Istan-Bullseye!

'And the end of all exploring will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time'
T. S. Eliot

So I made it. One side of Europe to the other - the gateway to Asia, the end of the western world. And, as you may have gathered from the Eliot quote above (sorry to be so pretentious, but it's one of my favourites) it's now almost time to come home.

I've seen a few things over the last 2 months. I've been chased by angry dogs, I've been threatened by angry Romanians with large farming implements, and I've nearly been flattened by some terrifying driving on pretty much an hourly basis. Riding into Istanbul in particular was a festival of death-defying feats. If you're tired of life at any stage, get a bike and ride in and out of Istanbul until a murderous bus-driver finally finishes you off. It will definitely happen sooner or later, and you'll enjoy the adrenaline rush during your final moments. It surely beats jumping off any roof.

But anyway, I was looking back at my account of a typical day cycling in Germany, and I decided that it left a fair bit to be desired in terms of adventure. (Haribo? Fuck off!) For sure, cycling in Western Europe is very similar to cycling in Eastern Europe in some ways (you turn the pedals round, the bike moves forward, you get tired and the traffic tries to kill you). But the experience is also vastly different as well. So, for your edification, I will now recount the experiences of a typical day cycling in Romania, so you can see the difference for yourself.

7am: You wake up to the sound of a truck pulling up nearby, and frantic barking of dogs. You no longer wonder where you are upon waking - the smell tells you everything you need to know. You're sleeping in a tent next to a petrol station forecourt.

7:10am: Open the tent and climb out. Say hello to the manager of the petrol station, who is standing by one of the pumps smoking a cigarette. You recall his warning last night ("No smoking here. Benzine. BOOM!") and wonder why the basic laws of combustion don't apply to the proprietor as well. Take a piss behind the pumps and say hello to the horse, which is eating some suspect looking grass growing next to the petrol-stained concrete. You no longer question why a petrol station would need a horse. They all seem to have them. It's normal.

7:30am: You pack up your tent, while being occasionally bothered by the petrol station's five resident dogs, which only leave you alone in order to chase the cars that pull in and out of the station. When there are no cars to chase, they circle around you growling and occasionally nipping at the fabric of the tent as you try to roll it up in the breeze.

7:40am: You discover that the front tyre of the bike has gone totally flat overnight. There is no logical reason for this. Pump it up and pray that it stays inflated. It does. This is an omen that augers well for a good days riding.

8am: You're now riding. It's still quite cool but there isn't a cloud in the sky, so you know that in about an hour the temperature will be in the 30s, and rising. You press on - it's crucial to cover distance early as it'll only get harder as the heat builds. The road is quiet, but liberally garnished with large cracks and potholes, which turns the ride into an exciting slalom course.

8:20am: Overtake a horse and cart. The driver looks grimly at you until you wave, at which point his face bursts into a smile and he shouts something loudly at you. Respond with a 'Alright mate, cheers for that!' or something similarly English. When communicating here, a shared language is completely optional.

9am: It's getting hotter, and the sweat is now running freely down your face and saturating an already pretty ratty t-shirt. You pass yet another dead dog next to the road. This one is particularly grisly. It's insides are on the outside, it's mouth is open in a grimace of agony, and it smells like Satan's christmas dinner.

10am: You reach a village. There must be a circus passing through this particular village, because people are running onto the road, shouting and waving. You realise that you are the circus. A man bellows something at you that could have been an insult, a greeting or a threat - but it's doesn't matter because you're already past him and pedalling hard. Kids run out, pointing and laughing, and put their hands up so you can high-five them on the way past. A man driving an old Dacia blasts his horn as he goes past and waves out of the window. An old lady with no teeth is the only person not interested in the spectacle you're creating - she sits in the shade and observes the goings-on with a tired frown and an obvious lack of interest. You're hungry, but there's no way you're going to stop to visit a shop in the middle of this furore. You decide to press on to the next village.

10:40am: The next village is exactly the same.

11:05am: And the next one.

11:15am: It is now seriously hot. When the road doesn't pass through villages, the road cuts through vast expanses of farmland with no shade. The farmers are burning the old straw, which creates plumes of smoke that blow across the road. The temperature is maybe 37 degrees, but as you drive past the fires you can feel the heat on your face. You can't see though, because the smoke is thick and black. You try to hold your breath and cycle simultaneously. This is impossible, so you inhale deeply halfway through the smoke plume and then suffer a coughing fit that lasts the next 5 minutes.

12 noon: You run out of water. This is a problem, so you strike up a conversation with a driver of a horse and cart. The conversation is conducted in Romanian on his side and English on yours, but you say 'Apa' a few times and show him your empty bottle, and he gets the gist. 2kms down the road, he pulls in at his farm, takes your bottle and goes to fill it up. While you wait, his dog barks and growls at you. When the bottle comes back, it's full of cold water. It tastes kind of slimy, but you don't care.

12:30pm: Pop into a shop to get some lunch. Most villages have one small grocery shop, and the items the stock varies immensely. In this one, you manage to find some kind of questionable cheese, an old hard loaf of bread and an icecream that looks a bit like a cornetto from the 80s. When you leave with your treasures, there are another 2kms to pedal to get out of the village and under some shade. The days of benches are long gone - now you're just trying to find somewhere to sit that isn't a dead dog. While you look for somewhere to eat, the retro icecream turns to mush and the bread turns to stone. You improvise by shoving the gooey icecream into the middle of the bread to make an icecream sandwich. The cheese tastes salty and strange, but probably won't kill you.

2pm: The road decides that it's tired of being made of tarmac, and starts being made of sand and small rocks instead. It also decides that this is a good time to head uphill. After 3 kilometres of this, you wish the road would just sod off. You tell it this, so it does. You follow a track made out of bumps, rocks and ridges for another 3 kilometres. You start pleading with the road to come back to you, but it has taken umbrage and remains resolutely absent.

2:30pm: The road reappears, but it is mainly made of holes. The sun is like a furnace, and concentrating on the road surface becomes very difficult. While wiping the sweat from your eyes, you hit a huge pothole which almost throws you off the bike. You get off and sit under a tree, smoking a cigarette and glaring at your bike which you've left lying in the road. You pray for a truck to come and flatten it, but the only thing that goes past is an old woman driving a herd of geese.

3pm: You ride through another village. A group of teenagers run out and stick their hands out for the now standard high-fives. As you slap one of them, he graps your wrist and tries to pull you off the bike. Sadly, he's a skinny lad and he's underestimated the speed and weight of the bike, so he's jerked forward instead. He tries to let go, but you're not having that. You hang on to one of his fingers for as long as you can, because fuck him. He wriggles free and yells something. One of his mates throws a clod of mud that hits your rear panniers as you cycle off.

4pm: You've probably done about 110kms now. Approaching a cart with 3 Roma gypsy women in it, you wave politely. They respond by all sticking their middle fingers up and laughing. It's unclear whether this is a friendly gesture or not. Certainly, as you pull out to overtake the cart they suddenly stop laughing and gesture frantically at you. You pull back in just in time for a truck to hammer past with a blast of horn and a cloud of dust and fumes. The gypsy women resume their laughing and all stick their fingers up again. You grin, wave, and pedal past.

5pm: It's time to start looking for somewhere to camp. It doesn't seem to matter where you camp in Romania, but it's best to try and find somewhere nicely out of the way. There's a good spot in some tall grass just behind a small copse of trees. Get the tent up and try to find a spot to hide from the sun. You're soaked in sweat, and your knees hurt like hell, so you curl up behind the tent in the grass and wait for the sun to drop far enough for it to be bearably cool enough to walk around.

5:30pm: The dogs arrive. They come over a nearby rise and bark at you until you crawl into the tent. Then they sniff around for a while before becoming bored and racing off somewhere else.

6:30pm: Stick some food on the stove. It's tuna and pasta. Some things just don't change.

7:30pm: Make a little fire, just for fun. Nobody cares - the whole country seems to be on fire anyway, and at least it'll keep the dogs away.

8pm: Read a book, listen to some music, write up your journal. Whatever. Enjoy the fire, enjoy a cigarette, enjoy the sunset.

9:30pm: It's basically bedtime now. Watch the fire die and turn in.

2am: Wake up to footsteps and rustling outside the tent. Immediately awake and alert, and busy constructing a large poo in the depths of your bowels. Open the tent to find a large doggy face staring back at you, with a mangled tin of tuna in its mouth. Shut the tent and go back to sleep. It's normal.

Tomorrow: Do it all again.

Buried in Pomposity is brought to you by Dan, who is very sad that it's all over. For now.

I got Serbed

Hello! After 3,350 kilometres, I've made it to Belgrade from England. Which I'm really quite pleased about! Below the waist, I now look like some kind of sculpted Greek god (plus nimble like a tree-frog). Unfortunately, above the waist I have retained my usual peculiar fun-house-mirror physique, but with the addition of a pair of very tanned arms. Needless to say, the combined effect is... peculiar.

Anyway, some notable events...

• Shortly after leaving Vienna, I bumped into Julien and Tarek on the road. They were both very pleased to see me, and they both had a striking black eye each -a souvenir from a drunken fight in Passau. Can't say I'm too disappointed I missed out on that. Anyway, it was good to see them again and we have ridden together right up to this point, where we are now going to go our separate ways.
• Riding into Bratislava, we got very lost and found ourselves on a tough mountain-bike trail. The path was mainly wet mud, rocks and steep slopes, and the area was infested with mosquitos. My tyres are fat but quite slick, and my bike is about 45 kilos, so I was powersliding round most of the corners and down most of the slopes. Which was pretty fun. Caked in mud at the end of it.
• Got to Budapest after 3 days. Went to the thermal baths, which were amazing, apart from the fact that nearly every pretty girl (and there were many) was laughing openly at my hilarious white torso/nut-brown arm combo. I didn't care. There were whirlpools and everything. It was too fun for looking sexy.
• Rode out of Budapest into a thunderstorm, where I got to try out my brand new expensive waterproof gear (my old jacket was completely un-waterproof, which I considered something of a design flaw). This was the last time I saw rain, so maybe the expensive gear was a total waste of money.
• We camped secretly one night in a private orchard. I didn't sleep very well, as my head was busy concocting crazy scenarios involving angry farmers, guns, dogs and bullet wounds. It didn't help that Tarek and Julien chose to camp under a massive silver tarpaulin that you could easily see from space, so it didn't feel very secret at all. But nothing happened, of course.
  
• We paid a guy about one pound fifty so we could camp on the grounds of some building. He was ridiculously grateful, and not only gave us beds, but also some disgusting wine from a plastic bottle, and a lengthy and incomprehensible Hungarian history lesson conducted only in Magyar (the local language) and numbers scratched in the dirt. As a result of this, I can now tell you that something very exciting happened in 1560 somewhere in Hungary, but I couldn't tell you what it was.
• I should mention the cycling, I guess. We cycled a lot. A real lot. It was hot, and tiring, and occasionally quite funny, particularly because I managed to crash my bike twice. Once in slow motion down a steep embankment, which wasn't too painful, and once on a gravel track (hit a rock and went straight over the handlebars), which was. My gloves and helmet (which I was wearing for once, luckily) took the brunt of the punishment, but now one of my gloves is worn through to the palm. But hey, I probably won't crash again.
• I got my first puncture just after entering Croatia, and just after boasting how I'd gone almost 3,000kms without one. Bloody thorns lying around on the road. It's criminal. Something should be done.
• We camped in a family's vineyard after asking them politely if we could (while their two dogs growled and barked angrily at us). They gave us some homemade wine, and some homemade raki. As we were enjoying this, we were interrupted by a loud explosion nearby. It was probably a deer stepping on one of the many landmines that litter the countryside. We discussed going out in the dark to look for venison steaks, but decided it was maybe a bad idea.
• And finally, I rolled into Belgrade, which is a very beautiful city. The third hostel we tried had enough beds, and as soon as I got upstairs I was offered a beer by some very friendly travellers. It turns out this hostel has something of a party reputation, so tonight I am going to get SMASHED. 20 days to Istanbul, hopefully. But we will see...

Buried in Pomposity was brought to you by Dan 'Thunder-thighs' Gregory. He likes to ride his bicycle, and he likes to ride it where he likes.

Every Day's a Dan Day

What follows is a typical account of a day spent cycling solo...

7am: Alarm clock goes off. Wonder why the hell my bed is so hard and why it smells of plastic, stale tuna and feet. Remember that I'm in a tent somewhere. Wonder vaguely why the hell I'm in a tent somewhere. Hit snooze violently.

7:09am: Hit snooze violently.

7:18am: Hit snooze violently.

7:27am: Decide I now need to get moving because I need a piss. Hit snooze.

7:36am: Get out of tent in a mood, bleary eyed. Do a piss. Find my cigarettes and light one. Stare at the horizon, then at my bike, then at the horizon. Then at my bike. Then at my tent. Eat a cereal bar. Eat another one because cereal bars are a pathetic joke of a breakfast.

7:45am: Start packing up my tent. Wonder how so much stuff could have been spread so randomly in such a small space of time in such a tiny area. Retrieve my phone from one of my socks and my cooker from up a tree. Pack it all up and swear quite a lot. Roll up my tent and stowe it on my bike. Realise that my ipod is still in my tent so unpack everything and retrieve it. Pack it up again.

8:10am: Put on my gloves. Get on my bike. Look at my compass. Start to pedal.

8:11am: Realise I haven't put my speedometer on. Stop the bike, dig it out from somewhere implausibly inaccessible, put it on, and start riding again.

8:15am: Immediately get lost. Try to remember which way I came when I arrived yesterday. Invariably get it wrong and cycle 5 - 10 completely pointless kilometres while I get my bearings.

9am: Wonder why it seems so hard this morning. Realise that, like every morning, I have forgotten to top up the slow puncture in my front wheel. Consider changing the tube, but, like every morning, just top up the tyre with my pump instead. Because that's easier.

10am: Hunger starts hitting pretty hard after 20-40km. I start looking for somewhere to buy food, because I have nothing in my bags suitable. (Tin of tuna in oil for lunch? Sod that.)

11am: Find somewhere to buy food, just as I'm losing hope of ever seeing any kind of shop for the rest of my life. Become so insanely excited that I only buy chocolate, sweets, fizzy drinks and cigarettes. Come out and realise I've spent a fortune on a load of crap. Go back in and buy sensible food.

11:30am: Start looking for somewhere nice to have lunch. Inevitably find myself in the middle of an industrial park, next to a motorway, or in the vicinity of a smelly sewage works at this point. Cycle at least 10 kilometres to get back to the countryside. Ignore several benches on the basis that they don't face the right direction, they don't have a bin, or they're underneath the wrong kind of tree.

Midday: Find the perfect bench for a nice lunch. Swear silently at the people sitting on it. Cycle onwards.

12:15pm: Have lunch at an inferior but adequate bench. Wonder why I care so much about what bench I sit on. Wonder why I bought the crustier rolls instead of the soft bread. Wonder why I'm here in the first place. Wonder why I'm wondering about everything instead of just enjoying myself. Stop wondering.

12:45pm: Finish my second cigarette, stick my headphones in, and start grinding out the kilometres.

1:15pm: Plunge down an exciting downhill road at 55-60kph. Get to the bottom and realise I've gone the wrong way because my camera case was under my compass and north is actually south. Get a bit angry. Ride back up the hill.

1:45pm: Album finishes. Have cigarette. Eat some haribo, but furtively, to ensure not being spotted as a grown man eating Haribo on a bicycle. I shouldn't care. Haribo are good.

3:pm: Near 100km mark (on a good day). Celebrate by stopping exactly when the milometer clicks over to 100. This will usually be in the middle of a motorway, or on a narrow section of path next to a huge pile of cowshit. Smoke a cigarette.

3:15pm: Start riding, and think about looking for a campsite.

3:45pm: Start actively looking for a campsite.

4:15pm: Start beseeching random deities to present me with anywhere safe to camp that isn't in the middle of an army shooting range or a crack den.

4:30pm: It starts to rain.

5pm: Boots start to fill with water. Toes submerged. This makes for a pleasantly squishy sensation, which soon becomes quite unpleasant quite quickly. Wonder if it's possible to get trench foot on a bicycle.

5:30pm: Find a campsite. Act overly friendly with the campsite reception due to relief. Get some funny looks. Wait until someone comes out who can speak a little English. Explain that I want to camp (which should be patently obvious, since I'm at a campsite, wet and talking at reception). Pay whatever they ask.

6:00pm: Finally finish putting my tent up. Put all my wet stuff into the tent, therefore negating the waterproof properties of the tent. Get out my cooker.

6:10pm: Smoke a cigarette while I wait for the water to boil. These two things take exactly the same time, which is nice.

6:30pm: Tuck into a delicious steaming hot meal. This will probably be a bowl of pasta with an oxo cube, and either tuna or some kind of dried sausage.

7pm: Wonder what the hell I'm meant to do now. Probably read a book, or listen to something. Adam and Joe podcasts are a favourite. Smoke several cigarettes in my tent. Try to avoid burning the fabric. Occasionally burn the fabric.

9pm: Try to go to sleep. Eventually go to sleep.



Repeat.


Buried in Pomposity is brought to you by Dan, who is actually genuinely enjoying himself, despite what the above may indicate.

Viennese Whirlwind

Hey there. Thought I'd do one of these blog things again, since I've now almost ridden 2000km (mainly) on my lonesome and have finally made it to Vienna. Quite a lot has happened since Luxembourg, so I'll give you a few of the highlights...

• One of my favourite parts of the trip so far was meeting Tarek and Julien, a couple of guys cycling to the Black Sea. Being the friendly types that they are, they saw me riding past (as one of them was making an arboreal toilet) and thought that I looked like someone who was going somewhere interesting, so they chased after me to find out. We spent a couple of days together, drunk a few beers and generally had a great time. They were both ex-French Foreign Legionnaires, which made their camping style quite different from mine. Basically, they just rigged up a tarp and lay under it, open to the elements. I thought this was pretty hardcore. It was a shame to split off from them in the end, but I'm meant to be doing this on my own, which doesn't really work if there's more than one of me riding along. That sentence didn't really make sense. Ah well, I'm probably still drunk. What else good happened...?
• I saw a snake! It wriggled across the cycle path as I was riding along. It's probably not that big a deal for most people, but it totally kept me happy for the next 20km.
• My bike went swimming. Yesterday riding to Vienna, a 100-metre section of the cycle-path was completely submerged in waist-deep water. Not one to backtrack and find another way around, I took my boots off and plunged in. My bags have now been thoroughly waterproof-tested, since they were quite definitely underwater for some time.
• I rode my longest day so far, which was 132km. This is quite a long way to ride, but at the end I found that my average speed was 20km an hour. Which is fast, for me. I think this is due to a secret fuel I have discovered - a combination of Red Bull, Haribo and Snickers bars. An extra incentive is to deny myself a cigarette for stretches of 40 kilometres. This somehow induces my legs to magically find some extra power when I'm nearing the end of the stretch. Weird.
• I also did possibly the stupidest thing I've ever done. One evening, my tent was being mobbed by flies. I was pissed off anyway because I hadn't hit my daily target due to rain, so the flies were the final straw. Enraged, I got my Deet spray out of my bag (100% Deet mossie repellant - real nasty stuff) and angrily decided to spray it at the flies as they flew past. This was the idea, anyway. But you know the bit in Anchorman where Ron Burgandy and the woman - Veronica Thingybob - are having a fight, and he gets her pepper spray and accidentally sprays himself in the face...? Yeah, exactly what I did. Eyes full of Deet are probably the most painful eyes I've ever had in my head. It was lucky I'd left my waterbottle by my tent, because I literally couldn't see. Splashed water in my face (and consequently all over myself and my sleeping bag and everything else), and eventually sight returned. Leaving me the problem of how to deal with a soaking wet tent that was still full of flies...
• And finally, the thing that can still make me laugh even now when I think about it. I was having breakfast with some Finnish girls, and one of them said something and the others started laughing. I assumed it was because I had toast stuck to my ear or something similarly stupid, so I asked what was so funny. One of them leaned over to me, ut her mouth to my ear and very quietly whispered, 'The guy next to you... he is eating only jam!' I looked round and sure enough, there he was shovelling jam into his face with a spoon like the most natural thing in the world. I think maybe you had to be there, but it still cracks me up to think of it.

Some thoughts on riding a bike in general.

At the start of this trip, I thought I'd coined a phrase that seemed like a pretty good philosophy, but which irritatingly turned out to be printed on the waterbottle of the very first cyclist I met. The phrase was, 'If you don't know where you're going, then you can never get lost.' And I stick by it. It's a good way to stay sane after several days of waking and not knowing where you're going to sleep that night, or even which direction to start pedalling.

However, after a while of this riding, I started to question why I was doing it. Why, in this era of planes, and cars, and other wacky modern inventions, did I still insist on dragging myself painfully slowly across the face of the planet? So I thought, maybe a more pertinent question would be this: 'If you don't know why you're going, can you still get lost?' And I think the answer, mentally-speaking, is yes. Yes you can. Let me explain.

Our daily lives, for the most of us, are based on repetition. We do the same things, see the same people and visit the same familiar places. This means we tend to use the same bits of our brains all the time, which makes for some very well-trodden neural pathways. But when you take all of this routine away, then it's very easy to get lost in yourself. To start thinking differently, to start feeling differently, and to start looking at things differently. Now, I'm (clearly) not a doctor or neurologist, so this is just based on my own observations, but it seems to be the case. I feel very lost inside myself a lot of the time right now, while my legs keep mechanically pushing myself along. There is a strange disparity between the physical repetition and the mental meanderings. But yes, I'm often lost.

But we assume to be lost is a bad thing. Maybe it's good to get lost now and then. Think to yourself, when last were you lost? Getting lost means you can discover new things - things you would never have discovered were you on familiar ground. So for now, alone in Vienna with nothing familiar around me (apart from the ubiquitous MacDonalds' everywhere), I am very happy to be lost.

Buried in Pomposity is brought to you by Dan, who is clearly going crazy out here on his own...

DeLuxemBirthday!

Hello all. First blog of the trip. I was going to put some pictures up but they're mainly of hills, or drunk backpackers, or a bicycle, or me looking sweaty and tired and grim. All of which you have probably seen before. So maybe I'll do this tomorrow.

Anyway, I've been going on my own for five European days (it turns out that European days are exactly the same as English days, just one hour earlier. Or later. Basically, five days...), and I have to say it's been better than I expected. I don't want to bore you with an overwrought flowery diary in which I honk on about how hardcore I am, so I'll condense the last five days into bullet-points. In which I will honk on about how hardcore I am.

Before that though, I should say thanks to Ed and Tom who did the first 450km with me. We went to Amsterdam, and Brussels and there was a thunderstorm, and all was a lot of fun. If you want details on those days, track one of them down. They will bore you with the tales like some ancient mariner (but a mariner who traded his ship in for a bike and then drank a lot in Europe for 10 days).

Anyway, over the last 5 days I have...

• Ridden my way out of Brussels, with a tailwind, heavy traffic, no sense of direction and a stinking hangover. That was pretty easy, actually. No exciting happenstances. Sorry. I am too amazing for this to be an interesting story.
  
• Ridden 100km into the Belgian countryside. Failed to find a campsite, then been surprised by another thunderstorm. Pleaded with some cyclists who let me put my tent on their son's lawn. The mum went and made me a toastie and brought me a beer and some icecream. She also insisted I do a poo in her house. In the toilet, I mean, not just anywhere. They were strange, but very nice.
• The next day I did 100 more kilometres. Oh yeah. Like nothing. Like falling off a rock. I met a Belgian cyclist who refused to believe I would ever make it to Istanbul. He's probably right.
• Camped at a campsite, where some children insisted on using my tent as a kind of central column to chase each other round. They ignored me, so I ignored them
  
• The next day I found myself in the Ardennes. I had not really heard of this place, but it turns out it's Belgian for 'Land of the fucking steep hills and forests that go on for miles without so much as an ice-cream stall but full of horseflies who treat you like some kind of buffet service'. I did 85km. It was really really hard work. If you don't believe me, try this simple exercise. Tie a tractor tire to the back of your bike, then ride up and down a footpath in a nearby wooded area for 6 hours, with a sunlamp tied to your head. Drink 2 litres of water, but no more because the stingy owners of a cafe wouldn't let you fill your water bottles up. After that, put up your tent next to a motorway and then put a Belgian sitcom on your iPod and listen to it for 5 hours. Eat a bowl of pasta with an oxo cube in it.
• The next day I crossed into Luxembourg. Luxembourg is not small. It is huge and hilly. My back chainguard broke in the middle of nowhere and I had to cut it off with a penknife to free up the freewheel, as I do not have the tool to get the cluster off. It was bloody hot too. I cycled down a dual carriageway to try and make it to the capital (which is also called Luxembourg - imagine!) but I almost got smeared onto the crash barrier by a truck. I then pedalled like mad, shaking legs and poo-stained gusset and all, for 4 kilometres to the next exit, and went back on the country roads. Which were too steep and didn't ever go in the direction I wanted. So I found a campsite, had a beer and ate some chips.
• This morning, I woke up in my tent and it was my birthday. I got myself the best birthday present I could think of. A train ticket for the 40km left to Luxembourg city for 1 euro and 50 cents. I am not ashamed - far from it! The hostel was fully booked, but the girl called all the people who hadn't yet shown up and got me a bed. I am now going to have a well earned birthday beer! Next up... Germany and beyond!
  

This is my bicycle. There are many like it, but this is mine.

Hi all. Welcome to the second part of the 'How not to cycle round the world' series. Pull up a cup of tea and let me make you a chair.

Below you will see a picture of a bicycle. Her name is Heristorsen, because that's what I called my rocking-horse when I was 3.



Now, some of you may not be so au fait with bikes as your able narrator, so I'll take you through some of the notable features.

Wheels:

It's got 'em. Two of them, to be precise. To be honest, this was a cause for concern for me in the shop, as I was unsure how two wheels could possibly remain upright when travelling along. In fact, I'm still not sure. However, my requests for 4, 6 or perhaps even 8 wheels were greeted with a disdainful tut and much shaking of the head from the long-suffering shopkeeper. So two wheels it remains.

Saddle:

It's got one of them too. As a responsible customer, I was sure to check that one was included before I rode off. The saddle is made of leather, and is slightly harder than a comfortable anvil. I am assured that after 200 or 300 miles it will break in and mould to the shape of my rump. I am more inclined to bet that my rump will be doing the moulding, until I have a perfect saddle-shaped impression where my anus used to be.

Frame:

This is the bit of the bike that stops all the other bits of the bike from simply being bits of a bike, and turns them into a bike by holding them together. It is made of steel.

Bags:

I have various bags hanging offf the bike. There are three at the back, two on the front wheel and one on the handlebars. I put them all on myself, which pretty much guarantees them to fall off every five miles. Inside, there is a tent, a cooker, a sleeping bag, a few clothes, a medical kit, some spares and tools, and a penny whistle. And a multitude of other crap that is surely destined to find a final resting place on some roadside verge as soon as I get tired of lugging it around.

Deck-chairs:

These will not be coming with me.

Various accesories:

In addition to the above, I have also put a number of other things on to the bike, all of which I am assured are crucial, and none of which I am sure that I need. There is a bell for tinging pleasantly every 3 minutes, a speedometer to see exactly how slow I'm moving, bar ends to give my hands yet another uncomfortable position to hold the bars in, lights which I will use when I intend to cycle at night (which is never), a pump to hit aggressive dogs with in Romania, and brakes. Because what I really, really want to do after struggling and slaving with my poor legs to pick up enough speed to actually get anywhere, is to squeeze my hand effortlessly and come to a standstill. Fortunately, I don't intend to stop, so I can use my brake-levers to hang windchimes from. Which will be nice.

So anyway, that's about it. I leave on Monday, and will try and keep this updated reasonably frequently. Until then, enjoy the sun!

Coming soon...

...to all good cinemas on the Norfolk Broads.



Since leaving regular employment, I've found myself very easily distracted.

How not to cycle round the world

Coming soon to BiP - performed and then written by Dan 'Not again' Gregory.

In July 2010, an unremarkable man will leave England with a bike, a half-baked idea, and an uncharacteristically short haircut. His mission - to cycle from Ipswich UK to Ipswich Australia, something that he's always never dreamed about doing for his entire life. With no experience, insufficient preparation and a super-human ability to make a terrible hash of everything, he will foolishly set off to tackle this insurmountable challenge.

He will almost certainly fail.

Dan will leave with his former bandmate and good friend Tom Askew for a couple of weeks cycling round Holland/Belgium, before being unceremoniously left on his own to head towards Istanbul. Tom has the utmost confidence in Dan's ability to utterly break down at this point, and will be greasing his lower legs to prevent Dan from pathetically clinging onto his ankles as he boards the Eurostar home. Tom has also suggested a number of blog entries that you may well see in the future, such as 'How I raised the bar (and then ran straight under it)' and 'Riding a bike - you can forget.'

Dan hopes to raise money for a charity, but he hasn't decided which one as a lot of them seem just as good as the others but for different reasons. It may well be for the Make-a-Wish Foundation, or it may be for Medecins Sans Frontieres. Now that he's mentioned both of them, it might now have to be both out of politeness. But the main thing to remember is - whoever wins, he loses.

In summary, over the coming months this blog will chronicle Dan's day-to-day trials and how he's unable to overcome them. Read of colourful local cultures that he never experienced, exotic locations he failed to notice and dangers that inevitably got the better of him. A life-affirming and heartwarming read, Dan Gregory's experiences will convince you that yes - you really could have done so much better than he did.

Critical reception:*

"I've never laughed so hard at someone else's expense in my life." - Time Out

"Truly emotional stuff. At one point I felt that I was really there with him; hungry, terrified, and crying in a tent." - Sara Flimsy, London Review of Blogs

"What a tool." - Nuts Magazine


*These quotes are made up. Time Out have never heard of me. There is no such person as Sara Flimsy. And I bought Nuts Magazine once in order to find a recipe for Pecan and Macadamia Pie, and feel that they should probably change the title to something a little less misleading.

Dan's Winter Driving Tips

1 - Pulling away:

Use the highest revs possible. Engage first gear and release the clutch swiftly. Make sure that you keep accelerating. This is the only way to break free of the snow's icy clutches.

2 - Stopping:

Your brakes will definitely stop you if you need them, so always drive confidently and with this in mind. After all, they've never failed you before...

3 - Cornering:

Corners should be taken at a reasonable speed and with decisive confidence. If you start to spin, relax. You will probably go all the way round in a minute.

4 - Motorway driving:

Change lanes as often as possible to keep heat in the tyres. Drive at 70 mph regardless of conditions, visibility or traffic jams. After all, the speed limit is there for a reason - to stop people going too slow.

5 - Parking:

Leave your car anywhere. If the conditions have got the better of you and you have slithered into the middle of a busy intersection, just give up. Leave your vehicle there and walk the rest of the way. It'll still be there when you get back.

6 - Hills:

There are two ways to tackle hills. Technique (a) - Approach cautiously at 5 mph in 1st gear. You will crawl steadfastly to the top like a tortoise, and if you begin to lose traction, simply rev harder. You'll get there in the end, champ.

Technique (b) - Accelerate to at least 45mph. Select top gear. Charge blindly at the hill with your eyes shut. You'll be over it in seconds. Easy as that.

7 - Pedestrians:

They are more scared of you than you are of them. Exploit this fact. Old ladies are remarkably sure-footed when crossing icy roads, whereas your car is a potential catherine-wheel of automotive death waiting to happen. As this is the case, make sure you do not adjust your direction or speed for anyone, as this could result in catastrophe. Ignore the children throwing snowballs in the middle of the road. They're young... they'll heal.

8 - Other road users:

...can be trusted implicitly. After all, they have a driving licence, don't they? Drive as closely behind them as you can, and let them plough a path for you through the frozen wastes. If anything happens, they'll bear the brunt of it, and you will be able to stop safely behind them.

9 - Cyclists:

Treat cyclists in exactly the same way as you do in clear conditions. By ignoring them.

10 - Precautions:

To ensure that your car is warm in the morning, leave the radio and sidelights on overnight. The gentle glow and soothing late-night jazz will stop it from freezing. To defrost the windows, pour on warm bisto - nothing melts ice quicker. If you are only going for a short journey of less than 3 hours, don't bother bringing a coat, gloves or shoes. After all, you'll be in the car. If you begin to feel chilly, turn the heater up.

If you do become stranded, try eating the foam out of the car-seats. It is an excellent natural source of fibre and poly-urethane.

Dan's Winter Driving Tips were brought to you by Dan. He had a car once, until he crashed it.