A new start after 60: I rented out my flat and bought a bike. Now home is a tent and the open road | Life and style

When the urge grew to become unattainable to disregard, Sarah Cook dinner purchased a touring bike and an “all-singing, all-dancing four-season tent”, and packed her belongings into 68-litre bike baggage.She was 60, and, having rented out her flat in Cumbria, England, set off alone to pedal the Pacific west coast of the US. As she cycled away from Vancouver airport, “I used to be like ‘See you in six months!’,” Cook dinner says. “Not having the burden of bricks and mortar and possessions was so liberating.” By the point she arrived in La Paz, Bolivia, 111 days later, she knew, “that is how I need to reside my life.” Now 67, she has been itinerant ever since, and has cycled 24,000 miles.Cook dinner needed to search out out, she says, what occurred “when your life was on the highway. I believed one thing should swap in your head or your feelings … It’s the final residing within the second.” Every day, as she begins to show the pedals, she says, “I really feel weightless – as if I’m flying.”Cook dinner’s highlights embrace biking practically 3,000 miles throughout Europe, from the Black Sea to the Atlantic Ocean; tenting beneath large sequoia timber in California; wild tenting within the Colombian páramo; and pedalling 2,000 miles of Patagonian shoreline into Ushuaia in Argentina, to fulfil a childhood dream.Rising up in a Surrey village, Cook dinner traced explorers’ routes on to greaseproof paper from her dad and mom’ world atlas. The eldest of six, she would lead her siblings down the backyard with elements for tea, raise a bit of turf along with her penknife, and make a campfire.She studied medical sciences at college and labored for some time in a hospital hematology laboratory, however stopped to dwelling faculty her three daughters and son.However as she entered her 40s, “the unfavorable committee” in her head requested her: “What have you ever accomplished together with your life other than increase kids?’ I used to be a shiny lady with a level.” When her kids went to college, “I used to be like ‘What do I do now? Who recognises home-educating children as private growth?’’She educated for a mountain chief qualification, and one other to show English as a international language, then labored part-time – main strolling holidays, expeditions with youngsters and educating English. She wanted to be financially impartial, having separated from her husband.‘After I begin turning the pedals, my spirit takes off’ … Cook dinner. {Photograph}: Jack Boniface/The GuardianAlthough Cook dinner returns recurrently to England to see household, she has no fastened base, and switches between leases or campsites. Between tenants, she has camped in her sleeping bag on the carpet of her flat. “It’s not my dwelling now,” she says. “Though house is the place I’m.”She feels settled even when she is barely staying one evening. “Every little thing that goes in my tent has an order to how I unpack it, and a spot that I put it. And I’m amazed each time. How does this piece of cloth really feel like dwelling after I do this?”Biking, and residing itinerantly, has given Cook dinner “the data that I can survive just about no matter occurs”. She has two mantras. “One: ‘It’ll work out.’ The opposite: ‘Simply do the following factor.’ When the whole lot appears horrendous and also you don’t assume you’ll be able to cope, simply do the following factor. It could be sitting all the way down to eat a banana.”Cook dinner has osteoarthritis in a single hip, and biking has its challenges. She needed to push her bike uphill for 5 hours in Colombia. “My physique is ageing and desires extra relaxation and recuperation,” she says.However she has no plans to cease. Within the UK, the place she is visiting household, she has toured the south of England and pedalled from the Shetlands to the southernmost tip of Cornwall.It was gray and grizzly in Scotland, and the whole lot was damp when she packed up and fixed the lights to her bike. The cloud was low, the gulls screeched. “And I’ve this vivid reminiscence of considering, ‘Why do I really feel so ecstatically blissful, setting off on my bike on this gray, drizzly morning?” Fact is, she says, “I get on the bike and begin turning the pedals and it’s like my spirit takes off.”