break for christmas

thud, thud, thud, thud, thud..
Hmm, I thought. That's a new noise i haven't heard from the bike before.
I had a quick look at the front at back wheels but couldn't see anything immediately wrong.
I slowly edged forward again.

thud, thud, thud, thud, thud. thwack, tssss..
Hmm I thought. That sounds a bit worse.

Checking again i could now see a split in the rim of the back wheel which was also punctured, in fact the back wheel would no longer turn at all.
This wasn't good. I was about 10km from the next town of Mondejar and amongst all the spares i had brought i certainly hadn't brought a spare wheel.

What to do? Obviously i couldn't wheel the bike anywhere and the prospect of carrying both the bike and my bags wasn't a goer either.

My right thumb seemed to hold the key. I held it out and pointed it to the sky.

30 minutes passed and no joy. Admittedly I wasn´t the most attractive looking prospect, covered in oil with my broken bike and various bags - I had already started to think of hiding my bike somewhere and setting off on foot.

And then, out of nowhere, my knight in shining armour appeared over the horizon.
Perhaps not the traditional image of a knight in his ford transit and slightly blood spattered white coat but it seemed not to matter under the circumstances.

"What´s up" he said.
I showed him my wheel and explained my predicament.
"I´d like to help, but my van´s full of meat. I´ve just come from the slaughterhouse"

A weak excuse i thought. I persuaded him to open the back door suggesting that my injured bike was not so dissimilar to the carcasses he was already carrying and no, i really didn´t mind getting blood on my bike´s paintwork.

It seemed to work. Minutes later we had pushed the various animals towards the front of the van and my bike was nestled in alongside them.
We were soon on our way and within half an hour he had dropped me at the local mechanic´s in Mondejar.

A quick chat with the mechanics and they told me to come back at four when their bike specialist would be on hand.
What luck i thought. He´ll probably be able to sort me out with a new wheel by the morning and I´ll still be on track to make it to my Mum´s place in Alicante for Christmas eve.

Sadly, it was not to be. Returning later it seemed the bike mechanic had never seen a bike with so many gears and certainly didn´t have any new wheels i could have. Apparently i should go to Madrid the next day where they had a biggest and best bike shop and he was sure they could help me out.

Catching the bus, I arrived in Madrid the next morning still hopeful.
It soon became obvious however that they couldn´t help me out in the kind of timeframe i was hoping for. "We can´t do anything until next week", they said in a slightly dismissive tone.
I´m not entirely sure i believed them but gradually i seemed to be coming round to the idea that they might be doing me a favour and i should listen to series of subtle messages telling me it wasn´t to be.

I´m a bit sad but really it´s a good thing. My bike rim had worn through from all the braking i have been doing coming down those hills and it´s more than likely that the front one is about to go too.
A bit more research on my achilles problem has also revealed that i should really rest it for a while if it´s not to be damaged permanently.
So that´s what i´m doing. I´ve managed to transport the bike and me to my Mum´s house where i´m now resting (stocking!) up over the christmas period.
I´ve also ordered some new, stronger wheels from the UK which Lisa is very kindly bringing out for me when she somes to visit next week.

I´ll get on the bike again just after the new year. Time to brush up on some arabic before i reach North Africa...

اجمل التهاني بمناسبة الميلاد و حلول السنة الجديدة

the gaffer

Having spoken to various people before embarking on this trip it seems common practice to perform some kind of a `shakedown´. This is where you spend a couple of hundred miles on the bike with all the luggage you intend to take and check to see if anything breaks or needs adjusting.

This had always been my intention but with the advent of xmas parties and everything else i only actually managed to do this for about 30 miles around London and even then without the full load. I was therefore looking towards the Spanish leg of the trip to iron out any issues.

A few issues have arisen already..
Actually the bike seems to be holding up pretty well to date and it´s me that seems to be struggling. I have literally found my Achilles heel after only a couple of days. Looking around my first aid kit i drew a blank but then i remembered the gaffer tape i had brought for it´s 1001 uses.

Not sure i´ve seen this one on the box before but it seems to be working just fine.

to the hills

My first day in Spain and already i´ve encountered several hills, the largest and most unco-operative being a 900m beast. I hadn´t really considered Spain to be that hilly before but apparently were you to level out all the mountains, hills, humpasand bumps, the whole country would be 600 metres above sea level.

I´ve now arrived in Miranda de Ebro for the night. A pleasant if unremarkable industrial town on the banks of the river Ebro. Unremarkable except that is a gateway to Rioja country :)

the beginning and endless surburbia

A little bit late but i did finally set off on Tuesday as planned.
It seemed to take forever to get out of London.
Probably about 3 hours until i had left the smoke and still the burbs kept on stretching on, trying to maintain their grip on me..
Finally i reached my stop of Godalming for the night and from there it was pleasant day´s ride onto Portsmouth to meet Lisa and then catch the ferry the next day.
A fairly smooth and uneventful start except for the excitement of the A27. I stopped in Chichester and asked a friendly shopkeeper of the best way onto Portmsouth.
She kindly told me that the A27 would be the quickest and just fine for me and my bike so i took her advice and found myself happily joining what was soon pretty obviously a motorway.
Not really what i was looking for but i must say it did speed my progress and the quality of road surface was excellent!

reason for being

So it seems it's finally happening.

My hopes of a cycle trip to Oman are now crystalising and over the coming weeks and months I'll be keeping a record of my travels here.

The premise for the trip is a simple one:
Boy meets up with sister.
Sister tells boy she has moved to Oman.
Boy decides to visit sister by bicycle.

I'll be leaving London on the 12th December and cycling down to Portsmouth before catching a ferry to Bilbao.From there the map gives a rough outline of my route but it's not precise. In part this is because it's still being planned but i also slightly lost control of the mouse while drawing it.

That's all for now.
If you're interested, tune in for more updates....and if you're really interested come and join me for a day or week somewhere along the way!