Prologue: It's taken a while but we're finally on the road again. We missed out on our planned Danube ride in 2020, so we've taken that and run (ridden) with it. We added the Rhine and Main Rivers to come up with a trans-European route only to realise it was probably a little further than we could fit in our available time. Not only that, but the Danube flows into the Black Sea at Constanta on the Romanian coast, just a little too close to Ukraine and "Mad Vlad" for our liking. Instead, after reaching Belgrade via the Danube trail, we'll head south and east through eastern Europe ending up at Istanbul. It's still going to be an epic adventure. We'll visit 14 countries (I think?) and travel roughly 4,500km over 3 months (well, that's the ... read more

The definition of "puncture" commonly has two varitions. (1) to puncture via a piercing of the skin and (2) the cause of a sudden collapse of air. Technically I didn't get a puncture, a patch applied 12 months earlier had given way overnight and in the morning my rear tyre was deflated. Jeff on the other hand was admant in the Puncture Count score happily singing (yes singing) one - nil while I changed my tyre. Needless to say we got away later than expected this morning, but I was greatful for my bottled air which meant no hand pump was required. Only a shortish day today of 60+ kms. We started north from Nathalia and into a North Easterly wind. Slow going for the first 5kms but the wind was our friend for the rest ... read more

A change of plan at dinner (yes, another one) had us heading for either Mulwala or Yarrawonga today. Either way it meant we hadd 100kms to travel so we needed to be up early and away before both the heat and wind got up. We did pretty good getting on the road by about 7:10am. Rather than follow the main highway out of town we chose the scenic route around the river, only to notice after about a kilometer that river was flowing "the wrong way"! Oh dear, another slight directional lapse but at least it only cost us a couple of clicks. The riding in the morning air was perfect and the heat of the day was still hours away. We made great time to our first stop at Howlong and cruised into the bakery ... read more

With a shorter distance to travel today (70kms) there wasn't the urgency of yesterday to get away so early - I didn't rouse until 7am. It was a pretty liesurely preparation which saw us leaving the Paradise Caravan Park just after 8:30am. Our destination for the day was Yackandanda via Beechworth. We started out of town on the "Murray to the Mountains" Rail Trail which will take us all the way to Beechworth. The rail trail is paved rather than gravel which makes the going a bit easier, as does the accompanying wind behind us. Not as strong as yesterday but certainly better than heading into it. The first station on the rail trail was Everton (27kms) which was mostly flat to undulating with a nice down ward run to the station. At this point the ... read more

Apparently noone uses the full name of a town around here. So instead of saying Rushmore to Murchison to Shepparton, it's Rushy to Murchy to Shepp. There was no real hurry today as we were only planning on about 55kms. Having said that Felice said he'd come up for a Sunday drive and meet us at Murchy for a coffee at about 10am. We bid farewell to Rushy with a slight detour to see a block of land Jeff's brother has recently bought and a property that Jeff had previously been interested in. What happened next was quite absurd but let's just say it involved Jeff and I being separated, lack of communication, a lack of direction and a lying GPS. Anyway, Jeff and I were reunited just outside Rushy with a stong wind at our ... read more