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My name’s Emily Chappell, and I’ve been travelling around by bike for most of my adult life, as a cycle courier, as a long-distance tourer, and more recently as an ultra-endurance racer. I’ve written two books, I blogged for many years, and behind the scenes I have a couple of degrees in literature.

Unfinished Journeys is where I’ll share thoughts, opinions, essays and stories that are too long for Twitter, too detailed for Instagram, too experimental for cycling magazines, and too niche for mainstream publishers.

Here, rather than having to please sponsors and editors, I get to write directly for you, the reader. It’s like the old days of blogging, except that I’m coming to it with two books under my belt, plus a decade-and-a-half of experience in the cycling industry, and thousands more miles cycled.

Join the invisible peloton

Long ago, on a dark windy bike ride up an absurdly steep mountain, I discovered the peculiar strength of knowing we are part of a community of likeminded people - even if this peloton is scattered far and wide, and not visible to the naked eye.

I wrote about that fateful night on Mont Ventoux in my second book (Where There’s A Will), and hundreds of people have since got in touch to tell me how much the story has helped them scale their own mountains - and how much they appreciated having me in their invisible peloton as they struggled onwards. If you’re one of those people, I’m not sure you realise how much these admissions have helped me over the years, and kept me cycling and writing at times when it all seemed pointless, or impossible.

I hope this newsletter will provide a platform for us all to find and enlarge our invisible pelotons - to draw strength from each other’s stories and experiences, to offer support for each other’s challenges, and to know that we’re not alone in our struggles, even when there is no one else in sight.

Your support will help me to do more of what I love - travelling by bike, exploring the world, and telling stories about it. I hope what I write for you will offer just as much support in return.