Sunday evenings, my mum and dad would have the travel programmes on. Michael Palin going round the world in eighty days. I'd sit there watching a man cross a border I'd never heard of, and something in me went quiet and certain. There's more than this.
That's not a complaint about where I grew up. I had a good childhood and I'm fond of the place. But I never quite fit, and the telly showed me why.
Waiting
At university I met people who'd already been places. Gap years, family holidays further than Wales. They were middle class and I wasn't, and the difference wasn't ambition. It was money.
So I waited. A few careers that didn't take. Then affiliate marketing, and for the first time the maths worked. I could earn from anywhere.
In 2009 I left.
Seventeen years
Over fifty countries. Climbing in the Himalayas. Trekking volcanoes. Sleeping badly in beautiful places and getting things wrong often enough to learn something.
For a long stretch of it I had no fixed address and no particular plan to get one. If you'd asked where home was I'd have changed the subject. I don't think I was running from anything. I just hadn't found the place that made me want to stop moving, and I'd started to wonder if it existed.
The moments I remember from those years almost never came from an itinerary. They came from being outside, moving under my own power, early enough that the place still belonged to itself.
The bird
The peregrine falcon nests in the cliffs at Boca do Inferno, twenty minutes from Lisbon. It's the fastest animal on earth. It's also one of the most widely travelled birds alive, crossing continents, turning up on every landmass except Antarctica, and returning to the same ledge.
Falco peregrinus. Peregrine is Latin for wanderer, for one passing through. Falconers gave it the name because they took the birds mid journey rather than from the nest.
Our word pilgrim comes from the same root.
I didn't know any of that when I moved here. I found the coast first. The bird came later, and the name came later still, and when it landed I sat with it for a while.
Seventeen years of wandering, and I end up living on the doorstep of a creature whose name means exactly that.
Where I am now
I want to be honest: the journey hasn't ended. I don't think it does. I'm not going to tell you I've settled down and hung up the boots, because that isn't true and you'd smell it.
But something changed. I can open my door and ride to the sea. I can run the coast path before most people are awake. There's a falcon overhead often enough that I've stopped taking it for granted, and I photograph them when I'm lucky. Those prints are available if you want one.
Mostly what I feel is gratitude, and a slight disbelief. The kid in Wednesbury watching the telly did not imagine this. Not any of it.
What I'm doing here
I ride this route because I love it. The e-bike takes the hills out of the equation, so we get the whole coast, up into Sintra, and to the viewpoints most people never reach. Peninha on a clear morning shows you the entire coastline in one turn of the head.
Four people at a time. Not as a luxury gimmick. Five is a group, four is a conversation.
If you've ever looked at a screen and thought there's more than this, I know exactly where you're standing.
Come and ride.