Molly Weaver is in a kind of disbelief. I start our call brimming with compliments for the woman who last month became the fastest person to ride the circumference of Britain – 17 hours faster than her predecessor.
“I can’t believe I’ve actually done it, I need to keep on reminding myself,” she laughs down the line.
Molly is a doer. Before the notion to attempt the circumnavigation of Britain even entered her head, she’d ridden as a pro for Sunweb (now Picnic PostNL), represented Great Britain and broken the record for the Fastest Known Time (FKT) in the Lakeland 200 – amongst a roster of other gruelling multi-ray races.
“You have to have a certain drive that I think is innate,” she said, looking back on the decision to try and break the British Circumnavigation World Record.
“I just told myself: “I’m going for the record. I don’t care about anything else.””
What she’d decided to do was an enormous undertaking. She had 7730 kilometres to ride, less than 22 days to do it in (the current GB Coastline record set by Nick Sanders in 1984), meaning she would have to be covering around 370km a day over 18 hours.
Weaver is the first woman to ever attempt this record.
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Once Weaver had decided to attempt the circumnavigation, the task grew tendrils, reaching into other lives via social media, in training days prised out of summer holiday plans, and in a growing crew of volunteers set to support her on the road.
“It’s almost harder when you’ve told everybody, because then other people want you to achieve it, too. It’s a very nice pressure, because people are rooting for you, but you also don’t want to let them down.
“Especially as I was woman going for an overall record, you also have that thing of, I want to get this for women as well, I don’t want it to be like: “ah, she couldn’t do it.””
Weaver was raising money for the RNLI as part of her world record attempt
(Image credit: Rob Gardiner (@robgardinercyclist))
Then, on the 15th June 2025, she set off. In the first stretch of the ride from London’s Tower Bridge to Brighton, Weaver was joined by six crew members who alternated across the week. The first leg was a family one. Her brother, Sam had three days left of holiday, which he spent on the tail of his sister, along with their dad, Phil. Then Sam swapped out with Ben, a fellow record-chaser (just this time in rowing), who had replied to an Instagram call-out asking for support.
“He was almost the most nerve wracking of all the members, because I thought, well, this could go either way.” Weaver said of Ben’s recruitment – before he quelled her worries.
“So he then came in and he was great immediately. I was like: Okay, this is gonna work. He’s supported quite a few challenges and people going for records, because he just enjoys doing that and wants to give back.
“He was with my dad for a day, and then my girlfriend swapped in for five days. Then my dad came back with his best mate, Matt. Then after a week, they swapped again to my girlfriend and Steve, who is a good mate, and also the mechanic at the bike shop I worked for. So it was kind of a mishmash.”
But, ahead of the support van, Weaver rode out, tackling first Kernow country, in England’s southernmost leg, then winding up around Wales, and through the jagged, mountain dappled North until reaching Scotland 10 days into the challenge.
“I had horrendous weather for the whole of Scotland, especially on the West Coast. We were basically in the eye of a storm the entire time,” she remembers.
“It is weird seeing the whole of the country and noticing how quickly stuff changes. You cross the border. It’s instant change. You can feel it.
“Once you’ve been in Scotland for a long time, it’s an adjustment to go back into England after you’ve been in quite an isolating and wild landscape where the population is quite small, because suddenly the areas are more built up, and much more populated. The adjustment to kind of clicking back into that rhythm was more difficult than going the other way [to Scotland].”
The crew that made the world record possible: Phil Weaver; Steve Chapman; Sam Weaver; Rachel Bennet; Ben Gothard (plus, Matt Walky, not pictured)
(Image credit: Rupert Hartley (@ruperthartleyphoto) )
Riding any ultra is a challenge of endurance as a rider negotiates mental and physical pain, often riding solo for hours on end. Riding the circumference of Britain was no different – apart from the support car lingering a few kilometres behind, catching up to Weaver every four or five hours, equipped with snacks, extra clothes and shouts of encouragement.
Each support volunteer in the van helped Weaver achieve her ultimate feat. After a debilitating crash in 2017 which saw an end to her professional road racing career, Weaver had found herself bikeless in Bristol, overeating and under-exercising, having dropped out of university in the midst of a severe depression, unable to think about cycling let alone do it. Then she went to Girona with her dad, who one day, wheeled a gravel bike over to her.
“And then we started riding. I just couldn’t stop. It started as just an hour, and then two hours, three hours went by, and then we were doing these all day off road gravel rides.
“We sat down in the café with a notebook, and he said: “Well, you’re not sitting around doing nothing, so what are you going to do?”
“And I was like “I want to race ultras”.
“And he said, “Okay.””
Back at the van, nearly five years after Weaver rebuilt her relationship with riding, her girlfriend Rachel (along with their shifting entourage) helped shape the adventure around Britain, documenting the journey on Instagram.
Part of what has made Weaver’s journey around Britain so joyful, is the presence of the people who love her, who celebrated the big wins and the little ones through curated photo-dumps online, and reels coloured by the often brutal realities of endurance cycling: sopping wet chamois; endless pot noodles; windswept tea breaks, and solo singalongs whenever Weaver got hold of the Instagram account.
“I mean, [some of the best moments] were just when it would rain all day, and then the sun would come out, and the sunset would be amazing, and the view would be incredible.
“And quite a lot of times with the crew, they’d be doing things to cheer me up, and dot watchers would line up outside the road. Most of the time I was on my own, and then suddenly there’s people who were cheering you on. And it’s a really weird feeling to have people you don’t know supporting you in that way.
“Obviously, your family and friends want you to achieve something, and it’s great you’re lucky enough to be someone who has that kind of support. But then these strangers who have come out in the torrential rain holding up signs, and ringing cowbells – they believe that you can achieve this thing, and it makes you believe that you will.”
On the 6th July, Molly Weaver broke the Guinness World Record for the fastest circumnavigation of Britain by bike, in a time of 21 days, 10 hours, 48 minutes.
During her three weeks on the road, she was riding to raise money for the UK’s Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI), and visited over 100 of their coastal stations during her challenge around Britain’s coastlines. You can donate to them here.
