the build up

Like the long and slow build up of the wet season, so to our journey is on the precipice of beginning, of breaking open and letting out some cool refrain.

We have been able to set ourselves up for the next 2 years of our lives with the help of Braemar Mountain Shop. Apparently me fluffing about in the basement of the shop qualified us for massive discounts in the shop. So spend we did. New wardrobes we have, new camping gear we have, and most importantly – new bikes we have.






















All the electronics are fully charged, all the cameras are ready to shoot. We'll fit most of our gear in our front and back panniers, with 1 or 2 waterproof bags on top. So apart from a few more good-byes, that is that.

Hopefully tonight we will be camping down the other side of The Lecht, a ski field between here and Loch Ness. There are 2 dirty big hills that we will have to climb to get there, so we might as well get them out of the way on day 1. I can't promise too much action for day 2 though. :)

So, thats it for now. There wont be too much action on the computer front until we stop in a city, as we only have about 1hr of battery life on the laptop. But I will do my best to update and get a few nice photos on here for everyone to see.

Oh, and a big thankyou to our other sponsors of this trip. I've already mentioned Braemar Mountain Sports - good blokes who give you good price!
Also we have to put out a huge thanks to Carol and Miriam at the Hungry Highlander, who kept us well nourished through the long and cold winter.
Fartech Electronics were a big help also by setting up wireless internet access all through our house.

And any moneys that are raise during this trip will be going to the Waratah Beach Surf Life Saving Club. Now we're not going out of our way to raise money, but in our dishevelled state we might have a few coins thrown at us.

Hooroo,
Wally.

the plan

Hi, and welcome to the blog of Wally and Nadia, with maybe a few other friends dropping in along the way. We're going on a bike ride.


We have been out of Oz now for half a year, living and working in the small town of Braemar, in the highlands of Scotland. Nadia was working in the Fife Arms hotel for a while, before running the shop at Glenshee Ski Centre. I was working at the Braemar Mountain Shop, working as a ‘ski tech’, which involved winging my way through the winter pretending to know something about snow, and drilling many a hole into very expensive skis.

The basic idea now is to hop on our bicycles and ride. The first destination is east, to the shore of Loch Ness. After rounding the southern end of the loch the bikes will be turned north towards the Orkney and Shetland islands. From there we are looking at Bergen in Norway, but that depends on hitching a ride, if there is a ride to be hitched. Otherwise it will be onto the Aberdeen ferry for us, then cycling to Newcastle before ferrying again over to Denmark. Either way, we will be cycling through Denmark, into Germany and from there… who knows. I guess it depends on the weather, the wind, the landscape, the promise of good food. The options are simple – left, or right. Left will have us exploring the less touristy Eastern Europe, where right would put us into a French summer and Spanish Autumn.

And that’s about as concrete our short term plans are so far. Looking further ahead means preparing for a second European winter. When and where the weather turns nasty will determine when and where we hole up for a few months and hopefully give a bit back to the bank accounts that we’ll be ravaging along the way. When the sun warms the road ahead, we will be on the bikes again and cruising through unseen parts of Southern Europe before journeying into the deep, dark unknown of Africa - top to bottom, with a bit of a wiggle through the middle.

Then after all this exhausting travelling that would have most people upgrading to business class, no no, not for us official ‘Widget the World Watcher’ world watchers. We, being the eco warriors we are, will then be hoping to catch a ride on a yacht, cunningly disguised as competent crew members. As to the where that the yacht will be dropping us, that will probably be discussed at length over a bottle of rum.