I've been lucky enough to cycle in some of the most wonderful places in the word, including a Trans American crossing from West to East, the UK's end to end from Lands end to John O' Groats, from Bremen in northern Germany down to the Bodensee and Switzerland, and down to the Med at Montpellier. I've also done several smaller tours including two previous visits to the island of Cyprus.
I'm going back to Cyprus again to ride because I enjoy it so much there, and fortunate enough to have somewhere to stay and the cycling is superb.
On previous longer tours I have always had a plan, a set destination or personal goal. Not this time. This time I'm just going to make it all up as I go along and go with the flow. It won't always be about the bike either, this is a holiday as well, so I'll be doing other stuff off the bike as well hopefully. This won't be a traditional cycle tour of the type I've done previously, simply a holiday where I have my road bike with me and I get up each morning, look out of the window and decide which direction to ride there and then depending on how I feel, the weather and what else is or isn't going on.
The long winter in the UK has taken it's toll on my fitness. I ended last year in good shape, but have let that slip during recent months, due to poor weather and concentrating on another important aspect of my new life, building a new network of friends. Those are my excuses anyway and I am sticking to them!
Today is 30/3/2014, two days befor kick off at Gatport Airwick at the ungodly hour of 4am. I've fitted some new schwalbe durano plus tyres to Celeste, my trusty Bianchi Via Nirone Coast to Coast road bike, the one I did the LeJog end to end on last summer here in the UK. Ideally I could do with some new rims but I didn't get my finger (or wallet) out in time to get some before this trip became a reality. So I'm putting my faith in the Greek God of cycling (Cyclops) that they will keep rolling for the duration of this trip and not collapse under my Christmas excess.
As on my last two cycle tours I will be posting mostly from my HTC desire cellphone, so please forgive the inevitable predictive text cock ups and typos.
I really need to get away from this petty minded little town on Englands 'riviera', and be free from it's shackles once again. I'm going for a month and hopefully will have got my timing right so as to experience the cypriot spring and and English summer, always assuming the UK weather forcast doesn't fast forward to winter directly upon my return.
Let the fun begin...
