Clare and Vernon

Fifteen minutes later we disembarked into another new country and rode through the rather industrial port area of Helsingborg looking for a cashpoint and access to the town centre. Five minutes of drab grey buildings and we were in an underpass worthy of Milton Keynes with three possible exits each signed to local areas not listed on our maps, guessing that the town centre was to our left we headed that way and came upon a road full of take-aways and shops selling cheap plastic stuff with a lot of sad looking people trudging about and the occasional excited argument spilling out from doorways. The cyclepath seemed to be a place to put rubbish, smoking areas, pushchairs and advertising signs or to just wander aimlessly in. We found a cashpoint and left quickly, following the main ... read more

Please note, I can't work out how to create the extra Danish vowels on this EeePC so place names may not be quite correct. May contain traces of weather Nothing much changed as we crossed the border, no flags, no signs, not even a join in the tarmac. We were soon on a gritty rutted cycle path around the back street and car park of Rudbol then onwards to Mogeltonder and our first taste of Danish cobbles; gaps big enough to swallow a wheel meant I soon got off and pushed. We got blown to Tonder with a brisk tailwind and rolled into a lively town centre with stalls, bands, street entertainers and a lot of people enjoying a beer or two. The Danes are cheerful drunks and laughter filled the air as they enjoyed the ... read more

Europe bound (29/06/11-19/07/11) So we finally decided to set off again, this time into northern Europe with a section of our route (which will be made up as we go along) using the North Sea Cycle Route, we are headed to Denmark from where we can either head north into Norway and up the coast to Bergen, fly to Aberdeen and head south for winter or turn right into Sweden, then Finland and back through the Baltic states and eastern Europe. Of course all plans depend entirely on the whim of the participants so they may change at any time. Essex and mechanicals We left Bletchley on the 29th aiming for Harwich and a ferry to Hoek van Holland, route-planning by asking the iPod to give us a route for bicycles to Harwich. Things started well ... read more

Losing Altitude We were heading down to Tiger Leaping Gorge on a ride over three passes with the corresponding descents so it was gutting to have to sit out the day in the minibus but my knee hadn't improved at all and I was having trouble with stairs, let alone a day's cycling. The Jaffanaut stayed in the van and Vernon rode John's bike while I sat out the best ride of the trip. Ah well, time to take many photos, hurrah for digital photography! We were driven to the top of the first pass where everybody else got on their bikes and hooned off down the hill while He and I chased them in the minibus, we caught them riding up the second pass and stopped at the top to get some action shots of ... read more

Bangkok (25-28/03/11) We landed at Suvarnabhunmi Airport at 23:10, quickly cleared immigration, collected the baggage and steered the box through the customs slalom to the amusement of the staff there. Originally we were going to be riding through Thailand, Laos and Vietnam then into China but our plans had changed when we had to extend our stay in Australia, so we only had one week in Thailand before flying into China and would be spending that week in cities so we decided to leave the Jaffanaut in left luggage. Unfortunately we arrived on floor 2 and left luggage was, we were assured by a very helpful gentleman, on floor 4. More unfortunately the lift didn't stop at floor 2 so we had to use the travelator. The travelator was one metre wide, the bike box wasn't. ... read more