Premier Inn Macclesfield - North

... that it feels like home yet but it did feel good to get back after our week away. Easy to keep clean, warm now that we need the heating and all very simple. I don’t miss the gardening, but it would be nice to be out under the pergola for a BBQ or just to have breakfast or a coffee. Withington and West Didsbury have a sort of community and bohemian/student type atmosphere. We enjoy being able to walk to pubs and restaurants and the bus is 50 ...

... decision to reside there has been entirely mine (albeit a decision born of convenience). It is perhaps to be expected that leaving Stoke once and - effectively - for all, has brought it home once again that, actually - this is a pretty big deal! All I was feeling was the sense of vertigo that is caused by the shape of one's life changing radically - and rapidly. It's like being on a fairground ...

How could anything be worse than the Ball Breaker? How? And yet it was. Damn the kilometres of bog, damn the no bacon butty truck on the highway, damn the twisty part where you go around curve after curve after curve and don’t see anything ahead of you but CURVE. Then damn the “ ...

... I was walking on. They’d paved the path with boulders?! On purpose?!

This was when my leg started coming out of its socket.

The Greedy Sheep Incident

Pennine sheep are in some parts greedy having been feed by walkers they rather expect food now. They will sneak up behind you but if you wave a stick they kind of run away and wait for you to stop paying attention again. I asked Ryan (remorseless *******) to watch ...

... filled with Laphroig single malt but will probably hold a number of different spirits around the way).)

Backpack: Clothes, Food and cooking utensils, Duck tape

Top Bar: Energy tablets, gels and Caffiene tablets

I'm glad that is sorted - now just to put my affairs in order.

Precisely 1 week today!

Well, my little adventure begins here, in Stoke-on-Trent!

I found out about going to Denmark in September, and since then I've been planning how to get there. At first I look at getting the plane straight to Copenhagen, but that's a far too mediocre start. Instead, I'm travelling (with my Mum and Brother) via train on the following route -

1st Class train from Stoke-on-Trent to London
1 Night in a London Hostel
Eurostar to Cologne via Brussels
1 Night ...

... arrangements in this country.
2) Store or dispose of everything that I have been carting around in the car.
3) Sell the Car.

The end of this process is a watershed moment - from that point on it will be just me, my bike, and the belongings that I propose to carry on the bike... until the end of the journey. (duh duh duhhhh!)

Oh... and anybody wanna buy a Vauxhall Corsa?

... raining still!

It has been a bit of a blur today, as well as the Royal Marsden we have been to Addenbrookes in Cambridge, THe Queen Elizabeth in Birmingham and now I am sitting in a cosy front room in Sheffield with a real fire!
I am excited about tomorrow as we will be going back to my home town of Newcastle. Yippee!!
I have taken a few pictures of the day.

... in Argentina in the first week of January. I thought I'd start 2009 by climbing the biggest mountain on the continent, Aconcagua on the Argentinian-Chile border. It's only 6962 metres! No doubt a good way to burn off those excess pounds after the indulgence of Christmas. A little bit strange being back in UK after so long. Not a lot has changed really accept for the economic crisis which unravelled while I was driving around ...

... I guess this is just trial and tribulation #1, and there'll be a whole lot more to face. Thank you to everyone for all the messages, cards and good wishes. I hope that maybe now I can entertain you for a few months with what stupid situations I find myself in. Now off to the airport, and on with adventure...