On February 1st, 2025, my partner Mark Graham and I waved goodbye to friends and family, got on our bikes and pedalled to Rosslare ferry port. We left on a two-year break from our careers, domestic arrangements and everything referred to on social media as “adulting”.
We were off on an attempt to cycle around the world. So far, it’s almost exactly a year since we left home, we’ve cycled more than 18,500km and have just crossed the equator by bike in Sumatra.
We’ve cycled in temperatures ranging from -3 degrees in France at the start of our trip, to 44 degrees in the Kyzylkum desert in Uzbekistan. We’ve been scared, exhilarated, exhausted, dehydrated, and have learned more than we could possibly have imagined.
It’s been the most liberating and challenging journey of my lifetime already, and we’re only halfway through. We still have Singapore, Japan, Canada and the US to go before we’re home near the end of 2026.
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We have some work to do on the trip – we write a weekly newsletter with a video, and release a podcast episode each week. But most of the time, we’re on our bikes and enjoying more freedom than either of us has had in years.
I’m 45 and Mark is 51. Carving out time from the responsibilities of adult life to take on a journey like ours is a complex business. The weeks leading up to our departure were a blur as we finished up work and packed our possessions to stash in relatives’ attics.
Some time during this, I joked to Mark that what we were doing was probably best described as a “midlife gap year”. I thought I had coined a witty term for our impending journey by combining “midlife crisis” and “gap year”. But actually, the midlife gap year is already a thing. Days later, Mark sent me a link to an article in a British newspaper with the term in its headline. “Someone got there before you,” he joked.
Maybe it’s no surprise that taking a significant break is gaining popularity. People in their 40s or 50s make up the so-called “sandwich generation”, caring for ageing parents, while taking care of children in their late teens and early adulthood. They’re often juggling demanding careers and mortgage repayments. They’re adulting so hard their heads are spinning.
We’re also seeing a move towards midlife career changes. The days of the fixed career trajectory followed by the retirement party and the gold watch are gone. So why not celebrate the shift with a midlife gap year?
Meath-based career counsellor Claudia Geratz says a growing number of clients, ranging from mid-30s to 50s, are craving more meaning in their lives and contemplating either a career change or a break of some sort.
Geratz believes the increase in people seeking a new direction in life is partly a byproduct of the shift in Irish employment towards what she calls “knowledge-based” industries, like tech or finance. In those sectors, “the tangible outcomes are secondary. Your work is about creating money for yourself and ultimately the company you work for” she says.
“Psychologically speaking, that’s not how humans naturally operate. We want to work and live in a community setting, where what I do matters to you and what you do matters to me.
“I think that’s one reason why, once people have financial stability, more and more are starting to question what they are doing, and whether they want to do it for the rest of their lives.”
Not all midlife career breaks begin voluntarily. “Unfortunately, burnout is another starting point,” Geratz says. “When people reach their mental and emotional limit, maybe they can’t look away any more: they need to address those deeper questions for themselves, to protect themselves long-term.”
In setting off to cycle around the world, I left behind my two adult children, 27 and 21. The guilt for not being there and the feeling of missing them are the biggest hardships of this trip, more than the potholes of Uzbekistan, the bears of Romania or the culture shock of China.
Geratz has reassuring words: rather than seeing a midlife gap year as shirking responsibility, we should see the benefits such breaks can bring to society.
“Only when people get a chance to step away from the hamster wheel do they get a chance to see what is really going on in the world, and that building in such breaks would help us to design a more promising and regenerative future,” she says.
Building in the option to take such breaks could be supported by workplaces and government policy. Geratz points to the recent extension of the Universal Basic Income for the Arts, and entitlements like parental leave, as examples of how society can change. She’d like career breaks to become a normal part of life, and supported across more industries.
It may be a cliche, but I really did set off on this crazy adventure to find myself: to recalibrate, rediscover my core values, and to prepare for the decades to come.
I can’t in all honesty say I’ve found myself yet, but there have been glimmers. On the wilderness of the Kazakh steppes, I found myself more in awe of the planet than I had been for years. With daily encounters with kind, curious and welcoming people, my faith in humanity is greater than ever before.
Will I discover new purpose on the road whizzing beneath my two wheels? I don’t know, but there’s a lot of road ahead. Right now, mostly I feel gratitude: for being able to take on this journey; for the people in my life who I miss and look forward to returning to.
If this is all my midlife gap year – or two – manages to achieve, it will have been worth it. I’d love to think other people could take the opportunity to do the same.
Mind the gap: Highs and lows
Bart Adons and Inge Roels: ‘You don’t have to be super-rich to do it’
For Bart Adons (59) and Inge Roels (58), a gap year long-distance cycle from Europe to southeast Asia is “sort of an in-between thing”, with an ultimate goal of moving to Africa.
The couple, both vets, have two children each from previous relationships, aged between 30 and 27. Their youngest finishing third-level education was a turning point, giving them the opportunity to shift the trajectory of their lives.
“Now they are all independent, live on their own and are earning money, so we felt we could go,” Inge says. The couple’s love of adventure means the news came as no surprise when they told their children they’d be taking off.
“I think we probably talk to them more now from the road than we did before,” Bart says. “The world is a smaller place now. Staying in contact is not difficult.”
Bart lived and worked in Westport, Co Mayo, for 23 years, where he worked as a vet before co-founding Mescan Brewery. Inge’s veterinary practice is in Belgium, so she spent years splitting her time between the two countries – an experience she wryly describes as “exciting”.
They set off on their bikes eight months ago, and have cycled through Europe, Central Asia, China and southeast Asia, taking in the notoriously tough and mountainous Pamir Highway in Tajikistan, which reaches its highest point of 4,655m above sea level at the Ak-Baital Pass.
Bart and Inge can fund their travel and plans to return to Africa, where Bart began his veterinary career and has always longed to return to live, by renting a property in Mayo and a short-term holiday let in Belgium. This affords them a lot of freedom, they acknowledge, but Bart points out that some countries are affordable for anyone considering a midlife gap year.
“I can get a super hotel room in China for €6,” he says. “You can’t even pitch a tent in Ireland for that. So you don’t have to be super rich to do it.”
While family and property ties to Ireland and Belgium are not severed, they are ready for a big move to Zimbabwe when their cycle is over in May 2026. For Inge, this means using her long hours in the saddle each day to think and re-evaluate. Her Belgian veterinary practice has been taken over by a colleague while she cycles, but decisions about her future beckon.
“I really feel like I am too young to do nothing,” she says. “I am thinking about the future. If we move to Africa, I will need a new goal in my life. I am thinking about that new goal a lot while I am cycling.”
What would the couple say to others contemplating taking a midlife gap year to reinject some adventure into their lives? “Yes you can, and don’t let anybody tell you any different,” Bart says. “There will always be obstacles, but if you want something enough, you can do it.”
“Don’t be afraid!” Inge adds. “Don’t think, just do.”
Mark Graham: ‘Life is short and the world is big’
Mark Graham (51) is a lecturer in music technology in the South East Technological University (SETU) in Waterford. His job in education has permitted him to take a two-year career break to fulfil his dream of cycling around the world.
“I applied for two years of unpaid leave, and the theory is that you can go back and your job is still there for you,” he says. “I’ll be back in work on the first day of semester two, 2027.”
A growing awareness of his mortality was part of Mark’s personal trigger for a midlife career break, as well as a hunger to see as much of the planet as possible.
“Life is short, and the world is big,” he says. “As you get older and death looms on the horizon, your time becomes more precious and you start to think about how you can get the most value out of the short time you have.”
Despite countless life-changing experiences on his bicycle, leaving behind family and work commitments isn’t always easy, Mark warns. “Some of the hardest things are not the mountains or the headwinds, but the things you should have been at home for,” he says.
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“I had a family member in hospital for surgery recently. I would have liked to have been there for that. Also, extracting yourself from a life that is not set up to allow us to take time out is difficult: bank loans, repayments, job commitments. There are lots of obstacles and red tape.”
Mark feels his career break, and the more than 18,000km he has cycled in 20 countries so far, has changed his outlook on life, though he says it’s been “no great epiphany, but slow change by degrees”.
Because he’s returning to an existing role when his career break is over, he hasn’t been contemplating a brand new direction, but says that cycling the world is broadening his horizons and will enable him to bring renewed vitality to his teaching work for years to come.
Mark had to pause his pension payments during his career break, which will mean upping his contributions after he returns to be able to benefit from a full pension at the end of his working life, but he feels it’s a small price to pay to have been able to go on the adventure of a lifetime.
“‘Some day’ might never come,” he says. “If we say, ‘Some say we’ll cycle across Kazakhstan,’ that might never happen. You have to say you will do it.”
Barbara and Jordi Sanchez: ‘You never know what the future will bring’
Jordi and Barbara Sanchez set off on a two-year cycling adventure on Jordi’s 50th birthday in May 2023. The couple extended their trip by an extra year, and are currently cycling back through Turkey towards Europe to return to Dublin, having cycled nearly 36,000km through 34 countries to date.
Jordi, from Spain, worked in landscape gardening while Barbara, from Poland, was working as a maternity nurse when they decided it was time for a break.
The decision was precipitated by Jordi’s health: he received a shock diagnosis of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), a degenerative disease with no cure, in his 30s. For someone in his situation, there really is no time like the present, he says.
“When people say, ‘Why don’t you wait until you retire to take a trip?’ I can’t,” Jordi says. “Right now it is already very difficult, so when I am 65 it might not be possible at all.”
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“I used to work in nursing homes and at the end of people’s lives, they usually expressed regret about things they never did,” Barbara adds. “I didn’t want to go through life with regrets.”
The couple sold all their possessions, saved what they could, and set off with just €16,000: a budget of €400 per month.
“When you travel by bike for a long time with no return date, you watch your money differently,” Barbara says. “Budget is something we’ve had to consider in many situations.”
Their first year saw them tour Europe and South America, where Jordi’s dream of visiting the Salar de Uyuni salt flats of Bolivia saw him struggle with his COPD at high altitudes. “I visited one hospital in every South American country,” he says with a laugh.
“We have one pannier bag for Jordi’s medication, and we had to buy him oxygen for the altitude,” Barbara says.
For Jordi, their time at Salar de Uyuni remains the high point of their travels in more ways than one, partly because of the physical struggle of getting there. “He cried like a baby, he was so happy,” Barbara says.
Having cycled southeast Asia, China, Mongolia, Central Asia and Georgia, Barbara and Jordi are making their way home to Dublin, but they’re not alone: in Kazakhstan, the couple rescued an injured puppy, Lulu, and crowdfunded vet’s bills to restore her to health.
Barbara has also written a book, Cycling to the End of the World: Dublin – Ushuaia, sales of which are helping the couple with the cost of returning to Ireland.
Both will return to their pre-cycle professions after they get home, and have some trepidation about going back to work after such a life-changing experience on the road.
“Another cyclist we know thinks there should be therapy for long-term cyclists coming home to settle back into society,” Barbara says. “I think she might be right! But we still have time to enjoy our last few months and not worry. You never know what the future will bring.”
