This week on the Tough Girl Podcast, I’m joined by Veronica White — a PhD student, photographer, and outdoor adventurer who is combining academic research with exploration in a truly unique way.
For her final year at the University of Exeter, Veronica set out on an extraordinary journey: cycling more than 2,000 miles across England to explore how women envision the future of farming. Her Farming Futures Tour— meeting and interviewing 50 women along the way who are shaping the future of food and agriculture.
Born in the US and raised in the Netherlands, Veronica’s path into farming wasn’t traditional. With a background in environmental science and food security, she’s found her passion in connecting people, place, and purpose — and using adventure as both a research method and a personal challenge.
In our conversation, we talk about how she planned and trained for the project, what it was like to balance the mental and physical demands of fieldwork on the move, and why she believes surrounding yourself with people who say “yes” can make all the difference.
Tune in to hear how Veronica turned her PhD into a pedal-powered exploration of England’s rural landscapes — and how adventure can open new ways of seeing, learning, and connecting.
New episodes of the Tough Girl Podcast drop every Tuesday at 7 AM (UK time)! Make sure to subscribe so you never miss the inspiring journeys and incredible stories of tough women pushing boundaries.
Do you want to support the Tough Girl Mission to increase the amount of female role models in the media in the world of adventure and physical challenges? Support via Patreon! Join me in making a difference by signing up here: www.patreon.com/toughgirlpodcast (http://www.patreon.com/toughgirlpodcast) .
Your support makes a difference. Thank you x
Show notes
• Who is Veronica?
• Final year PhD student at the University of Exeter (https://www.exeter.ac.uk/)
• Cycling over 2,000 miles across England for her PhD fieldwork
• Being born in the US and raised in the Netherlands
• Her interest in food and farming
• Studying environmental science for her undergraduate degree at the University of East Anglia (https://www.uea.ac.uk/)
• Reading up more on food waste
• Deciding to do a Masters in Food Security and Sustainable Agriculture
• Not having a background in farming, but doing volunteer work on farms
• Doing cycling as a social activity
• Starting her blog during the pandemic in 2020
• Spending time exploring the South West Coast Path (https://www.southwestcoastpath.org.uk/)
• Naming her blog – Coves to Cliffs (https://www.covestocliffs.com/)
• Using the blog to get away from social media
• Not getting sucked into the world of SEO and affiliate marketing
• Wanting the blog to be a collection of memories and stories and not just another marketing tool
• What The Farming Futures Tour (https://www.covestocliffs.com/farming-futures-cycle-tour) is
• Speaking to 50 women on the tour
• The reasons for cycling
• Being supported and encouraged by her supervisors
• Spending a year planning and training for the project
• Finding the women to speak with
• What the fieldwork looked like
• The futures triangle
• Autoethnography method – reflecting on your own personal experiences – while cycling through the landscapes
• Planning and logistics for such a long trip
• Receiving funding from the Royal Geographical Society and a charity organisation, Act Big Live Small (https://www.actbiglivesmall.com/)
• Setting off on the journey
• Balancing the mental and physical sides of the challenge
• Dealing with fatigue
• Finding new strategies to cope with the work load
• Doing voice notes instead of writing field notes
• The bike and gear set up
• Off Cut Gear (https://www.offcutgear.com/)
• The highlights from the trip
• Still having to write the PhD!
• Food and farming
• Finding lunch in rural areas
• Cycling hunger
• How to connect with Veronica (https://www.covestocliffs.com/contact)
• Planning the next adventure?
• Final words of advice
• Surround yourself with people who say yes
Social Media
Blog www.covestocliffs.com (https://www.covestocliffs.com/)
Instagram @farmingfutures_cycle (https://www.instagram.com/farmingfutures_cycle/?hl=en)
Youtube: @veronicaa_white (https://www.youtube.com/@veronicaa_white)
[Music] Hello and welcome to the Tough Girl Podcast, a three-time award-winning show that aims to motivate and inspire you while increasing the amount of female role models in the media, especially in relation to adventure and physical challenges. I’m your host, Sarah Williams. If you’re passionate about adventure, challenge, and learning from women who have overcome obstacles and achieved remarkable things, then this is the podcast for you. Every Tuesday at 7 a.m., new episodes go live, featuring incredible women who share their stories, insights, and tips to help you achieve your dreams and goals. You can support the Tough Girl mission by signing up as a patron. Visit Patreon p.com/tuffgirlpodcast. Keep listening until the very end as I share more information about what’s going on with me with Tough Girl Challenges, give shoutouts, and recommend other ToughGirl podcast episodes. More information can be found at toughgirlchallenges.com. [Music] [Music] Hi, I’m Veronica. I’m a final year PhD student at the University of Exit. And this spring I cycled over 2,000 m across England for my PhD field work which was looking at visions for the future of farming and food production in England. And along the way I interviewed 50 women in farming communities about their visions for the future. And I’m currently in the process of going through all the transcripts from from those interviews and sort of editing them before I begin my analysis and then eventual write up for my PhD thesis. Did you Did you grow up in the countryside? Are you from a farming background? So, no, I’m not from a farming background. So, I was born in the US and then raised in the Netherlands. So, that’s where I got my interest in cycling. My family didn’t have a car, so I grew up kind of cycling and taking public transport everywhere. My interest in sort of food and farming really stemmed from a field trip I went on during my undergraduate degree. So I studied environmental science at the University of East Anglia and we visited southern Spain on um one of my modules and as part of that we actually visited some of the green houses in Almaria which is where a lot of the vegetables that we eat in the UK actually come from and we visited one greenhouse where the entire crop of red peppers was just being left to rot on the vine because they hadn’t grown big enough to be sold in the supermarkets in kind of um Western Europe. That moment was just so it made such an impact on me that I then started reading more about food waste and that sort of started me to read more about the food system more broadly and just how our food system really interacts with sustainability and our our environment and it was through that kind of experience that I then decided to do a master’s in food security and sustainable agriculture and everything has sort of rolled on from there. So, so no background in farming. I have now volunteered on four different farms to sort of understand what it’s like to live on a farm and to do that kind of manual labor and farm work. But yeah, no childhood experience on farms. But isn’t it amazing like one experience can affect you like so profoundly and I mean it almost just seems ridiculous like you know describing that like just food just going to to waste but then what I love is that you then like followed it up like you know learning more about it doing your masters you know working on different farms doing your doing your PhD so we’re going to combine everything together and so one of the other aspects that you mentioned obviously is the cycling and you said you you brought up in the Netherlands, didn’t have a car, doing cycling. Did you ever go on like solo cycle adventures or go on your own sort of adventurous trips when you when you were younger? I don’t really think I did. So, cycling was very much like a social activity for me growing up in the Netherlands. Like I would go for for cycle rides with friends as like an activity, you know, we would or we go cycle to the the city nearby to then go do whatever we wanted to do to do in the H or Leiden. But um I don’t think I did a huge amount by myself. It was mostly with friends and I never did any kind of bike packing or bike touring or anything like that. So when did you start your blog? Do you want to share more about your blog? Yeah, sure. So I started the blog um it was during the pandemic in 2020 and spent a lot of time sort of just exploring the southwest coast path near exit and came up with this idea of life sort of being like the coast path where you’re kind of going from the coes down by the water up to the cliffs constantly this constant up and down like a roller coaster, right? And that life’s quite like that as well. you know, you’ve got those kind of low moments where you’re kind of down maybe by the coast and then you go up to the highs, the cliffs. Um, and so that that’s where the name Cove to Cliffs came from was all that time I was spent out on the Southwest Coast Path. For me, actually, the blog was mostly about trying to get a little bit away from social media. I was realizing I was having quite an unhealthy relationship sharing my photography on Instagram. And I just wanted a way to be able to share my photography and share the stories of my adventures in a more meaningful way where I could actually really write about what I was doing and and share my photography um in a way that didn’t feel like I was being influenced by an algorithm or what people on social media like to see. There’s something on your blog which I’m just going to read out which I absolutely love and I feel as though I need to add something sort of similar in relation to the podcast, but you said as a blogger it’s tempting to get sucked into the world of SEO and affiliate marketing. You said I value authentic storytelling over what’s likely to be most successful on Google or social media more than anything. I want this blog to be a collection of memories and stories, not yet another marketing tool. And that really sort of connected with me as well, especially I suppose from the from the point of view of of the podcast just as in it’s sharing women’s women’s stories and a whole variety of different women’s stories and and actually sometimes you know like if I interview women who’ve done say dragon boat racing or or something which isn’t maybe seen as very sort of mainstream and maybe isn’t going to get the most download for example but then for me it’s not. So in my world, it’s not about like the SEO, it will be about like downloads. And it’s almost like, well, it’s not about that. It’s about the fact that there will be women listening who really connect to that. Even if it’s only a couple of hundred, it’s still making a difference. So it’s almost, you know, choosing the stories that don’t get heard and like amplifying them. So I really I really appreciate you sort of writing that on your on your blog and sort of blogging about it. You blog about your photography. you blog about your your PhD. You um there’s also blog posts on the farming futures cycle tour and that’s what we’re going to be digging into. So I’d love to just sort of take it back a sec. So talk us through where the idea came from, you know, with you coming up to head off on this farming future cycle tour. Um yeah, what was the story behind that? So the farming future cycle tour really stemmed from my PhD research looking at visions for the future of farming and I was really interested in actually going out to speak to people on the ground who are involved in food production to find out how they imagine the future and what they want to see from the future of farming and food production. And I was specifically interested in speaking with women in farming communities because you know as we’ve just been talking about their stories aren’t necessarily being told as often. there was an interesting link between, you know, me as a woman going into the cycling kind of world and um my participants being women in the very male-dominated uh farming industry. So, yeah, I I knew I wanted to speak to women, but I wanted to speak to women across the country, and I never learned how to drive. As I said, we didn’t have a car when I was growing up in the Netherlands. And so I actually realized the easiest way for me to get to farms across the country was going to be by bike because if anyone’s tried to travel around rural areas in England by public transport, that’s not going to be necessarily the most reliable option of travel. Um, and so yeah, I decided, what if I did this by bike? And I remember proposing the project idea to my PhD supervisors and just saying to them, I know this is like such a wild idea. I’m not going to be like heartbroken if you say no. Like I completely understand if this is too too ridiculous. And my supervisors were like, “This is so cool. Like you have to do this. We love this.” Which I’m so grateful for because I know a lot of PhD students wouldn’t necessarily have that um support from their supervisors. But yeah, so I basically spent a year planning for the project and training for it as well. And so the idea was to basically cycle across England. So from L’s end in Cornwall all the way up to the Scottish border, but not taking a very direct route because farming types in England vary um quite a lot depending on the geographic area you’re in. So I knew I wanted to go out east where there’s the big kind of massive flat arable farms. So my route took me from Land’s End up through Devon or up through Cornwall, Devon, um up into London and then out east through Essex, SuffK, um Norfolk, then through Lincolnshire and then up into Yorkshire and then finally ending in Cumbria. So yeah, it wasn’t the most direct route, but I was basically stopping along the way to interview women in farming communities as I went and it was a fantastic experience. How did you find the the women to interview? Yeah. So, one way I kind of got around this was that I decided I wasn’t just going to focus on women who identified as farmers, but more kind of broadly looking at women who live, work, or volunteer on farms. Actually, like when I was out east, it was hard to find women who were sort of involved in these really big scale arable and horiculture operations. But, so I was also speaking to kind of farmers wives or farmer’s daughters. they didn’t necessarily have to identify as a farmer. And the way that I kind of recruited participants ended up varying dramatically. So there was quite a few people that I was put in touch with by contacts I already had. I had quite a few people reach out to me through Instagram or Facebook cuz I was putting a a lot of stuff out on social media. I was able to advertise my project um through various different farming organizations. So had some people contact me through that way. I had campsite owners who would just be like, “Oh, yeah. I know this farmer up the road. Like, why don’t you go chat to her?” Or people that I stayed with would just put me in touch with people in their local area. There was a couple times where I’d just ring up a farm shop and be like, “There any women I could interview?” So, it ended up being such um a range of kind of recruitment strategies. But it is really positive that I was able to actually recruit so many people because there’s a lot of challenges right now in research to get farmers to participate in projects like this just because there’s such an over research population. And so the fact that I was able to speak to 50 women I think is a testament to kind of the excitement the project had and the novelty and the excitement that my participants had in getting involved and supporting me on this project as well. What did your fieldwork look like in terms of like the interviews? Yeah. Like was it was it like you had like 10 set questions or was it more like were you filming them? Was it audio recordings? Yeah. Like did you have you this I don’t know. It’s like did you have a plan that you had to follow or did you have more sort of flexibility with that? Yeah. So it was fairly flexible in terms of sort of adapting to my participants needs in terms of time or um how I was going to structure the the interview process. So yeah, my kind of two main methods were the the interviews with with farming women and then I also did a lot of kind of autoethnographic reflection which I can share more about in a bit. But for the interviews I basically audio recorded them. So, I just use my phone, like the voice memos app on my iPhone. And the first half of the interview is typically kind of just getting to know my participant, having them share their background, how they ended up working and living on that farm, telling me more about what the farm produces, the kind of agricultural practices they were using. And then the second half of the interview was looking at the past, present, and future of farming. And I structured that using um a tool called the futures triangle. And that was basically just to help us think about these different temporal kind of points and think about how they might interact. And I used what’s it called? Like um reusable flash cards almost like dry erase flashards. Yeah. So I used dry erase flashards and I would take notes as my participants were chatting about the past, present, and future and lay them out around that triangle. Um, and that was really great because it gave a sort of interactive element to the interview because at the end we could both step back and look at all the notes of things that they’d said and then we could discuss things, they could add things if they wanted to. Um, and then I’d ask them to highlight which factors they kind of thought stood out or thought were most important. So that was sort of yeah the interview protocol. And then quite often after the interview I’d get to go have a look around the farm with my participant. they’d show me around and I really enjoyed that aspect as well to get to see all these different farms and like one thing that really struck me doing all these interviews on all these different types of farms is just like the incredible diversity of farms in England even if you know it’s two arable farms and they’re both growing wheat, you know, their practices and how the farm is laid out and the geographical and weather elements that they have to deal with are going to be so different and so specific to that one farm um that everyone although they all have a lot of similar challenges. They all face individual challenges as well which is really interesting. And you said another word is that you’re going to do an auto ethnosic. What’s what’s that? Yeah. So this is a method in kind of geography and other disciplines which is very much about reflecting on your own personal experience. So for me this was about reflecting on my experience cycling through these landscapes. So obviously cycling is very much like a physical experience right? You’re not just looking around and seeing these landscapes that you’re traveling through, but you’re actually feeling them. You know, I was feeling the landscapes in my legs as I’m, you know, climbing up the hills in Cumbria or um but you’re also hearing them. I’m hearing the birds. I’m hearing the animals, the livestock in the barns that I’m passing through. I’m smelling the different landscapes. Um whether that’s the wild garlic kind of growing on the verges or the smell of um manure being spread, which is not quite as pleasant. Um, so I was reflecting on all of those kind of experiences as I was cycling. So I attached a lapel mic to um my high viz jacket and basically could record voice notes while I was riding. And those ended up being kind of the bulk of my field notes for my research. I’m not entirely sure how those will all be analyzed yet, but um it’s nice to kind of have that memory also of of the trip um recorded in that way. So before you started sort of the adventure in terms of the the cycling aspect, you know, what were you planning on camping? Were you going to stay with with people along the way? The logistics, were you going to be um sticking to quite a tight budget? Did you have funding for it? What did that side look like with regards to like the cycling and planning such a long adventure? Yeah, so the planning, as I said, took quite a few months in the kind of leadup to the project. I did go through um a couple different funding applications and I was really lucky to receive funding from the Royal Geographical Society and a charitable foundation called Act Big, Live Small. And then I did a lot of training for the ride. So, I basically rode on all the National Cycle Network routes in Devon um or as many as I could just to practice getting out on the roads, practice on the hills. I cycled from Exit to Falmouth for my master’s graduation. So, that was my first kind of big multi-day bike packing or bike touring trip. And that was really just a proof of concept to see am I strong enough to do this? Is this something I want to do? And after that trip, which was four four days, I think I was like, “Okay, if I can do Devon and Cornwall, I can do England.” Um, so after that trip, I was like, “Okay, I’m committed to doing this.” Now, in terms of what I was where I was planning to stay. So, it was very much a mix of camping, but then also some hotels, some warm shower hosts. I also stayed with friends and family, stayed with just strangers that were, you know, connected by, oh, this person knows this person, you should go stay with them. And I stayed with three of my participants as well, which was really lovely. So, yeah, very much a mix. Um, some of the kind of most challenging logistical elements for me were actually to do with like the risk assessment and the ethics application that I had to go through with the university, which obviously these are both very important processes to go through, but they were just lengthy, very lengthy documents um that took a while to kind of um to finalize. So, take us to the start of your journey, you know, sort of setting off, you know, how was it for you? because I suppose um I’ve done a a big cycle ride before from Vancouver all the way down to Caban Lucas and um obviously not doing field research for a PhD but sharing on social media. So, so very very different and even you know when I hike I document my my journeys and share on social media but I do sort of find that with like sort of the physicality of the challenges sometimes I can get uh quite brain dead or very sort of fatigued and I’m just sort of wondering how you balance that because obviously you need your brain switched on and working and obviously when you’re riding a bike there is you know the dangers of the road so you’ve got to be aware of your surroundings. ing sort of all all the time and then um you know getting to places on time when you’ve got your interviews booked in, conducting all the interviews, doing your field work, making sure everything’s documented and you know doing what you need to do. How did you balance that out? Sort of the mental and the physical because was that quite sort of draining? Yeah. So it was something I think I underestimated. I’d sort of planned out the trip that I’d be doing, you know, 5 days of cycling a week up to 70ish kilometers and having two rest days a week. And that fully just went out the window like very quickly. So, I was cycling a lot on most days, but I wasn’t cycling as far necessarily. And I also massively massively underestimated how far I’d be cycling in total. So, I thought I’d be cycling around 2,000 km, and I ended up cycling around 2,000 miles because I kind of had hadn’t factored in the the fact that I’d need to be cycling out to the farms and cycling out to the campsites that aren’t actually on my A2B route. So, that was if you’re planning something like this, make sure you factor in a lot of extra distance for that. But um yeah, in terms of kind of the fatigue, I think one thing I underestimated was about I sort of just thought when I was off the bike I’d be able to relax and that just was not the case. Cuz when I was off the bike, I was planning, you know, okay, where am I camping tomorrow? Where am I getting lunch tomorrow? Where can I get food? Who am I contacting? I need to contact someone to interview in 2 days from now. What social media content should I be posting? So there was just constantly things like I was just on my phone constantly when I wasn’t on the bike. Um and I think I hadn’t I hadn’t anticipated that and that was challenging. Yeah. How did you sort of handle that challenge because it I can imagine that’s almost quite overwhelming like trying to handle lots of moving parts especially you know if you’re you’re blogging you’re sharing on social media arranging the interviews doing you know there’s there’s a lot there’s a lot going on. Did you have to develop certain strategies that you found that worked for you? Yeah. So like I mean for example one of the strategies in terms of the research was around doing voice notes instead of written field notes. So I’d bought these like gorgeous waterproof notebooks that I was going to handw write all my field notes in. I was super ambitious and literally I think I I wrote handwritten field notes for maybe the first two days. Um, and then the rest of my field notes were done by voice note cuz I could just record, you know, as I was waiting for something to cook and it was just so much faster. I could get so much more down, like so much um more recorded than I would be able to write. So that was one kind of strategy. And then the other strategy is like I really prioritized sleep. So I’m also a photographer and like usually when I go camping, I’m getting up in the middle of the night to photograph the stars or I’m getting up at sunrise to take pictures of of sunrise. Whereas on this trip, I was like, you know what? I I just can’t get up at 4:30 in the morning to take pictures of sunrise every day because I really need to sleep. And so sleep was a big a big thing. You know, I was getting into campsites and I would go to bed pretty early and try and stay asleep for as long as I could because I knew I needed to have that rest um to as you said to be safe on the roads um and to have the kind of mental capacity to do the interviews as well. And tell about your bike. What was your bike setup and gear? Did you have a special bike for it? Like did you already have all of the gear that you that you needed? You know, what did that look like? Yeah. So, I ended up buying a new bike for it. So, this is the first time I’ve ever owned a new bike. All of my bikes previously have been secondhand. Um, and so that was quite a big deal. I’m very grateful that my parents basically bought my bike for me. And I got a Genesis Tor, which is lovely. She’s called Elfie from Alpha Bone Wicked. And um a lot of the gear I was able to borrow. So I was very lucky that you know my parents had done some bike touring so they had all the pier bags that I needed. I was able to borrow a lot of camping gear off of the couple who run the the charitable foundation I mentioned earlier. So that really helped not having to to purchase a lot of those kind of big item things. But I did get a really lovely frame bag from a oh wait it’s called offcut gear. I think he’s called Ben that does it. And that’s one of my favorite things about the bike. I think it just gives the whole setup such like personality and so much color. And it was very helpful to have a frame bag for storing snacks that I could easily access on the road. And you know, you obviously you have been around bikes for a very very long time. Have you also picked up sort of the um the mechanical knowledge so that you can you know if anything does go wrong with the bike you can fix it or did you need to take underdo like a special course or something just to um increase your knowledge in that area? Yeah. So I think the issue with growing up in the Netherlands um was that I never actually learned how to fix my own bike because my dad would do it or you just bring it to the bike shop and they do it. Um, and also I feel like Dutch bikes just like don’t break very much. But anyways, so no, I had no bike mechanic skills when I started this and I would say they’re still pretty limited. I did do a one-day course in Bristol, like a bike maintenance course, which was really helpful, but you know, whether I would have remembered any of those skills while on the road, I’m not sure. And I was very lucky that I didn’t have a single flat tire on my ride because in theory I know how to change a flat tire. And I’ve done it on my old bike multiple times, but I’ve never had to do it on the Genesis and I think it would be a lot more challenging. So I was very lucky and very glad that I didn’t have to change any flats while I was on the road. What are some of the highlights from the trip? You know, like the standout moments. Was it the start? Was it the finish? Was there any sort of like cool moments that you sort of experienced? Yeah, I think in terms of like the places that I visited, I really really liked Yorkshire. So, I’d never been there before. I loved riding through the Yorkshire Dales. That was probably like one of the highlights. And then in terms of the the kind of project as a whole, I think I just really enjoyed getting to meet all these different women and hear their visions for the future and just kind of see their resilience. farmers in England right now are facing a huge amount of challenges and pressures and you know the fact that these women were willing to kind of welcome me into their homes, sit with me for you know sometimes 3 4 hours um once you add in the interview and the farm tour and having a cup of tea and you know just that kindness and openness was really touching and I think also I think I was probably a bit starved for human connection as it was getting towards the end of the trip and I so I think just being able to sit down and like just chat with someone was really valuable. Yeah. How was coming to the end of the trip and sort of like finishing I suppose this you know the farming future cycles all this amazing sort of adventure combined with your with your PhD research. Was it relief? Was it adventure blues? Was it a bit almost maybe is when I say scary I mean because now suddenly you’ve got all of this information and it’s like right it’s the next step sort of thing. Yeah. What was it like towards the end? Yeah. So, I I joke sort of before the trip, I was like, I’m going to either get to the end and like never want to get on a bike again or I’m going to get to the end and like really wish I’d gone all the way to Jona Gros cuz it was something we discussed um was like, oh, should I finish the trip and then just for fun just ride up to Jona Gros? But I actually ended up injuring my back in the last week of my trip. And so by the time it was finished, I was like, “Oh my goodness, I’m so glad. like I’m so ready to go home. I think if I hadn’t gotten injured, I would have been, you know, happy to keep going, but we didn’t actually decide to do John in the end anyway, so it’s fine. I was just going to go home at the end, but I was like very very much ready to to not be on the bike and to not be camping. So, yeah, was was glad when it finished. But I was also really worried because, you know, this trip and planning for this trip had been my life for a year and I was really worried like I’m going to get home and I’m not going to have that to look forward to anymore. I’m not going to like who am I going to be if if I’ve not got that trip anymore. But, you know, it’s been a couple months now. I got I finished the trip in July and now it’s um early October and you know, I’m still I’m chatting to you about it, right? Like it’s still part of my identity. I think I maybe was worried that it would finish and that would be it, you know, it’d be over. But obviously, I’ve still got a whole PhD to write. Like, it’s it’s not over. And I think that’s maybe quite nice about the project actually is that it’s going to be with me for a while. I think I’m obviously got the thesis to write up. I’ve got a lot of speaking opportunities coming up over the next month. Um, and who knows what will what will happen from it after that. So did you you had a bit of downtime before sort of heading back to extra to start and is now this final year this is just where you’ve got to write is it 80,000 words you’ve got to write or what’s it look like for you? Yeah. So I think the maximum is 100,000 but I think we’re very much told not to reach that many words cuz apparently the people who read your thesis will not be happy if it’s that long. Um, so I I’m not entirely sure what kind of word limit I’m aiming for, but yeah, I’ve basically got the next year to do all of my analysis. So, basically going back through all my interviews, coming up with key themes, seeing um what kind of key areas of similarity there are between the different visions, whether there’s key differences between how people imagine the future, and then yeah, turning that into a thesis somehow. Um, but I’m I’m sure between now and then there’ll be lots of discussions with my supervisors about how I want to structure it and kind of what the key findings are um and what story we want to tell. You’ve done something similar on um on your blog coastcliffs.com. There is you’ve got like a tour stat. So your total distance cycled was 3,242 km. Total elevation gain 28,800 m. Your longest day was 118.5 kilometers from Reading to London. 71 days on the bike, 41 nights camping, 43 nights um spent indoors. But then you’ve also got a really good one for the farming future cycle touring numbers as well, like all the counties that you cycle through. 10 Sunday rows, nine books read, eight wild swims. I love it. It’s like uh six national parks, six cycling companions, three radio interview, two heat waves, two preventative visits to bike mechanics. Um it’s really great to have um to have all of those stats um which is awesome. So with with some of those stats that I have mentioned obviously, you know, there are some big numbers there and I particularly did like the 10 Sunday roasts. Um but talk let’s talk about food while you’re cycling. Obviously like food is linked into farming. Farmers produced food. So how was the food on your on your trip? You know, what was what was that like for you? Yeah, so food ended up being one of the bigger stresses on my trip than I was expecting. I did have camping meals with me that I would have for dinner mostly when I was at campsites, but actually finding lunch in rural areas was a lot harder than I was anticipating. You know, I think I’m quite lucky being in Devon where when I go for a ride, it’s like you’re going to come across come across a cafe or a farm shop or something, but out east and kind of up into Yorkshire, there was whole mornings or where I would go and just see absolutely nothing um where I could easily get something to eat. And I think that’s because a lot of the food infrastructure is built around the big roads, which obviously I was avoiding. So that did end up being a challenge. But yeah, as you mentioned, I had 10 Sunday roasts. The plan was to have a Sunday roast every week. Um, but I was getting so sick of Sunday roasts. I was really struggling. So, I can’t even remember the two weeks that I didn’t have them. Why? What happened on those weeks or what I did on those weeks? Oh, one of them was because I was at the North Yorkshire County Fair or County Show. So, couldn’t have a Sunday roast cuz I was at the agricultural show, which I think is a good excuse. I mean, I did have some fantastic food and I think the food highlights were probably the times that I got to share meals with other people. So, whether that was my warm showers hosts that very kindly cooked meals um or I went to a conference in Cumbria and we had like big communal meals, those are probably the food highlights for me. When I’m hiking, I get something called hyper hunger. You know, when you’re physically exert exerting yourself, like it gets to the point where sometimes I can look say like there’s like four people around a table and there’s four meals. I could eat everything on that table and I’m like, and I’m not even joking. Like I could just eat and eat and eat and eat. Did you get the same thing with the with the cycling? Did you get sort of like a cycling hunger? I definitely was very hungry cuz I would I’d have these um camping meals that I think were like 800 calories, which I think is meant to be like quite a good robust meal and I’d finish that and just be like, “Yeah, I’m I’m still hungry.” Yeah. Um so I ate a lot of candy. I ate a lot of biscuits. I I discovered dark chocolate hobnobs for the first time. Those are fantastic except for when they all melt into like one big mess. But um yeah, so I was I was definitely pretty hungry. It’s honestly I think it’s just a a great thing to to have done like the way that you’ve combined like your loves and your interests and and how you sort of documented it. And Veronica, do you just want to share where people can find out more information about you about the academic side of things, but also your photography and your your cycling adventures? Where are you most active on social media? Yeah. So, for the project, for the Farming Futures cycle tour, I’ve got a project Instagram and a project Facebook page. So, the Instagram is Farming Futures cycle and the Facebook page is just the Farming Futures cycle tour. And then my blog is sort of all my other adventures. There’ll be some more stuff about the the cycle tour on there probably. Um, but yeah, as we’ve mentioned before, that’s coes to cliffs and I think those are sort of the most most active. Fantastic. And are you planning another cycle ride or another big adventure after you finished your PhD? I haven’t got anything sort of in the works at the minute. I think right now I’ve been uh procrastinating actually doing my PhD work. So I think that needs to be the focus right now. I can understand that. So when do you have to hand it in then? Next year like next is there a deadline? Yeah. So, it kind of depends how I end up structuring the next year, but it’s going to be between September and December next year at some point within there. Yeah. Amazing. Well, honestly, like just just best of luck with it. It sounds super super exciting. Thank you so much. And I’d love for you to share your words of wisdom, words of advice for other women who are maybe they might not be thinking of doing, you know, a PhD. They might be or doing like a big cycle trip, but they might be. But I suppose for women who want to sort of, you know, combine their passions, you know, to have like a wild idea and to think outside the box and and do something which is a little bit different apart from just do it. Is there any advice that you would like to share? I think maybe and I don’t know how easy this is to do, but I’d say find people or surround yourself with people who say yes. You know, as I was planning this project, I just was waiting for someone to say, “No, you can’t do that. That’s ridiculous. Like, you can’t do a PhD like that.” But I was so lucky that I didn’t have anyone who said that. Like, everyone I chatted to about the project was like, “Yeah, that sounds cool. You should do that.” And I think if you can surround yourself with people like that that build you up and you know are maybe even more confident in your ideas than you are then um then I think that’s a good good spot to start. I think that’s a really really good spot to to start actually because sometimes you can have this idea and it’s like this sort of um I remember when I wanted to do like my masters and I had this like and I was like oh you know should should I do this or not and it was almost like like a like a little gentle flame and to be honest if somebody had sort of said no or laughed at me or done you know done something like that I think it would have extinguished the flame just because it wasn’t burning bright enough initially at the start and I hadn’t like fully sort of committed to And so actually like making sure that you tell the right people who are going to be really supportive and encouraging say yes of course you can do that. Yes 100% we believe in you can make a massive difference. So yeah massive congratulations on this really exciting project the farming teacher cycle tour and best of luck with writing the PhD. No more procrastination but Veronica thank you so much and please do keep us um updated with how the the PhD goes and I can’t wait to see it on your blog when you become Dr. Veronica White. A thank you so much. It’s been lovely chatting. [Music] Hey, hey, hey tribe. Hope you’re doing super well. I always love speaking to people who combine all their passions. So Veronica’s passions for research, for cycling, for farming, for food waste, for sustainability and putting it all together and actually studying that I think is amazing. I’m also a massive encourager and motivator for you to get qualifications in the subjects that you love and inspire you. So whether that is land mountain leader becoming a mountain leader an international mountain leader whether it’s going back to university to get your first degree to get a master’s to go for a PhD to go and get qualifications in things that you are interested and passionate if you’re thinking about a career change go for it follow those passions get your qualifications get those certificates invest in yourself and invest in your future. Now, on the ToughGirl website, we do have um a resources page and there is one dedicated to scientists and researchers. And there we have such an amazing collection of different women doing a whole variety of different things from Jen Benson. She’s a running coach, author, and also a PhD researcher. And she wrote a book called The Path We Run, and she shares more about her ultramarathon adventure adventures. We’ve also spoken to anthropologists, earth scientists. We’ve spoken to Dr. Sophie Redlin, who’s an expedition doctor, researcher, and also an emerging filmmaker with a passion for improving mental health care through cross-cultural learning and promoting access to natural environments. Dr. Ellena Drinkwater. She is a bug, nut, and adventurer. She was awarded inspirational explorer of the year award by the scientific expedition society. We’ve spoken to uh Dr. Serita Robinson who is known as doctor aka Dr. survival who is a leading academic researcher in survival psychology sharing how to improve your chances of survival in disaster situations. We have spoken um I’m trying to read through all the list of names of the amazing women that we’ve spoken to but you know other researchers as well. So Emily Penn she’s an ocean advocate and skipper and she’s looking at how to solve the plastic pollution crisis. We have got Dr. Tammy Jovenelli who’s a world explorer. She focuses on major river systems including the Nile, the Amazon, the Mississippi, um, etc. We have spoken to Dr. Stacy Sims who’s a leading global expert on female physiology and endurance training. She is also the author of RAW. So, loads of women studying their passions, going after their qualifications. I highly encourage you to go after those skills, get qualified, invest in yourself, invest in your future. Um, little mini update from me. So in the past couple of episodes I probably talked about making of a film which is called 10. So a combination of celebrating 10 years of the tough girl podcast and me hiking the GR10 across the French Pyrenees. So worked really really hard on that film with Jess and we submitted it to the BMC Women in Adventure Film Festival which is going to be held at Kendall this year. Unfortunately, it didn’t get selected, which is really, really gutting, especially when you work really, really hard at something. But then, you know, the reason I share this as well is it’s still important for that film to be out there. It’s still important for the film to be shown. You know, I’d love for you to watch it. Patrons will have received an update on that and access to the film via private link. So, if you visit Patreon, you’ll get access to it if you’re a paid member. And then, I’m not quite sure when I’m going to release it. I believe the BMC will be sharing it maybe via their YouTube channel. So, I’m not sure if I need to wait for them to share it first or I can just share it because it wasn’t selected as one of the films for the festival. I am also going to enter it into the Shaft Film Festival, which I think is the Sheffield Adventure Film Festival. So, that is on my list of things to do. Their deadline is the end of October. So, I will be working on getting that submitted. But, you know, like anything, you know, setbacks can be disappointing, but it’s okay to deal, you know, to have setbacks because actually sometimes you still got to be in it to win it. And I’m still glad that we, you know, took the time, took the energy, and created this short film. It’s 10 minutes, which links in nicely with the name of 10. So, it’s okay to work really, really hard at things and then maybe not get to where you wanted to get to. And, um, yeah, so I just thought I’d share that with you. So, little bit disappointing, but we’ll handle that disappointment. We’ll learn from it. We’ll improve. We will get better. If you haven’t already, please do subscribe to the Tough Girl YouTube channel. I’m I’m so sorry I haven’t got new vlogs coming out, but the old vlogs are still there. If you want to watch about the Appalachian Trail or hiking in Turkey or the Overland Track in uh Tasmania or any of the comminos, those vlogs are live. I haven’t quite managed to get caught up with podcast editing yet to focus on the vlogs for the GR10 and the Southwest Coast Pass. They are next on my to-do list, so I will start working on them soon. Thank you again for listening to the Tough Car Podcast. All that’s left for me to say is wherever you are, whatever you are doing, give it your all. Give it 110%. Get after it. Go for it. Believe in yourself because I believe in you. Take care. Lots of love and I’ll speak to you soon. Bye. [Music]