Day 0

12 hours of train fun including a lovely break to cycle through central london in horrible traffic and then pushing my bike round thesainsburys in the massive paddington station. I managed to get most of my way through my book, 'arctic event'.
Now staing in 'penzance backpackers'. Made a bangers and mash ready meal in the crematorium oven, hugely burnt! But it still tasted ok

1 day to go

This is a post from my phone the day before i set off on my end 2 end trip.

Peru Update

Check out the photos
Ive not uploaded many yet, partly because theres not many good ones and partly because it would take a while.

Currently in Puno, on Lake Titicaca. Going on a boat trip to the nearby islands tomorrow, and staying on one overnight.

So far weve visted Arequipa, Hauchachina near Ica, Pisco and Lima. The plan for the next few days is to try to cross into bolivia via the north side of the lake.. the more challenging route.

We visited the Ballestas islands from Pisco, went sandboarding and camped in the desert from Hauchachina, a desert lagoon. Unfortunately, my ankle is hurting so we havent been able to walk anywhere and so had to miss the colca canyon near arequipa and come straight to puno instead. The altitude here is 3800m and you can feel it, have been drinking lots of coca tea and taking a couple of pills to try to overcome the headache. Today we walked round some funeral towers nearby and found it very difficult to walk anywhere, not sore, just impossible to do.


Sorry about the terrible punctuation, I cant work this keyboard. This blog is also a bit random as Im just writing as things pop into my head.

Sun 22nd February 09 - EUCC trip to Inchcolm

Meeting at the lock up slightly late in the morning after a breakfast of scrambled eggs on crumpet we had a little argument over whether to go to Stanley (the only river with water in) or a paddle in the sea (no surf).

Sea won out in the end so Me, Morgan, Beth, Mae, Adam, Calum Mackenzie and Kindra set out in the minibus with brake lights on the trailer that flashed when Morgan indicated left and not a lot else we headed for Incholm island.
Starting from the silver sands we headed west along the bay until near the tanker port quay then beelined it out to the island. None of us being in fast boats meant this wasn't a fast process but we all go there safely and after saying hi to some seals we had a small picnic outside the abbey.

Just before we left some of us ran up the little hill to get the picture on the right. Heading back was very choppy and involved missing one oil tanker being towed in to dock. All in all a nice trip, with a fair bit of sun and a high tide timed perfectly.

See the photos on picasa web albums

Sat 21st February 09 - Round Pentland Cycle

Pedalled round the pentlands with Morgan, wasn't the greatest cycle ever due to a strong headwind on the way there and a slight bit of rain on the way back.

Reached a village called Carnwath: it had a few shops and I tried the interesting combination of (reduced) hot cross buns with (reduced) tuna and sweetcorn sandwich filling. Managed to take in a days worth of calories over lunch alone, fairly quickly as well since the war memorial we were sitting on wasn't a great seat, not completely sheltered from the wind.

During the cycle we managed to go through 4 counties! Edinburgh (obviously), Borders, South Lanarkshire and West Lothian.

Finished with an amazing amount of downhill in the dark (no lights). A healthy 63 miles in total.