For those of you that don’t know what Cycling for Celiac Disease Awareness is I’ll briefly explain it now: Jeanie and I have decided that next year we will attempt to cycle from Argentina to Florida. It’s currently unclear how much we will actually cycle as how much time we have has come into question, also there’s the possibility of some people joining us for segments of our trip in which cycling with non-cyclers could be difficult. At any rate this remains a district possibility for the start of 2010. We already have our flights booked to Buenos Aires on the 27th of December 2009 so New Years celebrations will be in a brand new place!
Over the past fortnight as we’ve worked hard to cope with the heat our thoughts have moved more and more in the direction of somewhere just slightly cooler. Despite the arrival of monsoon (the wet season in India averages four solid months a year) we have not changed our minds on leaving. It’s quite strange to look at a map and wonder where to spend the next month. Our budget will allow for some flexibility but not so much so that three weeks in the Caribbean for example is an option! Jeanie would love to see Malaysia, yet flying backwards, and still running into their monsoon created issues, plus its two flights and one would be somehow more manageable. There was the idea to fly to Russia, spend three weeks seeing her wonderful two main cities and a spat of smaller ones; then heading to Poland for a cheap flight back to the U.K. This proved impossible thanks to Russian visa requirements which makes travel agents and return flights a necessity.
Finally I came up with the idea of Europe. Not a cheap option yet a romantic one. It would seem we’re both getting a bit sentimental about “home” these days. The incessant honking alone is driving Jeanie and I a bit mad at the moment. I thought to myself, what if we fly to Amsterdam or Frankfurt, one of the cheaper hubs in Europe and brought cheap second-hand bikes. Without a doubt Holland and Germany are some of the great cycling capitals on mainland Europe, we could pick some up for a penny and be on our way! Neither of us are in any kind of shape. We cycled everywhere in Laos on our little crappy Chinese bikes but putting in a few hundred kilometres is a different matter altogether.
Approaching Jeanie with the idea she was up for it; or at least couldn’t think of a better option! I would like to tell you it’s guaranteed at this moment but the internet in our hotel was down all day yesterday, this means still no flight ticket. I did find a flight on Sri Lankan Airlines (one of my favourites in the days when I flew to and from Europe on a more regular basis). I will look to buy the ticket this morning, probably at the same time as posting this!
The trip at the moment will be something like this: Fly into Frankfurt, head to Cologne and then into Luxemburg and Belgium. We will then cycle back towards Holland definitely going to Den Hague and Amsterdam before going back to Belgium hopefully along the coast and into France where we will take a ferry to England and end up at Jeanie’s parents’ home in Shoreham-by-Sea! We are looking to have one month for the trip. Leaving India on the 11th of July I need to be in London by the morning of the 13th for my birthday!
This is the idea! I’ll let you know once the tickets are actually brought and I’ll let you know more about Cycling for Celiac’s in the coming days. I’ve yet to write a proper mission statement but I can feel the time to do so is at hand.
