And we're off!
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.
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 underwhelming trip through Coalville, before some quiet roads to reach our destination. We were staying at my aunt and uncle, Jenny and Rick's. It was a fantastic first night and we were well looked after, with delicious chilli, wine and tales of visiting Peru in the 80s with a travel writer (who later described them as "a nice couple from Leicester", the least damming review of the tourists in the group!).
In the morning, loaded up with fruit, we set off. We were impressed we could navigate Leicester entirely on cycle paths, even if it was a little stop-start. Passing a Tesco we thought we should start our tour of Supermarkets; a decision we didn't regret, as we passed far more churches than shops. Leaving Leicester, the countryside was more undulating than we expected, isn't the east meant to be flat?! Our destination was Oundle - chosen as half way between Leicester and Cambridge, and somewhere we'd vaguely heard of. We'd contacted a few WarmShowers hosts, but had no replies, until we took a punt on one man. We weren't sure what to expect and were somewhat nervous to stay in a stranger's house!
Our nervousness turned out to be totally unnecessary! Our host was incredibly interesting, being a keen skier, enthusiastic cyclist and had lived in the Alps for over a decade! We definitely were inspired by his exciting life! The house itself was an impressive ecohouse, complete with heat pump, which Rhys, in particular, found very interesting!
Our host and his friend joined us for the first 25k of our ride in the morning, and it was lovely having company and some local knowledge. We're now sat, not for the first time, on a slightly random park bench, enjoying our new lifestyle.
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