DIANA TANSEY is a former copywriter who left her job in Dublin to travel the world – with a difference.
On August 7th, she began her journey with a cycle from Dublin to Newbridge, and from there, friends, family and strangers have been asked to determine her course via indianajune.com. In the modern-day equivalent of a 1980s Choose Your Own Adventurebook, Tansey – whose middle name is June and whose moniker was chosen when a customs official mistakenly wrote her name as "Indiana June" – is trusting her loyal public to set her on the right course.
From Newbridge she went to Birr, then to a pig farm in Limerick and via Scotland to Paris to watch her home team, the All Blacks, in the rugby – and when we spoke she was settling into a night of wild camping in Frontenac, before cycling to a painting workshop in Tournié.
“I put a call out for suggestions and I’ve had lots of different ones,” says Tansey. “I try to pick places I can get to. Someone suggested Kazakhstan but for now it’s a bit too far.”
Surely trusting the public to pick her destinations is a bit risky? How does she know they won’t send her to an abattoir in northern Italy, or to shear sheep in Edinburgh?
“I ask for suggestions and then I put up options that I’d be happy to do,” says Tansey. “I only put up things I’d actually do.”
As for the cycling, it may seem hardcore but Tansey isn’t taking it too seriously. “If I need to, I’ll get a ferry, or I’ve caught the train a couple of times,” she says. “But most of it is cycling. I think I’ve done 3,000km. But it’s not hardcore, where you do 100km a day. I might do 50km or 60km, then I might have a day somewhere to do an activity. If you’re moving every day, you miss the places you’re travelling through.”
By tomorrow, voters will be determining the next part of Tansey’s adventure – Italy, Switzerland or Spain – and she’ll be moving on to the next leg. “I’m two months in, but I’d like to do it for at least a year,” she says. “I have the funds for six months, so I’ll see after that – I might look at getting sponsorship, or do some work on the road.”
Who knows – maybe we’ll get to vote on it.
- indianajune.com