Cycle Touring Blog
A city of 2 halves, a place where West meets East. We stayed in Istanbul for 6 nights. The longest stop to date. We were joined by our mums and my brother who flew out to meet us.
Tea is a bigger part of Turkish custom than I ever imagined. Usually when I think of tea I think of China or England. In Turkey you will see many people enjoying Çay. In fact you can get Çay pretty much anywhere.
I purchased the bike on my credit card (naughty!) I paid it off with my student loan and within the summer the bike paid for itself.
Since travelling and seeing some of the world I’ve been torn over comments like : “tourist trap”, the notion that tourists ruin places and the mentality that it would be a shame for countries to gain a place on the map.
Today Lynne Brownhill shared the total money raised in the Leanne Brownhill Memorial fund – we have now smashed £15,000 – this is a collective effort between Leanne’s friends and family since 2013.
For the last few weeks Stew and I have started setting the alarm nice and early. The average wake up call is 05:30am. Occasionally we wake at 04:00am, if we’re wanting to put some serious miles in.
In this album we leave Montenegro and enter Albania.
Montenegro is AMAZING! We will return here no doubt and tour this beautiful country in a van.
Once we left Croatia we ended up visiting a lot of countries in a short space of time, here are some pictures of Bosnia!
When we set off on our 24,000 mile bike ride Turkey felt like it was so far away and yet on 24th June we arrived!
We entered Bulgaria from North Macedonia at the top of an enormous hill and were immediately welcomed by a great big downhill!
I deliberately left this part of Plovdiv out of my story so I could write about it here. This statue of Miljo was my favourite feature in the city.
With an epic 95miles under our belt from yesterday we were ahead of schedule. This allowed us to have a full day exploring Plovdiv, rather than a half day as planned.
We arrived in Skopje yesterday, what a fantastic city! There’s a lot to do here, so Skopje, we will return! Travelling on a budget means you have to pick the places to spend your money and you just can’t see every city in all its glory, however walking around Skopje was a treat.
Our first stop was Skopje, we really enjoyed our short time there and the city has some wonderful statues and interesting history. The weather was not on our side during our visit to North Macedonia and it rained on and off every day.
Marko encompasses exactly what warmshowers is all about. He’s an experienced cyclist whose travelled A LOT by bike…over 38 countries. He knows biketouring!
We didn't spend much time in Kosovo but the time we did spend was pleasant. The roads were in good condition and the traffic was very light.
Travelling in Albania is an experience. It has breathtakingly beautiful landscapes and for us it was our first big culture change.
We’re now out of Albania and enjoying Kosovo!! After Stew’s injuries we’ve been keeping mileage low, only riding 20 miles a day for the last 2 days. Stew found it relatively easy today so if it goes well tomorrow we might do more.
Albania was our first real culture shock of the trip, the world took a very sudden change from the developed european world to a much poor and culturally different one. The first and most noticable difference was the road quality and the change in vehicles.
We’ve been so well looked after in Albania. Stew is still recovering from his injuries so we’ve stayed in Krumë – the same hotel Abdullah took us to a couple nights ago.
This picture was taken yesterday, on my way up a climb I spotted this dear man tending to his sheep. I stopped to take a photograph. As I was doing so he waved and started to walk over.
When Stew and I set off to cycle around the world people asked us what we were most afraid of – and I said “dogs”. It took me to Evesham, England just 70 miles from home for me to realise the biggest threat to us is TRAFFIC.
Injury – I guess it was always going to happen, but were we expecting to be the catalyst ourselves? No.