I spent 5 nights in Gent this trip thanks to the unwaivering hospitality of my friend Kat (shes probably reading this so I have to be nice!) and her housemate Annalies. The first night I surprised Kat by producing a haggis brought all the way from Dundee (and hopefully surviving the sweltering temperatures of my cycle to Gent in the lower reaches of ma rear pannier unscathed). In the end the haggis was partially consumed but we have to wait till Saturday for that story. Thursday and Friday were both fairly lazy recovery days. Kat was working in the Bio-Shop (pronounced [View Full Entry]

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This blog entry sees me having successfully completed the first stage of my cycling trip, with nothing worse to tell than a mild case of sunburn. Everything got off to a typically smooth start as I was forced to backtrack a mile along the front at Dundee having encountered improvement works on the esplanade. Dad was there to re-wave me off in the opposite direction 10 minutes into my tour with precisely no miles under my belt! Crossing the Tay bridge I stopped for a brief panorama shot and a goodbye to the city for, if all goes well, at least [View Full Entry]

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Welcome back to my blog. As you may know I'm now just about to hit the road on a cycle epic to Norway lasting 2 months or thereabouts. I'm starting tomorrow from Dundee with a quick 50-miler down to Rosyth where I'm boarding the 17:00 ferry to Zeebrugge, yes Zeebrugge - probably further away from Norway than Rosyth! But the plan is to then cycle around the north sea coast, via my Belgian friend in Ghent for a few days :), and then up across Denmark to Copenhagen maybe in time for my birthday on the 27th (last years birthday was [View Full Entry]

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Well I've been back in the UK a full month now. And what have I achieved... er... well almost precisely nothing! Has it been good? Well the weather has at least. Was I overjoyed to see my old workmates? Er... no comment (they may be reading). Has anything changed at all? No, not one bit. Today I had a meeting (topic - rain modelling) and a free lunch at Chutney's, one of the finer Indian establishments in Oxford (complementing yesterday's free lunch at a thai restaurant very nicely). In the afternoon rather than rushing back to work, I went for a [View Full Entry]

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Thanks for reading! [View Full Entry]

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The Second Bit We headed out to Whittier from Anchorage the following day, but not before another night out in Humpy's with our Swiss friends from Denali. We ended up failing to get into a karaoke bar, probably for the best really, and the poor girls got a parking ticket for their campervan. The first bit of the evening had been fun though! And who knows maybe Richie will be meeting them later in their trip... watch this space! ;) Right unlike Richie I'll try not to get distracted by all things Swiss (they do make good cheese though). Whittier is [View Full Entry]

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The final leg of my journey, Phoenix then Alaska... then home. I can remember booking my flight all those months ago and basically picking a day at random to come back. It seemed hard to believe it had actually come. I remember the first couple of weeks of my trip down in Argentina seemed to last forever (for the right reasons!) and thinking back then that how on Earth would I survive 5 months out. Well in the end it was surprising how quickly time passed by. Anyway, I arrived in Phoenix and was quickly whisked back by Richie in his [View Full Entry]

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Miami, art deco city, fun nightlife, beach, beautiful people! That's what I'd heard, so I was looking forward to my one night there. Well, thanks Mr. Immigration men for completely taking it away from me for no apparent reason. 2 hours I had to wait in their fr*cking office for what? For a 5 minute chat about some departure form they probably lost the last time I was in the states. Well it might have been interesting for any sociologists among us - an interesting if not quite representative cross section of society, i.e. lots of blacks, hispanics, the odd russian, [View Full Entry]

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Well, for those that have been following this blog the whole way, you may have noticed a downturn in the general levels of enthusiasm for this trip. I believe this is a common condition known as 3-month fever. I guess it started to creep up on me as I left Peru. Leaving Lukas was supposed to be the start of a big solo adventure again. Alas I never quite got that feeling. There was a brief recovery during days at Cotopaxi and in and around Quito, and also at the Angel Falls. But since then I've basically been waiting for the [View Full Entry]

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[Well finally I've got around to updating my blog... from the confines of my parents house in Dundee. Yes my trip has come to an end now! So Merida... where was I?] After an afternoon wandering around the town I'd pretty much seen all that there is to see in Merida (a pretty town square, the famous Guiness Book of World Records ice cream store, x thousand flavours including things like spaghetti flavour, and diabolical traffic). That being said, the main reason for being there is the great outdoors, which literally surrounds the town on all sides. To the east you [View Full Entry]

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