The training begins...

 

Flora begins training for our largely flat and very hot journey by riding uphill for the best part of an hour in the pissing rain! Thanks to pace-makers Ali Jack and Sam Putnam...

Brooks England

Three bum cushioning leather beauties all the way from Brum. This saddle design hasn't changed for 100 years and we didn't take much persuading from Keep Pedalling in Manchester to commit! The boys went for the narrower 'racier' version (in Brown for Harvey, obviously) and our female contingent has the slightly petiter ladies version...

My flatmate Jim is a bit of a leather specialist, so I will consult him on the various balms and ointments the instructions suggest applying, but essentially the more you ride them, the comfier they get! They reckon it takes around 500km to form a perfect ass grove, then it will last you a lifetime...

Flora's Falcon

Place your orders...

The route briefly passes from a far corner of Hungary into Croatia, and a small wine making region centered around a town called Osijek.... Does anyone have 3 of these?

Flora's Bicycle

We have plans for Flora's bike. As you can see, she's started training on an nice blue Eddy Merckx, sporting a variety of funky shorts! She's going to have to embrace the Lycra at some point but is currently taking her bicycle choice (sort of) seriously - she wants an English steed!

There's a ideal 531 Reynolds steel Falcon frame hung up in the garage which was gratuit courtesy of Arragons cycles with her name on it... will post a picture soon!

Luke's bike - A pink French (obviously!) steel Mercier

I picked up this 1970's dream machine for 20 euros earlier this year! She was missing a few essential parts, but, as you can see from the obligatory 'lent against tree surrounded by foliage' photo below, is on the way to being ready for the ride.

 

Harvey's Birthday

Harvey will turn 23, on the 23rd day of our trip! It's also the day we think we'll ride through this gorge known as the 'Iron Gates', where the river runs from Romania into Serbia...

The horn- Our first kit donation!

Lovingly donated by Natalia Rossetti
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Harvey has a new Bike! ...because the current fixie just wasn't old enough

I found myself bidding on an old Elswick Hopper and winning it for £56.

A lot of work to do though.

Marrakesh, Istanbul, Tripoli, Moscow, Greenland or Svalbad...

So, to put this into perspective, from our hometown of Penrith in Cumbria, 2875km as the crow flies could get you to Marrakesh, Istanbul, Tripoli, Moscow, Greenland or Svalbad, wherever that is!

2875km is the length of the river, so our route will be a bit longer meaning we'll need to ride on average 100km per day. Sweaty.

We didn't want to go on shiny new bikes, so we're going on some golden oldies! I live in France at the moment where 70's steel racing bicycles are cheaper than croissants. They all need a few new parts but, while I'll keep the geeky stuff short, their horizontal dropouts make them easy to convert to single speed - so we don't have the hassle of gears etc to go wrong / it looks sweet!

We'll take a tent to keep costs down and hopefully this means we'll be more flexible and can stay out of towns etc. The Danube should be lovely to bathe in further up, bit once we're past Budapest, Flora is on wet wipe duty.

The route will take us through 7 countries; Germany, Austria, Hungary, Croatia, Slovakia, Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania, with as many language regions. As the brightest, Flo is in charge of Hungarian linguistics, but allegedly Romanian is a 'unique' mix of French and Italian, where Peeley and I can shine!

2875km