Cycling Into Your Soul

By M. Archibald

The spirit quest of a fifty-year old woman who took her bicycle around the world looking for answers to life questions. She traveled alone. She rode in Russia, the Czech Republic, Corsica, Turkey,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 096821004X
• ISBN13: 9780968210048
• Release Date: March 1999
• Publisher: Monday Group Ltd
• Length: 285 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.3" x 0.8" x 5.5"

Customer Reviews

A Great Travelogue

Whether one enjoys this book depends on what one is looking for. I found it to be a great travelogue and a lot of fun to read, with the author detailing her journey across various regions of Europe and Asia. I've read other bicycle-touring books that seem to be focused as much on technical information and problems as the journey. If that's the type of book one likes, this isn't it. There is very little technical in the book; it focuses on the journey. There's a little 'new age' style where the author speaks with her ancestors but it really doesn't shade the book as a whole. I found it charming. The most enjoyable aspect of this book, as opposed to so many other bicycling books, is that this author obviously was no jock trying to race against time, or anything else. She was in her middle age, as I am. She certainly didn't impress me as a world athlete, just a fairly ordinary person on a fairly extra-ordinary journey!Easy, fun, and pleasant reading, recommended for all ages.

A literary equivalent to standing on a mountaintop!

Cycling Into Your Soul is a book not just for cyclists, but for all people. For long-distance runners, back-country hikers, canoeists, parents, anyone who has ever let themselves be small and be touched by the wonder of life and become stronger for it.The love that Marg Archibald speaks of in Cycling Into Your Soul seems to have infused it's pages. Each time I read it I am filled with a sense of joy. Her story is told in moments, feelings. Like her trip itself each experience can be enjoyed and left, or lingered over as your mood takes you. Each small story is entertaining to read, but each also offers something more. Many times Marg's words cause some not-quite-glimpsed insight to 'plunk' into place and I thrill at the thought 'Yes! I've known that too!'Amid the rush and importance of everyday life Marg's story reminds me to hang on to my sense of wonder, to embrace, to accept, to try. It helps me believe that anything is possible. It leads me to look inward and consider how I might be a better person. Or, when I want it to be, it is a simple distraction to settle my mind before sleep.I would (and often do) recommend Cycling Into Your Soul to anyone.

When faith leads your steps.

I don't know if this book came to me or if I went to it. I was intrigued by the title and probably in need of learning about someone who dares to take risks, ready to move out, against the current. I had just finished to read "The Alchemist" and wanted, I suppose, someone to prove me that Paulo Coelho's book was more than words of promising. "Cycling into your soul" brought that to me.The woman who leaves Canada, at the age of 49, to cycle around the world, takes with her all the experiences of her past life and her believings as a north-american woman.She is there, out of her world, to confront them with the unknown, the unfamiliar. As a witness, she describes what she sees with such words that we really have the impression to be by her side. But more than that, she tells about her feelings with emotions. She tells about her fears, her strenght and weakness, alone on the road. This loneliness takes her closer to the nature, and she becomes an integral part of it, like in the russian forest. She reveals us her fragility but, in the same time, her pride after a long and difficult ride. She talks shameless as we do with close friends. The heroine is human and that let us think that, who knows? maybe we can be one too.Could only life be simply like this?

Solo cyclists have soul.

I read Marg Archibald's book, 'Cycling Into Your Soul' immediately following a solo trip across Canada of 7900 kms. Her book touches deeply on the feelings that emerge when you face a challenge alone and have many hours to contemplate about the meaning of your own life in relation to the environment and people you encounter on the journey. I am seventy years old and was touched, as a man, by the ease with which Marg could convey her feelings (as I think only women can do easily) as they encounter new experiences that allow them to grow in spiritual maturity.There are far too many cycling books that talk only of "gear ratios" and "good food" and what "you" should take along or leave behind. It was a pleasure to read a book that gives a lot of attention to personal feelings and what cycling can do for the mental side of our lives quite aside from the obvious physical benefits. The vignettes that make each chapter cover a number of different countries and as an ex-New Zealander I felt at home with her description from her experience of that country. What stands out strongly in her book is the sincerity and willingness to share her deepest feelings which touched a chord in my own feelings because my experience showed that 98% of a long cycle trip is spent 'thinking' and the serendipitous events encountered get more attention and have to be placed into a special context, compared to the daily events of a normal life. Congratulations Marg and I hope you continue writing about your experiences and feelings gained from cycling.

An exhilarating and moving view of the world and the soul.

If Cycling Into Your Soul was simply a travelogue, it would be highly entertaining and of interest to anyone with a sense of adventure. If it was a self-help book, it could easily open one's eyes to the sense of wonder and strength within each of us. However, it is both of these and much more as well.The book details the journies, both external and internal, of a woman who celebrated her 50th birthday on a bike, travelling around the world, alone. The author, Marg Archibald, weaves a rich tapestry of sights and sounds seen through the eyes of a strong, independant person facing the unknown with only her inner conviction that people are inherently good. The travels are unique and definitely out of the way. The people met are the good, the bad, the beautiful and the ugly, in reality, human beings.It is Marg's journey into the depths of her soul that set this book far apart from any others. Throughout the journey she learned to trust her "spirit guide", what many of us would call intuition. This inner guide grew in stature as well as strength until it allowed her to face any adversity. This discovery is important to all of us in that it shows that we really know what to do in life, if we only let our basic strengths take over.Cycling Into Your Soul left me jealous of Marg Archibald's accomplishments and, at the same time, exhilarated by the potential which can be found within. I would recommend this book highly to anyone facing a fork in life's road, or simply as great entertainment and insight.