Pugsworth goes to Europe

This is it, the big one! Well, the first big one hopefully.

I'm going on a solo cycling tour of the UK, Ireland and Spain, just me, my bike, a bit of money and a whole lot of time to have a look around, (about 6-8 months hopefully to come back early Jan if all goes to plan).

The plan is to have a couple of weeks in London, ride around the SE corner of England and then back to London for the Peace Brigades International general Assembly (it's triennial global gathering). The I'll head up the east coast, hopefully duck across to Sweden for a few days with friends from Japan, up around Scotland, across to Northern Ireland and Ireland proper, back across to Wales, around central England, down to Cornwall and back to London. Then I train to Paris, have a bit of a look around there and maybe the lowlands and head for Spain. My route around there will begin with the north coast pilgrimage trail and then down the west coast including Portugal. From the SE corner I will ride inland to Madrid, train across to Barcelona, hopefully fit in Majorca and then down the east and south coasts. Then back to Paris for the flight home.

The other interesting part of my trip is that I plan to get mostly free accommodation through Servas, a travelers organisation where you can stay with local hosts for two nights to spend time telling them about yourself and your country. The aim is to foster intercultural dialogue between peoples. Check it out at www.servas.org

So I'm resurrecting this blog, I don't know how often I will get to update it. I won't be keeping an intense a record as of my Japan trip because I just couldn't keep that up for months on end and I get the sense that people don't have time to read such long blogs anyway. I will be keeping a more detailed record in a Moleskin journal which was a parting gift from MacKillop - thanks MacKillop.

I think that's enough of an intro, more to come soon.

cheers
James