The morning we left home was hectic. My brother has been away for 6 weeks and so we only had Saturday to pack up for a 10am departure on Sunday. Luckily you can rely on British trains to be running late and so we managed to catch it with plenty of time to spare. It was then a simple job…
Walking to the top of the world Vignemale and d’Ossoue Glacier The Vignemale Massif section of the walk was incredibly beautiful but also incredibly steep! We started in Cauterets, a tourist hotspot known for its spas and skiing. We joined the tourist crowd for an hour in the morning, whilst they looked at cheese shops and novelty stores, I was…
A slight detour due to misfortune After walking up the Aspe valley and over Col du Moine in my last post, we dropped down into the valley to shelter from thunderstorms. The tops of the mountains were quickly shrouded in cloud and so we thought it would be a good opportunity to buy some fresh food and relax. The following…
Up the Aspe Valley The holiday started with flying from Bristol to Toulouse on the 21st June. I arrived to find in typical French fashion that the train service up into the Pyrenees was on strike. The issue was quickly resolved by booking a lift on Blablacar. Blablacar is an app that let’s people advertise where they’re driving to and…
When people said ‘Tenerife’ or ‘Gran Canaria’ to me in the past, I’ve thought of towering hotel blocks packed to the brim with sunburned tourists who bake themselves on the beach all day. I’ve now come to the realisation that this is only a partly accurate image. Whilst the coastline of Gran Canaria is a heaving mass of holiday resorts,…
After a couple of walks in the Gran Canaria mountains, we decided it was time to do a bit of sightseeing and visit the Maspalomas Sand Dunes. The dunes are famous for being a ‘mini desert’, in certain places all you can see is hill upon hill of sand. We parked near Maspolomas and walked over the bridge towards the…
For the second half of the holiday, we stayed in the town of Agaete located on the north-west side of the island. Our house was part of a large apartment complex, but I thought the street looked quite scenic with the mountains in the distance and it was one of my reasons for liking the area. After settling in, we…
The initial idea of a summer cycling tour began a few years ago but never developed into a full plan. We knew we wanted to do it and that was enough. Then, last Christmas we started to discuss it more and dithered between two ideas: 1. Cycle the Baltic Sea. 2. Head into France and meander south. Idea 1 had…
We entered France at Lille and what felt like the worlds longest continuous highstreet. It went on, and on, and on. We spent so long on it that it started to feel like a timeloop. Every 10 minutes the same tram station would go past, and I would stare at it until I realised that it was ever so slightly…
I was initially excited about cycling through Belgium. I researched the best way home during the Dusseldorf break and found the Flanders Cycle Route. It’s a segment of LF6 that goes from Maastricht to near Dunkirk and so would have carried us nearly all the way back. In reality, it was useless and we ended up going more diagonally towards…