Year: 2007
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Half A Year On (And They’re Sacrificing Sheep)
It seems far longer than 6 months — but at the same time it feels like we left yesterday! It’s an odd feeling, but I think I can pin it down to the fact that we have removed almost all trace of routine from our lives. I begin each day with little real idea of […] Continue reading →
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Coastal Progress
We’ve spent three weeks since leaving Istanbul following the Black Sea coastline. Yesterday we completed the very hilly northern stretch, arriving in the peninsular town of Sinop. It’s a charming place with some of the friendliest people we’ve met in Turkey so far. Already we’ve been fed lunch, dinner, breakfast and lunch again, taken clubbing, […] Continue reading →
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Frost, Tea and Celebrity
Ten days have elapsed since we made our way hesitatingly out of Istanbul after nearly a month off the bikes. We were expecting hardship; cycling and camping in the cold, wet, and mountainous climes of northern Turkey. Continue reading →
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It’s Not All Bad News
I know you like reading about our misfortune. It’s dramatic stuff. I like writing about it, too, trying to commit the experience to words and take you to that place and time. I hope that the results are entertaining, but also resemble the reality of what happened, too — exaggeration and artistic license are not […] Continue reading →
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At Least It Happened In A Big City
Andy and I have been soaking up Istanbul for a fair while now. We’re both itching to get on the road again, and I’m excited and a little apprehensive at the prospect of seeing through the winter in Central Asia. But we’ve had more than our fair share of hiccups, and they are still preventing […] Continue reading →
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Thoughts From the Far End of Europe
We arrived in Istanbul a couple of days ago, cycling into this sprawling monolith of a city along one of the two main routes against about 9 manic lanes of rush-hour traffic, minibuses and not-so-mini-buses. That experience recovered from, we have again been enjoying the hospitality of a variety of city-dwellers courtesy of the Couchsurfing […] Continue reading →
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An Unexpected Welcome
We pedalled slowly down the dusty track out of the last Hungarian village. An unsettled evening was in store — clouds brooded above, hanging menacingly as the air gusted and whipped around us, and the silence of the plains was interrupted only by the distant sound of cowbells on the wind. I had cycled a […] Continue reading →
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Pain Stops Play
We attempted to leave Budapest on Sunday. We made about 30km and then it happened. My left knee, which had been giving me pain over the 3 days between Vienna and Budapest, started to hurt again. Continue reading →
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A Hungarian Yurt…?
The Ride Earth Fellowship was broken yesterday as Andy and I said our goodbyes to Mark, who now returns home to the UK. It seems odd that the journey that took him two months to make by bicycle will be undone in less than 24 hours. The adventures and experiences that we have had within those […] Continue reading →
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Meat. To Eat, Or Not To Eat?
If you had asked me one year ago about my thoughts on vegetarianism, I would have replied that there was no argument that would convince me to give up eating meat. It constitutes a necessary part of our diet, we are all born omnivorous, and I would happily go out and hunt my meal if […] Continue reading →