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We rode the 10km from our hotel at Alsmeer to Schipol Airport, outside Amsterdam, packed our bikes and were on our way.

We stopped off, as we usually do at an Asian hub on the way home.  This breaks the 21-hour journey, and helps with the jet lag.  We book a really, really nice hotel, and veg out.  We go for a bit of a walk, maybe hang around the pool, and indulge ourselves.  Usually, the flight out of Europe arrives in the early morning, and we can leave on the evening of the following day for Australia.

We indulge ourselves with the wonderful breakfast that these hotels offer and then don’t eat during the day.

The stopover, Hong Kong this time, is an indulgence and a celebration, and something just for us, before going home.

As this is our fifth European bicycle tour, the experience of getting there and home are now pretty familiar.  While I love getting back to my own home, perhaps the most overwhelming feeling is the one of withdrawal from the intense daily exercise hit.  I know that over the coming weeks I will mourn the gradual loss of the very high level of fitness, that I simply do not have the time to maintain in “normal” life.

This was the hardest trip we have yet undertaken.  We rode just over 3700km, a little less than in some of our other trips, but feel that the workload was much more intense.

It cost us around $150 per day and of that perhaps $100 was for accommodation.  We could have done it for a bit less, if we didn’t have blowouts.  But we like the blowouts.

This was not a trip for the first time bicycle tourist.  I think it takes a trip or two to develop the confidence in your own ability to know that you can cope with the continuous hard riding through Scotland and England.  While the hills are not large, they can be very steep, particularly in England, and there is no relief.  Most days, we were either riding up a hill, or down the other side.  The weather in Scotland is not easy, it is often wet, cold and blowing, but there was never a day when I just wanted out.

It is hard to know whether we just had luck with the weather and our trip organization, or at some level our experience from these trips and a lot of other travel leads to some subliminal planning that allows us to pick a way through that works.  In 43 days of touring, we only got seriously damp on 4 days.  Pretty good in wet country.

Our trips are about the journey, and now after some 20,000km of European bicycle touring, we are a bit over cathedrals, castles and the like, and more into the subtleties of the changing landscape.  The thing in the built environment that struck me most was perhaps the Great War German cemetery outside Ypres.  It’s stark and somber design made more of a statement about that war than all of the other monuments, most of which I found slightly sickening in their honouring of the soldiers who would have been shot by their own side, had they not sacrificed themselves.

I think unless you undertake an extended bicycle tour you cannot understand the sheer joy of just riding when your stamina is up, and your confidence is high.  It is an absolutely exhilarating experience to be riding hard on a good day, with the bike spinning along, knowing you can ride like this forever, and getting to this point is so easy.

I always find it hard to think about another trip at this stage, but I am absolutely sure we will be back.

There are several different bicycle-travelling systems in Holland.

All towns have bicycle lanes on almost all roads.

There is a system of efficient bicycle tracks between towns, which usually parallel a main road, but not the motorway.  These tracks are around 2m wide, about 1.5m from the road, and built to a similar standard as the roads.

Then there is the knoppoint system.  This consists of a series of places scattered all over the country, and signed routes from them to adjacent points.  At each knoppoint there is a map showing the location of the point, and the location of neighbouring points, and there are signs defining the route from one to another.

Lastly, there are a large number of defined routes.  These are designed for tourists.  Some are national, but many appear to be the work of regions.  These signposted routes may be a day’s ride or a week.  They meander around to show the best of the country, and therefore are not efficient as point to point options.

Yesterday we followed one of the national routes and today we used the town-to-town system, in order to ensure that we will be at Schipol by tomorrow evening.

The difference in the efficiency of the routes should be obvious by comparing today’s and yesterday’s routes.  Of course, efficiency is not everything, and if time allows, we would usually choose to follow one of the national LF routes.

We rode 109km today, and there is not much to say about it.  It was easy and pleasant riding through flat country on well-defined high quality paths.  The objective was to get close to Dordrecht, where we eventually stopped for the night, to give us a straightforward ride into Schipol. We need to be there tomorrow night as we have to be at the airport by about 10.00am on Friday.

Drodrecht is a large industrial city in a heavily populated region, so we found accommodation, but it was not straightforward.  There is not much accommodation even in a city as large as this.

Even though we were generally travelling through villages that were on or near major routes, there is little travelling infrastructure, by which I mean coffee shops.

If you were to take the best of cycling in Holland, the marvelous bicycle infrastructure, and in the UK, the good accommodation options, coffee, pub culture and associated food you would end up with Germany. Only Germany offers even more sausages, and nothing wrong with that.

View 29 6 2011 Kapelle to Dortrecht in a larger map

Today was just about getting to Hull so we could catch our ferry this evening.

We caught a train to York, then rode the 64km to Hull.

Something unusual occasionally happens to our bike computers.  Sometimes they just put on a lot of kilometres.  Today mine was indicating 92km/hr for quite some distance, while Roz computer was working perfectly.  We have never seen this happen at home but it has happened a number of times on this trip.  The computers are wireless, so presumably they are picking up some stray electrical noise in the environment and interpreting it as a signal from the sender unit near the wheel.  We have not been able to track down whatever is causing the problem, and of course there is not necessarily a single cause.

We left York as quickly as possible, we have been there before, to ensure that we could get to Hull on time.

Today was the hottest day we have had in the UK, with the temperature well over 30C.

The road to Hull is mainly flat, with one minor hill, but there was a solid head wind all the way and we had chosen to ride on the busy A road in order to ensure we could get to the ferry terminal before they cancelled our booking.

Headwinds make the bike and me feel lifeless, so with the traffic and the heat we have had more inspiring days, but it was alright.  The one hill gave us some good views of the east Yorkshire landscape, so it was a bonus, even though we had to ride up it.

We went straight to Nero’s in Hull and settled in for a half hour to drink a lot of cold liquids, and a coffee of course.

All we then had to do was post some letters, go to Tesco’s to buy some picnic food for dinner and then we got to the ferry terminal about 15 minutes before they were due to cancel our booking.

The food on the ferry is not bad, but we don’t need the full buffet meal, and are happier with a cold drink and our bread and cheese.

As we lined up to ride onto the ferry, the weather started to change and the dispatcher wished us luck and said we were lucky we were not in Scotland as they were forecasting temperatures of 3C and awful weather.

Lucky indeed.

The map is made up in Google, as the datalogger failed, perhaps due to the same electrical noise that affected the computer.  I hope it hasn’t affected my fertility.

This is posted late due to the vagaries of our ferry and various hotels.

View 27 6 2011 York to Hull in a larger map

We left this morning in a cold light drizzle and solid overcast to ride up a big hill. This was an appropriate ending for our riding in Scotland.  This is not to disparage Scotland, the weather gives it the mystical quality that is so beguiling.

As we got to the crest of the hill we had a spectacular view back north up the coast.

Glistening in the sunlight was the nuclear power station at Torness, right on the coast, only there was no sunlight.

A few miles further north we could see the steam billowing out from the cement factory, as they dehydrated the lime for the cement, presumably using the power from Torness, thereby establishing a tiny carbon footprint.

We pressed on today, as last night we decided to check the ferry timetable out of Newcastle, only to find that the Sunday night ferry was booked out.  This is unprecedented in or experience, and we believe it may be due to a major bike race in Newcastle that has attracted the major teams from Europe. They will have come with vans full of equipment, and the teams and officials will likely need the ferry to get home.

The upshot of this is that we will catch a ferry out of Hull, and that will require a train trip.  We are not going to ride from Newcastle to Hull as we have already done that. So we had to get closer to Newcastle tonight than we had planned, to allow for the trains.

We made a point of riding as close to the coast as we could, all on road.  We crossed the national cycle network route 1 numerous times, but decided to ignore it.  The first time we saw it this morning we were riding on a perfectly good road, and the sign suggested we ride up a nearly vertical rough gravel track.  So we didn’t.

This was generally easy riding after the first hill, on gently undulating country, farming country, with fields sloping away down to the sea.

We rode over one shallow ridge, and came upon Bamburgh Castle.  It just appeared at this point.  It is pretty impressive, and makes Edinburgh Castle look pretty ordinary by comparison.

As we rode south, the population density increased, and so did the frequency of delightful, quintessentially English villages.  It is Saturday, the weather was pleasant, so people were out and about, sitting outside the pubs and coffee shops, just enjoying life. 

While this was a long ride on a long day, just under 130km, it was not difficult.  The country was a pleasure to ride through, the weather immediately improved when we left Scotland, and we rode in balmy conditions in light clothing for the first time in ages.

View 25 6 2011 Cocksburnspath to Morpeth in a larger map

Tomorrow may well be our last day in Scotland.  Our intention is to have a quick look at Edinburgh, before heading south, which may take us into England.

We did a bit of tourist stuff this morning, went out to Scone Palace.  The gardens are great and the palace is quite nice.

The ride today was pretty straightforward.  We rode up a big hill out of the Tay Valley, and then down secondary roads, occasionally intercepting the cycle network route 1, and easily rode into downtown Edinburgh without having to go on major roads.

We checked into maybe the worst B&B of our trip so far, although Roz believes there are two other candidates for this honour.  It is a basement room and we can’t open the window.  We usually don’t bother to check rooms when we book in as they are almost always much as we would expect.  Not surprisingly for a hotel of this standard, they do not have free WiFi, like other mediocre hotels from the Travelodge and Ibis chains.

So I am writing this in a pub, where we had dinner.  I stuck with the fish and chips, which was very good, and good value.  You can tell good Scottish fish and chips, as, when you press your fork into the batter, little wells of oil appear.  Of course you can’t live on food like this, but it is great on a short trip.

Scotland has been very easy to travel through.  We have been comparing the food with Italy, and the pubs here are incomparably better.  You get a good solid feed, not haute cuisine, but fair variety at a good price, often in an atmospheric old bar.  Our experience in Italy was that you get very limited choice, pasta or pizza, at ridiculous prices with very poor service.  To be fair, you get better delicatessen food in Italy than you can find in Tescos in Scotland.

Accommodation has been easy to find, and at least with the current exchange rates, pretty good value.

So that is the logistics covered.  The riding has not been easy, but quite achievable.  There has only been one day where we have not had to do some significant climbing, but the rewards have been there in terms of the scenery and the riding experience in general.

We are down now to checking ferry timetables to get back to Amsterdam.

It may be necessary to scroll the map to see the route.

View 23 6 2011 Perth to Edinburgh in a larger map

We met another bike rider on the high pass we rode through yesterday, a local from Inverness out on a morning ride, albeit quite a strenuous one.  He was riding a light-weight carbon-fibre road bike, with a weight, I would guess of less than 8Kg.  My bike’s all up weight, including panniers is around 30Kg, and that makes a big difference.  And we are travelling very light compared with many touring cyclists we see.  This chap, a man about our age gave us some advice, including that we could use routes that he could not on his bike.  That was the case yesterday, and again this afternoon, when we again joined the national cycle network.

The weather forecast for today and the next day or so was pretty grim.

We left Spean Bridge in dry but threatening weather, which turned to light drizzle in about an hour.  Our route out was a road called the A82.  Any road with an “A” in its name gives me some traffic concerns. However the traffic was light and we had a simply exhilarating morning. The road climbed steadily up 200m vertical at a modest 3 to 4%.  We know this because our bike computers tell us so.

After 5 weeks of riding we have gained a good deal of touring fitness, which we could use today.  It is very hard to explain the pleasure of being able to work hard on a bike, with simply no sense of impending tiredness.  It is a wonderful feeling, and to get there requires no particular effort, other than simply enjoying the previous five weeks.

We have had days that are harder than others, today being an example, but I don’t think there has been an occasion on this trip were we have actually felt tired.

After our coffee break, we rode to a whiskey distillery at the junction of the major trunk road, the A9, took a tour, then rejoined the cycle route that parallels the A9.  This route is made up of old parts of the A9, bits of local paths and some rough custom-made trail to join the other bits together.  We considered joining the A9 instead to avoid the roughness, but there was far too much traffic.  Not a route for road bikes, and it is the only way to get through this part of the country.

We came to a notice warning us that we had to go through a pass at 457m, and the weather could be horrible.  In fact, at this stage it was horrible.  Steady rain and a temperature of 10C.  Our bike computers tell us the temperature.

Murpy’s law came into action and Roz had two punctures in rapid succession, right at the crest of the pass.  We were cool enough at this stage, and even though it only took us a bit over 5 minutes to replace each tube, this was quite enough to cool us down further.

We then rode hard to get into Blair Atholl, and as we rode in saw the sort of great eccentric old pub that we both love, and checked in, a bit chilled by now.  So I am sitting in the bar after a hot shower, in front of the fire, writing this stuff.

Despite a good deal of climbing in generally awful weather, We enjoyed our 102Km today.

The weather forecast for tomorrow is no better.  Nevermind.

View 21 6 2011 Spean Bridge to Blair Atholl in a larger map

I have decided that I am not going to eat the Full Scottish Breakfast anymore, a meal that has some similarity to the Full English Breakfast.  We were told by one of our hosts that the Full English Breakfast is rubbish.  The ingredients, bacon, eggs, sausage, tomato, black pudding and mushrooms are the same, but where the English fry the tomato, the Scots grill them.  There are some other variations, for example, some Scottish breakfasts include a tattie scone, that is, a wedge of a potato pancake.  These are so strikingly similar from one establishment to another that I suspect they come from Tesco, a theory I intend to check. Haggis is occasionally offered.

Anyway, I travel better on cereal or porridge and toast.

Today was an easy day compared with the last couple.  For most of the day the road was flat, and we travelled on Cycle Route 1, the North Sea route that we joined shortly before we arrived in Tain yesterday.  This route has a total length of 6000km, and we have now ridden on it in Holland, Germany, Denmark, Norway and England in addition, now, to Scotland.

We are getting used to the weather.  Today was pretty good, with just a few drops of rain and broken cloud.  The temperature got to about 16C, which is a bit above what we have been experiencing, and there was no wind, which is such a pleasant change.  It felt like a nice day. 

We started back in attractive country, pretty farmland, with shallow forested valleys and rhododendrons.  The towns are so much more attractive than the ones we have ridden through elsewhere in Scotland.  So we meandered along comfortably and covered 108 km.

Finding accommodation was difficult. There are a couple of little towns along this southern, les-travelled shore of Loch Ness, but we found nothing that could offer us an evening meal, so we rode on to the locality, rather than a town, of Foyer, which seems to be here because of a hydroelectric plant.  We found signage for 2 hotels.  The first was up a very steep and long winding path, but was closed today.  After a considerable amount of effort, which included using a map given to us by a passerby and a ride up another steep and winding path we found the hotel.  We missed it at first as the sign had just been cleaned, and the arrow on it was placed pointing the wrong direction.

This hotel is another of those rare finds.  It costs 80 pounds, but the huge room has windows with unimpeded views of the loch and an enormous four-poster bed.  It is great, and another of those bits of happenstance that we so love on these trips.

We saw some sheep with four horns.  That is, four horns each.

View 19 6 2011, Tain to Foyer in a larger map

We started this morning with a big steep climb, overly sustained by an enormous piece of Stornoway black pudding.  The people around Stornoway claim it is the best in the country.  I prefer to warm up a bit before facing a climb like this, particularly when weighed down with a big piece of black pudding.

This morning was probably the best weather we have seen in Scotland.  It was sunny, and the country looked great, with its sparkling lochs and dramatic hills.

The plan was to ride to Stornoway, by a slightly circuitous route.

We were told yesterday afternoon that there were no B&Bs much between Tairbeart and Stornoway, but we saw at least 6, and there were probably a lot more.  The Visit Scotland people who helped us yesterday were concerned and really tried, but were just wrong.  Visit Scotland seems to have a bit of a problem in this regard.

I have been puzzled as we ride through the Hebrides about the lack of evidence of human habitation before around 1960, when pebblecrete buildings seem to have been built.  We made a point of visiting the hamlet of Arnol, to see some traditional buildings, the last of which was vacated in 1966, and is now a museum.  It was the sort of design one imagines from the middle ages, no windows, no chimney, no plumbing, a small hearth with a peat fire and a thatched roof. The animals were kept inside, and the floor was flagstones.  Pretty rough living.

When travelling through these islands it is important to remember just how tenuous human civilization was here. If it was not for the availability of peat, it would probably have been impossible.  These islands really are on the edge of nowhere, and a trip to the west will probably see a landfall in somewhere like Boston.

There is a distinct lack of industry here now.  We visited a Harris tweed outlet, but they are well past their heyday.  A couple of generations ago, every middleclass British subject would have worn a Harris tweed jacket, but no more, and the styles we saw harked back to this period.  The roads are covered in EU supported sheep, there is tourism and a little fishing and that is it.

The riding deteriorated this afternoon.  A change blew in, and the country suddenly looked bleak and threatening.  We moved out of the dramatic hill country and onto rolling moors, scarred with the trenches of peat mining.  We rode towards Stornoway, uphill against a strong head wind in occasional drizzle across this bleak empty moorland, that even the sheep have deserted.  It was all a bit ordinary.

We rode 113km today, and both of us prefer the longer days.  We have been a bit constrained by the ferry timetable, but hopefully it will be more up to us from tomorrow.

We booked into a B&B, went to Tesco for food, and will leave the Hebrides on the ferry tomorrow.

View 17 6 2011 Tairbert to Stornoway in a larger map

We met a woman on the ferry into Hull a few weeks ago who had been on a cycling holiday, based in Ghent.  She had rented a house for a week with a friend and gone on daily bicycle excursions.  Ghent is a good place to do this from.  Other possibilities for a similar holiday would be Delft in Holland, Sarlat in the Dordogne Valley in France and Passau on the Danube River in Germany, amongst many others.

We don’t do holidays, we do a tour, or perhaps and adventure.  Our tours are as much about the travel as the sights, and we feel perhaps a bit guilty when we ride straight past one of the wonders of the world.  Scotland suites our kind of tour, but may not suite those who want a holiday.  The distances between things is a bit greater than other areas of Europe, and some of the wow factor of European civilisation is not here.  Instead, there is a wild and subtle beauty and good roads.  And of course there are historic buildings, castles and the like, that we have not seen, but were told that we should.

On a tour you expect to be a bit uncomfortable, like this morning when we left in cold drizzle to ride up and over a number of ridges.  I think hill riding with a touring bike loaded with all your possessions is a bit of a learned art, and for that reason, I don’t think Scotland is the best choice for a first tour, but of course many people do so.

We stopped after about 40km or so, as we were a bit chilled and there was a nice pub with an open fire.  That was worth a second cup of coffee, and a slightly extended break.

By the time we left, the weather had mostly cleared, and the afternoon’s ride was good.  The scenery today was not as attractive as the little corner of Skye that we saw yesterday, mostly rolling moor country with enormous spectacular peaks.

The town of Portree is unusually attractive, with gleaming white buildings with grey rooves.  In our experience, building sightly homes is not a Scottish forte, many homes being covered with some sort of pebblecrete or other ugly stucco.

From Portree to Uig there is barely a building that does not fit the white and grey model, and it enhances the countryside no end.

We passed a large number of B&Bs on this road, many run by Mrs McLeod, not Susan Mcleod, or Fiona McLeod, but Mrs McLeod.

We are going to catch the ferry to the Isle of Harris tomorrow, and Uig is the ferry port, so that is our stop.  86km today.

We rolled into Uig, and there is not much of it.  We knocked on the door of a likely B&B, there are many, and there was a vacancy.  We have an unusually large and comfortable room, for the modest sum of 50 pounds, with WiFi, unlike…..

For the first time on this trip, my datalogger failed, so the map does not have the full data set of other days.

View 15 6 2011 Isleorsnay to Uig in a larger map

We caught a ferry to the Isle of Mull this morning, because we were variously advised that the scenery was stunning and the main town of Tobermory was one of the prettiest in West Scotland.

We got off the ferry in a cold drizzle, with a bit of a head wind to ride the 35km to Tobermory. We had discussed perhaps staying in Tobermory, as it was so special.

The ride in and the scenery on Mull was alright.

We got to Tobermory and went straight to the ferry terminal to check to timing of the ferry north to the mainland, the one we had planned to catch tomorrow, and found that the next one left in an hour and a half at 2.30, so we went to a coffee shop to discuss our options.

Tobermory was alright, so we caught the ferry and left Mull.

The ride on to Salen was fairly special.  The views from the road were sensational, and the weather cleared to a nearly cloudless sky, something that boosts my spirits, and has been rare so far during our stay in Scotland.

We had no idea what was at Salen, but rode up to a pub, that had a room, did dinner, charged 70 pounds, which is pretty reasonable and all is good.

We are on the way to the Isle of Skye, and this means that we had two legs to get to Skye itself that added to around 140km, too much for one day, so by doing the extra leg today, we have split this section neatly in half.  69km today.

We have not travelled on B roads in Scotland until today, and they are certainly much harder than the A roads.  They have slopes up to around 12%, which is big, and the ones today were single lane, with pockets every couple of hundred metres to allow passing.  One of these roads is so minor that it is not even marked on one of our maps.

Our pub tonight has free WiFi, unlike the Travelodge or Ibis pubs.

We used the pay WiFi at Ibis and found out later that Roz’ Facebook account had a hiccup, which I put down to the affect of the proxy server used by Orange, who supply Ibis.  Another reason to just provide the service.

View 13 6 2011 Oban to Salen in a larger map

We decided that we would head up Loch Lomond, and then make a decision when we got to the head of the Loch.  We could go on up to the Caledonian Canal before turning west to the islands, or ride more directly west.

After the sort of just adequate breakfast we expected form our cheap hotel we spent a bit of time doing a few odd jobs in Glasgow that included drinking a large cup of excellent Costa coffee.

So we got away very late.

The ride out of Glasgow was shaping up to be pretty ordinary, when after only 5km the route turned onto a rail trail.  From there on, the route was pretty much excellent.  We moved from the rail trail onto a canal path, and finished up on an obselete road patched together with bits of narrow footpath up the side of the Loch.

The Loch, as you would expect is extremely photogenic, on a sunny day, which it wasn’t.

The weather forecast was pretty good, but around lunchtime the temperature dropped to 11C and we were in drizzle for the rest of the day.  Not enough to get really wet, until we hit a shower shortly before we stopped.

We only got to Tarbet, about 70km or the day.  The decision we had to make at 4.15pm was whether to continue for another 35km or so in the cold drizzle, or stop here.  So we stopped.  We go the tourist Information Centre to find a B&B for us.  We have had a couple of good experiences with them now.  We only found out today that they will book ahead for you.  This is very unusual in Europe where they are fiercely loyal to the local community.  This may be a huge advantage for us, as it could allow us to make a booking fairly late in the afternoon for a place some distance away with the knowledge that a bed awaits.  We don’t have a feel in this lightly populated area as to what may be available.

We still have to make a decision as to exactly where we go from here tomorrow, but it will be to the west islands one way or another.

The Scottish farmers have been out doing there shit spraying, and it is quite different from farmers to the south.  We usually like the nice earthy compost smell of the spray, but here the shit has an appalling sulphurous smell.

Tonight’s nice B&B is the first good one we have come to without WiFi.

Our host has just driven us to a local pub (with WiFi) on a neighbouring sea loch.  The rain has stopped, the mist is low on the hills, the loch is glassy smooth, and the outlook is exquisite.  The weather forecast for tomorrow is even improving.

As usual, zoom in to see the track.

View 11 6 2011 Glasgow to Tarbet in a larger map

I think I am beginning to get the hang of Scotland and like it.

We had an easy and very pleasant ride today, getting into Ayr in time to talk to the very informative guy at the information centre.  We have not had much luck with information centres in Scotland.  Mostly they close at 4.00pm.  We did catch one lovely lady just as she was closing up, and she gave us a lot of information, mostly wrong.   A couple of our B&B hosts have complained about the service offered, and in particular the advertisement on their website advertising lovely cheap holidays, in France.

However, Mike here was different.  He told us what he did know, and what he did not, that is, he didn’t make it up.  He persuaded us, gently, to try the Isle of Skye, rather than Arran near here.  So we will continue to ride on towards Glasgow tomorrow.

Today’s ride is about as good as an on-road cycle tour can be.  The roads were virtually empty for most of the day, and while we went through hilly country, the grades were always modest.  The only problems are the persistent cold wind and overcast skies.

Having only ridden a few hundred km in Scotland it is probably too early to make a judgement, but the design of the secondary roads seems quite strikingly different from those in England and are immensely more pleasurable to ride. They are more like the evenly graded French roads that I have discussed this at some length in our book,

The countryside was remarkably variable, from deep forest, to moor land that looked remote and wild, while only being a few tens of km from major centres.

So we rode 100km with comfort and ease, helped greatly as we were not held up by the chopping and changing that characterises bicycle routes in the UK.

We met someone in the street a couple of days ago, who sympathised with our difficulty in assessing B&Bs.  Her advice is that if they have tidy gardens and clean windows, they are OK.

So far we have had extremely good luck with B&Bs.  They cost around 60 pounds a night, for the two of us including a huge breakfast.  They are so good that hotels can be a bit thin on the ground.  The ones we have stayed in are run by friendly helpful people, are clean and in all ways a pleasant experience.

When travelling I always have a beer with my dinner, it is an end of the day ritual.  I always try and find a local beer as usually these are better than the internationals.  In the UK I try and find a local ale, or failing this, the excellent Newcastle brown ale, or Fullers London Pride, both more interesting and better beers than the standards.

I have attended occasional social functions where beer tasting was part of the proceedings. The idea is that people are given a list of beers, and have to match the number on a glass of beer with the brand.  I have never seen anyone get more than 50% correct, and yet many of the participants swear by a particular brand.  There is also, amongst Australians a certain chauvinistic attitude to the major Australian beers, which by any reasonable standard are as mediocre as all of the major international brands, Stella Artois, Heinekin, Tuborg, Budweiser and so on.  In fact, the major breweries often produce one or other of these brands in their own breweries under licence.

British ale is often written off, but in my humble opinion is vastly better in general than the lager produced by the big companies.

So here in Scotland, the riding is good, the accommodation is good, the scenery is good, the beer is good, and the food is good.  What more could you ask for.  More about the food tomorrow.

Zoom in to see the map, I have Google's scaling problem again.

View 9 6 2011 Stoneykirk to Ayr in a larger map

We left this morning under a threatening sky, and within a half hour were drenched by a cold, soaking drizzle, that lasted about 40km, until we reached Castle Douglas. 

As we rode into town, Roz had a puncture, our first on this trip, so we pulled off into a convenient bus shelter to fix it.  This took about 10 minutes, by which time we were bone-chilled.  We bailed out into a café for about 45 minutes until the shower had blown through, and we had warmed up a bit.  The coffee was mediocre, the cake not fresh, but I live in hope of improvement.

We left town, continuing to follow National Cycle Route 7, and had a dry ride for most, but not all of the rest of the day.  There is not much choice of roads in this part of the country, and eventually we ended up on the A75.  Normally we avoid these A roads, but things conspired against us.  Route 7, even for a bike route, takes an unusually idiosyncratic and convoluted path through here.

The section of the A75 we rode on is a coastal road, and pretty.  It is flat, and while busy, populated this afternoon by very courteous and considerate drivers.

Before coming to the A75, we had been riding through some quite exceptionally beautiful hilly country.

We were trying to reach Stranraer today, which would have been a big ride in the best of conditions.  As we rode into Newton Stewart we were again hit by a shower, and then hail. It was only 4.00pm by the time we arrived, but the weather was still threatening, it is 40km to Stranraer, and, we were told, the traffic was going to pick up as people hurried to catch a ferry. Stranraer is a major ferry port.

So we bailed after 91km.

We found a B&B, and by the time we had checked in, were seriously cold again.

B&Bs in Scotland may turn out to be a bit of an issue.  There seem to be plenty of them about, but we can’t yet read them.  Our host in Dumfries explained that he does not subscribe to a star rating system, as he thinks they are a rip-off, and sure enough, most B&Bs don’t.  Neither of the B&Bs we have checked into are attractive from the outside, but both of them are exactly what we need, and run by pleasant and accommodating people.

View 7 6 2011 Dumphries to Newton in a larger map

This was a very short day.  I woke up with a sore throat, our power adaptor had broken, Roz’ bike needed attention, we wanted a map for our next stage, the temperature varied between 8C and 12C, and there was just a little bit of drizzle.  So we bailed out at Carlyle at about 3.00pm, after only 53Km. 

Carlyle is where we finish the Hadrian’s Wall route, before turning north into Scotland.

We rode into Carlisle, saw an Ibis hotel and checked in.  It was then we found that the hotel had Travelodge disease.  WiFi is an optional extra, and just like in the Travelodge hotel, the optional extra doesn’t work.  Actually I walked away for an hour or so, and it decided to work at an extra cost of just 9.90E.

We actually rode alongside the path of Hadrian’s wall for quite some time today, and saw some of the fortifications and forts that were built to support the wall.  It was an astonishing engineering achievement. There is an outside chance that there is some possibility that Hadrian may have actually briefly stopped at one of these forts.

The riding was not difficult, but had its challenges.  The country is rolling and there are several steep hills with pitches up to about 14%, but they do not last for long.  We found out that we were very lucky that the wind for the last couple of day has been from the east.  Apparently most people ride from west to east as the prevailing wind is from the south west.

As is nearly always the case, the scenery improves as you move into hills.  It is also the case, that while you might wish for flat country, after a while the hills offer a change and they are something to look forward to.  So today’s scenery was classical English post card stuff, rolling hills of green grass, dotted with sheep and bounded by dry-stone walls.  This is also country of pretty villages and hamlets.

We have stayed in perhaps 150 hotels on these trips, and many more outside of Europe, and they share this common misconception.  They assume that their clients enjoy good coffee at all times of day, except breakfast, when they would prefer to drink really appalling, awful coffee.  Now why is that?

Tomorrow we begin another stage of this trip, with a tour of the Scottish west island.

View 5 6 2011 Haltwhistle to Carlisle in a larger map

We are staying tonight at the Grand Hotel at Tynemouth, on the coast east of Newcastle.  Never in our wildest dreams would we have considered coming to Tynemouth, let alone staying at this wonderful old Victorian pile of a hotel, with its views out over the North Sea.  That is the point of this sort of touring.

Leaving Middlesbrough this morning was a bit of a trial.  The route markers were simply not there on some crucial intersections, a problem that haunted us all day.  Normally we wouldn’t care about it, but in this heavily populated and industrialised part of the world, the easiest way to thread your way through is to follow the bike route.

The first couple of hours was somewhat frustrating as we twisted and turned down suburban streets, through back alleys and across town parks, before eventually coming to another rail trail, that led most of the way to the sea.  The path rose gently out of the Tees River valley, meandered along a ridge line, before descending into the Tyne River valley.  The going was slow.  Most of the route is on gravelled paths.  There are occasional places were there are a lot of people with dogs doing there own thing, and numerous gates designed to stop cars, but which require you to get off your bike and wrestle it through the gate.  This is another area where a bike trailer will not work for you, an issue we have covered at some length in our book.  Some of these gates are only a few hundred metres apart.  So we only made some 90km today, even though we were riding solidly until about 6.30pm.

The riding was generally easy and pleasant, and it is a miracle that the route designers managed to find a way through at all. Unlike a lot of mainland Europe, bicycle access is not the first consideration of road designers, so the route planners here have to work hard to find a way at all.  It is interesting that a lot of the very recent roads have a parallel bike path in the European tradition.

We reached South Shields and crossed the Tyne River on a ferry to North Shields, the point where we leave national route 1, the North Sea route, and join the Hadrian’s Wall route, number 72, to the west coast.

We probably should have got better maps, but with a combination of our large scale maps and TomTom on my Iphone we muddled through.

This was another day’s riding in perfect weather and with just a tiny tailwind.  We could not have asked for better.

Our old Victorian hotel of course has free WiFi, unlike the Travelodge chain.

I have the map zoom problem again.  Just use the zoom in (+) key to show the route.

View 3 6 2011 Middlesbrough Tyneside in a larger map

After an uneventful overnight ferry crossing to Hull, we had a bit of  a hold up in the city.  Riding into Zeebrugge, Roz’ pannier rack broke.  The only spares other than puncture repair stuff that we carry are cable ties, which we used to secure the rack temporarily.  In Hull we got a new rack fitted, and had some minor work done on Roz gears.  Unfortunately they are still not right.

We had decided, depending on weather, that we would either go north more or less along the coast, or if it was less clement, than go inland towards York.  The longer-term objective is to get to Newcastle, from where we will head west along the Hadrian’s Wall route.

We have a large scale map of the UK major bike routes.  From this we chose to follow route 65 out of Hull and then join up with route 1 going north along the coast.  This part of Route 1 is also the North Sea route, and we have ridden on the other side of the route, north through Denmark.

The path out of Hull is great, being a rail trail for the first 20km or so. These trails always have a very even grade, as you would expect.  This was a good one as it did not go through cuttings and tunnels, so we could see the countryside.

We had a pleasant day’s riding meandering though the Yorkshire wold, before arriving in Scarborough.

The quality of the bike infrastructure in the UK is nowhere near as good as in Flanders.  While there is a good attempt at making provision for bikes in the town traffic, there is little in the way of dedicated bike lanes, usually just an easement alongside the road.  However, this is not a problem.  Mostly it is possible to find farm lanes, if you lose the bike route, which in turn uses mostly farm lanes.

We had a good easy day’s ride, with mostly tail winds, in pleasant mild weather.  Difficult to ask for more.  Distance covered was 91km.

This will be posted a day late as the Travelodge chain in the UK wants to charge for WiFi, and can’t even get that right. 

View 1 6 2011, Hull to Scarborough in a larger map

This was about as good as a day’s touring can get.  It started as a bright sunny day, for a change, and the wind was not against us, also a nice change.  As the map shows, the Flanders route, LF6 loops to the south before continuing its counter-clockwise direction.  This means we were taken back into some hillier country.  The countryside is exquisitely beautiful on a day like today, which makes the frequent military memorials and cemeteries even more poignant.

We left the hills not long after Kemmel, descending into gently rolling country and by the time we came to the pretty city of Poperinge, we were back to canal country.  Poperinge is where the British in World War 1 lined up and shot bewildered and traumatised soldiers who could no longer face the horrors of the front line.  British soldiers that is.  They also wanted to shoot Australians, but in an unusual rejection of the usual sycophantic quasi-colonial attitudes of that time, the Australian command would not accede to this slaughter.

This was a day when our gradually building riding stamina made the ride so enjoyable.  We have found that it takes a little while before your body gets used to the longer days of exercise and responds positively.  The sensation of limitless stamina is absolutely delightful and difficult to describe.  You have to be there.

We have found on the last couple of days that our tour guide, purchased some 6 years, ago is occasionally out of date.  We had to follow TomTom into Veurne due to such a change.

Most of the day was spent on the wonderful sealed farm paths.  I had wondered about the cost of sealing these tracks, but after seeing in the World War 1 photos how impassable these tracks were then, it makes more sense.  It is these sealed byways that make bike touring such a pleasure in this part of the world.

This was another shorter day, just 79km.  The issue is that we decided to stop in Ypres lat night, which meant that the ride to the ferry port at Zeebrugge was too long for one day, and a little short for two days.  We could have just made a beeline for Zeebrugge and made it in a day, but this tour has taken us to some great places, and today was no exception, so we made the right decision to continue the tour route.

For example, the route took us past a Trappist abbey, reputed to make the finest beer in Belgium, a country that arguably makes the world’s finest beers.  We tried a sample, which was excellent, but I think I have had the equal here at other times.

While I think it is wonderful that the Trappists are dedicated to making fine beer, I wonder at the motivation to serve God by making fine beer.

View 30 5 2011 Ypres to Veurne in a larger map

Late yesterday afternoon we visited Gaasbeek Kasteel.  It is set in a beautiful landscaped park. The castle, more of a large banorial home, has at various times been attacked and rebuilt in a variety of styles which gives it a wonderful eccentric appearance.  The bike route deliberately takes you past this monument, and is typical of such routes.  That is, the route designers place the route so that you meander past the interesting features of the region. That is why we follow the meandering route the designers have chosen.  As this blog is primarily about the experience of bicycle touring, I have not included the major interesting features, but you can take it as written that following a route such as the LF6 will incorporate as many of the features as possible that make Europe such a stunning destination.

I received an email from Koen last night, he of the fabulous Brussels bike shop, to say that, coincidentally, he had had a visit from the Taiwanese manufacturers of the bike chain that I had left in his rubbish bin.  They told Koen that the chain was completely inappropriate as it was a kind of “funky BMX chain”.  The point is that I prepare our bikes meticulously. I bought this chain from a well-reputed Canberra bike shop who claimed that it was a superior product for my needs.  They were clearly as clueless as I was.  This is hardly surprising as they rarely if ever have to deal with a touring bike.   Their suggestions were entirely similar to another highly-reputed bike shop that I deal with. It is hard to overestimate the demands that our sort of touring places on a bike, and the need to use precisely the right equipment.

We started late this morning, as breakfast was late.  This is the weekend and the owner of the establishment wanted just a little slack in her hours.  Breakfast was as nicely done as everything else.  Butter was put on a plate and jam in little bowls.  I hate “portion control” packets and think that it is not such a big deal to avoid those annoying little packages.

We rode against a strong headwind all day, but due to the twists and turns in the route, it was quite tolerable.  The route ran through gently rolling hills and very attractive country before rising to a beautiful forested ridge, not accessible by car.  This forest park seems to be a major tourist attraction.

We rode a steep descent down to a canal, which we then followed to the town of Kortrijk.  By the time we got here the weather had deteriorated, and we had a brief rain show.  While riding along the canal we could only manage around 19kmh, instead of our usual 25kmh, due to the wind.  That made 88km for the day.  We normally expect to do around 100km, but there seems to be a reason on most days on this trip why it doesn’t happen.  It really doesn’t matter at all.

We arrived in Kortrijk at around 6.00pm, too late for the information centre, so used TomTom to find a hotel.  The TomTom database is far from complete, but we found a good hotel easily, then went to a local delicatessan and loaded up on cheese, meats and beer for dinner.  Another day that worked as planned.

View 28 5 2011 Vollezele to Kortrijk in a larger map

We have a day or two or Brussels, and the number one thing on my agenda was to get my bike fixed.  There was something wrong with the drive train, which I suspected was from my lovely Rohloff hub gear set.  My friend in Brussels found out that there was a local distributor, and we went out to see what he could do.

He immediately put the bike on the stand, identified a couple of major issues, none of which were due to the hub gears, and spent the next two hours working on the bike while we watched over his shoulder asking questions.  I have never, in a long life of working on bikes, come across anyone who had more knowledge and capability as a bike person.

Amongst other things, he replaced the rear wheel rim.  The one on the bike had a large crack that ran completely around the circumference of the wheel.  It was only obvious when the tyre, tube and protective tape were removed.  It certainly explained the buckle in the wheel, and could not have conceivably lasted much longer.  The drive problem was due to a faulty chain and cog combination.

The company is Fietsen Koen at www.fietsenkoen.be.  Highly recommended.

The rest of the day was spent wandering around Brussels.  Normally we sort of “do” cities in a couple of hours, but having a guide made a huge difference.

At the time of writing the weather over the UK seems not to be conducive to riding, so we will meander up to the ferry port, perhaps by the long way.

Riding hills is something of a learned art.  As a general rule of thumb, anything over 6% is a serious hill, and I cannot maintain 14% slope.  Roz has lower gearing and better balance so she can ride something a bit steeper. There is also a pacing technique that has to be learned through experience.

Today was all about hills.  To make sense of this, click on the link at the bottom of the Google map.  Then click on the link to view in Google Earth.  Then when this has loaded,  expand the folder in the left pane, and then right click on the track and “Show Elevation”.  The Day 5 map is also relevant.

Most of the climbs were less than 300 metres vertical, but steep.  We again used Iphone TomTom to work out a route, and it was good at avoiding traffic, but hills apparently did not figure in its calculations of what constituted a bike route.  We routinely saw slopes of more than 13% on our VDO bike computers.

Eventually we arrived at the village of Werbomont, where we held a meeting and unanimously decided that we were over the Ardenne, emotionally that is, and decided to turn north east towards the Meusse valley.  We also decided to use the N66 road, shown on our map as a scenic drive.  This road was little trafficked at this stage and had much more even slope than the goat tracks picked out by TomTom.

One of the attractions of the Ardenne is its war history. Hitler invaded France by unexpectedly sending an army under the gifted general Hans Guderian, through this region.  Even though we only skirted the northern edge of the region, it is obvious that its seemingly benign terrain would be horrendously difficult country to bring an army through, particularly in 1940, when the roads were not sealed.  The country is a very attractive mix of forest and farmland, with a timeless quality.

From the ridge tops the Ardenne appears as a series of pretty rounded shallow rolling hills.  This is deceptive, as the descent into the valleys between the ridges is steep.  We live in hope of receiving a speeding fine for entering a village above the speed limit, as we often did today, but so far no luck.

We arrived in the town of Huy on the Meusse, a typically slightly shabby Belgian town with considerable history, around 4.30pm, visited the information centre and quickly checked into a hotel.

This was a hard day.  When we crested the top of a lot of these ridges, we were hit by a head wind.  We only rode around 83km, but it was our hardest day.

Both Roz and I have the arrogance and the sheer good luck to have got by without really considering the physical challenge of what we do.  We still get off on the proven fact that we can do what we chose to do when we choose to do it, and don’t have to take into account our advancing years or, frankly, common sense.  We knew we were in a hilly region, but did not bother to find out what it might cost us physically to ride through it.  We have done something similar on many occasions. We just rode, and it was all OK.  Perhaps one of these days we might find a limit, but thankfully it hasn’t happened yet, and long may it stay distant.

View 23 5 2011 Spa to Huy in a larger map

Last night while we were finishing dinner, a group of about 6 middle-aged people rode up to the café to have dinner.  They were chatting animatedly as they dismounted their bikes and walked in.  It is a puzzle to me as to why it is in my country that riding a bike is considered some sort of hair-shirt activity, restricted to greenies and socialists.  For all I know these people may have been part of the local conservative party, but one thing is guaranteed, that to lose their bikes would reduce the quality of their lives.

For the last couple of days there have been thousands of people on the bike paths, from people in their racing strip on carbon fibre racing bikes, to elderly people on electric bikes, drawn out by the unseasonably pleasant weather.

The bike path is just a hundred meters from our B&B, so after a good breakfast we made an early start.  Being Saturday, we planned to stop a little earlier, as there may be a bit more demand on accommodation.

Fairly early in the day we met a Dutch couple, obviously touring from the equipment they had.  We rode alongside for a while and they explained that they were riding to Rome.  They told us that riding from Holland to Rome is considered a fairly standard ride now and a bit of a challenge.  They were heading to Maasstricht and then to Luxembourg, Basel, the Alps and on into Italy.

There have been quite a number of ferry crossings in the last few days, which is a puzzle to TomTom, as some are not able to carry cars.  TomTom seems to estimate distances a little over half of the actual distance.  This is because the bike path meanders.  It is a tourist route and probably all the better for it while TomTom calculates the best possible bicycle route.

Just when I think I have seen enough of the Maas Valley the route changes and something else happens.  While we had another good day today in superb weather, the countryside lacks the impact of the last few days.

We noticed that many of the villages we passed through had B&Bs, until we started to look for one, and they all disappeared.  Eventually we arrived at the village of Elsloo after riding 117km, more than we anticipated, and found another little gem of a pension at 80E.  The provided an excellent dinner on the terrace on another beautiful evening.  The owner explained that they did not expect passing traffic, but picked up guests through internet searches.  He certainly was not easy to find.

I have just noticed that for the lat two days Google maps is not loading the track correctly.  However, if you zoom the map, the track will appear OK.

View 21 5 2011 Lutton to Elsloo in a larger map

This is the time of year that Dutch farmers get to do their shit spreading.  They have cleaned out their barns after winter, and are now spreading the manure over their fields, so the whole countryside smells of it and it is wonderful.  This earthy smell is the scent of northern Europe.

It only took about ten minutes to work out how to ride out of Utrecht, and on into very pretty farming coutryside.  Today we followed route LF4A. One of the pleasures of travelling through this country is the marvellous houses and gardens.  Even modest houses and semidetached homes have beautiful meticulously tended gardens.

This was an easy day’s ride.  The weather was cool and comfortable, albeit with a bit of drizzle, but not enough to wet us. We had a late start after sleeping in a bit, the result of a couple of hard disrupted days.

We had to stop at a bike shop to get a buckle taken out of my rear wheel.  This was aircraft handling damage.  I have had damage that indicates considerable mishandling on three of our five trips.  It only took a half hour and I was only charged 5E.

We are now into our daily routine.  A big breakfast, which we never do at home, and a coffee and cake stop at around 1.00pm, or whenever a place turns up. We don’t do lunch as such, simply because we don’t feel the need.  So we stopped at a great popular little bar, restaurant, coffee shop, warmed up a bit and refuelled.

I have been using TomTom on my Iphone in addition to the Dutch bike route maps, the “Basickaart netwerk LF-routes Nederland”.  I have the TomTom preferences set to bicycle routes, and it worked today, most of the time. That is, it followed the bicycle route we wanted, but the database is not perfect.  It needs to be used in conjunction with maps.   It is however, a huge aid and highly recommended.

We rode very comfortably into Arnhem around 5.00pm, found the tourist information centre who booked us a B&B.  This turned out to be more in the way of an apartment, so we walked back to town, about 10 minutes, found a supermarket and spent 15E on bread and food which we cooked in our apartment.  The apartment cost 80E.

It is hard to understand, unless you are on a bike, just how pervasive and central the bicycle is to Dutch culture.  If you drive around, you will notice a lot of bikes.  If you ride around you become aware that no transport system in the country operates without bikes at its centre.  So, you do not need a special path into the centre of a city, the whole system works to get you safely to wherever you want to go in the country, seamlessly.  More on this later.
View 19 5 2011 Utrecht Arnhem in a larger map

We have done this sort of trip a number of times before, so our preparation is pretty streamlined.  The only things we have booked are our tickets from Sydney to Amsterdam, rental cars to get us to and from Canberra to Sydney, and a one-night stopover in Hong Kong on the way home.

Our intention on this trip is to ride to Brussels to see friends, and then to the North Sea coast, where we will catch a ferry to somewhere in northern England, probably Kingston on Hull.  From there we will ride more or less up the east coast of England and Scotland, as far as we can go.  We have to get back to Amsterdam to fly out, so will look at riding back south through Scotland, and perhaps across England via Hadrian’s Wall.  We have six weeks.

The English Sustrans company produces maps of bicycle routes in England, and there are a few which coincide with this route.

However, if it rains, we may jut go to eastern France from Brussels.

We have sort of planned part of our first day.  The plane arrives in Amsterdam at 6.30am.  We will ride to Utrecht, about 40km away, and then on east from there.  I would like our route to Brussels to include part of the Ardenne region.  At Utrecht we should find the junction of a couple of the Dutch LF major bicycle routes, so will probably follow one of them to the east.  We have maps of these routes.  I also have the TomTom GPS application on my Iphone, and it shows a bicycle path out of Schipol airport and on to Utrecht, so that should do.

So all that has to be done now is a little bit of preventative maintenance on our bikes, and a bit of packing and we are off.

More on the saga of getting a GPS track to work properly.  The problem is that I am a Mac user.  Mostly this saves an enormous amount of time, but GPS are the exception.

I reported in an earlier post that I cannot reliably use my Iphone, so I have to use a dedicated GPS tracking device.

Mostly these are designed for business purpose, but low cost models are available. The first one I tried I had to send back as it simply didn’t work, even though it came with Mac software.  this was a Gisteq.  The guy I bought it from said they were sometimes flakey, and recommended that I try the next model up in his range.

I will add details to a GPS Tracking page on the specifics of the issues involved in getting this device to work, which is not quite straightforward.  The device is a Qstarz BT-1300ST  .  Its virtue is that it uses a standard chipset so in theory I should be able to use any of a number of programs that work with that chipset.  But this is not the case.  Again, refer to the GPS Tracking page.

I have managed now to get track details onto a Google map.  This is just a local afternoon coffee run from my home. It is our intention to do a daily addition to our blog when we are touring, and include a map.  If you click on the link at the bottom of the map, you will be taken to the actual Google map, from which you can link to Google Earth.  If you right-click on the track in Google Earth, you will have the option of seeing an elevation profile, which is both pretty cool and of interest to touring cyclists.
View 12 5 2011 Tuggeranong in a larger map

Early March

I have said in our book that we much prefer to travel light and stay in B&Bs or hotels than to camp.

 However, our intention is to go to the north of Scotland, where the population density is quite low, and I was concerned that we might get stuck, like we nearly did in Sweden.  When I looked at a possible route up the east coast of Scotland, there appeared to be quite a lot of accommodation.

 The problem occurs over a few hundred kilometers down the west coast. It does appear that there is accommodation, but not a lot.

 We will be away for six weeks, so as it is likely that we could have a problem for just one night; we breathed a sigh of relief and decided to leave the tent and sleeping bags at home.

 A friend rang, and said that it is possible to travel by ferry between the islands off the west coast, and she seems to be right. 

 Check here: http://www.scotlandinfo.eu/scotland-island-hopping.

 Some time ago I bought a pair of dark glasses with a two-times magnification bifocal built in.  I use them for flying so I can read the instruments.  I find it gives my passengers confidence.

 It is a good idea on bike trips like this to wear glasses, not only for the glare but also to keep the bugs and dust out.  Bicycle shops do not sell anything appropriate but I found some DeWalt glasses on Amazon.

 Check here:  http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=dewalt+bifocal&x=0&y=0

 They haven’t turned up yet, so I will have to wait and see.  They are a lot cheaper than normal bicycle glasses, and I will be able to read a map or TomTom on my Iphone without changing glasses.  That will be nice.

 I use Cannondale Roam bike shoes.  These are very comfortable, and have recessed cleats for walking about, so you don’t have to hobble.  I need a new pair.  So they have been taken off the market.  I hate it when I find a product that just works and for some inexplicable reason the company that makes them decides to do something else.  They deserve to go broke.