I left Beziers on a cold morning with my host from the night before: Jean Luc. He rode with me for a bit to make sure I took the right route. This meant I rode from Beziers along the canal du midi before eventually coming out at the Mediterranean. It was, as you’d expect in winter,…
At Fort Lauderdale airport I got my bag and bike checked in with no problems and I settled in to wait for my flight to Madrid. It was delayed about an hour but I wasn’t bothered as I had a long layover in Copenhagen, sitting in the departures lounge in Florida as opposed to Denmark…
For my first night in Lafayette I was hosted by Becky and John, who were unfailingly kind. They and their son, who was also visiting with his own family, gave me a lot of good advice for the city. They also assured me I shouldn’t be worried about alligators as it was winter. This was…
Riding through Sanderson, it seemed that, like most other small rural American towns in this area without a tourist industry, it was slowly dying. A lot of the businesses had closed down or were for sale and there was no market, super or otherwise, outside of the petrol stations. I was a little worried I’d…
In Safford I was fortunate enough to be staying with the Larson family. They were kind enough to put me up for a couple of nights so I could rest my legs while a storm blew through. The Larsons were Mormons which was quite interesting for me as I’d never knowingly met a Mormon before.…
Riding off the canal paths in Phoenix was a fairly worrying affair. Huge pickup trucks would whizz by very close and drivers didn’t seem too courteous. Luckily the day before I’d covered most of the city and quite soon I was out of the really urban areas. I was merrily riding along following Googlemaps’ recommended…
I left Paso Robles and was soon riding through very flat arid land very different from anything I’d experienced in North America thus far. To date it had pretty much been lush coastal areas, now I was seeing the effect of the long drought California had been suffering first hand. I also passed the junction…
I decided to take a rest day in Newport as I had been riding for about seven days and I try not to keep going for too long without a break. The motel I was staying in, the Money Saver Motel, felt like luxury to me after a lot of the hotels I had been…
The day I was to leave Vancouver for America dawned grim and rainy and I took rather longer dragging myself out of the front door of my friend’s than I perhaps should have. My plan was to ride as close to the Canada/US border as I could and camp on the Canadian side allowing me…
I was sad to leave Imabari and the Tokunaga family; it’s always difficult to say goodbye to people who have been so kind. Off I went though, once more I would be crossing the Shimanami Kaido, the series of bridges linking Shikoku and Honshu. I wanted to get across as fast as possible as another…
Riding ROUND 