The plan

From a whimsical idea in summer 2010, my journey from Vladivostok to Lancaster has crystallised into a plan. It will involve covering 12,780 km of railway track on 10 trains and crossing two continents.

A journey needs a purpose and therefore travelling east to west, means I’ll be homeward bound. There can be no better way to make landfall of a continent than by ship, and that’s what I’ll do, courtesy of the DBS ferry ‘Eastern Dream’.

So, my plan is to fly from Dubai to Seoul (via Singapore) and then catch a bus across to Donghae, on the east coast of South Korea. Then it’s an overnight ferry to Vladivostok followed by Kharbarovsk, Ulan Ude, Lake Baikal, Krasnoyarsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod, Moscow and onwards across Europe to Brussels and then London and Lancaster.

I am confident in my ability. It feels good and is in no small measure due to my family, whose language just doesn’t include the words don’t, can’t or shouldn’t.

The plan is made, time to go!