France by numbers
Sunday, May 23rd, 2010Entering France to sunny skies and 24km of downhill we thought our endless summer of cycling had truly begun. It quickly turned unseasonably cold, but camping in the snow, cycling through prehistoric gorges and learning how to make bread were all things that made us forget the weather. – Posted by Emma + Justin
3000 kilometre photo
Friday, May 21st, 2010Make sure you turn off ‘smell-o-vision’ and put away your ‘real-life-touch’ pads if you’re viewing this from the future. This photo documents 3000 kilometres in the saddle, taken on 21st May in Val de Chavagne, France just before the second downpour of the afternoon. – Posted by Emma
Gorge(ous) riding
Tuesday, May 18th, 2010After we left Yves and Ingrid on a bright Thursday morning we had a rough route planned that would take in the Gorges du Tarn and the Gorges de L’Ardeche both of which had come highly recommended by Ingrid. Travelling through the two gorges would also align us to continue further East towards Italy. – Posted by Justin
Food Diary: France
Saturday, May 15th, 2010In France we swapped chocolate filled mini croissants for regular ones and traded Spanish bread for baguettes and many types of cereales filled bread. Influenced by what we experienced when staying with Yves and Ingrid our cooking has become a little more French as well. This is what we ate in one day in France. – Posted by Emma
Fresh Bread & Blue Cheese
Thursday, May 13th, 2010We arrived at Yves and Ingrid’s beautiful home after days of camping in snow and rain. They had contacted us by email offering us the chance to visit them and as we tried to resolve the problems with our tent their offer seemed to good to be true. Before we arrived we had decided that we would stay 2 nights giving us the chance to recover a little and make plans for our route ahead. – Posted by Justin
Snow cycling and tent crisis
Thursday, May 6th, 2010Following our hibernation from the snow we really wanted hot showers and hot food. Instead we had a freezing ride, brought cold paella thinking it was hot and I had a freezing cold shower. And that was before we found the holes in the tent. – Posted by Emma
Showers of sun & snow
Monday, May 3rd, 2010We entered France on an endless downhill, following gorges in blazing sun with baguettes tucked under our arms and berets on our heads – (well maybe not quite but you get the picture). It was too hot to contemplate the thermal waters at Amelie-les-Bains and we hid from the worst of the heat before hill climbing among vivid green trees in the late afternoon, wondering where summer had been hiding all this time. – Posted by Emma
2000 kilometre photo
Wednesday, April 28th, 2010Here is the second in our 1000km milestone photos. This one was taken on 28th April 2010 as we cycled between Taulis and St Marsal in France.
– Posted by Emma
Food Diary: Spain
Monday, April 19th, 2010We’ve tried to document a typical day’s food intake for two hungry cyclists in Spain. Note we normally wouldn’t have two dinners but this day began with a free camp outside Biescas and ended with an offer of a comfortable bed in Gerbe. – Posted by Emma
A (hopefully final) winters weekend
Sunday, April 6th, 2008So this weekend has seen a few things going on which I thought it was worth writing a few words about. The weather has been pretty cold for starters with the most snow we have seen all winter. The snow wasn’t very heavy and didn’t stick around long but its still magical to see the garden and streets temporarily transformed.
Em and I have spent some of the weekend planning our next bike trip which is a 6 day route around Normandy in France. Its going to be a pretty much circular route starting at Dieppe heading west along the coast, back inland to follow the seine to Rouen and then north along the avenue verte to Dieppe. [read more...]












