get some fresh air or a big multi-day trip, I hope that the stories I tell here can inspire you to get outdoors and create your own experiences.
While some of the stories you’ll read here are big trips, I also aim to share the wee ventures too. Hopefully to help you see that adventure doesn’t have to be a huge, expensive, time-consuming expedition. That it can be found anywhere, without spending a fortune or quitting your job or sleeping in a tattie sack under a motorway. That’s not to say that those types of adventures are not valid and very cool – I for one would love to ride the Transcontinental, for example. But sometimes I think we can get caught up in the feeling that adventures are something other people do, and we forget that they are in fact challenges we create for ourselves – just something out of the ordinary.
That’s the starting point for this blog. Encouraging myself to get out of the every-day and seize the opportunities for exploration and challenge, wherever and whenever they arrive.
I hope you enjoy these tales and that you get some inspiration from them to go on your own adventures.