British Cycling Expedition – 1st Google Map Adventure
In the summer after college had finished, I as most students do, had far too much spare time. I found myself spending hours on google maps, looking at all the incredible places in the world. I found patterns which are so alien to anything we see in the UK, that they inspire a new way of thinking about travel (take a look at the area around the Kara Sea). One which addresses modern age technology, and seeks to use it as a inspirational tool . This lead me onto another set of adventures, the Google Map Adventures, In which I would look for a natural point where a journey was at the B part of A to B, and go there.
For this trip, I looked at the southern tip of Italy, Reggio di Calabria. I left it at the back of my mind while I travelled around some of the rest of the world (much of which is documented earlier in LongTimeSpent). But last summer, this idea came into fruition. Laura, whom I met at University, had a family home in Malta, and so I decided to extend the trip onto Sicily and then across the Mediterranean to little island of Malta.
So in the olympic summer of 2012, one of my best friends, Louis, and I went on a cycling trip. Naturally I took my camera along for the ride, and Louis, brought a guitar… which he strapped on the back of his bicycle. We aimed to only spend money on food, and drink, and vowed NEVER to push our bikes. (this resulted me walking probably less than a kilometre that month, most of which was around supermarkets.)
Initially we aimed to cover 100 miles per day (the London to Brighton bike ride is 56 miles) but we probably averaged 90 miles, and only reached 100 a few.
Our route would take us through France, Germany , Switzerland, Liechtenstein (if we’re counting), back into Switzerland, Italy (the Vatican City…again if we’re counting), Sicily, and then Malta
I’ve posted a few of the photos below, and will write a little description below each. This is a pretty long post, with lots of photos, so please bear with it and let them load, I hope it’ll be worth the wait.
Stopping off in a (seemingly) ghost town, for dinner from a pizza van after day one of riding. We almost got as far as Paris, and were very proud of ourselves.
We passed through so many idyllic french villages, which you don’t get to see when travelling any other way, and its a real pleasure. “Liberté, égalité, fraternité”
a bit of a skip in the Journey here, this is the bridge in Zurich, Switzerland. In northern France, around the Alsasce region however, there were some beautiful golden evenings sunshine which I will never forget. The way the sunlight reflected off the corn was surreally enchanting.
The stunning Lake Walensee, we followed a line of lakes down from Zurich while approaching the Alps, these proved a good spot for taking much needed washes, and the icy water would sooth our muscles
A well earned sunset
This was our camp spot, free of course, and incredibly peaceful.
Liechtenstein, a pointless goal in the trip, and a kind of mental halfway point, even though it was less than a third of the way!
Just about to start our highest climb of the trip, and it was clearly going to be a ….
Another free camping spot, halfway up the Alps. We hadn’t carried any food with up except 5 biscuits, and Louis had ‘accidentally’ eaten 3, leaving me with a mountain to cycle up and only 2 biscuits for fuel. But it rained and the wind blew like a hurricane that night, repeatedly pulling the pegs out of our tent and blowing our things away, which Louis fetched, and so redeemed himself.
At the top of the Julier Pass (about 50km from bottom to top, and reaching 12%), feeling very smug as the only cyclists amongst a bunch of lazy motorcycle tourists… Until a man pulling his kid in a cart behind his bicycle reached the top.
If you’re lucky enough to have ever felt that feeling where you know everything is going to be easy, and ‘downhill from here’. That is the precise feeling I had when I began rolling down this road. literally hours of freewheeling followed.
some nice Swiss scenes
and the border to Italy… still not the end of the freewheeling yet, got a good hour or so of that left.
and finally at Lake Como, just in time to watch the sun go down, and pull open a bottle of red. The next day took us through some of Nothern Italy’s flatland which was dull, but we powered through it and achieved our longest distance day.
And over the Apennine mountains which run the length of Italy, these actually seemed harder to ride over than the Alps, there was a heatwave with temperatures over 41 celsius, thats 105 fahrenheit. But the pleasures of a sunny Tuscany would soon follow.
Little compares to cycling in Tuscany.
Getting some shade and looking for a route at a petrol station. (no need for refueling)
My Stallion, the Mercian, this was a bike hand built for my Dad, he had cycled it to Venice, and around Sri Lanka.
One of the best camp spots of the trip, just off a sheltered holiday community beach south of Naples. After a party, at which we hadn’t yet worked out that everyone knew everyone (apart from us) we became quite notorious.
Mozzarella and Salami Shop
Stopping for a rest on the Amalfi coast, which has to be one of the most pleasurable, and toughest coasts to cycle.
I had been here a few times on holiday before, but this time It felt the best.
Louis finally managed to get the Guitar out. While cooking up dinner (half a kilo of pasta and tomato sauce…again!) on the promenade we managed to confuse an Italian policewoman to turn a blind eye to us cooking there. A compromise of moving our pans slightly to the left was drawn up, and she left.
Torrential rain is never welcome when you have very little places to keep dry.
With nowhere to pitch up for the night, and it being in complete darkness, we found a lime grove to set up in. Mud would be an understatement. If ‘Stuck-in-the-Mud’ was to be played in real mud, rather than a school playground, this is the mud they would use. We spent 2 hours in the morning cleaning it off everything.
Avola Antica mountain goat.
Avola Antica, the ‘Grand Canyon’ of Sicily.
Noto, the whole town was buildings like this, nothing modern, and it was incredible.
In the sea on the last day before catching the ferry to Malta! We had about 10km to cycle, very little indeed. So we ended up falling asleep on the beach. We had both burnt in some very distinct tan lines, and so I fell asleep naked in an effort to even them up… much to the dismay of an Italian family.
Cliff Jumping in Malta
Relaxing on the yacht. A photo which always makes me feel fat now.
Louis and I took the dinghy out, and it ran out of petrol, so we had to paddle the whole way back… possibly the only upper body exercise we got that month…
I hope you enjoy the photos, and thanks for getting all the way to the bottom! If you have any questions please do ask!
Two from Brighton
It has been too long since my last visit here, it’s ben almost a year since my last post, and at first, as the months drew out I felt almost guilty over my lack of long-term commitment to it. I can blame it on my studies, or lack of digital camera (grumble), but to tell the truth, I just haven’t been getting myself out there. It’s been a long winter in London, and I haven’t been exploring as much as I should.
So here are a few photos of Brighton, well Hove actually… One in the summer, and one from the winter.
I hope everyone has endured, and is now looking forward to the summer we are about to receive.
St Tropez
Summer has started, I’m finally out of England once more, and you might notice that’s a film camera slung over my shoulder, so there will be more photos coming… as soon as they’re developed.
I’m spending a few weeks on the Cote d’Azur, and then I’m off on a grand cycling tour I may have mentioned previously. Keep posted for photos, and have a great summer.
China – Part 1 – with supporting holiday snaps
China has to be one of the funnest (excuse my English) countries in the world. I had been travelling for a while with a Canadian guy, Shane, in the north of Vietnam, and he had decided to change his plans and come into China with me.
We booked our train tickets from Vietnam’s Capital, Hanoi, to Nanning, just over the border in the south east of China. Shane was a couple of days over his welcome on the Vietnamese visa, and mine would run out on the day we would travel, and we still had both of our motorbikes to sell. Needless to say we were cutting things fine.
Previously I had been travelling with my girlfriend, who had at this point become my ex-girlfriend. I knew we were on the same-ish schedule, but when we boarded the train and she was sitting not just in the same carriage, but in the next row of seats, it became apparent this was going to be quite a border crossing.
At the border we were awoken by some other passengers, or guards, I don’t recall. Dazed we hauled our bags onto the dark station platform, and through to security. The guards pulled up Shane on his overdue visa, and took him into a side room. They wanted a bribe to let him through, I overhead him casually tell the guards ‘I don’t have any money with me’, they said ‘okay’ and let him on his way. Surprisingly easy.
Upon slowly re-alighting the train, I dozed off and awoke in China. It was the early morning, but a sticky anticipation hung in the air. Lu, a Chinese girl we met on the train helped us work out where a hotel was, nobody seemed to speak any English here, I loved it.
From there on out China kept getting better and better. It was the last month of my travels and I was determined to make this count even more than the previous half year. Nanning is a city which the guidebooks play down to be a mere stop through from Vietnam into China. To me, it was a city which let the imagination run wild, anything and everything seemed to happen on the streets here, the back streets were full of colour, smells, and sounds. Chinese text shouted at us everywhere, at night the city turned to sin. It didn’t feel wrong to hit the clubs here.
The first night we decided to explore, without a guide we had no clue where to head, so we would have to trust the hopefully kind heart of a taxi driver. We sat in the back seats and pumped our arms up and down, while I sang ‘Disco Disco’ and Shane dropped me a beat. He understood, and much to our surprise took us to the best club in town, Soho.
We seemed to attract the attention of nearly everyone inside, the men handed us more drinks than we could drink, and the girls flocked in all directions, I felt famous. Then things went blackout and the next thing I know Shane is hauling me into a taxi, where my consciousness oscillates until Shane is convinced the driver is taking us in the wrong direction. Shane drags me off the backs seat, and pulls a couple of cardboard boxes out of a bin at the side of the road.
We wake up in the morning, without a clue to where we are, some local guy is washing his car next to my head, and everyone is staring at us lying on the floor probably thinking, ‘what the hell are these two white guys doing?’. I take the cheat cards which Lu had written for us and we get a cab back to the hotel. I think, ‘I need to learn Mandarin’.
The next day we went back to the same club, this time we were more prepared, but received the same treatment as the night before. Shane met a model who invited us to come back to her place, the only catch being it was a four hour train ride north to LiuZhou. Outrageously drunk we bundled ourselves into a taxi back to the hotel (which we now knew directions to), stuffed our belongings (and the contents of the mini-fridge) into our backpacks. It was now 5am, so we ran to the station where Tank met us with three sleeper tickets, and three bowls of Laoyou noodles.
Tank took us around her town, showed us all the little locals places which the ‘cool kids, models, and socialites’ hang out, we lit one of those Chinese lanterns down by the Lijiang River. Each of us wrote some wishes on the side. Tank wrote ‘Every Day be happy! Get more money.’; I wrote ‘Be successful in love, life, happiness, live long, fast and bring greatness to the world.’, Shane wrote ‘To find BIG Party & marry Tank’. It crash dived into the river, leaving hoards of laughing Chinese and two gutted travellers. We went to Tank’s fashion show to cheer ourselves up and meet some nice Chinese girls.
At the show we met three local business men who were in town entertaining clients for the night, we had been given front row seats, and all the food and drink we could stomach, and now these guys had invited us to come to their town with them the next day. Our luck seemed to be on for China, and Shane and I were absolutely loving it.
The next day we got up bright and early, but obviously after Tank as she wasn’t in the apartment, so we wrote her a note, and left. The businessmen were staying in a nice hotel in town, and had a Jeep waiting for us when we arrived. They had a fake police siren mounted on the roof of the car, and we sped down the motorway towards Guilin at what seemed like at least twice the speed limit.
Guilin was one of the ‘Lonely Planet’ destinations, and as such Shane and I weren’t too keen on staying for long, we had a rule that if we saw another white person in town then we’d leave the next day. After a quick dip in the river we went back to one of the guy’s houses, where we got dressed up to go out for dinner. That night we dined on Century (rotten) eggs, intestine, and fish head.
After dinner the businessmen wanted to take us out on the town, I guess to show us how they partied, they said we were going to a KTV, apparently we had a private room booked. A maitre d’ ushered us to the room with purple velvet sofas, and a line up of girls in long silk ball gowns. A little set back by the situation, the businessmen explained that the girls were not prostitutes and just were going to spend the evening with us. I was sceptical but went along with it anyway. KTV turns out to be Karaoke Television, I consider myself lucky to have been in China, because with the exception of the Chinese trying to sing in English, my rendition of Tom Jones’ ‘Sex Bomb’ makes me quite frankly the opposite of what the song would be suggesting.
Jack, one of the businessmen, who’s house we were meant to be staying at for some reason did not want us to come back to his, maybe the girls had wound him up enough to want a free house for the night. So he took us to this massage parlour, where we were handed a baggy set of silk shorts and a shirt, and a big white dressing down, told to have a shower, and taken to a room. Where two masseuses massaged Shane and I to sleep.
According to our rule, we had to leave that day, the stench of white man was too strong in this town. I’m not normally one to retract on my steps, but we both agreed that catching a train back to Nanning was the best plan.
Love was in the air. It was ‘Chinese Love Day’, officially called the Qixi festival. Couples were out in their hoards on this warm night, buying all sorts of tit and tat and ridiculous Chinese made unnecessary products for their other halves. Men donned matching t-shirts to their girlfriends, their trying to hide the embarrassment faces suggested they were forced into doing so. Shane and I thought it would be a good night to hit the clubs again.
That night I met Chao, a sweet, and stunning, local university student. For the next few days she was determined to show me the ins and outs of herself and her city. Apparently the place to hang out was the water park/zoo. Dubious of whether this really was the best place to go, and a bit pissed off my swimming shorts had been forgotten/stolen (probably forgotten) in Hanoi, I decided to go anyway. Chao promised me that it was possible to buy new swimming shorts at the park, what she didn’t say is that the only type available would be skin tight speedos. I’m not a guy to get that embarrassed by the things I wear, but speedo’s on a day out with a girl you’ve just met?… I manned up and wore them anyway, and to my surprise people seemed to like them. We met a chinese couple there who we arranged to have dinner with later, what they didn’t say was that we would be eating boiled pig brains intestine and bone marrow. A feast not for the feint hearted. While I politely bit into the soft moose like brain, and sucked the marrow out of a chunk of bone, Chao had decided to give me a Chinese name. After discussing the matter with the couple she decided on Long Wang 王龙, I was delighted with her choice even before I found out the English translation, which was Dragon King. What an honour, ‘I love China’ I thought.
The next day Shane and I decided that we had spent too much time in Nanning, and we left in the morning. Our ambition was to get to Taiwan, just without paying for a ticket. First we had to catch the train to ShenZhen, one of China’s wealthiest cities in Guangdong Province. After the reasonable fourteen hour train ride, it felt not dissimilar to stepping into the future
Lands End and Back
Thailand Gallery – Set 2
On my first day in Thailand I forked out the same amount of money as I spent in two months in India, and all I got was a couple of Visas, and a Scuba Diving course. I had mixed apprehensions about the whole ordeal after my first few hours in Bangkok, most of which had been spent asleep in the back of a taxi cab, and later passed out on the bed of my seemingly luxurious hotel room after 85hrs (yes thats Eighty Five) in the lowest class of a train crossing India.
Koh Tao bounced in front of me as the ‘high-speed’ catamaran pulled into the dock. I had arrived on one of those Thai islands which are famed for their perfect white sand beaches, clear blue water, and excellently cheap diving qualifications. I had been promised a week in paradise.
While the diving was excellent, and the group course turned into private lessons seeing as nobody else had booked up, the looming full moon lay just a few days away, and travelling in a duo meant I had compromises to make. Don’t get me wrong, I do love to party, I started clubbing almost half a decade before I was of a legal age, but when the party is 10,000 morons on a beach, i’d rather be counted out.
I went nonetheless, it was everything I had expected and more (and worse). So I was glad to get back on Koh Tao and continue the Scuba course. I love the sea, I live a stones throw away from it in Brighton. So spending hours on a boat, and seeing what lies in the ocean was a dream.
Hanging about in Gare Du Nord, Paris
I caught the trains around Europe in the summer of 2010, Paris was the first stop over the channel from England, I was in the queue to reserve a train ticket heading to Brussels, I had just bought my first SLR, a Canon 450D, and was taking photos of everything, including these two boys ‘Hanging about in Gare Du Nord’
India Gallery
I visited India for a couple of months at the start of summer 2011, I hadn’t a clue what to expect ,but it exceeded my thoughts in every way. They say Incredible India! and it really is, may that be good or bad. I flew to Chennai (Madras) and travelled through the centre up to New Delhi and onto the the Himalayas in Himachal Pradesh, then retreated down through the deserts of Punjab and Rajasthan, further south I hit the bustling city of Mumbai (Bombay) and down to the beaches and jungle of Goa, Just inland from Goa hides Hampi, a gathering of temples many thousands of years old. I then went back to Mumbai and caught the train for half a week to Darjeeling up in the mountain on the north east province of Assam, then down to Kolkata and onto the next leg of my journey.
LongTimeSpent 