Pausing en route to Hungary with some very old friends from student days in East Germany 1971 (old in every sense) here’s experimenting with a very brief pictorial post using Jetpack on my mobile (nerdy web builder reference there). With some captioned photos reflecting how very English German continues to become. The wonderful Gutsfelds, with … Read more …
Well, this is nearly it, and for the third year in a row (after 5500 km round Germany in 2023, and 4000 km round France last year) , Jutta and I are about to head off on our now-regular spring/summer cycling adventure, this time driving first to Hungary then on with Daisy2 round Romania and … Read more …
Greetings friends and colleagues with a short post to confirm that Jutta and I are looking forward to heading out to Hungary later this month with Daisy2 in the back of our VW together with the solo I used to call Raven – realising now she’s actually a Thorn Nomad. This post is by way … Read more …
Just – February 2025 – came across this account written 10 years ago of how Jutta and I got together again in 2013, and the journey thereto.. Braynes reunited A contribution from Mark and Jutta Brayne to commemorations of the CCPE’s 30th anniversary. It’s well known, of course, that training in psychotherapy can have a … Read more …
What a trip. Ending rather hilariously when, for an entire day last Friday, we were following what I thought was the correct Ride-With-GPS routing, only to discover after 135km (!) that we were heading for Amsterdam instead of the ferry in Hoek of Holland. A rapid shift of planning ensued, with an unscheduled overnight in … Read more …
Another long gap between posts, and this will probably be the last one from the road, from the delightful little canal-river-and-hills town of Epinal in French Lorraine. Close by Alsace, home to Jutta’s paternal grandmother in those border regions that have so often switched ownership over the centuries in the wars between France and Germany. … Read more …
Goodness me, we’re heavy. First blogpost in nearly a week, reflecting our gentle, slow progress from Saintes Maries de la Mer in the Camargue to Marseille (just to have been there, really), then up – in every sense of the word – north into Provence. Where we’ve been staying with cousin Lal (her Rodier grandparents … Read more …
1500 kilometres in three weeks, and we’re taking a two-day pause at the bottom of France in the completely delightful St Maries de le Mer, the capital of the Camargue (remember those stories about wild horses and gypsies at school – this is where they came from.) Riding the Voies Vertes along repurposed railway lines … Read more …
Two and a half weeks into our 10week (planned) odyssee around France, the Med looms ever closer, with two-days-and-a-bit to go before we should reach Montpellier, as we find ourselves seriously enjoying the unpredictability of Booking.com. I (Mark) love camping, ever so slightly more than Jutta does. But I have to say that the quality … Read more …
These ones in a bit of a jumbled order to catch up with the last few days through Bordeaux, where we collected a third Pendix battery. Discovering that its range is the same as our two older ones, which can only mean (given nothing else has changed, e.g. bike weight or configuration) that it’s our … Read more …