The Plan

Having realised eventually that the world was rather bigger than first appreciated, we felt the need to condense our rather grandiose plans a smidgen.

First off, and a kind of trial to get things right, was Europe. Specifically, to follow the route from the source of the river Rhine in Switzerland, all the way to the Hook of Holland, surprisingly, in Holland. This is quite a well known trail, known, again surprisingly as the Rhine cycle route, or if you like numbers, Euroroute 15. The guide book sold this to Sian, as in the introduction it boldly declares that this “mostly downhill route” is very spectacular. Quite what the word “mostly" entails we have yet to find out. I had initially planned to fly out to Zurich, and use rail to reach the start at the Oberalppass. However, and my Scottish heritage is showing here, at more than £200 for the most basic hotel room , I decided against that notion.

So we are flying to Basel ( a strange airport that is essentially in France, but has a protected area that also exits into Switzerland ) and camp there for the first night. So “Le Grand depart” is on August 1st 2017.

Cycling about 50km per day, and allowing for rest days, this should take us about 30 days, so we are hoping to be back in the UK early September.

Then we are back in the UK for 10 days or so, and then off to Tokyo on the 10th September. We have been to Japan a couple of times, and love the blend between western culture and oriental culture. The plan is to cycle south towards Hiroshima, and quite probably get the train back to Tokyo.

End of October we then fly from Tokyo to Bangkok. And that’s where the planning essentially ends. We’d like to get as far as Laos and Cambodia, possibly even Vietnam. So much depends though on what we find there!

April 2018- we fly back to the UK.