Pedal for Your Life

Christopher Portway

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0178829463 ISBN 13: 9780178829467

Publisher: Parkwest Pubns, 1997

In his 70th year, the author made a journey across Eastern Europe by bicycle together with his son to relive his memories of this part of the world during World War II. At that time he was involved in sabotage, theft and revolutionary action against the Nazi and communist regimes, and frequently clandestinely crossed borders. As a consequence, he was captured several times, put in prison camps, forced to take part in the 1944 Death March, given a 104-year sentence in Czecho-Slovakia and expelled from several countries. These experiences did not stop him from making spectacular escapes - jumping a goods train, cutting through electrified fences, crawling across a mine-field - and finally releasing his love, Anna, from communist thrall with the aid of Scandinavian diplomatic intervention. This personal travel account is interspersed with flashbacks to his dramatic past.

About the Author:

Christopher Portway has been travelling about the world and writing about his adventures for many years. He is a member of the British Guild of Travel Writers and a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, and for the journey chronicled in Pedal for your Life he was awarded a Winston Churchill Fellowship.