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jkd - John Dawson

I´m Tasmanian and that probably explains a lot. I also love to travel, particularly by bike ...

I´ve somehow survived cycling through England, Scotland, Ireland (though someone did steal my bike in Sligo which put an end to that), New Zealand, South Africa, South America and even Vietnam. OK, Vietnam was a cycling story without a bike and a clear demonstration of why, if you should ever be tempted, you shouldn't play touch football on an icy oval 30 minutes before the sun rises on a cold Tasmanian morning two days before heading off on an overseas holiday.

So this time's it's Europe. 9 days before we leave and nerves are running high worried about everything from long haul flights to language barriers. Ah the joy of the unknowns at the beginning of a new trip. My bike is sitting on a maintenance stand behind me ... minus its wheels. Other small problems include the rear brakes aren't working, the front brakes are squealing all the time, I can't fit the new front pannier rack I've bought, there's a funny squeak in the crank ... you get the idea and that's why I'm updating this profile rather than tackling the bike - it's too scary.

We've also not got much figured out other than we're flying into Athens and we've got a flight our of London three months later, and for me, that sounds like a good start to a joke, I mean a travelblog ... who knows how the punchline will go ...
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Joined on: October 17th 2005
Last Login: August 13th 2008

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Blogs & Travel Journals

by jkd, order by Date newest first.

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One of the fears at the back of your mind when you are camping is that of theft: Your bike being stolen at night, your gear being pulled out from under the tent flaps (our tent being so small that we couldn't acutally fit anything in it but ourselves), basically waking up in the morning finding yourself with nothing left but the sleeping bag and sleeping mat you went to bed in. We decided to cycle up from Dover to London, partly to pass a few days, partly because I wanted to see Canterbury, and partly because we wanted to pass [View Full Entry]

jkd - John Dawson | Read The Full Entry | Subscribe | 0 Comment(s) | 0 Photo(s) | 0 Video(s) | [diary=307839] | 2008-08-06 08:41:33


Who would have thought that French keyboards would be so ridiculously hard to use? In reality they only have about six keys in the wrong place, compared to the QWERTY keyboard, but when the 'a' and 'q' and 'm' and 'n' and a few other keys in between switch places, suddenly emails start rwedimg lioe thqs, hence no blogs for quite a while. So here's the last few weeks in summary. I think we left in Carlisle in the rain heading south searching for some sunshine. We got to London around 11pm tha [View Full Entry]

jkd - John Dawson | Read The Full Entry | Subscribe | 1 Comment(s) | 0 Photo(s) | 0 Video(s) | [diary=307747] | 2008-08-03 11:12:58


So now we're sitting in the Kendal Library waiting for the train tonight. Had a huge breakfast this moring at the YHA (it was included in the price), shopped a bit and basically lounged around (at costa's of course). Big news for the day is that Christie is feeling a little better from her head cold. Sorry, that's not the big news, the big news is that Christie spent more on getting a hair cut than it cost for our train tickets and that her hair is now shorter than mine. Yep, Christie's gone sho [View Full Entry]

jkd - John Dawson | Read The Full Entry | Subscribe | 1 Comment(s) | 0 Photo(s) | 0 Video(s) | [diary=297495] | 2008-07-09 14:46:04


After a bit of a discussion this morning, we've decided that we'd had enough and needed a break from cycling, and we needed some sunshine. As Christie described it, riding has just become a chore for her, and although a big bit of me wanted to cycle to to London, the idea of getting into the sunshine was pretty appealing. We therefore packed our bags (Christie battling with both a bad head cold and a bruised and sore leg) and cycled the 2 miles to the train station. The oddly quiet train statio [View Full Entry]

jkd - John Dawson | Read The Full Entry | Subscribe | 0 Comment(s) | 0 Photo(s) | 0 Video(s) | [diary=297483] | 2008-07-09 14:40:37


If anything Christie was looking worse to me this morning, but my attempts to convince her to stay another day in bed came to naught. We were watching the morning show, and the weather came on. The summary of the weather for today was that it would be miserable , and that's not my words ... That's what the weather broadcaster said. Even this wouldn't disuade Christie from heading out, so we packed our bags, and set off out of town. We'd decided to head towards the Northern Peninnes (Cycle Route [View Full Entry]

jkd - John Dawson | Read The Full Entry | Subscribe | 0 Comment(s) | 0 Photo(s) | 0 Video(s) | [diary=297481] | 2008-07-09 14:26:57


The campground we were at described itself as having a private beach. The truth was it backed out onto a mudbank. I have to say, I really understand why the English go crazy for Australian beaches. Anyway, we headed off to Gretna in the morning with little fuss, other than that Christie's sniffles had developed into a gale. After our morning coffee, we did a wee bit of shopping and then headed across the border into England for Carlisle. Other than meeting a couple of loca cyclists on the [View Full Entry]

jkd - John Dawson | Read The Full Entry | Subscribe | 0 Comment(s) | 0 Photo(s) | 0 Video(s) | [diary=297476] | 2008-07-09 14:17:16


I discovered today that there are two Christie's. Christie B.C. (Before Coffee) is currently a morose, unenergised, tired and crabby person. Christie A.C. (After Coffee) is a chatty, happy, speed demon ... As much as I love the coffee we've been getting at Costa's (the mugs come with two handles, one either side because they're too big and heavy to lift with one hand) I think the caffeine is having an effect on Chrisite, and until we get our morning hit, things aren't the cheeriest. The other [View Full Entry]

jkd - John Dawson | Read The Full Entry | Subscribe | 0 Comment(s) | 0 Photo(s) | 0 Video(s) | [diary=297473] | 2008-07-09 14:06:53


We set off today with muted enthusiasm. OK we were both pretty tuckered out. First stop was a bike shop down the road where we picked up another new inner tube for Christie's bike, then spent 30 minutes changing her tyre. We didn't get 2 miles down the road before I noticed Christie was already three or four hundred metres behind me. I stopped and waited, and her explanation was that her head just wasn't in it today, she was ready to stop already. We perservered, I told her it would be OK onc [View Full Entry]

jkd - John Dawson | Read The Full Entry | Subscribe | 0 Comment(s) | 0 Photo(s) | 0 Video(s) | [diary=297466] | 2008-07-09 13:48:14


For a long time people have been trying to prove or disprove God's existence. Well I've done it. If God existed then scotish flies wouldn't, because no benevolent, all-knowing and wise creator would EVER create those bloody things. I've never been so close insanity. I mean, midges, I can survive, leaches, nothing ... but those flies, shiver ... We woke at our (favourite) campsite this morning to the pungent smell of sewerage. yes, that great screeching machine next to us was a sewerage t [View Full Entry]

jkd - John Dawson | Read The Full Entry | Subscribe | 0 Comment(s) | 0 Photo(s) | 0 Video(s) | [diary=297436] | 2008-07-09 13:33:52


England. No I didn't kneel down and kiss the shore as I landed, but I almost wanted too. In true British fashion we were an hour late arriving, then we had to go through customs and convince them that we weren't here to stay. They had two customs officers to process the entire ship, so we snuck into the middle of a bunch of harley davidson riders and as they just pushed their way to the front of the queue, well we were just innocently taken along for the ride. Then just past customs were all th [View Full Entry]

jkd - John Dawson | Read The Full Entry | Subscribe | 0 Comment(s) | 0 Photo(s) | 0 Video(s) | [diary=292466] | 2008-07-02 10:57:25




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