For the next eight months, South-London cyclist Boru Pratt McCullagh’s bicycle will be his home as he explores corners of the globe on two wheels.

‘Mind Map’ is a sort of rejection of everything that the British rider knows. It’s leaving behind his job, his home, friends and family, and any sense of routine, comfort or the safety of doing things you know. “I remember I was talking to Josh Ibbett [winner of the 2015 Transcontinental Race] about this stuff I wanted to do but I was saying I’d never be able to get the time off work to do it. He said to me: you can always get the time off work. That stuck with me,” says McCullagh.

Returning to his normal life after months on the road seems like a strange proposition to McCullagh. How will this experience change him? How will he be different when he returns to the concrete pavements of his hometown?

“I joke with people that I’m going to come back speaking in haikus and proverbs and have a really big beard,” he says with a smile. “But if I’m honest, I don’t know and I don’t want to expect anything because I don’t want to be let down, you’ve got to go into it with an open mind, right? Then everything’s a good surprise.

“I can’t say how it’s going to change me. But I know I need to open my eyes to a world that we don’t get to see from our living room in London and the lanes of Kent.”

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