The Push East - Bratislava

We are now in Bratislava, having entered our seventh country so far, out of probably 19. We bashed straight along the Danube, which is MASSIVE, but made the journey relatively hill-free.

The past two days have been fairly large. We felt pretty good after Linz, and the key to covering distance, we've discovered, is to eat constantly throughout the day. Our legs are reasonable engines now, we just need to make sure they have fuel. So, the past couple of days, we pressed out 300km, all in the most severe headwind we've felt so far (20-30 kph). This decimated our average speed to a mere 21kph and saps morale and energy. Still, it felt good knowing we can do 150km a day in adverse conditions.

While checking the map of Austria, we were wondering where Vienna was, we couldn't see it anywhere:

Duncan: "Hey, Geoff, am I going mad? I can't find Vienna anywhere!"
Geoff: "Maybe it's quite small. I think it's somewhere in the middle."
Duncan: "Weird. Nevermind. Hey look, Wien is bloody massive! Probably a dump, lets blast through it."

We did blast through Wien, in about half an hour, stopping only at a Lidl for some much needed energy. Turns out Wien is Vienna, and we just missed one of the best cities of the trip. How dumb is that?!

Bratislava we thought would be an industrial heartland full of gangs and crime. It's actually really nice, the government has obviously laid down a lot of bones to sort out the roads and clean the place up. Still a fair bit of construction going on though.

Here's some 'interesting facts' about Albania from a book on Europe. No joke:

Albania is famous for having over 700,000 nearly invulnerable concrete bunkers from the Soviet era.
Did you know? Albania's streets, even the mountain passes, are all lined with discarded plastic bags.
Gun ownership in Albania is extremely high, fuelled by the resurgence of blood feuds. This leads to a endless cycle of violence and murder which stops only when the two families reconcile.

We need to up our daily kilometers to about 300 so we can bash through that place in a day!

Trip Update

Well, we've been doing a bit more planning on our rest day in Linz, and it looks like the Alps are a no-go. The weather is the problem, forecasts show a temperature in Linz or Graz of around 0 degrees at night, which means our three days wild camping in the Alps at altitude will be very definately sub-zero.

We don't have the kit to deal with that sort of cold, we've had a few nights around the 4 degree mark, and we got very little sleep due to the violent shivering! Now, we both love a bit of suffering, but there the risk of death is just a little bit too high.

So we're taking a detour and adding some more km's!! We'll go via Bratislava and Zagreb, hitting both Slovakia and Hungary. I'm keen to pop round Lake Balaton again, that place is beautiful, but it's a long way East from the Adriatic.

We feel a little bit like wimps but we think this is the best course of action. Look out for our new route (which won't overlap the green) as it comes!

Geoff and Duncan

From Prague to Linz

We're in Austria now, after a couple of pretty exhausting days from Prague. First day from Prague was a smooth 116km, which slipped by almost without a breath. But, we forgot to eat and the next day, 90km to the border in the pissing rain for another session camping wild in the woods was a little trickier. To be honest, though, we've both been missing the peacefulness of the wild camping after 5 days in Prague with some tosser fiddling with plastic bags and padlocks every day at about 2am!

Still, on the second day we also forgot to eat, and so today, to Linz (65km) was really tough, even though it should have been a pile of piss. Our bodies are just totally drained of energy. We know it's the food because after a quick snack we get half an hour of power before slumping again. Something we really need to sort out.

Austrian countryside in Spring is absolutely amazing. 'Sound of Music' style amazing. Meadows of wild flowers, perfect roads with nothing but a couple of tractors, and stunning woods with glorious sunshine. Duncan has been particularly impressed with the locals, which are also of high quality. Linz, in particular, is a student town, and we sodding love it!

Some Nice Days Ahead

Just been planning the route through the Alps, we've got a few days like this ahead!

Duncan's Outrageous Behaviour

We were at a club one evening after a few drinks in Prague, but it was packed.

A girl keeps saying she's really thirsty, but the bar was completely rammed and she can't be arsed to queue. Eventually she submits.

Twenty five minutes later:

Andrea

"I can't believe I had to queue for so long to get my beer, never doing that again!"

Duncan

"Do you mind if I have a quick sip?"

Andrea

"Yeah, sure, no problem!"

Geoff

"That's a finish! Buffalo!!"

Duncan glugs deeply and polishes it off. He dumps the empty pint glass on the table in front of the girl. Then he looks a little peeky, looks like that pint is going to bounce! He runs off and we see him a bit later on, smelling slightly worse. The girl has since left Prague, thank god.

That guy is a liability.

Some more Photos

Here Duncan is showing how much filth he managed to accumulate on his face after a gruelling 4.5 hour ride to Prague in the pouring rain. He stank of sewage.

Duncan was feeling a little low after the comfort of Alana's mum's place, so I tried to cheer him up with a few sets of chins. The kids playing basketball were very impressed with our form.

Here is Geoff showing some good form with nice straight legs and a slow, deliberate action.

Here are the offending bottles some time into our pre-gaming session for our big night out. As always, it started off as a joke in the supermarket ("Hey, why don't we each drink a bottle of vodka?") but naturally neither of us would show any weakness on the suggestion and we promptly squared them away back in the kitchen. We were smashed and the evening was quite eventful, read about it below in Duncan's post!

Standard dinner outside a supermarket. If only that weather held... Here we ate so many meatballs Duncan nearly chundered on the short 2km to the woods for some wild camping. The meatballs were disgusting too, but thankfully the smell of them was so bad it kept away the animals at night.

A nice Canard in a baguette. Standard fair, washed down with a bottle of the old vino tinto. The whole duck cost a mere 5 euros. Down she goes!

WHAT IS GEOFF DOING?? This is after the Boskov and Geoff was slightly worse for wear. Still, he seems to be enjoying himself and at least he slept in an actual bed unlike Duncan. Poor bastard, I asked to borrow his key because I'd lost mine in the bogs, and then locked him out and promptly dozed off. He slept on a sofa in the bar downstairs.

Czech Vodka

We have made it to Prague after 19 days on the road including rest days. Our last day from Plzen to Prague was cycled in the pouring rain which made it exceptionally miserable. It was so sodding cold that we did the whole 103km with only 5 mins break under a bridge. Cycling in the rain is not fun! We only have waterproof jackets so our legs get wet and then the water runs into our shoes so after about 10mins we could not feel our hands or feet. At one stage, Geoff's hand were so cold he couldn't change gear when a hill approached. Although the mud guards are quite good at stopping water getting on you, the person cycling behind gets constantly sprayed. Czech roads are not clean and as a result the spray coming from the bike in front smells of sewage.

Once in Prague we settled into the hostel and then hit the local supermarket for some sustenance and a bottle of rum costing less than 4 quid. The rum was down the hatch quite quickly along with some beers for a good 22 unit evening. The cycling seems to have really improved our alcohol metabolism as at 8am the next day we were up and ready to go with no side effects.

Last night was planned as a big one so we were a little bullish and purchased two bottles of Boskov Czech vodka. This was mixed in a 1 to 2 ratio with multi-fruit juice. These were squared away within an hour and a half. 20 shots each, fine. The next venue, Cross Club, is slightly hazy with some more beers and climbing over walls involved. Geoff's chat was not good, at one stage he was commenting on the child bearing qualities of a girls hips to her face. Once back in the hostel at 5am, Geoff locked me out of the room so a couple of hours on the sofa was all the sleep i got.

Duncan

 

Sunburn and Headwinds

I think over the past few days we've over-baked it. My legs are smashed, my arm is absolutely bright red and radiates heat something chronic. The past few days we've been heading straight East into a prevailing headwind, which is seriously hard work and saps our stength. The panniers act like large square-rigged sails and crawling up a 600m peak really takes it out of us.

Normally I quite like the climbs, it gives you a boost when you scream downhill, a good view, and it's satisfying to boot. Now though, the downhills require power too, and breaking 25kph is an achievement. It makes the days longer as well. So, grinding down a peak on the granny-cog at 12kph isn't as fun as it used to be. No rest days now since Frankfurt, and we have averaged nearly 100km a day.

One more push to Prague tomorrow, and then we can take a few days as rest.

Past two days:

Nurnburg to Wild Camping: 115.6km
Wild Camping to Plzen: 91km

End of Day 16 - Nurnberg

A reasonably short day today to Nurnberg (81.2km), still got to cycle back to the campsite. For some reason all of our shorter days seem to be bloody difficult. Today it was a headwind and my bruised knee! The bruise was a result of the combination of a generous local in the restaurant last night who bought us some extra beers and shots and my damn pedals that i cant seem to get out of when i start to fall over.

Only three more 100km+ days cycling to Prague where we will let our legs recover and chill.
The night before last was spent in an awesome wild camping spot. We were however woken at about 3am by some really strange noises that sounded like they came from a big animal. We think it was a couple of wild boars mating. His stamina was impressive.

Today we managed to get in some much needed chin-ups as the past two weeks of calorie deficient days have caused our upper bodies to be metabolised directly into leg muscle. Pictures will follow but the kids in the playground were mocking us in our lycra bib-shorts!

Next three days:

Nurnberg to Wild Camping near Czech border: 95km assuming perfect nav
Czech Border to Plzen: 100km - CZECH REPUBLIC
Plzen to Prague: 95km

Perfect nav is extremely unlikely as we only have one sheet of A4 with a map 300km a side on it.

Off to the supermarket to get in as many calories as i can stomach after the 4 mini magnum icecreams, 2 pretzls, half a pack of meatballs and a twix i just ate. Today we burnt about 5000 calories. Need to try and eat 3000 in the next few hours. Eating is getting boring.

Duncan

The tour in photos

This is a typical view of the ground as we grind out a climb. Road-kill not only breaks up the monotony but also provides valuable protein to a hungry cyclist. This duck went well with a tin of sweetcorn.

Standard dinner. Here we'd just done our longest day, the 125km one, and I was tucking in nicely to some corned beef and a local beverage.

Here is Duncan showing the quality of food we enjoy. This was supposed to be tuna, but it had a thick layer of scum on the top which affected the flavour slightly.

Here we are at Hoegaarden outside what we thought was the brewery. Actually it was a fancy hotel and the brewery was closed further down the road. We got bored after an hour and cycled another 75km.

The sun was bright and I am squinting. That meal is a huge steak from a French kebab van. Cost €5.80 and was thick as a Yellow Pages. They love cyclists (or maybe just lycra) in France and we think we got a good deal!

This climb was massive. Went on into the distance and, although you can't tell from the photo, it was quite steep. Serious energy drain whipping up that one! Around the bend, there was an identical view and another moral-sapping climb. This time with snow. That day we climbed 1474m.

Map of current progress

Well, we're doing ok, but there is still a LONG way to go. It took about that much distance to break in our saddles, which are now extremely comfortable. There's a photo of them in one of the first posts. We went to a bike shop and felt some other Brooks saddles, and the titanium model was definately worth it. So much lighter.

It's got to the stage now that when we talk to people they think it's quite interesting that we've gone so far. Great for random encounters.

Frankfurt - Day 12

We're now in Frankfurt at Alana's mum's place, which is really nice. Neither of us had ever met her before and we just turned up at 1130 after an early start, stinking after a night in the woods. All our clothes were filthy, and Duncan refuses to shave off that ridiculous excuse for a beard, so he looked even more homeless. Still, she took us in, we showered, I shaved, and she even washed all our clothes (the stink coming from the groin of our cycling bib-shorts was INSANE. That woman is a saint). Then she took us out to a restaurant, refusing to let us pay our way. We felt guilty, we'd never met this woman before and I had absolutely no connection to her. Still, let the good times roll! Duncan right now is helping to teach a student with her so we're helping out where we can. Plus, obviously our dinner-time chat is priceless.

Past few days have been quite hard. Dunc and I have both been eating far too little and we think we've averaged a 3000 calorie a day deficit. Trouble is, we've allocated a 20 euro a day budget each, which includes campsite fees if we're not wild camping. This limits us to supermarket food.

The only food that's suitable without a stove is ham and bread and cold tinned food, so we've been getting thinner and thinner. Plus the mornings are generally freezing (our load-outs are designed for Greece and Egypt, but it isn't 40 degrees C yet!) so we want to get going ASAP, which means a small breakfast. I tried to deck a tin of corned beef the other day, but spoon after spoon of the stuff gets a little boring. I'm still waiting to buffalo Duncan on a 800g can of ravioli. Down she goes!!

All this means we've been hitting the wall earlier each day. Yesterday and the day before had some monster climbs too which just mashed up our legs. They feel like the cold ravioli we ate for dinner a few days ago. Like pasty ground-up meat mixed with rusk and barely a muscle-fibre to string it together. Cycling feels like we're cycling through treacle and it's made worse by the fact that the bikes are slowly deteriorating too. Strangely, though, morale is high, and after each climb you just have to laugh about how destroyed our bodies are!

This is what we've done each day so far:

Day 1: Calais to Saint-Omer. 55km - FRANCE
Day 2: Saint-Omer to Lille. 52km
Day 3: Rest day. 33km
Day 4: Lille to Oudenaart. 72km - BELGIUM
Day 5: Oudenaart to Brussels. 80km
Day 6: Brussels to Soumagne. 126.6km
Day 7: Rest day. 10km
Day 8: Soumagne to National Park. 98km - GERMANY
Day 9: Wild camping to Koblenz. 96.4km
Day 10: Koblenz to wild camping. 66.2km
Day 11: Wild camping to Bad Homburg. 56km
Day 12: Rest day in Bad Homburg.

Next few days:

Day 13: Rest day, a bit soft I know but we need it.
Day 14: Bad Homburg to Hafenlohr. 100km
Day 15: Hafenlohr to Scheinfeld. 80km
Day 16: Scheinfeld to Nurnberg. 65km
Day 17: Nurnberg to Irchenrieth. 95km
Day 18: Irchenrieth to Plzen. 100km - Czech Republic
Day 19: Plzen to Prague. 95km

That's our next milestone and we'll take a couple of days off there. Watch this space for a few photos! Oh, on Day 8 we climbed through the snow line on a monster 12km long climb! That was cool.

The Big Day

A couple of days back, we were cycling on an easy day, about 50k or so, and stopped in Hoegaarden to visit the Brewery.

Two hours later, after a couple of beers, we got a bit bored sitting there at about 3pm. It was a nice day, so we figured we'd have a look at the route ahead. One thing lead to another and 65k later we were approaching Liege, in the East of Belgium. We were a little puffed, to be honest, but we had a nice, long downhill into Liege.

At the bottom, we got a bit lost, so asked a bus conductor where Soumagne was. He thought about it for a bit, then went "ah! Soumagne! Au velo?" with a disbelieving look. I said yes, he laughed out loud, long and hard.

Turns out Souamagne is up a sodding great 10km 6% climb. We had no choice and just had to grind it down. We'd already carried our fully loaded bikes (including a shed-load of beers, a rotisserie chicken, a baguette, and a litre of juice, ON TOP of the full tour load-out) 115km and the hookers in the brothel windows on the N3 between Saint-Truedan and Liege were a distant memory. Still, we made it and had made up a day on the schedule.

Good phys.

The next day we took a rest day and went looking for a supermarket by foot. This turned into a 7 mile round trip, not great for the legs on a rest day!

Currently in Koblenz, nice place and still looking for somewhere to camp. German roads are awesome and I fully recommend cycle trips here.

Duncan's First Post

A quick note on the nature of the trip so far and the unnatural levels of testosterone. After five days we have still not had a hot meal, most meals consist of as many calories as we can buy for our money. Anything with less than 500 calories gets discarded. Most meals consist of a whole cooked chicken, ripped off the carcass and stuffed into a baguette, washed down by a few local beers and then followed by some kind of energy dense cake. Today we bought some carrots to add a litle vitamins but geoff couldnt eat it and instead went straight to the cake.
This trip seems to have turned in a massive fitness session with every opportunity for a little more exercise grabbed. While waiting at the cash machine geoff was doing calf raises.
The chat is awful. Topics of conversation include physical exercise (phys), our low levels of hygiene, beers and women.

About the trip, we are in Brussels after an 80km day. The weather is amazing, i have got a little sunburn. It is still a touch cold with both of us waking up at 4am every morning shivering. Our bodies will adapt so that is fine.

Lille

After a interesting couple of days, we have successfully arrived in Lille for our first rest day.

Day one had some highs and lows. High in that we made it to France, low in that we had some difficulties. Duncan almost missed the train to Dover, smashing in an old lady in the process of boarding - then IGNORING her injuries. We then missed the stop for the connecting train so had to backtrack. Finally, we spent so long stuffing KFC into our eager mouths that we missed the final boarding for the ferry. Duncan's smooth chat managed to get us aboard.

So far so good.

Driven by our target of Saint-Omer for the night, we gleefully cycled past five campsites. In Saint-Omer there were none, so like true heroes we pressed on to find some wild camping. This proved trickier than expected, and following a turn-down from a feral farmer we kipped under a bridge on an old railway line just as it was turning dark at about 8:30.

Then it got cold, so cold that we probably burnt more calories shivering in our sleeping bags (you'll see a photo later about how hilariously thin they are) than we did cycling there. The fact that we'd had no food probably didn't help matters.

Woken by glorious sunshine and truck noise from the overhead bridge, the next day was a lot better. Lessons learnt and tonight we are camping properly. One last thing, the Brooks are breaking us in, not the other way around.