Oldies Gap Year

I’d like to say some interim thanks to you for having us over these past two and a bit weeks. You have been overwhelmingly welcoming to us. You haven’t minded in the least where we have camped. You have laughed with us when we make gaffes. You have come up time and again and made conversation, and whilst google translate is a good tool, you have been patient when the message hasn’t quite got through. You have even brought us breakfast in the morning when camping out in towns. You have lots and lots of convenience stores which are always a welcome site when we are hungry, and we have started to expand our repertoire of things to eat, including, recently, the red bean filled pancake which I am glad to report was delicious. Thanks to your population holidaying mostly in July and August some of your most beautiful locations have been quite deserted. Even where we have met people in these places, they have again been friendly and inquisitive and always wanting to know where yo...

“What if there are bears? asked Sian when I mentioned that we would be doing our first wild camp. Turns out that when she had googled the idea it had lead her to “10 tips for wild camping”, which of course mentioned bear spray, bells and other bear scaring devices. Essentially most of the bears are in Hokkaido ( Japan’s most northerly isle) but it still hasn’t stopped her being a little more nervous in the dark. It also hasn’t stopped me doing bear jokes, such as mentioning that the everpresent kites circling around are in fact leading bears to humans, much like the honey bird in Africa leads humans to bee’s in return for a bit of honey. So we left Kyoto post typhoon, which as it happens turned out to be a real anti climax. As good Brits, we had panic shopped in the supermarket and got some supplies for dinner in and decided to hunker down in the B and B whilst presumably rooftiles got ripped off and all shops closed down. Except that the Japanese are made of far sterner stuff a...

A bit of a long one folks, so hang on in there! We are currently in Kyoto awaiting the passing of typhoon Talim which should clear by Monday. Currently raining, but we are holed up in a lovely   new Japanese style guesthouse about 2km from central Kyoto. So the picture to the left is checking in the gear in Tokyo's Haneda airport. Which should have been a straightforward affair, which to be fair it was until we got a call back once we got through security. A very apologetic JAL lady escorted us back through security where we had to open the bike boxes to show an official. Apparently the x ray scan had showed up something containing oil, which I suspect might have been the multispeed Rohloff gear hub. Anyway, they were satisfied, and the same JAL lady, still apologising profusely ( such is the Japanese way) escorted us back through security, and then bowed deeply to us before disappearing. On arrival at Osaka here. It look us about 2 hours from getting the stuff off the b...

Maybe we have been lucky so far, but our bicycle checking in process at Heathrow has been pretty easy, and this time 40 minutes from leaving Ripley to sitting down airside. So here I am bemusedly watching as all sorts of stickers are attached to the bike boxes, which this time are even smaller, having disassembled them even more than last time. One of the joys of cycle touring is not taking more clothes than you need, so I am essentially wearing my Sunday best here. You may also note that colour coordination is not my strong point. Glad to say that everything arrived safely in Tokyo, although one of the wheel hubs had managed to make a small hole in the side of one of the boxes. Patching with some gorilla tape I had brought and a very useful copy of the local tourist guide sorted stuff out nicely. Airports, and especially airports in Japan are geared for transporting just about anything.Anyone that has witnessed some families going home especially to perhaps less developed countr...

Our run of fantastic weather rather predictably came to an end as we approached the UK. We arrived at a large but slightly neglected campsite right by the river. Trouble was, the friendly owner said "Camp anywhere". Well, the campsite was very big, and this of course prompted the standard tour round ( think about where you park in an empty car park!) for about 5 minutes. Where will the sun be in the morning, how close is it to the loos, where is the water? Having eventually settled on a site with a good view of the boats passing by we set up the tent. With half the pegs missing (see previous post), which incidentally wasn't quite the disaster we had thought. However, within about an hour the wind had turned through 180 degrees and it started raining, so this ideal position was no longer ideal. It also put paid to a culinary experiment of mine, where I had bought some sliced potatoes and some oil and intended to do fried potatoes. I got to the almost brown stage, but the...