Another Bike Box in Another Hall

Until recently I’ve never slept in so many different places. Over the past 3 months we’ve rarely spent more than one or 2 nights in the same place and only a handful of stops have been for longer. In fact, until now, I think I’ve only fully unpacked my panniers and hung up my clothes once.

It’s amazing how quickly you can get used to living out of a bag and to moving on every day or so. I’ve become very adept at being able to reach into my clothes bag and select by feel the item I want to wear. To be honest it’s not a massive choice, but it means I rarely need to unpack everything.

Until now.

The Roads to Almost Nowhere; Cycling across Croatia.

In all fairness we both saw the big, red X sign at the start of the military road but it’s amazing what you can convince yourself to ignore when doggedly following a line on the sat nav.

The route we had picked seemed to have unwittingly taken us through a restricted military area, for about 10 miles.
Now my lack of language skills meant that the warning signs could have said “Road closed at night for firing practice”. Or this is what I sheepishly tried to explain to the stern looking gentleman in the military jeep who pulled us over then unequivocally escorted us back to the main road and a 15 mile detour.
Bugger.

Getting In Tents

If Carlsberg did campsites they would look like this one. All marble walls, heated floors and lavender scented soap. The showers are, in fact, so nice I feel that I am too grubby to use them, a first in my entire camping life and a world away from the site we have just left.

Midges and Maniacs (Part 1)

Heading off to Wales for a week of mountain biking, it began to get a bit disconcerting after the 11^th text message which said

“Have fun, don’t hurt yourself too much”.

I don’t know if these concerned messages were indicative of my (lack of) skill or just the perception my nearest and dearest have of the sport.

However as it turned out, the very real danger was to come from somewhere wholly unexpected.