Home Sweet Home...and dry

Why did travelling by train in Britain feel like about the most challenging part of our journey, I wonder?

We didn't arrive at Kitty's parents' place in Wellington until after 10PM, so rather than cause a nocturnal fuss, we camped on their lawn. They had quite a shock, next morning!

So that's it - we've landed, and with a BUMP!Thank you so much for all your mails during our absence, encouraging words and subsequent 'welcome home' messages. It has been an amazing journey & apart from the difficulties of adjusting to the 'normal' life, our biggest challenge now will be trying not to bore everybody to death by going on about it. Did I tell you about the time we were trying to cross the border into Slov...

Back to blighty

We made a mad dash across Denmark (after 3 months of stunning weather, Denmark was our horizontal-rain Nemesis!) - in fact so mad that we didn't draw a single Danish Kroner from the bank, nor even buy a map - just followed the signs & the sun (what we could see of it) all the way to Esbjerg port!

After the rumours of a spot or 2 of rain in Britain, we were slightly taken aback to arrive in blazing sunshine.

In Harwich, we heard some guy say "right, I'm off across the estuary now", turned out he was skipper of the Stockley ferry and, nope, we didn't know what that was either, but we threw the bike & trailer onboard anyway and ended up in...yep, Stockley (see pic). We cycled the 10 miles to Ipswich and caught a train to Wellington. Tandems aren't allowed on British trains, so a bit of blagging was required, especially in Cambridge @ 5.30 on a Friday afternoon!

Going down

On our way up to north Germany, we hit a big, or rather wide, problem: trying to cross the Elbe river.

People we asked suggested the nearest bridge was a long way away - in the wrong direction.

Eventually the mystery was solved when we found this tucked-away lift entrance. It dropped us down to a large pedestrian tunnel, which we cycled along, resurfacing via another lift at the far end. Quite exciting - 'twas like a scene from Dr. Who!

Bringing it to life...

We nearly raced through the east German town of Torgau without stopping, oblivious to its rich history.
Luckily this lively, erudite retired farmer, Heinz - with a real flare for storytelling - adopted us for a whole day. I was so enthralled with his tales - such as how the allied & Russian troops met here at the river Elbe, thus effectively isolating Germany & ending the war - that I kept catching myself with my face almost pressed against his!

A wonderful day, thank you Heinz!

City of Romance

It´s a bit corny, I know, but what a wonderful place Prague is - well deserving of its UNESCO world heritage badge.
Kitty was grinning from ear to ear, on account of a newly opened museum with original Beethoven, Mozart & Handel manuscripts. I was grinning from ear to ear, on account of cheap beer.

Getting High...

In this little Austrian town of Retz, just south of the Czech border, there was an open-air high-wire act one evening. You can just make out the guy balancing on his head, on the wire running up to the rathaus (town hall - you have to love a nation that calls the place where its local politicians meet, a rat house!).
We sat outside a restaurant drinking local wine whilst the artists attempted to fall from great heights.
At the end of the show, there was a really dramatic electric storm and we cycled 3 miles back at high speed, lit up by lightning & laughing all the way - jumping into our tent just seconds before the torrent of rain!

trailer map

One of Kitty´s best ideas on this trip, was to draw a large map, in black, of Europe on the lid of our trailer - with our trail drawn in, in red.

It also gives our names, and has allowed us to explain visually what we´re up to in every country-without being able to speak a word of the lingo.


The downside is that we frequently have to spend 10 minutes going through it all and fighting our way through the gathered onlookers, before we can get on our way!
Considering the trailer was knocked together in a couple of evenings and has had an absolute hammering on this trip (oh, how I love these east European cobbled streets!), it has stayed intact, watertight and done sterling service.

bratislava

OK, OK I´m ashamed to admit it - but Kitty will tell everyone anyway - we only cycled to Bratislava so that I could add Slovakia to the list of countries we´d visited!
In the ´70s after the communists had marched into Slovakia, they demolished an incredible two-thirds of the old city in order to build this monstrosity of a bridge. Well, there was a bit of good heritage foresight! Note the des. res properties in the background - another communist legacy, that you see everywhere in the former eastern block.
In spite of this, Bratislava was a really cool place (well actually it hit 40 degrees celsius!).

border time gentlemen, please!

Kitty had worn the seat of her pants out pedalling too hard - or so she said; so we needed a cheaper country than Austria to buy some more - and decided on neighbouring Hungary (is that taking ´budgeting´ a bit seriously?!).

But having got up at 6 a.m. to race across the border, this young guard was most insistent that his post DID NOT open until 8 a.m.

No end of offers of cash, a night of passion (with Garry), or promises that we weren´t carrying drugs - or even offering him drugs (?!) would persuade him to let us through before time.

tanked up...

...but nothing to do with cheap Slavic beer!

This was outside the military museum in Ljubljiana.
Kitty says the power of being ´captain´ on the tandem has gone to my head - I can see she has a point!

In the depths

More by luck than judgement, this trip has included a large number of UNESCO world heritage sites. Some have been real stunners -like these, the Skopjan caves several hundred metres underground & with 15m stalactites, in Slovenia. Took hours to walk through!

One for Cello Mary

Sorry about the 90 degree problems on these pics!

We happened on this pretty hill village, Roc, in Istria - home to an international accordian festival. It had sculptures of assorted instruments, including this ´bas´(2-string cello) - guess who was in her element trying them all?

Jelsa, Hvar

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This was one of those pretty Croatian islands with civilization at both ends, but a dearth of life-sustaining supplies in-between.There was a 'village' on the map called Dugi where, after having woken up in somebody's olive grove & done a very hot 400m climb on empty stomachs, we pinned much hope of sustainance - to no avail. "Dugi" is now part of our vocab, meaning "looks like another barren, foodless place"!

Hot and Hungry on Hvar

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but it was worth it!

yet another place...

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that we're going to have trouble getting away from!

Thought I'd better not put a pic. of me skinny-dipping in the beautiful lakes of Mljt island, so here's a more 'conventional' scene of this gorgeous place!

on the fiddle again

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On our second island off the Dalmation coast (Hvar), we were up at about 400m (Kitty has thing about going over mountains) and we met these Czech guys who saw the guitar on the trailer and said, 'hey come back to our boat and play some music with us!'
The end result was a constant flow of rum / wine/beer/awesome hospitality - a really crazy night and sore heads the next day!

moving on

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having planned to stay in Dubrovnik just one day, it took us 4 days to tear ourselves away - we were so happy here. We eventually caught a ferry to the nearby island that Homer described as paradise - he wasn't kidding.

it´s the people you meet.

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The best thing about this trip has been the extraordinary and spontaneous acts of kindness and friendliness.

We´ve had old ladies bring us an expresso whilst sitting in a town park; had to follow families in cars, or old men on rickety bikes, miles to the nearest accomodation; had ancient champagne shared with us on a ferry. Pictured is Nunzio, a lovely Italian guy who gave us loads of advice, acquired maps for us...and even gave us some money towards our journey! It has been truly humbling.

night owls

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I suppose I had to earn some of the rent too! Actually, I think this is the first time I´ve ever busked - pretty cool place to start!

view from our balcony

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....better still, our front door is the centre of this C13th city & the hottest busking spot in town, so Kitty busks for a bit each morning and pays the rent (10 GB pounds a night - food, oven, fridge included!!)

Trouble is, we're feeling so mellow (and flush) here, we´ve forgotten about all that hard work cycling stuff!

the accomodation´s pretty hot

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When we arrived at the gates of old Dubrovnik, this sweet old lady jumped out of the shadows and said, `you want room?`. Hereś a pic. of the house we´re staying in (the balcony is attached to our palatial bedroom). Fortunately the war ended 16 years ago and they´ve put the fire out now. It still has the bullet holes in the walls though...

everybody told us...

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Dubrovnik was beautiful, but I had no idea just how stunning it (and Croatia , in general) would be. But the real pleasure is in the absence of cars and scooters - a welcome stark contrast to Italy.

It felt strange getting on a ferry in east Italy at night and waking up in Croatia the next morning!

whoever said ...

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´you can have too much of a good thing´ has clearly never been on a tandem tour through Europe. It just seems to get better and better.
Of course, there have been a few lows and a few places we wish we hadn't bothered cycling for 6 hours through the heat to get to - I suppose something should have given it away...

Pompei-ed out

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Sometimes it all gets a bit much, and a cool cafe & ice-cream gets to have more appeal than yet another Roman marble.

No, I'm not on the 'phone...that's the Pompei audio guide! Did you know that, in 67AD...

some don't like it hot

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Not being of suicidal tendancy, we didn't fancy cycling through Naples, so, after a lot of camping wild in gorgeous places (it's uncanny how lucky we've been finding amazing places to sleep - we had a beautiful campsite totally to ourselves in Formia!), we finally booked into a cheap hotel in Capua and caught the train in. This proved prudent - Naples is utter chaos (did I mention something about 'on the verge of anarchy' earlier?)
The main reason for going there was to visit Pompei, which is pretty impressive. Not everyone feels the same way tho' - after a life of slavery, this poor guy got buried under 6 metres of ash from Mount Vesuvius (which is also quite impressive).

talking of litter

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Kitty got fed up of me taking pictures of all the tasty bits of Italy, so I had to blog this one of a VERY typical Italian scene. If it looks like I'm keen to get moving, it's because (just out of the pic.) there are 3 , hungry, rabid-looking mongrels!

waste not

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In Formia, they found a novel use for all those Roman ruins like colosseums littering the place - they live in them!

camera shake

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this was the view from about half way up - there aren't any pics from the very top - we were too terrified to loose our grip on the rock (yes, I mean it!). Still, at least we know the Italian for precipice now (il precipio).

go up there? You must be joking...

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Halfway between Rome & Naples, Kitty sees this big hill and says 'that looks nice to walk up' - I didn't realise she was serious!!

parmigiano time

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The inevitable cheesey pic of us at the Colosseo in Rome. Even in early May it was pretty busy and hot, I'd hate to be here in a couple of months. Could have spent a week here tho' - amazing what these Italians dig up in their back gardens sometimes.

why the Roman empire fell...

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Why just write "SPEED CAMERA" when you can write all this?!

The other bizarre thing you'll notice, is that this is a British police helmet, certainly never seen in Italy.

You get a strong feeling Italy is on the verge of anarchy: the road surfaces are atrocious, the drivers are homicidal maniacs - I had one close his wing mirror on my elbow, whilst riding as close to the kerb as I could get (he didn't stop). Yet you just can't help but love the Italians - they're just so damned friendly! Get the map out in a cafe full of old men (we always do) and we'll have 20 different heated opinions of where we should go next and how we shoulsd get there!

off to Italy...

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The ferry fare to Italy from Toulon was 44 Euros each - but 45 for the trailer!! So we took its wheels off and told them it was hand baggage (i.e. free)!
In fact, after friends Joelle and Daniel had escorted us to the port, nobody seemed bothered, so we put them back on & cycled onboard.

Daniel & Joelle

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We were very glad to meet up with friends Daniel & Joelle, who live near Toullon. They treated & fed us like kings, showed us beautiful places, took us swimming in the sea, played loads of good music with us, found us a ferry to Italy (yes, I confess, we skipped the Alps!) - then finally escorted us all the way to the port. THANK YOU BOTH - see you soon in Wales!!

medieval village

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We must be getting fitter - after a tough day's cycling we went up to this medieval village in Provençe just for fun. Mad, or what...

repairs on the road

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In the alpine foothills, after some serious hill-climbing we stopped off in a pizzeria (we could tell we were getting close to Italy!) and when we came out it was dark & we didn't know where we were sleeping! Half-an-hour later, the trailer hitch broke (a quick swap around of bike-bits botched it). Fortunately we found some beautiful woods to camp wild in (tho' we didn't know they were till the next day!). Here I am cleaning and oiling my baby (no, I mean the bike!)...

Otter in Camargue

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One of the highlights of the Camargue, was this otter showing off his aquabatics purely for our benefit.

Camargue

We're having a lazy day today, at St Gilles, on the edge of the Camargue. Yesterday we left the trailer and all the luggage at the campsite and cycled 65 miles around the Camargue National Park. We saw flocks of pink flamingoes and got a close-up view of an otter swimming around in the ditch. Weather is fabulous - a bit too hot in fact. Photos to follow.

re-packing the trailer

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It took over 2 hours to break-camp and re-pack the trailer! Why do sleeping bags, air-mats and tents never, ever pack as small as when you bought them?!
The views down over Newtown made us wonder why we were bothering to leave our home-town.

first camp, first cook

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Originally uploaded by garrysaady.

It took a while to work out how the tent went up, in the dark (it had never been out of the bag), but man that pasta smelt good...

trial (maiden) voyage

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The box trailer is full to the brim. I had joked that Kitty had to choose between spare knickers - or her violin...it turned out to be true!

and final touches to the trailer...

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I thought this huge toy box would fit all our stuff...how wrong I was!

final touches to the bike...

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The tandem is nearly ready - but where do I put this hooter thingy (a present from our friend Mary)?!

Our neighbour Mike...

...expresses his opinion of the idea of cycling thousands of miles round dodgy bits of Europe!

Maisie wonders how we're going to fit all the luggage in the box...

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Not quite sure where this mad idea to tandem around S.E. Europe (and beyond?) came from - but it's too late to go back on it now, so, with only a few days to go before we have to set off on the real thing - a trial run was planned for Easter weekend.