Clara’s Verdict
There is a breed of adventure memoir that mistakes distance covered for depth of reflection. Alastair Humphreys studiously avoids it. Around the World by Bike — the combined audiobook of Moods of Future Joys and Thunder and Sunshine, gathered here in a single twenty-hour recording for the first time — is remarkable for its honesty as much as its ambition. Humphreys set off at twenty-four with £7,000 and four years ahead of him; he returned having cycled 46,000 miles across five continents. That alone would make for a book. But what makes the account exceptional is his willingness to record the misery alongside the magnificence: the loneliness, the self-doubt, the days when the road felt endless and the goal abstract. He narrates his own work, and his voice carries exactly the kind of unpretentious, grounded directness the content demands. This is one of the finest adventure audiobooks I have encountered.
About the Audiobook
This edition is Book 2 in the Around the World by Bike series, representing the complete combined audiobook. Moods of Future Joys covers the first leg of the journey: from England through Europe, a turbulent Middle East, and the full length of Africa. Thunder and Sunshine picks up in Cape Town and continues through the Americas — South to North — then Siberia, Japan, China, Central Asia, and finally home to Yorkshire. Together they form a single, remarkably cohesive narrative of a man becoming himself across four years and 46,000 miles.
The book was written and the journey undertaken before smartphones, GPS, and the ease of instant connectivity that modern travellers take for granted. This chronological displacement gives the account an almost historical quality — there is a rawness to the isolation Humphreys describes that contemporary adventure memoirs rarely replicate. He was genuinely alone in ways that are now difficult to achieve. His engagement with the people he meets along the way is the soul of the book: the kindness of strangers in unlikely places, the complexity of political landscapes navigated at bicycle pace, the cumulative education in how the majority of the world actually lives that only slow travel can provide.
Humphreys writes without romanticism, but not without wonder. He is honest about the times when he wanted to quit, when loneliness became overwhelming, when the physical demands of the journey exceeded what he thought he could sustain. This honesty is what distinguishes the book from its competitors in the adventure memoir genre, where a certain macho stoicism often obscures the psychological reality of what such journeys involve.
The Narration
Humphreys narrates his own story, and it is a considerable asset. His voice is unshowy and conversational, with a northern warmth that makes even the bleakest passages feel shared rather than performed. He has the storyteller’s instinct for rhythm — knowing when to compress months into a sentence and when to linger on a single roadside encounter that reveals something essential about the country he was passing through. At twenty hours, this is a substantial commitment, but the quality of his narration means the time passes naturally and without fatigue. Blink Publishing’s audio production is clean and consistent throughout, with no jarring transitions between the two original volumes.
What Readers Say
The audiobook holds a rating of 4.8 from 767 listeners — one of the higher scores in the adventure memoir genre. UK reviews are uniformly warm, with particular praise for Humphreys’ candour and his ability to communicate both the hardship and the wonder of the journey without inflating either. One reader described his « incredible bravery — not just physical but also mental — and the way he describes the people and places and gets down to the nitty-gritty. » Another returned to it years after first reading and found it « as good the second time. » The consensus is consistent and clear: this is the adventure memoir by which others in the genre tend to be measured.
Who Should Listen?
Anyone with a spirit of curiosity about the world and an appetite for travel writing at its most honest. Particularly suited to listeners who have ever flirted with the idea of a long-distance journey — Humphreys has a way of making the enormous feel possible without minimising its difficulty, which is a rare and valuable quality. Will also appeal deeply to readers of Robert Macfarlane, Rory Stewart, and similar writers who find meaning in sustained physical engagement with landscape and people. Available on Audible UK, Kobo, Scribd, and Storytel. Listen to Around the World by Bike on Audible UK — twenty hours that will change how you look at a bicycle, and possibly at yourself.
