The end is not so much nigh as now, at least for this part of the trip. I'm back where I started, Bristol; older, wiser, handsomer, modester and grammerly betterer. I clocked up the magic 10,000 kms and after that stopped counting. It felt enough and I didn't want to be greedy. So, a few days here to do notalot and play with my computer again, which is why I'm lumping loads of mugshots on this page, one a photo of the best bar sign in France, the others the work of my own fair fingers en route. Parental warning: these [View Full Entry]

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Voila, my first blog videos and pretty darn fine they are too. Oh yes. Well, all it does in France is rain, which is good for the slugs, which are still hunting my bicycle shorts under the flysheet at night, but, but, maybe it's beginning to change. I got mosquito bitten last night, which I believe is a positive omen for better weather. I am, the barman tells me, in THE SMALLEST TOWN IN EUROPE!, though I can't remember what it's called right now. It's full of boats, has a big river, rains a lot, is near Dijon (where the ketchup [View Full Entry]

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There's a funny smell in the cyber cafe, and I realise it's me. Stale armpits, yummy. But that's not the worst of it. 2 days ago I stop for a little chat with a french cyclist with a green tarpulin over his rack and he calls me a fatty! I explained I'd just eaten a banana, but it didn't wash. I'm not a fatty, just well proportioned. And then it's been loads more rain, thunder, lightning and a change of route up into the Vercors mountains, slug trails on my cycle shorts, many peanuts, loads of cheese (fattinesses), Phil Collins on [View Full Entry]

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After cycling again in Italy, I got bored and took several trains from Florence to Aix-en-Provence, while someone else took my camera. Merde. Bad news is the vomiting monster shape I saw on the road outside Siena will now never appear in my photo album; good news is I've done unfeasibly huge cyclings in a big circle up Mont Ventoux, through gorges, up into the Provencal Alps, lots of rain, lightning, thunder (though not la tonnerre de la derriere), really enjoying it again, while waiting for replacement camera to come in the post. Which it now has. All the photogenic stuff [View Full Entry]

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My previous blog looked forward to a leisurely cycle into Bari and a ferry to Corfu. It didn't quite turn out that way. Buouyed by finding a campsite 20 kms north of Brindisi, a sunny day and the prospect of a much cheaper ferry, I went for the 120 km ride and, porridged-up, made it, to find the camping book had lied and the campsite was shut, so a long, cheap day became longer (145 kms) and expensive, with a hotel in Brindisi and NO ferry the following day, so a train into Bari and the original ferry after all. Hmph. [View Full Entry]

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Hands up at the outset, I have had a little bit to drink and no food and I've done heaps of cycling, so. I'm in a most extraordinary place. Matera. Little Mel Gibson was here first, apparently, and filmed Christ being crucified (usual quip about being well hung....) and there's this area called the sassi where folk pretty much used to live in caves. Me too. I've slung the boat out (there being no camping) and shacked up in a hostel, which is one of the caves. I've had a little dilemma today. For the last week I've been heading this [View Full Entry]

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Archaelogical Museum in Napoli confirmed what a perverse bunch the old Romans really were. More enormous phalluses and a charming sculpture of a satyr making the intimate acquaintance of a goat. More coventionally, the Farinese collection of sculpture houses huge marble heads, with bits of ears and noses chopped off. Maybe Mike Tyson got to them. Good to be out of Napoli, though. I'm now in a tiny town 180 km around the coast, where I'm getting into The Three Musketeers (not in any Roman fashion), as well as dog shit. Welcome back to Europe. [View Full Entry]

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Oooh, my little legs are tired. 300 km in 3 days and a thunderstorm outside of Napoli and up a big hill. So, for a rest, I'm at Pompeii, mulling (a la Frankie Howard). Not much of a rest though. I was expecting a few crumbly columns, maybe a statue, not the great big town that it is. Packs of screaming school kids accompanied by frumpy teachers. Soooo glad I'm not a teacher! I should have done a little research before embarking on that waste of a year. Italians are so vain. Sat opposite a white shellsuit bum fluff moustachio'd youth [View Full Entry]

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Brrr, it's chilly. I didn't expect that. I'm back into thermal longjohns, woolly hat and socks. But that's just at night. The rest of the time (daylight) it's pretty sunny, so I'll stop moaning for a bit. I have, at present, no plan, but I do have lots of maps and am putting off looking at them again by writing this and drinking coffee, to the strains of abominable pop music, in which the campsite specialises. I'm the only tent. Everyone else is either Italian or German in a campervan, or annoyingly American in a cabin. I cycled all around the [View Full Entry]

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It's 1 o'clock in the morning but, no, it's 10 in the evening, 'cause I've crossed time zones and this computer comes courtesy of a fried rice at Hong Kong airport. I've just 'done' Australia in 10 days, most of which was in a retirement village with top rellies and I'm now in transit, waiting for the next flight outta here to Rome. I am a headless chicken. Mediterranean Europe in the Spring and edging north in the Summer seems to be what's about to be occurring. No actual plan, except camp outside Rome (with my barbarian hordes), until it surrenders, [View Full Entry]

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