It’s hard to believe a year has passed since we set out on the road with our bikes and four bags each: 15,774km later — the equivalent of cycling from Yellowknife to Saint John’s and back again — we’ve seen 14 countries, spent two out of every three days on the road and slept 202 nights in our tent.
We cut our cycle touring teeth in Canada, rediscovering parts of our country we thought we knew well, but which actually looked so different from the seat of a bicycle. A few months later we were pedalling through Europe and many people told us we should just go straight to Asia.
“Save some money,” they said. “It’s too expensive here and nothing worth seeing.”
But we wanted to discover our backyard before setting off for far-flung lands and we are so glad we didn’t miss the Tarn gorges in France, sipping sherry in Spain or climbing the mountain passes of the Alps.
We fit in a tour of Morocco, reaching the desert dunes of Merzouga and Zagora, and now we are sitting on Italy’s Adriatic coastline, waiting for a ferry later this month which will take us to northern Greece, Turkey, the Middle East and some unknown combination of countries towards China or India. The visa muddle hasn’t quite been sorted out yet but there are so many interesting routes that no matter whether we choose to go via Iran, the Central Asian states of Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan or north towards Russia we are sure our journey will not be boring.
You can click on the photo for a slideshow of some of the best pictures from our first year.
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