I handed in my notice last week and will be finishing up here on April the 5th. Damn! I was only 10 years away from Long Service Leave! 😉

I’m currently trying to get rid of 25 years of accumulated crap – I’m a total hoarder – can’t throw anything away!

I’m also “planning” some form of cycle tour in Europe somewhere.. The term ‘plan’ is not entirely accurate as it looks like I’m going to end up with a lot of ideas and not much of a clue about anything. I’ve never toured before so I figure I should make my first attempt in a bunch of foreign countries, while I have no job, limited cash, no foreign language skills, no idea at all, in fact, of what I’m doing. Sweet!

So far it looks like I will take the GT (fitted with gears.. I’m a wuss.. shutup!), with panniers for a couple of changes of clothes, small camera, money, maps, a little food. bikesoiler showed me his SPD shoes which look like normal hiking boots but have SPD cleats fitted to them – they would be cool in that I could get away with only taking one pair of shoes for everything. I’ve got to sort out clothing. I only have race gear – nothing remoately passable for normal casual wear and not much warm stuff for the European cold.

Speaking of cold, cyclingnews reports the following:

“As an example of Europe’s abnormal colder-than-cold cold-snap, on Monday, the daytime/night-time temperature range for Brussels was 0 degrees and -4 at night. Meanwhile, way down in balmy Mawson, one of the largest bases on the Antarctic mainland, they also had a daytime maximum of zero, but at night it was only -3.“

My vague ‘plan’ at this stage is to fly into London, leave some gear with friends, ride from London to Dover, ferry to France, ride north over the edge of France, north through Belgium and explore the Netherlands. If I’m still alive at this stage, ‘sybaritic’, one of the posters on Lonely Planet’s Thorn Tree bike touring forum, suggested:

“You could ride from London, south to dover, cross the channel to northern france, ride east through belgium, netherlands, northern germany (inland as far as berlin if u want, or along the coast), northern poland (incl warsaw if u fancy), through the baltic states lithuania, latvia and estonia, on to russia (st petersburg), through south finland and helsinki, ferry to south sweden (stockholm etc), ferry to denmark (copenhagen etc) back to northern holland for the ferry to hull then south through eastern england back to london.“

I think I’ll play it by ear when I get there. Knowing my navigation skills, I’ll probably spend the first week, just trying to get out of London.. 🙂