Derby to Dubrovnik*

With a few shaky pedal strokes on our unwieldy bikes, many hours later than we'd hoped for, we cycled away from our house to start our two month adventure. It had been a slightly stressful weekend - it turns out packing up all of your belongings (essentially moving house), finishing your work, and preparing for a holiday dissimilar to any you've been on before, all at the same time, is quite ambitious.  We took our obligatory flat lay picture of our kit (not as finessed as we'd like due to slight stress). Packed it up into our new panniers, onto our new pannier racks, onto our new bikes. I weighed my bike - 26kg - slightly more than my road bike! We checked we'd locked the doors, and then checked again another three times, and said good bye to our house. All of our kit It felt odd going down very familiar cycle routes, knowing we wouldn't be seeing our local haunts for a few months. The cycle to Leicester was very smooth, with 25km on cycle paths, a slightly underwh...

Mary and Rhys: even weddings are made better with bikes! (Photographer: Charlotte Jopling) At the end of May we'll be starting a four month career break. Part I is a two month cycle tour across Europe, from Derby, to potentially, Dubrovnik (*quite possibly not as far, or elsewhere - it just sounds good!).  With less than two weeks to go until we set off, we're getting pretty excited! Over the last couple of weeks, we've been buying a slightly endless list of supplies - new front pannier racks, a travel washing line, shiny bottle cages. Not to mention some new touring bikes (a Sonder Santiago for Mary and a Genesis Croix de Fer for Rhys) to actually put all of our stuff onto! It's all starting to feel very real. Practising cooking on a stove on a kit shake out ride This year has been a bit busy with wedding planning, but we enjoyed the loveliest day getting married, and are now appreciating having more time to plan our tour. We've had a few ve...