Pedal power

What's the best way to raise money for charity? Shake a tin in the street, perhaps, or host a bring-and-buy sale? Al Humphreys decided to go one better - by taking three years out of his life to do a sponsored cycle ride around the world. Here he tells us how the first year has gone

Finding the perfect hiking boots

· This is an indicator that the boots are approximately the right size, but it is not on its own enough. Far better to find a store with trained boot fitters who can measure your feet, both when sitting and standing, and then suggest boots of the right shape and size. You should then be able to test the boots on an incline board to see if your feet move when pointing up or downhill. If they do, blisters are likely.

Four weeks fitness training

I want to spend four weeks fitness training and losing weight. Where can I go? It needs to be stricter than a standard health farm and not as expensive.

Travelling with kids

I've said it before, but that won't stop me saying it again: there's a dearth of reliable medical information for globetrotting families. The new edition of Dr Richard Dawood's Travellers' Health (Oxford University Press, £14.99) is an excellent, if disconcerting, guide to everything from motion sickness to mischievous bowels. But in its 700- plus pages (read it before you go, or it will devour your luggage allowance), only 14 are dedicated to children abroad.

Wild thing

Running through Kenya's Arabuko-Sokoke forest, swimming in the Indian Ocean and dining on mango juice and oysters - Ian Belcher finds the Wild Fitness course is gym life, but not as he knows it...

Cycling the Danube

I want to cycle the Danube all the way to the Black Sea - is this possible?