I have ridden in Germany as a school-kid and as a teacher, which is a nice full-circle thought. In addition, i've seen much of the country on holidays, professional development courses and by 4-wheels. From Hanover, Hildesheim and Berlin in the north, to Munich, Füssen and Stuttgart in the south, I feel like I have a good grasp of the diversity of land and people. However, I cycled during none of these visits, so I will now concentrate on two other spots in this blogpost: The

I will need another visit to Georgia to understand what it is. For the week or so that I was there I noticed that it was a melting-pot of cultures; Russian, Turkik and yet also very European. Cycling through the country was challenging due to road conditions as there were no shoulders on the roads I travelled, and there is no such thing as passing space. I felt wing-mirrors many times during this part of the summer tour from Baku, Azerbaijan to Kas in south-western Turkey. Th

France is of course just a a short-hop from the south of England, so as a kid I cycled many slices of the country. Sometimes on school-trips, other times on holiday and once around the suburbs of Paris whilst playing in a Rugby tournament. The land has always felt very familiar, but the people not so much. I remember drinking strong coffee made by a host family when I was about 12, before flying down the motorway at 180kph in a convertible Ford Escort XR3i. Life was lively he

Things were picking up pace in my life when I flew to Denmark from London. A summer of pedalling was ahead of me. The goal - The Arctic Circle. I had calculated the distances and figured that I had just enough time to ride from Copenhagen, Denmark to the Lofoten Islands in Norway. It was going to be tight as I had shortened the regular school summer break by securing a new contract to work in Uzbekistan. Induction week and familiarisation in Tashkent would mean that I had lef

Prague is the capital of the republic established in 1993. It is a beautiful medieval town known for it's spires, astronomical clock, gothic churches and a rather special bridge. It is a bit of a shame then that I once visited this town for a weekend with a group of rowdy young men celebrating the end of a friends bachelorhood. In the UK we call this a "stag do" and they are of course a lot of fun at the time, and then difficult to remember afterwards, sometimes on purpose, s

Writing about cycling for this post feels a bit odd as it took place in an ex's homeland of Essex. No, I mean her half Greek-Cypriot heritage obviously. To be honest, I had put the thought of it into the back of a cupboard, and forgotten about it. Nevertheless, it is a country that I cycled a bit in. Along the southern coast near Larnaca is beauty, splattered with lager-louts. Talk about a sudden change in the way of life for a generation of families who still remember the wo

Croatia is shaped a bit like a Nike swoosh with its base along the Dalmatian coast of the Adriatic Sea. We cycled the country end-to-end from the highlands of Slovenia in the north-west to the bays of Montenegro to it's south-east. What a glorious country it is to cycle. It has a bit of everything for the bicycle tourer, stunning beauty, good roads, welcoming people, fresh food and no Euro, which at the time made it a cheaper place to tour than some of it's neighbours. We rol

This is it. This is the moment I have wondered about for 18 years. I've finally sat on my bike long enough to surely say that I have cycled the world. So many pedal strokes, so many sights, so much exhilaration, so many aches in places I didn't know I had. The other day I just stopped after a short ride around the outskirts of Los Angeles, California. It was a grey day, nice and mild for cycling with not much of a breeze. The riverside bike path that I was on was smooth, othe

China is a very difficult country to tour by bicycle. A combination of vast distances, visa limits, government control and the need for registered accommodation meant that any hope we may have had of exploring this mystical country and its epic history were dashed on our first day. We were lucky to be there. Very few foreigners are able to apply for Chinese tourist visas from anywhere other than their home country. When we first discovered this we feared that we would have to

My experience of cycling in Chile was mixed; two sedate self-guided city tours of Santiago and Valparaiso, and a near-death experience near Torres del Paine National Park. I don't remember much about the city rides other than sunny churches on steep hills in both places. The sea breezes of the second longest country in the world (north to south) made for pleasant riding. 3000 kilometres south of these cities however lies a much wilder place. I attacked the stunning area at th