It’s flying day again. We had the usual panic to pack up and be at the airport 5 hours before our flight. Well we have lounge membership so we might as well make the most of it.

We arrived at Heathrow, had a cruisey check-in due to my Koru membership, but were told only the Koru member could go into the lounge. They don’t accept guests in Heathrow. Major bummer. So here I am drinking alone in the lounge and poor Mike is outside with all the plebs. Really , I am just having a couple of beers and some food then I will go and join him.

In approximately 15 hours time we should be in LA. Will keep you posted on our American adventures.

Thanks Matt and Sonia for a fun time at your place 🙂

We awoke to very sore limbs after our climb up Mt Snowdon. I guess it was justified. It was an 18 km round trip with a total ascent 1100m.

We decided to have a quiet day with a gentle stroll around the lake to prevent our muscles from seizing up completely.  Well that’s what we thought. The first half of the lake was a gentle stroll. The second half led us up into the hills. Up and up and up. We would have been pushing our bikes up, it was that steep. So much for an easy day.

It was worth it though as the views from the top were stunning. We were sitting on the edge of a cliff, quietly enjoying the view, when suddenly a woman appeared, clambering up through the bush, flushed and looking pretty freaked out yet relieved at the same time. “Phew”, she says. “Boy am I glad to see some humans. I took a wrong turn and had to climb up this cliff!’. We decided she was mad, or suicidal.

We stopped off at the Quarry hospital which is now a museum. It was a hospital for the slate workers in the 1800s.

We finally limped back to camp around 5pm for a welcomed beer.

Our gentle stroll had turned into a 12 km walk with a total ascent of 575m (half the height of Snowdon).

No wonder we are in pain. We’re cyclists, not walkers!

Reminds me of NZ

There’s the mountain we climbed yesterday – the peak on the right is the highest part.

Looking down on the town of LLanberis where we are camping. This is where the woman emerged over the edge.

Pretty waterfall

The Slate Quarry Hospital

Sunset over Snowdon from our campsite.

We set the alarm for 6am to get an early start at climbing the mountain. We were going to go up the Llanberis path – which is the main route up the mountain, but the lady at the campground suggested we try the Ranger track, which was off the tourist route. We decided to give it a go.

We started the walk at 7.15am (really early for us, but I wanted to try and beat the crowds). The great thing about where we were camped was we could pick up the walk right from the campground. Otherwise we would have had to pay 6 pounds for parking.

The first part of the walk was really pleasant. It was a rocky path, slightly undulating, which wound it’s way through a valley. We were all alone – nobody else to be seen. It was wonderful – just us and the sheep.

After about an hour of walking we came to a gate and the path seemed to disappear. There was a faint trail leading up a very steep hill. Mike suggested that this was probably the way. At this stage it was 8.15am and it was already hot and humid as we struggled up the steep hill. I became dubious that this was the right way, and would have been gutted if we walked all the way up to find we had to back track. Luckily we had phone reception so we called the camp lady and got directions. Yep – we had been struggling up the wrong hill!

We walked across some fields until eventually we picked up the Rangers path – which was a clear trail. Phew. After some time we came to the steep bits. It wasn’t too hard and we are feeling pretty fit after the cycling. About halfway up we saw other people who were very red-faced and out of breath. “Clearly you’re a lot fitter than us” they said as we breezed on past them. That made us feel pretty good.

After about 3 hours of walking we met up with the main Llanberis path and all the people. There were lots of them. Our solitary walk had come to an end. But the views were stunning. We were really lucky to have a clear day as it is very common for Snowdon to be in the clouds.

There is a cafeteria at the top, so we popped in to buy a coke and some more water (we drunk our 2 litres walking up). There is a steam train that people can catch if they don’t want to walk up. I was amazed as they got off the train (some of them in full hiking gear beleive it or not) , walked straight into the cafeteria and started queuing for coffee. I couldn’t believe it. They pay 25 pounds to catch the train up, they have only 30 minutes at the top, and they spend their time queuing for coffee!

We decided we would walk down the main tourist path. It was very busy and a bit boring. Not anywhere near as scenic as the route we took. It was a bit of a drag. I always seem to struggle on downhill walks as it causes me terrible hip and knee pain. I got Mike to analyse how I walk and he reckons I put my toe down first – not my heel. I have always had this problem and I am blaming my sisters for teaching me to walk too young and not teaching me properly!

Anyway – it was an awesome walk to do after a week of idleness. We had a lazy afternoon nap and an early night as we were both aching.

Nice easy start to the mountain

Start of the steep bit

Barbara Lamb

We thought we were in the middle of nowhere when a train chugs up the hill full of tourists.

View from the top

Me at the top.

This Blog Proudly Written by Mike

We slept in the van last night for the first time and it was quite comfy, and really dark as there were no windows in the back.

We had a cup of tea and some cereal for breakfast then headed off to find the tunnels that were used to store ammunution during WW2.

We set off aimlessly driving through the narrow lanes and stumbled across an empty car park. I eventually made the decision to stop and go for a walk. Donning our walking shoes we headed off up a muddy track. ‘I don’t really want to do this, my shoes are getting dirty’ Jo mumbled, ‘Oh there’s a tunnel over there let’s go and explore’ and the mud is soon forgotten.

The tunnels we find are all gated up and are now protected homes for bats, such a shame we can’t go investigating.

All in all the walk was a refreshing change, glad we stopped. Arriving back, the small car park is full, yet it seemed as if we were all alone while walking in the forest.

Back in the van we decided to navigate to a supermarket while avoiding main roads. Miss Nuvi found an interesting route for us to drive along, some of the roads were narrower than the cycle paths we used in Europe, with the hedges brushing against both sides of the van, thank goodness we took out the full insurance.

It started raining about 5pm, and the thought of sitting in our dark little van all night didn’t really appeal, so we checked in to a hotel in Worcester for the night after Jo negotiated a good reduction on the price.

We are off to climb a mountain in the next couple of days if weather permits. We’ll keep you posted.

The Tunnels are grated up

Mike exploring

Today we picked up our rental van for our road trip. We decided on a van as it was the same price as a car and we could sleep in the back.

We have no real idea where we are going. Just heading north, away from the expensive coast. We stopped at a campground and they were charging 28 pounds to camp! That’s $60! Unbeleivable.

So we continued on and are now camping in a farm paddock surrounded by horses. We are about 5 kms from Bath in a village called  Monkton Farleigh. There are 200 acres of underground tunnels here that were used to store ammunitions during world war 2. We’ll have a hunt around tomorrow and see if we can find them.

Mike cooking us dinner

We’ve just been chilling for the last few days at Ems and Nicks place in Bournemouth. We got some washing done and hope we are starting to smell better now. We had our hair cut today and hope we are starting to look normal too.

We are picking up a car tomorrow and are going to do a mini road trip in England. We’re not sure where we are going yet but will keep you posted.

Mike is cooking us a roast chicken for dinner. Yum Yum.

We had a comfortable nights stay in Hastings. The breakfast was spot on. They had muesli, and they cooked the breakfast to order. Much better than the buckets of stodge at the cheap hotel in Folkestone.

We decided that we didn’t want to cycle back to Poole in the terrible head wind. As well as that – we are both starting to fall apart. I adjusted my riding position to ease the chafing, now I am suffering from bad shoulder pain. So today we caught a series of trains back to Poole.

So that’s it – bike trip over.

On Sunday we are venturing on a mini-tiki tour of England, then 10 days in America on our way home, so I’ll keep the blog going for anyone who is reading it.

We had an early breakfast at the hotel. We noticed a huge difference here to the breakfasts we had abroad.

On the continent we had a selection of muesli and fresh fruit.
Here we had a selection of corn flakes, cocoa pops and fruit loops.

On the continent we had freshly baked rolls, croissants, hams and cheeses.
Here we had buckets of scrambled egg, greasy bacon and sausages.

I defintely prefer the breakfasts abroad.

We ate what we could stomach, then got an early start to the riding. To make it back to Bournemouth by the 31st we need to cycle 90kms per day. It’s achievable as we have done these distances before.

The day started with a wicked head wind and it was such a struggle. I’m not sure why a head wind is worse than a hill, but it just seems to be. After a while we moved away from the coast and cycled alongside a canal. This was more pleasant as we were sheltered from the evil wind. We cycled past a farm that had rhinocerous’s in.

Being in a new country, our routine has changed. Abroad, we would buy fresh rolls and either cheese or ham to put on them. Here, there are no fresh rolls, only highly processed stuff. We ended up buying some hideous corned beef pies for lunch as Mike wouldn’t let me have a Sunday roast at the pub.

After a while we encounted the vicious head winds again. It was probably the worst day’s riding we had encountered. I think a lot of it has to do with our frame of mind. We feel that now we are back in England, our cycle trip is finished and we just want to get back to normality (well, as normal as our lives are).

We came across a train station in the middle of nowhere (Winchelsea) that just happened to go via Hastings (our destination for the day). There was a train sitting just outside the station waiting for us. It had been sitting there for a while, and when we arrived at the station it blew it’s horn and started moving. The problem was, it moved right on by and didn’t pick us up. We looked at the timetable and the next train wasn’t for another hour. We decided this was too long to wait, so we continued to cycle the extra 20 kms.

About 10 kms from Hastings we encountered a series of massive hills. It was really just one big hill, but it teased us. Just when we had finished pushing our bikes up one part of the hill, there was another hill around the corner. By the time I was pushing my bike up the 4th steep hill, I was thinking that we could have lounged around the station for an hour and been in Hastings 30 minutes ago.

Anyway – it was all downhill after that. We found a nice hotel in Hastings and I negotiated a good price for the night.

Rhino’s in a paddock

We had grand plans of getting up early to get an early ferry back to England.  We were both so shattered we decided not to. We were on the road by 9.30am though, and that is early for us.

We wanted to make the 2pm ferry, but we had to cycle about 52 kms first. We stuck to main roads and we rode hard ( well for us anyway), only stopping for a quick snack, drink and to check directions. We managed to cycle an average speed of 20km/hr over a 3 hour period, which is excellent for us. Usually it is about 12 to 15 kms/hr.

We arrived at the ferry at 12.30. That’s 30 mins ahead of schedule! We had a nice calm ferry crossing and when we arrived we were first off the boat.

It was really well set up for bikes getting out of dover. There were special cycle lanes so we didn’t have to cycle amongst the trucks and we managed to pick up the cycle route straight away.

We will follow national cycle route 2 back to bournemouth (it goes all the way to cornwall along the south coast). It was pretty steep getting out of dover and I was regretting putting some Belgium beer in my panniers when we left Belgium. You can probably buy it here but I wasn’t taking any chances. I love my westmalle tripel.

We stopped in folkestone and contemplated stopping. A couple stopped and told us there was a campground on the beach to our left. They said it was probably best to stop in folkestone as hythe was more expensive and there was nothing for miles after that. It was 5pm so we decided to stop.

The camping was down a steep hill and the thought of pushing our bikes up in the morning didn’t really appeal. As well as that, it was going to cost 30 pounds! That’s criminal just to put up a tent. We found a seaside hotel for only 40 pounds and it had a seaview and included breakfast. You can take your overpriced campground and shove it!

We went out for a curry and had a good nights rest. Must remember the tent was packed away wet.

Arriving in dover

View from hotel

We set the alarm for 6am and were on the road by 7.30am. This was our plan to avoid cycling in the heat of the day. Must remember the tent was packed away wet!

We had a bit of a stop/start to the morning. Some terrible chafing had developed on the inside of my left leg and was agony. Mike adjusted my handlebars so i was sitting more upright in the hope that it would chafe in a different area.

We also had to stop at a bike shop and get Mikes front pannier adjusted as he didn’t have a spanner that fitted.

We rode into a town called leper. There were a lot of war museums and a big memorial arch for those who died in world war one. We stopped for a bit of a break here. As Mike was reading the plaque about the memorial realised we were at the Menin gate in Ypres. On 12 October 1917 in just two hours, more than 2,800 New Zealand soldiers were killed, wounded or listed as missing in the battle of Passchendaele, around Ieper – the most disastrous day in New Zealand’s military history. Every night at 8.00pm (20:00 hours) the ‘Last Post’ ceremony takes place under the Menin Gate and has done so since 1928.

A storm looked imminent. We had done 70 kms and were trying to decide whether to stop for the night. We wanted to get as close to the ferry in dunkerque as possible. There were a few more towns about 15km on in the town of Poperinge so we pushed it to there.  I wanted to ride further but Mike said we should stop as it looked like rain and we had done over 83 kms.

We had just checked into our room when the storm came. Good call Mike!

It was only 4.30pm, but we were both so shattered we just collapsed in our room. My leg was in such pain I could hardly walk. I have doubts whether I will be able to ride all the way back to bournemouth, but I would really like to. Otherwise the alternative would be to catch the train, but we don’t want to do that if we can help it. As well as that, it goes via London, and London will be heaving with the Olympics on.

We had a nice dinner sitting outside at the hotel watching the rain. Only 51 kms to go to reach the Ferry. We want to get back to bournemouth by the 31st and its about 300 kms from Dover. Let’s see if we can do it!