Getting Geared Up to Go AWOL!

A New Trip and A New Blog

Hello friends! We've been hanging tough through a less than glorious autumn in Hobart, turning the pedals over and looking forward to early June when we can get on the plane for Europe with our bikes.

Greetings from Tasmania

We're going back for another shot at completing the Bike Odyssey Lionheart tour. (For people who haven't been following our adventures over the past couple of years, we had to abandon last year's edition five days in because we discovered that Di had fractured her T12 vertebra in what had seemed like a relatively innocuous tumble a couple of days before the tour started.)

So, in a few days we fly away, land in Venice and spend the night in Maestre before jumping on a train for the Austrian town of Lienz. It is a pretty little burg of about 13 000 citizens ...

Downtown Lienz

It was in Lienz that Di climbed into the van after realising she wasn't getting better as quickly as she should  have been from a fall onto her backside while travelling relatively slowly. (A similar fall and fracture put Vincenzo Nibali out of last year's Tour de France, so she's in good company!)
Meanwhile, I rode up and over the famed Grossglockner Pass (here's a video of someone else riding up that mighty mountain much faster than I did) ...

The Grossglockner

 I caught up with Di in the lakeside resort town of Zell am Zee - where she was in hospital! She'd gone in for a checkup, was given the bad news about her back, including being told that she would have to get on a plane back to Australia - and stay in the hospital until that could be arranged!


Anyway, that's all in the past. We've got almost two months coming up to ride our bikes through Austria, Germany and France and are really looking forward to it. We've got four days in Lienz before our fellow Lionhearters arrive, and then we'll be riding with them for about three and a half weeks. After that, we've got another three weeks of travelling to different locations in central France to sample the riding, geography and cuisine in those areas before flying home. Apart from transit by train at the start and finish, here's what our holiday will look like geographically:

A cycling holiday

Although I will be blogging on the Bike Odyssey platform when we're touring with them, I thought I might as well run my own blog to cover the whole trip. So this is it. I hope you will enjoy following our travels - hopefully without any misadventures!

Let's hope there's none of this!

PS: If you're interested in getting regular updates on what we're up to, there is a "Follow by email" link in the top right hand corner of the blog. Cheers!