Shaft of light just short of Orford in Suffolk (itself 30 miles short of our immediate destination today, the port of Harwich) almost illuminating one of the silliest routing decisions we’ve ever taken on a tandem tour, taking us through fields, grass and narrowest of footpath gates after narrrowest of gates round the Alde estuary. … Read more …
As Ralph McTell (and I, in my late 60s/early 70s folk-singing Uni days) used to put it, finally the moment has come and here we stand, as Jutta and I (fresh from our winter break in Grenada, revisiting where we honeymooned in 1997) are very shortly off on our VERY-long-planned cycling sabbatical around Europe. Daughter … Read more …
A very (very) long break since our last post, so here’s just a glimpse of a big moment looming in our life, as Daisy2 our tandem prepares to be collected tomorrow, Monday July 11 2022, for delivery to Robin Thorn in Bridgwater to be, yes, electrified. I guess we’re feeling a bit like Bob Dylan … Read more …
Quite how we’re going to get all of this (and more, out of frame, though not the bed) into four panniers, one barrel bag and one handlebar bag is perhaps a question for Iniduoh – Houdini in reverse (terrible joke).But yesterday in two weeks, Feb 3, Jutta (hoping by then for recovery from a nasty … Read more …
Well, after five glorious cycling and canoeing weeks, the last two with Kat and Mela, it’s time to leave New Zealand, with a last blast of images (fuller set here on Google+ as usual), and some concluding thoughts about what has to have been the best cycling tour ever (though could of course have been … Read more …
As always, fuller set of photos here. I said I probably wouldn’t blog again very soon, but rounding a corner yesterday on the final stretch into Kat’s home province of Taranaki, seeing the local volcano looming above the clouds just stopped me in my tracks, and I couldn’t resist sharing a couple of views. So, … Read more …
Two things to capture today – 1) how the actual biking is going, and 2), I think I’ve cracked how to post photos in sufficient detail without taking three hours to upload them to WordPress. As some of you will have already been notified, I’m putting a daily selection up on Google+, and the link … Read more …
Greetings, friends and relations, from Middle Earth. There have been moments these last two days, my third and fourth in NZ pedalling first into a ferocious hidwund (sorry, headwind) some 45 miles from Wanaka to Makarora, and then today a further 50 miles through blazing heat and increasingly rainforesty mountains to Haast on the South … Read more …
Boy, do I need a faster laptop for my next big bike journey (and maybe some classier shades?) Lovely little Acer netbook, but it gets into the biggest spin (as Sue found out in India in the spring) when you ask it to do more than two things at once. It’s taken me nearly three … Read more …
Read on to the end to find out about the phone box, but here at the top, let me put my cards straight on the table today. Long-distance cycling has to be the happiest-making activity on the planet. I remember a Guardian chap (Mike Carter, written about before on this blog) describing an anti-clockwise trip … Read more …