Monday September 14th - Zurich

It was downhill all the way to Tiengen, and I was glad to have all my gears again.

I bought two fresh pretzels at Kussaberg and ate them right away before joining the Rhein cycle path, a gently undulating off road path with Switzerland just to the right across the river.

The border was manned but no passport was required... and I carried on into Switzerland, the twelfth country my knackered old tyres had seen.

I was soon swept up onto an off road cycle path but quickly lost track of where I was - the signposting was much less informative than in Germany. Several miles later I ended up in a town I managed to identify as Wil and determined that I needed to head south. I figured I might have better luck sticking to the roads but even those were quite badly signposted and I ended up resorting to the compass.

The sky clouded over and turned black, but stopped short of actual rain.

Roadworks at Eglisau meant a diversion, but the bicycle diversion signs appeared to direct me over the railway tracks, which also insisted that I do not cross them. Confused, I waited for another cyclist to come my way and followed the "do what that bloke does" tactic which took me straight down the road and past the works.

I was in a brand new country which used a currency of which I had none, and I also had very little food. In Eglisau I hunted down a cash machine which dispensed a single giant 100CHF note.

The road got busier and, although I was on cycle paths, it got distinctly less pleasant as I neared Zurich. At Kloten I decided to stop and catch the train into the city. A quick wifi stop told me all I needed to know - the bike would need its own ticket and must be loaded through the bike doors.

I found the station and bought tickets. There were no departure screens telling me where to go so I went under the subway to where everybody else was standing and found a huge grid telling me which platform and sector each train would arrive on. The train was very modern inside - display screens showed the projected (and actual) time of arrival at the next few stops.

There was lots to sort out when I got to Zurich, most importantly food. I sat down at a restaurant in the station and ordered Alpen Maccarone which is not breakfast cereal with pasta, but macaroni cheese cooked with small cubes of potato, accompanied by apple sauce. This was quite a revelation - although cheese and apple are widely known to be excellent companions, I'd never had nor even heard of this particular combination. It was delicious.

I headed for the travel agency and was able to book a very early (7:02) TGV + Eurostar journey home for the next morning. Not altogether unpleasantly, it turned out the cheapest Eurostar ticket the system could find was a first class- the only drawback being that I wouldn't be able to change my journey details. Being less than 24 hours in advance I felt I could just about live without that option (and could just about put up with the free drinks and lunch and comfy seat...)

The bike was easily booked onto the TGV but to do the same for Eurostar meant calling a UK (0870) number. I got dgym to call the number later on but all bike space was taken on the train that I'd already booked. I had the option of either sending it separately on a later train or bagging it up and taking it as luggage. Since I had my housse with me, I decided on the latter. And so the journey home was taken care of.

With such an early train to catch, I wanted to stay as close to the station as possible. I had ideas about staying in the City Backpacker hostel just round the corner, which I'd seen on wikitravel. I set out from the station with a map but put it away when I noticed three grubby backpackers heading in the same direction. I followed them all the way to the hostel but it turned out to be full. So I headed back to the tourist office at the station and enquired about city campsites and they directed me to one about fifteen minutes ride away.

On the way to the campsite I was given navigational help by a lovely lady who spoke very good English (as did most people in the city). She informed me that it had been a special holiday in Zurich, Knabenschiessen (Boys Shooting Day) in which traditionally boys (but now also girls) take half a day off work to practise shooting.

I got very little sleep at the campsite - church bells ringing, people talking, streetlights shining, cars passing. I planned to get up at 4am anyway so there wasn't a whole lot of point in trying. It's quite hard to pack up a tent quietly but I tried my best and left the site at 5am.

Distance: 48 miles (618 miles total) • Day 14 Route • Day 14 Photos

Wednesday September 10th - Vosges

I started out late from the campsite at Phalsbourg and headed straight for the town to do what I should have done over the last couple of days and buy some decent food from the shops - fruit, cheese, salads and bread. (yeah, more bread. It's hard to get away from in France)

I had been studying the map and come up with a nice wiggly green (i.e. scenic) route along a foresty road through the Vosges mountains, via Dabo.

The road was flat at first then started to gently climb, with signs towards the Plan Incline. This is one of those things I didn't really understand at the time but now that I've got back and done a bit of reading, sounds quite interesting and makes me wish I'd stopped off to take a closer look. The Saint-Louis-Arzviller Inclined Plane is a clever lifting mechanism for getting ships up the mountain canal route as a quicker alternative to multiple locks.

After a long hot climb, I reached the town of Dabo. The sun was high in the sky and it was getting a little hot for comfort so I stopped in the shady town square, placing the solar panel in a patch of sun - despite all the sunshine, it still wasn't gathering enough energy to keep my phone going. A group of Canadian cyclists on lovely lightweight racing bikes stopped to say hello - they were staying nearby and enjoying the sunshine on the last day of their holiday.

Further climbing out of Dabo led me up the Col de Valsberg to La Hoube then over the departement border and onto a lovely long descent down into Alsace. At Romanswiller I picked up a cycle path which ran along a disused railway line and a canal.

I passed several other cyclists and walkers, and the signposting was quite good until I reached Molsheim and it disappeared. Motorways and major roads met just south of Molsheim and I couldn't pick out a good route on the map to get past all that. A local cyclist stopped to offer help and invited me to follow him through a maze of back streets, eventually leading to a bridge over the motorway and back out into the countryside. I thanked him and he left me on tiny lanes among cornfields, the cycle route to Obernai now clearly signposted. I gathered some speed and then, not really looking where I was going, hit a rather steep speed bump at 20mph, jarring my arms quite badly - which hurt, but no real damage.

I lost the cycle route briefly in the pretty town of Rosheim but the tourist office put me back on track.

After that the road surface got very bad at Bischoffsheim but I finally reached Obernai, where the campsite was very well signposted and thankfully selling cold drinks and ice lollies (something that had become more appealing over the last few days than lunchtime hot chocolates). More importantly, a Chinese restaurant was just down the road and I was able to tuck into hot, greasy delicious chicken chow mein for dinner. Yum...

Distance: 45 miles (468 miles so far) • Day 10 Route • Day 10 Photos

Tuesday September 9th - No lemonade

The tent was even wetter than usual when I woke up at Burtoncourt. I walked down to the lake to take some photos of the sunrise and then spent a long time trying to dry out the tent and not making a very good job of it.

I'd been really bad at eating properly over the last couple of days - there had been fewer cafes so boulangeries had provided both lunch and dinner, and I was getting a little bit fed up with bread. Today was no better. It was a long day - I set my sights on a distant town with a campsite and went for it, choosing to put in the miles rather than divert into a town and seek out some decent lunch.

I cycled across misty farmland and through the towns of Boulay Moselle and Boucheporn. At Longeville I bought a baguette and a small quiche, then got on the N-road to St Avold, for want of a better route.

One of the things they don't tell you about cycle touring (and this probably also applies to backpacking and other such forms of travel) is the crap music that gets stuck in your head. I attribute this to two things - firstly, the terrible music they play in cafes and other public places, and secondly the lack of my own source of music to wipe away the bad stuff. After nine days on the road, my head was mostly full of Lily Allen singing "It's not fair, it's really not ok, it's really not ok" over and over and over and it was very, very annoying. I figured I had to get something decent but catchy into my head so started to hum catchy but enjoyable classics such as 99 Red Balloons and The Final Countdown.

Beyond St Avold stood a handwritten sign pointing to Biding, which was a village I was hoping to pass through. The sign pointed down a slightly stony track, so I set off on another off road jaunt along bumpy ground between fields. I reached Biding after a couple of miles, unconvinced that that had been the road marked on the map but having enjoyed it nonetheless.

Further down the road, signs pointed me to Munster which boasted of both its church and limonaderie. I'm not really fussed for churches but it had turned into a hot day and I was soon daydreaming about cool lemony drinks. I arrived at Munster hot and thirsty and ready to drink a gallon of the stuff. I found the limonaderie but nowhere to buy the lemonade, and left as thirsty as I'd arrived.

I arrived in Phalsbourg late in the day and followed signs through the town to a campsite on the outskirts. I was greeted by friendly English-speaking owners and directed to a mostly empty camping field. Too tired to ride into the town and find proper food, and too lazy even to cook up the emergency spaghetti, I dug into my panniers and had bread and butter for dinner again...

Distance: 62 miles (423 miles so far) • Day 9 Route • Day 9 Photos

Monday September 8th - Loo roll!

The church bells rang at 4am in Rosport. In continental Europe you get used to bells ringing at 6am or sunrise, but at 4 it was still very dark and I'm not sure what sane person would need or want to hear church bells at that time.

At a slightly more sane hour I set out into another damp and hazy morning, continuing along the river valley. A few miles down the road, a huge structure loomed out of the mist above me - it was the motorway passing high above the valley, supported by enormouse concrete columns. I've never seen a motorway look so beautiful!

At Wasserbillig, I left the bike path for a while to pick up some goodies in the town. I bought the world's tastiest plum tart and some bread from the bakery, a couple of chicken legs and, triumphantly, some loo roll. I've never been so happy to see toilet paper!

After spending quite a lot of time in the town I decided to put in some real miles before lunch. The road was flat so it was easy to set small targets - for example, getting to 25 miles by 11:30am.

The cycle path disappeared for a while and became a red strip at the side of the road. Vineyards became the dominant scenery, and the sun burned away the mist. The Our river flowed into the Moselle and the valley widened out a little.

I reached the 30 mile mark a few miles short of the French border and stopped for a chicken sandwich and to hang my washing on the back of the bike.

I arrived in Schengen, home to all good shared border agreements, shortly after that. There's probably a good reason for the choice of Schengen for that particular treaty - it stands close to the meeting point of three countries. In the space of a couple of minutes I left Luxembourg, crossed the bridge to Germany and turned the corner into France.

A small model of the Eiffel tower marked my passage into France. The cycle path vanished in the town of Apach and all of a sudden fast lorries and cars were whooshing past my shoulder. Then I remembered the first rule of cycling on N roads in France - don't! I dug out my trusty Michelin atlas pages to plan a nice D-route.

Things got hilly that afternoon. I huffed and puffed my way up a tiny little road, across open farmland and through tiny villages in which stood numerous closed and abandoned cafes. It also happened to get very hot, which was nice but also meant a lot of sweat and a lot of suncream. I reached Bouzonville, a reasonably sized town which didn't appear to have any accommodation but at least had a boulangerie where I was able to buy food and water, and a tabac whose owner directed me to the nearest campsite.

I double checked outside by Googling the place on my phone. I hope that doesn't seem like a rude or mistrustful thing to do. I've been sent on a few wild goose chases before, usually unintentional I'm sure - and whereas locals are normally an excellent source of general information about what's in the area, I don't expect the average person to keep a working and up to date knowledge of campsite opening dates and finer details. However, it looked as if the campsite existed and was open so I headed off in that direction.

An hour later, the sun was getting low in the sky when I reached the campsite, a pretty place beside a lake near the small village of Burtoncourt. It was good to pay single digit prices for camping again!

Distance: 59 miles (361 miles so far) • Day 8 Route • Day 8 Photos

Friday September 5th - Stinky cheese

After packing away, filling my bottles and receiving some directions from Jean, I was on my way, feeling somewhat refreshed - well, from the shoulders upwards anyway. I was into the Ardennes now, real hills, and my legs were having difficulty. I'd trained for this trip as much as I had for any other - i.e. barely at all.

In Clermont, a pretty village with a gatehouse, I rattled along cobblestone streets - if anything was going to reboot my brain it was that. Further south, in the town of Limbourg, I picked up a couple of rather disappointing and slightly stale pains au chocolat (french-speaking country but not french-baking).

After Limbourg, I faced a long (although not particularly steep) climb, passing on the way up a hydroelectric station, empty moorland and pine forests. The scenery was making the climb worthwhile - Jean had advised well on my route.

I reached the observation point of Baraque Michel at an altitude of 625m and stopped for hot chocolate and an omelette.

It was all downhill after that, a beautiful long sweeping foresty descent down to Malmedy, passing ski stations on the way down.

Malmedy looked nice and the map didn't show a campsite at a suitable distance so I visited the tourist office and found a room for the night. This also allowed me the opportunity to go shopping and find a lovely Michelin 1:150k map of Luxembourg, which was not far off. I purchased some picnicky food for dinner, among which was a super-stinky cheese that made everything smell faintly cheesy for the next few days, and probably warranted its own pannier.

Distance: 30 miles (216 miles so far) • Day 5 Route • Day 5 Photos

Friday September 4th - Into Belgium

I got to sleep really early at Valkenburg but was woken at 2am by people talking outside the tent. I stuck my earphones in (even when not plugged into anything they're quite effective noise blockers) and fell asleep again.

On Thursday evening I wasn't sure whether I'd be riding the next day - Valkenburg had seemed like a good place to stop and take a day's rest, but the night's disturbance had convinced me to move on. However, I still had shopping to do - I was running out of cash and needed a decent map and some AA batteries for emergency phone charging (still very little luck with the Solio). I found cash, and a half decent map at the campsite shop, but no batteries. Valkenburg was great for restaurants but useless for most other things.

I left Valkenburg around midday and set out into dark, cold cloudiness which did not promise a good afternoon. The wind had died down but that just meant there was nothing to blow the bad weather away. Before long I was entertaining thoughts of abandoning the crappy Northern European weather system and getting myself down to Sardinia for some sunshine cycling. I stopped at a bakery and bought a really horrible cheese pastry and a mediocre apricot one. The skies opened, it pissed down with rain and left me absolutely soaked.

I stopped at a guest house in the border town of Noorbeek for some lunch. Their tomato soup was good and I asked whether they had rooms available, but they were full. I left, disappointed but a bit drier and at least the rain had stopped.

The only way I could find going southwards out of town was a tiny road that quickly turned into stony track and occasionally light mud, winding between fields of cows and horses. I was pretty sure it would lead me towards Belgium, but there were no signs. Clearly they didn't want people escaping the Netherlands.

The track eventually met up with a paved and marked cycle path, numbered in the Belgian scheme and displaying the Belgian bike sign (the bike looks less like a Dutch bike and more like mine!) The path led to a road, again with very little useful signposting, so once again it was just me and the compass.

I reached Aubel at 4:30 - typically, the tourist office had already closed and there was no sign of any hotel, only signs pointing to two lodgings out of town. I followed the signs and was led several km towards Julemont.

The first, an auberge, showed no sign of life.

Outside the second, La Bushaye, I spotted three cyclists who I recognised from a pack of roadies that had passed me earlier. I wandered around looking for the owner and eventually a blonde woman came out to greet me. I asked her in French whether there was room - no they didn't, but we quickly established that since she was Dutch and I was English, we really ought to speak English. She suggested a couple of towns where I might be able to find a room but they were all several kilometres in the wrong direction and, it being Friday and getting late, I was starting to really not fancy my chances of finding much.

I'd had a bit of a miserable day and probably looked like I needed a bit of kindness and bless this lovely lady, she offered me a spot to pitch my tent on the grass beside a small coop of very shy chickens. Before I knew it the woman, Raissa, and her little girl (aged about two I think) were helping put my tent up, and her husband Jean was offering me a portion of the meal he was cooking for the other guests.

It turned out they were hosting fourteen of the cyclists - a crowd of them passed by just as I finished putting up the tent. One asked whether I was planning on sleeping alone in there, and I was offered a place in numerous different beds. Um, thanks but no thanks.

Dinner was pasta with tomatoes, followed by saltimbocca and then creme brulee - all were excellent. I also managed to squeeze in a bit of internet access and USB charging courtesy of the computer there.

It seemed almost too good to be true that these lovely kind people were there to help me when I was tired and fed up. I went to bed feeling a good deal happier and very well looked after.

Distance: 20 miles (186 miles so far) • Day 4 Route • Day 4 Photos

Wednesday September 2nd: Perfect Pancakes

On Wednesday I set off into sunshine, with lovely straight, wide, smooth cycle paths running down each side of the road.

I started to rely more on the compass than on maps and signs, and it did me well.

I arrived in Eindhoven at about 4pm and started hunting down Cool Blue, aka gpsshop, to pick up an iGotu GT-200.

The GT-200 is a small GPS logging device which can also double up as an external Bluetooth GPS receiver for a phone. I'm not a big fan of navigating by GPS - I don't need the extra battery drain and like using paper maps. But I liked the idea of having this little device quietly logging my journey - it's often hard to remember the precise route when I get home and want to draw a map of the trip (even more so in places like the Netherlands in which I often don't even know my location at the time). And, should I get truly lost, it would be a handy replacement for the Nokia built-in GPS receiver which is really quite pants. (Unfortunately, on this trip I don't think I ever managed to give the GT-200 quite enough charge to start working and remained clueless as to the meanings of all the different LED combinations until I got home).

South of Eindhoven, the flat farmland faded away into gently sloping pine forests.

Close to Leende I stopped at a junction, unsure of which way to go. Dedicated cycle paths headed both left and right through the woods. Should I go left towards Heeze, where a campsite was marked on my map? Or go right, i.e. south east, the direction I am generally headed in, and find another campsite a little further down? While weighing up this decision I noticed the third option and the only one that really mattered - the sign pointing straight on towards a pannenkoekenhuis (pancake house).

Pannenkoekenhuis De Clown is the kind of place I can get on with - or would consider giving it all up and camping next to for the rest of my life. They offer one hundred and ninety different varieties of delicious tasty pancake. I ordered chocolate and banana and was not disappointed.

I am very impressed with the Dutch dedication to pancakes, as am I with the embeddedness of the banana. A lady sitting nearby had a pancake topped with strawberries and fresh cream which also looked fantastic.

Stuffed full of chocolatey banana-y goodness I waddled out of De Clown and got back on my bike. With a little directional help from a cafe owner further down the road I located a small farm campsite close to Leende, where I also found an abundance of mains sockets in the washroom. I hadn't been able to gather a lot of sunshine with the Solio over the past two days so it was good to be able to charge it overnight.

Distance: 54 miles (116 miles so far) • Day 2 Route • Day 2 Photos

Tuesday September 1st: South Holland and Biesbosch

The boat was due to arrive at 7:45 but I'd forgotten the time zone change so, what with the wake up call being an hour before arrival, I was effectively up at 5:45am. Ouch.

Fortunately the weather smiled upon us as we arrived at Hook of Holland and I cycled off into a beautiful sunny morning, which cast the industrial lands around Rotterdam in a far more flattering light than the last time I visited.

It was good to be back on Dutch cycle paths and the signposts guided me easily along the waterfront past wind turbines, docks and factories. Before long I was feeling thoroughly spoiled to have such lovely paths to ride on. Having right of way when crossing side roads, not having the path come to an abrupt end half way along a busy trunk road... those are things that I could quite happily get used to, but had better not - the UK is a long way off from this.

Dutch cycle paths aren't perfect of course - on our previous trip we got lost quite a lot and often encountered some quite bumpy surfaces. The roads and cycle paths were being dug up in Vlaardingen, and with no sign of any diversion being signposted it came down to common sense and a compass (And a bit of Google maps). Just before I reached Rotterdam, the path turned into a huge sandpit, forcing me to get off and push for a couple of hundred metres.

Just before Dordrecht I had to cross the Oude Maas river, which at that point is spanned by lifting road and rail bridges. The bridges were opening to let boats through when I arrived. The road bridge lifted Tower Bridge style, whereas the rail section was a vertical lift bridge, and it was quite remarkable to watch the two operating side by side. (Photos of the rail bridge under construction)

It had been raining lightly since mid-morning and I stopped in Dordrecht for some shelter and a cheesy pancake. I popped into a book shop to consider getting some proper maps of the cycle paths but at 8 euros each and not covering a huge area, it seemed a bit expensive so I didn't. (I was carrying the same two maps we used in 2006 - a Michelin 1:400K that shows no cycle routes at all, and a fairly useless Benelux cycle map, which shows only the major LF routes and large towns and cities). The afternoon might have gone a little better if I'd made that investment.

More water stood in my way after Dordrecht, this time crossed by ferry. I stopped and chatted to a couple of truck drivers while waiting for the boat, one of them kindly offered to take my photo.

See? It had definitely turned into a bit of a damp day.

The ferry took me into the national park of the Biesbosch, a lovely peaceful area with very few houses and a mixture of woodland, farmland and lakes. I saw herons, and discovered that 300 geese taking flight all at once make the most awesome noise.

The dedicated bike path came to an abrupt stop by the river at Pontje Steur. There was a bell on my side of the river and the world's tiniest ferry was on the other. The ferryman came out of his little hut, waved to indicate he had seen me, and set out across the 40-50m of water that separated us. The ferry was only a couple of metres wide, just enough to take a couple of bicycles or a few people.

It got sunny again towards the end of the day but I got very lost trying to get out of the Biesbosch park - my lack of decent map was not helping, nor were my efforts to follow the LF12 cycle route, which was not exactly direct, and as evening approached I started to need direct.

Eventually I found a little board showing cycle routes, and discovered that I had made little progress and was in danger of going round in circles. It was good to see a map and get my bearings back and I soon reached a small town called Hank on the edge of the park, with a campsite nearby.

Distance: 62 miles • Day 1 Route • Day 1 Photos

Day Zero - getting to the starting post

Before

This was hardly the best-prepared of bike trips. I finished working about a week before I left, after nine months of dashing back and forth across the country to London and barely seeing home. During that week Dgym and I went on a mini-break to Winchester to check out the area as a potential place to live, and of course pay a visit to Ralph the wetsuited penguin at nearby Marwell Zoo.



I cycled to Winchester and back, an approximately 130 mile round trip, to test out both me and the bike after so many months apart. We did OK and had a particularly lovely time crossing the New Forest.

Day 0

The day of departure arrived, Monday 31st August, and all I wanted to do was stay in bed. It wasn't exactly a positive start - I was already looking forward to spending lazy autumn days at home when I got back, and wondering why I was doing this at all. At least there was an answer to that question: after a crazy few months, I really needed to reboot my brain.

The packing was somewhat last minute, but at least well-rehearsed - my packing list hasn't changed much. I wasn't sure about the mini-pump (a Topeak Roadmorph) as the Schraeder end had given me some trouble a while back, but a quick deflation and reinflation showed the Presta side worked just fine.

I left mid-afternoon, surprised by how light the bike was. I hadn't packed less or got any stronger - I think it had just been a long time since I'd carried those kind of loads.

I stopped half way to the station to take my first photo of the trip, a perfect blue sky textured with several different types of cloud.



The train reached London and I crossed an unusually quiet city to get to Liverpool Street (Notting Hill Carnival was happening on the other side of town). I almost made it without needing a map, but went horribly wrong right at the end and ended up at Old Street.

This being the UK on a bank holiday, it would have been too much to expect the trains to run as normal, and I would like to thank the Sail Rail people for not bothering to inform me that I was actually booking a Sail Replacement Bus ticket. And we all know what the policy is for carrying bikes on replacement buses (If you don't, it generally involves hoping the bike will conveniently dissolve into thin air).

Fortunately, National Express' drivers are a good deal nicer than their policies and, after some discussion that I should perhaps follow the coach or be towed on a rope, my bike was stowed away into the vast underbelly of the coach. It looked like I was going somewhere after all...

After a long coach journey with the world's most annoying squeaky children, we arrived at Harwich ferry port. I boarded, and my bike was tied up on the car deck. I foolishly decided to carry all my panniers up onto the ferry, forgetting what a pain they are to carry all at once, and dropping water bottles, tickets and bags left right and centre. Fortunately the nice ferry staff picked up what I dropped and helped me to my cabin.

The cabin was a pleasant surprise, one of the nicest I've seen on board a ferry - the decor was good, and the bathroom didn't look too much like a ferry bathroom. I sat in bed eating the sushi box I'd picked up in London, and fell asleep easily after that.

Cycling seasons

There are two times of year that I consider to be cycling season in this part of the world - April/May and September/October. There are a few reasons for this...

1. Temperatures are reasonable. Although there is often some leftover winter chill in April and September can still be quite hot, it's not usually unbearable in either direction.

2. With about 12 hours of light in the day, there's enough time for a good day's cycling but it's still easy to experience both sunset and sunrise with a good sleep in between.

3. With many people taking advantage of school holidays in July and August, tourist areas are usually open but less busy in the spring and autumn months. This makes things a bit more pleasant, and it's much easier (and often cheaper) to find somewhere to stay.

The benefits of moderate temperature became clear last week when with some time off work, a new tripod and a hired 10-22mm lens from Lenses For Hire (my new favourite people since I turned camera geek) I took off for the Dorset coast.

It was the first time in over a year that I'd ridden fully loaded - if you can call it that. Full camping gear but no kitchen kit, woolly thermals or winter hat. The extra camera stuff probably made up for that a little bit but I was still travelling lighter than usual.

London suffered a heatwave that week (well, 30C) - it looked as if Dorset would remain several degrees cooler but it didn't feel that way. I dawdled about packing all morning and set off into the heat at 1pm. The first few miles were good but once I hit the Dorset Downs there didn't seem to be a lot of shade and I turned into a melty exhausted heap of sweat, dust and suncream. The road surface seemed a little too shiny in places and the mass of grit that ended up stuck to my front tyre confirmed that yes, the road had been melting.

I pulled into the village shop at Piddletrenthide with one water bottle still full but warm enough to take a bath in. Piddletrenthide is lovely - it's a pleasant and quiet village with an amusing name, a nice little shop and there always seems to be somebody to smile at you in the street. I stocked up on delicious tasty cold water and some snacks.

When you're a pale and pasty person stuck out in baking heat all day long, several applications of suncream are needed throughout the day. It can be very easy to miss a bit just once - this time it was my arms and I ended up with a lovely pair of permanent pink arm warmers, which make me look a bit stupid in a sleeveless top.

Near Puddletown I needed to cross a dual carriageway, the A35. Dual carriageway is a rare occurrence in Dorset and every encounter must be savoured. Spotting a footbridge, I pulled off the road, opened the gate and started to wheel my bike up the dusty path. Another gate stood at the top, I peered around and noticed an adjacent field of cows. A couple of nights previously I'd had a dream about being chased by an over-enthusiastic herd of cattle while out walking, and in general I prefer it if they stay on their side of the fence and I stay on mine.

Checking that they were definitely enclosed within a field I opened the pedestrian gate and pushed my bike through, started to turn right onto the bridge and... oh, look. Several enormous Friesians were trotting merrily across the footbridge over the A35 in my general direction. Arrrgghh! The bike was reversed, the gate was closed and the cows and I greeted one another cordially if somewhat tersely before I wheeled back down in search of an alternate route. Yeah, I'm a wuss. But that was clearly their side of the fence.

The land between the Dorset Downs and the coast consists mostly of quite gentle gradients. I was hot and exhausted but things were easy until I reached Lulworth where I coasted down a long hill into the village. My destination was Durdle Door campsite, situated close to the coast near the rocky landmark of the same name, and about a mile outside West Lulworth. And, as I had obviously forgotten from previous visits, up a massive hill. It was long, straight and probably at least 12%, I was knackered and walked the bike all the way up (as I have explained before, not the easy option!)

The campsite wasn't far from the top of the hill, it was quite busy but there was room for a small tent. I pitched up, went straight for the campsite pub and ordered nachos. Oh yes... the nachos. Are they technically still nachos if you serve them with no sour cream, no guacamole and no jalapenos? I'm pretty sure that should be illegal, and I'm very sure it is an insult to nachos. So I had crisps with melted cheese and chicken & tomato sauce for dinner. After a day of munching on Tracker bars I felt a bit cheated

I took a quick walk along the cliffs to catch some sunset and take a few photos before returning to the tent. My head hit the mattress and I was asleep straight away.

Tuesday September 11th - herding chickens

On the second day I was up at 7:30 and there was no hope of seeing dgym for some time yet so I set about getting the stove set up for our porridge, and foraging for blackberries. Dgym emerged two hours later, still tired from his disturbed sleep.

Blackberries and porridge are a lovely combination, or so I thought, dgym decided he wasn't so keen on porridge after all so started considering alternative breakfast solutions.

Tuesday was not kind on the legs, and we only ended up riding 15 miles. The few miles to Whitchurch Canonicorum were OK but then were faced with our first arrowed climb (the designation on our map for steep gradients) followed by a similar descent to Wooton Fitzpaine, where we were delighted to find dozens of swallows waiting for us on the overhead phone lines. Having recently become rather fond of swallows after moving in next door to a nestful of them, we were quite pleased to see this.

A longer and more difficult climb stood between us and Monkton Wyld Cross. At the top we decided that since dgym was hungry and I was thirsty, we should head for Axminster. We hadn't seen much in the way of shops or pubs all morning so this seemed like a good idea.

We had fish and chips in Axminster and found a Tesco on the edge of town where we stocked up on water, snacky cakes and some bits for dinner.

We reached Colyton a little after three. We'd been planning to go a little further but we ran into another C&C site adjacent to a field of cows and free-range chickens, in which the chickens were able to walk under the electric fence and roam the campsite freely - it looked like a fun site so we stopped.

I took a wander around Colyton which turned out to be a lovely town with a beautiful church, old buildings and quiet narrow little streets.

The chickens were plump and tasty-looking, and very lucky that we already had our dinner planned. They seemed determined to get their pesky little beaks into our food, so dgym herded while I cooked.

Monday September 10th - a late start

The trip to Devon started out with Dgym wandering around looking for his thermal layers and refusing to leave without them (despite the fact that we were supposed to have left yesterday and he hadn't seen said thermals since skiing in April) and me getting very frustrated and desperate to get cycling. Not a great beginning.

It was mid-day before we were ready, solar panels fitted, panniers packed, bikes tuned up and ready to go. By this time, my breakfast porridge had worn off so we stopped a few miles down the road for a pub lunch.

Our ride started out nice and relatively flat, such is most of North Dorset. We opted for the smallest roads on the map - tiny, unclassified single track lanes. Our choice paid off well and we encountered very few cars on our journey. The roads were tiny and shady, perfect for warm September cycling.

The flats didn't last. South Dorset is beautiful but very hilly. The gradients started to get more "rolling" after Leigh, and by the time we reached Beaminster we were into proper hills.

A few miles before Beaminster, half way up a hill, we stopped to look at the map and realised we only had a few hours of daylight left in which to reach the coast, find a campsite, set up the tent and cook dinner - and we weren't doing that well. This was not made easier by the fact that there were no campsites marked on our map until we reached the coast. We pushed on, determined to set up camp and cook in the dark if we had to.

The next ten miles or so were continuous ups and downs. The ups were tough but the downs were wonderful. At one point I rounded a corner on a descent to find a vast landscape of beautiful green sunlit hills and valley laid out before me. I don't think dgym got that as he couldn't see over the hedge.

The last few miles, after Stoke Abbot, were a welcome respite, nice gentle terrain and descents, just what we needed as my legs seemed to have mostly given up.

We happened upon a Camping and Caravanning Club campsite a few miles before we hit the coast, not marked on the map, a £6/night tap-in-a-field affair, just what we wanted. We were the only campers there.

For dinner we cooked up rice with dried mushrooms, lentils, leftover tinned tomatoes from home with peas, ham and vegetable stock. For a first camping meal it was very nice but a meal for two hungry cyclists barely fits in a Trangia 27 pan! We ended up with just about enough time to set up, eat and wash up before dark.

We started to go to sleep as soon as the light had gone but were both disturbed throughout the night by a pair of owls holding an argument just outside our tent, and a bunch of noisy dogs over the road.

Off

We're off for some more adventures.

We are riding west for a two week tour. We're aiming for Cornwall with our camping gear and the intention of actually camping and cooking for ourselves this time.

After that, I'm leaving dgym at home and heading off on a long ride to Corsica.

Right now we're in a bit of a last minute panic getting everything ready. I managed to break one of the screws attaching my front rack to my bike, it's never pretty when a rack breaks on tour so I'm glad I discovered the problem before leaving. After a quick trip to the bike shop, my bike is happy again.

We're trying to decide what goes best in a camping kitchen without weighing ourselves down too much. I have been making little bags of herbs and spices, a little squeezy bottle of olive oil, and a little pot of sugar to sprinkle on porridge.

There won't be much blogging while we're travelling this time, due to limited supplies of electricity. Instead, we will be using what is known as "pen and paper" to write about our travels, followed by a lot of typing when we get back.

We look forward to telling you all about it.

Une Housse

Later this month, after dgym and I have spent a couple of weeks biking around Cornwall and re-building our hill muscles, I will be starting out on a ride to Corsica. This will take me down through Dorset to Poole ferry port, across the sea to Cherbourg and down through France to Marseille, from which I will take the ferry to Corsica. However, I am due in Normandy at the end of October for a family holiday so will be needing to travel back up the length of France at a rate which my poor little legs cannot possibly achieve. This means I will be travelling from Marseille to Paris on the lovely speedy TGV, and then taking a further train up into Normandy.

It is well documented on sites such as Bike Access that, whereas France's roads are among the most bike-friendly in the world, its railway system is the exact opposite and the best way to get around this is to partially disassemble the bike, bag it up in an housse and treat it as luggage. Unfortunately, commercially-sold bike bags tend to be bulky, heavy and expensive, not really suitable for carrying around in a pannier for four weeks.

I quite enjoyed our last sewing project, which was making litle padded travel cases for our laptops so, having ready access to the best fabric shop in the universe, and being a bit low in the funds department and keen to carry as little as possible around France, it made sense to follow Q May's excellent instructions for making your own housse.


Measuring up

I started out by measuring up my lovely machine. Strictly speaking, the bike in its housse should fit within 120cm x 90cm - however, commercial housses which are sold specificically to take on the TGV, are often larger than this, and according to the instructions it should be possible to get away with 140cm x 110cm.

Fully assembled, my bike measures 178cm x 95cm. The height is fine, but it is clearly far too long.

Minus the wheels, it would be 155 x 75cm. Still too long. I then measured how much length various components added to the bike...
Minus Front rack - 143cm
Minus rear fender - 135cm
Minus rear rack - 120cm

So I could probably get away with just removing the wheels, front rack and rear fender - however, I could take off the rear rack to get it down to the strictly required size.

Since I am going to have to reassemble it to get across Paris from one train to another (as various people have pointed out, I could get a taxi but I have never been to Paris before, I have a 2hr 20min changeover and I think it'd be nice to have a ride across town and quickly see some sights), I want the option of taking off as little as I can get away with, so I decided to go for the recommended 140cm x 110cm. I can always take more off and fold away the excess fabric to make the bag smaller.


Stur

I rode over to Sturminster Newton, which where my parents live, to make my housse. This was for two very good reasons:

1. Stur is the home of the best fabric shop in the universe.
2. My mum has a sewing machine and I don't.
   

Materials

Hanson's has everything you could ever want for a sewing project. It certainly had everything I could want.

I knew from the beginning that ripstop nylon would be my fabric of choice for this project. It's strong, light, water resistant and, like the name says, it doesn't rip. If the chainring gets caught up in the fabric and makes a hole, hopefully damage will be limited and I can simply patch it up with duct tape. I chose the darkest colour they had as it's going to end up with oil stains on the inside.

I also decided that I wanted a zipper along the top and sides. I was a little worried I wouldn't be able to find a long enough zipper, but was delighted to learn that Hanson's sells it by the metre.

I wasn't able to find the exact weight of thread suggested by the instructions but did find upholstery thread which seems pretty tough, and a set of machine needles tough enough to take it.


Cost

2.3m ripstop @ £5.99/metre - £13.78
2.6m of zipper @ 90p / metre - £2.25
1 zip slider - 29p
6.5m of webbing for the strap @ 60p/metre - £3.90
2 reels of navy blue upholstery thread - £5.70
1 pack of size 18 sewing machine needles - £3.25

Total cost £29.17
Minus 5% discount for purchase over £25: £27.71

I bought slightly more than the required amount of everything to allow for mistakes.


The making

The instructions were easy to follow. In summary:

1. cut the fabric to size
2. create a 1-inch hem around the edges.
3. sew on the zipper along the top and (optionally) down one side
4. optionally, attach the webbing.
5. seam up the remaining open side(s).

See the original page for full details.

It was fairly easy to make once I'd remembered how to use a sewing machine! There's a lot of fabric there, take care not to get anything caught under the needle that shouldn't be there, or you'll end up unpicking as I did at one point. There is quite a lot of sewing here, what with all the hems, and especially if you choose to add the webbing and put the zip along two sides. I'm glad I bought two reels of thread as I did end up starting on the second - and I still have leftovers of everything for repairs / enhancements. I'm not sure whether I made the straps the right length, they may be too long, but I guess I will find that out.

One word of advice: if you have attached an open ended zipper, please don't spend ages trying to get the slider on at one end, then delightedly zip up your creation, only to zip it straight off the other end! A few stitches or a blob of glue at each end should stop the slider coming off.






The finished product

I'm rather pleased with it. It zips and unzips nicely (although there is quite a lot of hem on the inside which sometimes gets caught in the zipper, it may be worth trimming this. Here it is, zipped and unzipped.




It weighs in at 280g, 100g lighter than the one described in the instructions. It would be even lighter if you only zippered the top, and didn't bother with the webbing. It also rolls up nicely to about the size of a bike bottle (it looks slightly bigger in the picture but can easily be further compressed). It measures 109x135cm, slightly smaller than I have aimed for, I think I may have made the hems a little too wide.

It's a good idea to test out the disassembly of your bicycle, both to check it will fit the bag and to make sure there are no problems with taking things apart. When I tried removing my front rack, one of the screws holding it on turned out to be stuck, and ended up snapped. I also found I didn't know how to rotate the handlebars. However, I did learn that it fits the bag just fine with the front rack and rear fender removed.

I look forward to testing the bag out properly, hopefully there will be more to report in a couple of months time when my bike has travelled the length of France inside it.

[Update 2007-12-01: It worked really well. See here for the full story]

Five Wheels

For our tour last year, we chose to ride two very different machines.

Dgym's trike

Dgym bought his Ice QNT recumbent trike especially for the occasion. He wanted something more comfortable than an upright bike and, already owning a recumbent bike and not being quite happy with it, decided to add a wheel for stability (i.e. the ability to stop and have a rest when going up long hills). The largest chainring has been replaced with a larger one to compensate for the small wheels, giving us both a similar gear range, and all three of the tyres have been replaced as the original ones were a bit flimsy.

Hel's bike

Dawes Galaxy, which I've had for a few years, and has received various improvements, for example a homebuilt front wheel around the legendary SON hub dynamo which powers a Lumotec Oval front light (non-LED version), an extra-strong hand-built back wheel, and various other bits such as PD-M324 pedals and Body Geometry bar tape for extra comfort.

Comparison

A nice seat
We both had moments when the other's mode of transport seemed like a better option. Dgym was very happy on his trike and recieved a lot of admiring gazes, cheering and requests to photograph his beautiful machine. He was very much at an advantage when we came to a stop - my heavily loaded bike would swing around all over the place when handled, and had to be propped up against a wall, whereas obviously a trike has no such problem. Dgym always had a seat with him, which was handy for roadside lunches, and he even dozed off on it a couple of times (whilst stationary of course).

Wind
Windy flat bits (e.g. the plains of Northern Europe) were a big advantage for dgym too, being lower to the ground and offering less air resistance, he breezed along whilst I struggled behind through thick treacle. I also got quite saddle sore in the flat areas, thanks to lack of variety in riding position, again not a problem for a recumbent rider.

Practical problems
It's not all good news for the trike though. It's harder to lock up, you have to get the central cross-bar right up against a tree, lamp post, etc. and then there's no 'loop' in the frame so it's not as effective as locking a diamond-framed bike. On the occasions we were allowed to bring the bikes up to our hotel room, the trike was much, much harder to get up through stairwells (although we both suffered that one!). It's harder to take a trike on a train, we did manage, but it had to be disassembled in Denmark and attracted a lot of grumbles in the UK . There were no problems with any of the ferries we used.

Obstacles
Then there were the various obstacles making it harder to use the trike. The frame of the trike is quite low, and it's easy to scrape it on humps on the road, e.g. for traffic calming. After being caught out by this once, dgym now gets off and gently lifts his trike over these bumps. In the Netherlands we also encountered many wooden fences / gates on the bike paths, obviously designed with regular bikes in mind but not having paid too much consideration to dgym and his beast. It was occasionally necessary to remove panniers from the trike and lift it over.

Views & hills
I was at a higher vantage point in my saddle, so got to see more, whereas dgym often felt that he was looking up at the hedgerows and missing out on scenery. And I still feel that the bike's a better climber, although I may not be able to stop and sit down for a rest so easily.

Wind
I already mentioned this, but this is wind of a different kind. Let's just say that if you eat too much cabbage and ride a recumbent trike the next day, you will be suffering from your own bad smells. If you ride a bike, you gain extra propulsion and woe betide he who rides behind you...

Safety
Dgym attracts a lot of comments about the height of his trike and how vulnerable he looks down there. It is fairly low, however you'll see that he has a tall fluorescent flag adorned with shiny ribbons. That helps. It also helps that recumbents are highly unusual and get noticed more - motorists will often get very cautious and give the trike a very wide berth. He also has the advantage that's virtually impossible to fall off.

Next time...

For now, we'll probably stick with what we've got. Dgym's still very pleased with his trike (although he doesn't spend enough time with her) and in a couple of weeks time we will be taking her to visit her homeland of Cornwall. Although I'm recumbent-curious and will probably get one when I have loads of money, I'm still comfortable on my Galaxy, it offers enough practical advantages, does everything a bike should do and will probably last a very long time.

Eight Great Sites for Touring Cyclists

• Warm Showers
  
  This site's made my day - the Warm Showers concept has been around since the early nineties but has only recently become a fully mappified website.
  
  If only we'd known about it sooner. When you sign up, you are joining a network of people who offer accommodation facilities to touring cyclists. You can choose what you offer, from a camping spot on the lawn to full B&B service, and dictate your own terms. In return, you get access to everybody else on the network for accommodation when you're touring, and the hopeful excitement that maybe somebody will take you up on your offer.
  
  The idea of letting a stranger into your home might make some people a bit uneasy - I think people are quite wary about doing so, and there are some good reasons out there, but those good reasons are few and far between and being afraid of them is really not very constructive. While travelling last year we were often helped by kind strangers who helped us find somewhere to stay or somewhere to eat, or just pointed us in the right direction. The most amazing of those was being given the key to the home of a Portuguese family within fifteen minutes of meeting them, along with an invitation to live there rent-free, and apparently without a moment of worry on their part about what kind of nutters we were.
  
  There's not really enough people signed up to the Warm Showers network - we've done our bit. You don't even have to be a cyclist, just willing to help somebody who needs a place to stay. We're looking forward to hearing from our first cyclist!
  



• Friends of the Bicycle (Vrienden op de fiets)
  
  We really, really wish we'd known about this one when touring the Netherlands, as the hotels were so expensive there.
  
  Friends of the Bicycle will send you a list of thousands of addresses in Belgium and the Netherlands where homeowners will give you B&B for a maximum of 17euro per person per night (You'd be lucky to find a double room in a hotel for under 60) and optionally a packed lunch next day for up to 4euro. There's a membership fee of 9euro but that'll pay for itself several times over in just one night. This one's for bikers and hikers.
  



• Bikely
  
  Cycling route planner based on Google Maps. Click points on your tour one at a time, and Bikely will connect them up and display the distance. You can make notes about each point on the route, and save your route off for everybody else to see.
  
  There is a down side - it can make your machine rather sluggish after several hundred points but I suspect that's Google Maps' fault. It'd be much better if the route could snap to roads but, again, that's a Google Maps limitation. (Along the same lines is GMaps pedometer which has been around longer, but is more geared for walking and I don't think offers any advantage over Bikely these days).
  



• The Fully Loaded Touring Bike Gallery
  
  This one's eye candy. It's exactly as the title says, pictures of fully loaded touring bikes against scenic backdrops. I wish I'd known about this one sooner or I would have taken some suitable pictures last year. Digging through the photographs we did take, I only found one picture of both our bikes up against a wall in France. I submitted it, but it hasn't appeared yet. Apparently it's quite hard to get a picture into this gallery.
  



• Trento Bike Pages
  
  Hours of entertainment here - various people's accounts of their bike tours all over the world. If you're wishing that hel and dgym would hurry up and post more cycling stories, go here instead and read about other people's adventures, which are probably much more exciting anyway.



• Cycle Tourer
  
  Assorted information about cycle touring in several different European countries. Tells you all sorts of useful things such as what maps to use, how to camp, road conditions, shop opening hours, how easy it is to take your bike on the train, and plenty of useful links. There is also lots of general cycle touring advice.



• Bike Access
  
  If you're planning a tour some distance from your home and need to take your bike on the plane or train to get there or back, it's worth checking Bike Access for somebody else's experience taking a bike on that airline or train route. There is also a lot of general information about boxing and bagging bikes for transport and the practical issues involved. It's not the best-organised site, but is a goldmine of information. You could combine this with the information on Seat61 to transport your bike hundreds of miles. Not that we're advocating the lazy option or anything.
  
  Within the UK, you can also consult the UK Bike/Rail Page.
  
  


• How to make a housse
  
  If you live in the UK and want to tour central Europe or beyond, you can either fly there, cycle there or take the train. Flying's no fun, especially with a bike, and you may not have time to cycle there. If you take the train, it's quite likely you'll need to go through France. If you read enough of Bike Access, you'll find out that this is a right pain and the only real way to get your bike on the French trains without too much hassle, is to take the wheels off and bag it up into an housse (pronounced "oose", it's a bike bag. The commercially sold ones are bulky and heavy, so this site gives you instructions to make your own.

A cup of Trangia Tea

The Trangia 27-1 UL stove arrived last Wednesday in a little brown parcel and it was all very exciting. Unfortunately in all the excitement I had neglected to get excited enough to actually buy any fuel for it, so wasn't able to test it straight away and had to content myself with merely unpacking it, working out what was what, and gazing admiringly at how neatly all the bits and pieces nested together.

On Thursday I picked up a good supply of pretty purple juice from the hardware shop and on Friday, a rather bleak and drizzly looking day (hey, this is the summer of grey miserable days, don't you know?), I put on my raincoat, armed myself with one Trangia stove + accessories, one plastic camping mug, one Spork (for stirring), one teabag, a small bottle of meths, a bottle of water, a cigarette lighter and set off into the deepest darkest depths of The Garden to boil up a cup of Trangia Tea.

Bits & Pieces

The Trangia comes in several parts:

1. Burner unit
   The burner (centre) is the core of the system, and that's where the fuel goes.
   
   The simmer ring (right) can be placed over the burner and opened to varying degrees for more efficient burning. When completely closed, it can be used to extinguish the burner.
   
   The screw-cap (left) allows you to store left-over fuel for next time.



2. Upper windshield
   This bit keeps the wind off the flame and supports the pans. The pot supports are lowered when using the saucepans, or raised (as shown) to support the frying pan.



3. Lower windshield
   This bit holds up the burner.
   
   

   It all fits together to make a stable and windproof stove.
   

   
   

Lighting up

I poured a small amount of meths into the burner and added a little water. You're supposed to add 10-15% water to the fuel to prevent sooting - it probably would have been a good idea to have something to measure out the proportions.

Lighting the stove was a bit tricky. At the risk of sounding a bit stupid, I spent a considerable amount of time attempting to light the little holes, like you'd do on a gas stove. Ten minutes later I had a sore thumb and an unlit stove. I tried using a bit of paper to transfer the flame but that didn't have much effect either. The instructions on the packaging didn't make it clear exactly how to light the stove, and after much frustration I gave up, headed indoors and searched the internet for more information.

That was when I came across a delightful little page on How to use a Trangia Camping Stove which informed me that, contrary to my instincts, I should just be chucking a lighted match into the little purple puddle of fuel. My cup of tea was saved! I didn't have any matches so had to use the lighted bits of paper, and a couple of minutes later my little stove was roaring away. I measured out a cupful of water into one of the saucepans, put it on to boil and covered it up with the frying pan / lid.

It took about 3-4 minutes to boil - not the fastest stove in the world but its stability does allow multi-tasking, so I could have made a start on putting up the tent while the water was boiling. At this point, most of the system was quite hot. The upper windshield, pan and lid were all too hot to touch and I needed to use the handle with them (the handle stays off until you need it). The lower windshield was cooler, but with longer cooking it too might have been too hot to touch.

I removed the lid, took the pan off the flame and dropped the closed simmer ring onto the burner - a tricky task as everything was so hot - and left the burner to cool. The cap shouldn't be screwed back onto the burner until it has cooled, otherwise the rubber seal on the cap will be damaged and you'll end up leaking meths everywhere.

Cuppa

I poured the water into the plastic camping mug and left my cuppa to brew for a few minutes.

Examining the bottom of the pan revealed no sooting whatsoever (sooting is frequently reported by Trangia users who don't read the instructions and burn neat meths), just a little discolouration from the heat. Jolly good.

Disaster

Disaster struck when I noticed an odd phenomenon - the cup was virtually empty but I hadn't drunk anything from it. The cheapo plastic mug I'd picked up from a nearby camping shop, while nice and light, was also split down the handle and the lawn had drunk most of my lovely cuppa. Noooo....

Findings

Useful things to consider when using a Trangia.

• Bring matches, not a lighter
  
• Dilute the fuel with 10-15% water and you'll get a soot-free burn. It might help to have a measuring device. You probably want to do this on the spot rather than pre-diluting the fuel as there's very little point in lugging extra water around when it's widely available and rather heavy stuff.
  
• Most of the stove will get hot. Don't touch it, and don't leave the handle on or it'll get hot too.
  
• Get a decent mug.
  
• Make sure you've got enough fuel in the stove before lighting it. It's dangerous to add more when the stove's lit or still hot, and you'll have to wait half an hour for it to cool down so you can top it up.
  

So the stove works great but if anybody feels like donating one of those nice titanium camping mugs, do get in touch.

Trangia camping stove full photo set