Peterborough

The view inside:

bikes get to stay inside of course

and  ditto outside:

fat and bold

We had an extremely bizarre experience in a London mini  mart  the day I arrived.  We were waiting to pay and the couple in front were arguing as to who should pay for their purchases with the woman using her card and the man proffering a 20 pound note which lay on the counter for a while so I said, well if neither of you want it, I'm happy to take it.😀  The woman won by paying quickly with her card and they went away.  Then just as we were fishing for cash, the guy returned and said that he just had to pay for something so he paid for our stuff!!!!!!!!!!!  Pity it was less than 5 pounds really;-)  weird..must have missed his meds or something.

The way our itinerary is, there's only 1 time when the car is going to be over full and that is right at the end of the holiday when Alex and I and our 3 bike cases and all our miscellaneous gear are finally making our way to Munich airport.  Currently I have quite a bit of stuff, so I checked to see if the front passenger seat could fold out of the way and it could.  BUT I found I couldn't get it back..it was stuck in the brace position:

I tried every lever in sight and since the manual is in French, I ended up having to find a Citroen dealer to get help.  It was embarrassingly simple.. it was just that the lever was stiff...well that's my excuse anyway.

Losses so far: 2 tubes of XXXX strength mints and 1 ear bud rubber thing...no stereo... listening with 1 ear now.

We have a red car this year!

Check out the groovy RED lease car..mine for 3 months

Sooo...guess where I am 😀..it's cool to cold, it's wet, the sky is grey and very low, the grass is ++very green and long...... the roads are narrow, parking is a nightmare and the tailbacks are famous but as yet no road rages instead patience and politeness from all drivers.

wet days...some places you just have to visit if only to get the pix!

 misty mornings

no snakes....wouldn't catch me walking in deep grass like this back home!

it's that time of year.

Misc..just to keep things going

...once again, liberated from the confines of FB

I've bought myself a new camera...I don't want to look like a tourist, especially in places like Rome and Naples and want  to be able to take pix while out riding, so a compact camera is the way to go..obviously.  However unless you're taking pix in dull light those LED screens are useless and you end up literally pointing, clicking  and hoping you're captured what you wanted.  So, I've gone for a compact camera with an eye viewfinder.  There's not much choice really but I've got the Panasonic TZ80..well under $500 and with a few GST $$ tax back coming to me when I go through customs..not a bad price.

Travel hack for anyone but for me this is all about how to take just a small amount of grease and carbon paste for the bikes:

Anyone  who has contact lenses will have masses of these lying around, they come "free" with every bottle of lens cleaner so,  rather than chucking them out...

2018...... older and slower but still striving ......

(liberated from the confines of facebook!)

It's nearly time to say farewell to the heady delights of putting a cold heart rate monitor onto a warm body and having my nose dripping the entire subsequent ride, even when training inside!  All my preparations are complete apart from bike servicing and tyre glueing. The exchange rate of 59 euro cents/$A and 52 pence/$A was definitely not to my liking, but what can you do? eat out less, buy less souvenirs?

This year's itinerary is as follows:

• Melbourne to UK via Charles de Gaulle airport, Paris and the Tunnel (I'm currently watching that TV show on iview!)
• stay with rels
• Peterborough for a TT
• York for a school reunion then back into Europe
•  Feltre, Italy  via Reims and Sankt Johann in Tirol
•  Naples area  for Pompeii etc
• Sicily for Etna etc
• Puglia for the Trulli and the Sassi of Matera (houses with a difference)

Trulli and Sassi

• Velletri near Rome (and a stone's throw from  the Pope's summer residence)
• Perugia
• Pitigliano, Tuscany
• Austria for racing (Hartberg, Sankt Johann)
• Varese, Italy for the World Champs..TT only this year
• back home

Once again posts to this blog  depend completely on internet access, although this year I've made a point of ensuring free WiFi wherever possible and also given last year's weather AC.  Oh and TV!!  our near Rome apartment didn't specify there was TV so I wrote to ensure we would not be denied the heady delights of watching the TdF!  Sorted!

Watch this space!