emails

2004/9/1
as most of you probably know i am cycling to hungary at the moment - took the first big step today by cycling from reading to portsmouth (probably about 100km) where i was supposed to meet greg about 10 minutes ago... lets hope he turns up in time for the ferry to france eh! had a few problems with the paniers but luckily got here in time to get it fixed. will write again soon

2004/9/6
a big bonjour to you all!!firstly, apologies if there is any bad spelling in this email - i am using a french keyboard at the moment and all the keys are in different places. also thanks for all the emails... sorry that i dont have time to reply individually now but will do when we arrive in hungary. this is the first internet cafe that we have found so far (rural french camp sites dont seem to be hooked up to modern technology... or even proper toilets for that matter!).anyway, now im going to bore all of you by telling you where we have been so far, etc.etc. if you are interested (which i hope at least 1 or 2 of you are) you can find some of the places on a map.
first day(september 1): as i wrote before i made it to portsmouth fairly early, and just as i arrived the panier stand on the back of my bike collapsed! luckily i managed to find a bike shop that managed to fix that and also the cranking pedals before meeting up with greg, having a few beers and getting on the night ferry to le havre. unfortunately there were no showers (or baths) on the ferry like in japan unless you had a cabin ( and of course being the cheapskates we are we didnt have a cabin).
september 2: arrived in le havre at about 7am, cycled around trying to find some breakfast, found a boulangerie (bread shop) ordered by pointing at stuff because we couldnt even remember how to count in french, ate, found some bloke who spoke a bit of english and got him to give us directions out of the city and then headed up the coast. we did about 120km (but not all of it was strictly speaking in the right direction) through: F馗amp, Cany-Barville, Baqueville and then ended up camping near to a place called Offranville ( close to Dieppe). Had to walk for a while until we got to a bike shop because Gregs pedals broke. After that had a much needed shower, pizza, couple of beers then slept.
september 3: got up and cruised down through a load more countyside towns including: Neufchatel, Forges les - Eux, Songeons, and ended up camping in a place called Marseille - en - B( in total about 125km including wrong turns). Highlight of the day was probably seeing an enraged french country bloke throwing a brick (and luckily missing) at another french bloke on scooter just as we cycled past. it had been hot and sunny for the first two days on the continent( and, of course, i am sunburnt).
september 4: was really hot and humid but none the less we did about another 100km, going through: Montdidier, Roye and then camped close to Noyon. Greg seemed to find it hillarious just how red my face had gotten in comparison to my also slightly sunburnt legs. asshole!!:-) the night was also excessively hot- couldnt even get into my sleeping bag because it was too hot.
september 5: realised how hot it has been as we cycled into Soissons at abot midday and say a thermometer reading 33 degrees. ouch! anyway we kept going from Soissons through Vailly, and got close to another place called Neufchatel when disaster struck and the wall of my back tyre collapsed. luckily there was a campsite nearby, so we stayed there (because the bike needs a new tyre before it can be ridden again), but unfortunately the nearest bike shop was 20km away in a city called Riems.
september 6: got up early and lugged our bikes onto the morning train to Riems (where i am now) to get a new tyre and sort out a few other smaller bike problems (bloody lucky there was a train station near where we broke down!). also had or first mcdonalds, and of course email stop, of the trip this morning.....and that pretty much brings us up to date!

2004/9/10
Hi there again everyone......and here it is... the long awaited continuation of the story of 2 english idiots who try to cycle to budapest... PART 3
last time i wrote(5 september - day 5) we were in RIEMS in france trying to get a new tyre for my bike... which ended up taking a lot more time than expected. all the bike shops that the tourist office told us about were closed on monday, and we had resigned ourself to having to spend the night getting mullered in riems (not really that bad a prospect) when we chanced on a huge sports store that also did bike repairs. in the end had both tyres changed as it turns out that the front one was on its last legs too, and did about 80or 90kms to get to a campsite in STE.-MENEHOULD. unfortunately by the time we had set up the tent and had showers every restaurant and shop in town was shut so we were forced to eat a not very satisfying dinner of peanuts and orange juice.
6 september - went to the supermarket near the campsite as soon as it opened to get a load of food to make up for the lack of dinner the previous night. we then stuffed our faces and lazed around all morning. we eventually left at about 1pm and proceeded to battle against an annoyingly strong headwind and eventually made it to a campsite by a lake (lac de madine)about 30km east of ST.-MIHIEL. only managed about 80 or 90kms, so a bit of a substandard day distance wise. we were determined not to be caught out by early closing restaurants again so we went to the only place near the campsite without showering to save time. it was a pretty high class place and we really stuck out as being very underdressed. also the most expensive meal of the trip so far (80 euros for both of us). still, good food.
7 september - bumped into two english couples doing cycle trips on the roads today! the first couple had set off from england and were heading for ethiopia!!! and the second were cruising down from holland to venice. was good to see that other people do this sort of thing for fun. today was also a pretty good day distance-wise with about 120kms covered. we went through: PONT-A-MOUSSON, MORHANGE and ended up camping in a place called PUTTELANGE (just south of SARREGUEMINES).
8 september - took a few wrong turns today but covered about 125km in total (bringing me up to abou 1000km for the trip so far!). we went through: SARRE-UNION, DRULINGEN, LA PETITE PIERRE; INGWILLER, HAGENAU and then made our way up to the border town of SELTZ where we camped for the night. also had our best feed of the trip at a restaurant in seltz. chicken wings and pasta.... mmmmm. :-)
9 september (today) -made our way across the french german border on a floating bridge across the rhine river, and then cycled into the nearest town (RASTATT) where we are now.so we're on day 9 of the trip and looking at the map it seems like we're making fairly good progress.lets hope our bikes and bodies continue to hold up to the strainbye for noweoin

2004/9/17
hi there y'allthanks again for all the emails... individual replies will be dispensed on arrival in budapest. which actually may not be that long away now because i am writing to you from an internet cafe in austria (about 35kms from vienna) and certainly no more than 400kms away from budapest. may sound like a long way but ive already cycled about 1950kms this trip so in comparison to that its not far at all. we should arrive in on the 21st or 22nd (we're planning a saturday night out in bratislava, so it will depend on how drunk we get then). the course we're taking doesnt start until the 27th so we should have a bit of a rest before then. we also got the phone number for the appartment we'll be staying in :(+36 1) 326 6613 (i think that 1 is the code for budapest) just in case any of you mofos feel like giving me a call.anyway...its been a while since i last wrote and i cant be bothered to go into day by day details of what has happened (which must also get pretty boring for you to read) so in summary...arrived in germany a found that there are lots of long distance cycle lanes, which is good, but that they are not normally a very direct way to go anywhere (which is bad). so in the end our route across germany was not very direct and a mix of cycle lanes and normal roads. i have to say that the people in germany (and also austria) have been unbelievably friendly and helpful, and are also very good at english. one time a guy who drove past us in his car when we were looking at our map by the roadside stopped his car to come over and reccommend some good cycle routes to us! on average about once a day at least one person came to ask us if we needed any help (i guess we must look permanently lost). first night in germany we ended up going to some sort of rave-music festival until about 3am. was pretty cool... they had an AC DC cover band playing too... pretty rocking! other highlights have been staying in a middle ages style town (dinkelsbuhl) where we bought beer from a drunken monk, going out drinking with some german agricultural students in passau (on the austrian border) and just generally seeing a lot of beautiful scenery and putting in a lot of kms (we did 150km yesterday, our biggest day yet). we have been following the river danube(donau) since just before Passau and that will take us the whole way to budapest. nothing very exciting usually happens in the evenings because we are normally pretty tired.anyhowlet me know all of your news.eoin

2004/9/22
touchaku!!! hello from (quite) sunny budapest.......as you may have guessed from that greeting the conquering heroes (ie. me and greg) have touched down in budapest after the greatest journey that mankind has known since jesus christ himself headed out into a desert somewhere for 40 days and 40 nights (and certainly a good deal more impressive than philleus foggs around the world in 80 days effort)!we arrived in on the evening of the 20th of september, which means that in total it only took 20 days door to door from reading, england to budapest, hungary. in total we cycled over 2200 kms with no rest days, thus averaging over 110km per day. my legs are like rocks!our big night out in bratislava didnt turn out to be so big because we arrived in quite late, and the last day ended up being a mad rush to arrive at our appartment before 7.30pm so that we could move in that night. needless to say we made it, not in the least bit inhibited by the beers we had been drinking at lunchtime that day (one of which was a massive 12% alcohol - slovakian beer is STRONG).not much else to report - budapest seems cool, though we havent really explored it yet, and the appartment is huge so if any of you want to come out and visit you will be most welcome.in summary, we have arrived... and to prove it we are here.love,etc.eoin