Big Ben's Travelogue Blog

In preparation for the ride on Saturday night the team had all studied the laws concerning cycling in Sweden, consequently the week leading up to the ride was spent frantically calling friends with children asking to borrow bells and reflectors both of which are mandatory.  Soon after the start of the race we noticed that very few of the local riders had bothered to comply making us wonder if we had wasted our time.  As the ride progressed we found that the bells were an excellent way of finding each other in a dark group and warning other lesser riders we were coming through.  Something else we noticed was not a single Swedish rider had a bell fitted, I later quizzed one of them about this and he explained the reason was obvious, Sweden is the birthplace of the Nobel prize.... Apropos of nothing here is a picture I forgot to use the other day of Motala's famous bike sculpture with my faithful machine grafted onto the end.  I believe my bike deserves a place in the pantheon of

I know that after of the excitement of yesterday some readers will be a bit worried about my ability to maintain the same energy level two days in a row.  Worry not, normal service was resumed with a day of doing more or less nothing.  Understandable under the circumstances but not necessarily interesting reading. Over the past few days we have become experts in motorhome living, knowing how to keep our van in tip top condition and create a clean and pleasant environment in which to live.  Such is our attention to detail that even after three nights of sleeping on a slope steep enough to make staying in bed a real challenge we couldn't be arsed to move. That said it didn't really matter today, I suspect we would have been able to sleep standing up during an AC/DC concert, during an earthquake.  And a thunderstorm.  One of the more science minded lads calculated we had had about 14 hours sleep since Wednesday morning, enough for a normal week but not one with this much

Today was quite different to the past couple of days in that quite a lot of things happened.  Actually just one thing happened but it was the point of the trip. In order not to miss our allocated start time we set off from the campsite to downtown Motala at around 18:30, perfectly reasonable for a 20:12 depart. The beauty of this was we had plenty of time to stand around whereas before we had only been able to take part in the far inferior and energy sapping sitting.  Motala had a real carnival atmosphere including a happy shopper Guns n Roses cover band who despite our calls would not shut up.  The good news was we were able to make last minute adjustments to each other's kit to maximise ride comfort. last minute adjustment to Dan's shorts Our allocated start time was 20:12 meaning we had to get into our start pen at 20:10.  With a bit of rather un-English pushing and shoving we were able to secure a position right on the start rope, giving Padrig a chance to be

As you will remember yesterday's blog talked a bit about Eastender's actor Leslie Grantham, today I received the sad news he died.  This has a few ramifications: i)  There is a national day of mourning in Denmark ii) I am now worried my blog may be cursed  To test the second point today I am going to mainly be writing about people I don't like. After the low quality sleep of yesterday the entire team retired to their bunks well before midnight, given our relative proximity I was impressed by the almost complete lack of snoring.  I would be thanking everyone at this point but keep in mind that snoring isn't the only antisocial noise a person can make in close proximity to others. The campsite - not sure what I was doing at this point Whilst very scenic and convenient for the start line the facilities at the campsite could best be described as 'basic', a special mention in particular for the showers which look like they have been made by th

When I last posted we were just enjoying a delicious breakfast in the red light area of some town in Germany.   By this time we had established a crew rotation of 3 hours sleep, 3 hours driving then 3 hours as driver's mate.  This allowed a 33.33333% sleep ratio, which is infinitely palindromic so pleased me a great deal.  The sleeping quarters were formed by collapsing the dining room table into a well upholstered bed, it was bit like trying to sleep on an active bouncy castle that smelt of ass. One of many naps I enjoyed today.  Looks comfy.  Wasn't. Driving the vans on full throttle everywhere has not been without penalty, mainly in the form of poor fuel consumption.  This necessitated frequent fuel stops.  This need not have been a problem but for the fact every single garage had a different payment system either requiring payment in the kiosk, payment at a local terminal, pre-payment or post-payment.  This lack of consistency is a real world example of why the econo

Following a leisurely breakfast at my local coffee shop the time came to go and collect the motor homes.  I met Dan and Chris and we drove to Bourn for the pickup.  None of us were really sure what to expect so were delighted to be handed a pair of quite new vans which appeared to be in very good condition. Which is camper, the vans or Dan? I soon got to grips with driving my van by reversing into a wall outside my flat, time from pick up to losing some of damage deposit < 10 minutes, it was OK because only about 50 people were watching.  On the plus side I was able to pick up a couple of trays of delicious looking flapjacks from Giggle and Wiggle so the morning wasn't a total bust.  The next task was to park the vans on the grass just outside the village to see how long it took to start the village facebook page traveller spotters off.......... Packing the vans mainly comprised me putting my spare pants all over the best bed in the hope no one would dare to move them,

Good morning everyone and welcome to the latest chapter of my perennially popular travelogue blog.  This time I am off to Sweden.  Like most people I had never heard of the place so when a friend suggested we go I jumped at the chance.  I don't really listen when I am excited so it was not until several weeks later and an exchange of emails that I realised that rather than a weekend of sightseeing and Roxette concerts what I had in fact signed up to do was: http://vatternrundan.se/vatternrundan300km/en/ If you didn't bother to click the link (and why would you) in summary it is a 300km bike ride around a massive lake.  A 300km ride is nothing to an experience international cyclist like me, however I would usually tend to spilt the 300km over several days.  Not this time.  This time we start at about 20:00 on Fredag and don't stop until we finish sometime on lordag.  For fans of television weather news the lake in question is the lower right of the two you can see in Swe

Thanks to my room mate it was an early start today.  A late night realisation that he had booked a train for the 11th of May rather than March (I always get those two confused) meant Alistair had to hastily book the first Eurostar of the day to have a chance of getting home in time for his mum to cook him a mother's day lunch.  I did find it quite funny when he realised his mistake, then less so when the alarm sounded at 06:15. A poor nights sleep was compounded by the room having about the same temperature as the planet Mercury, which as they told us at school, is so hot a tin kettle would melt on its surface.  Opening the window for a bit enabled me to doze for a while but the prevailing high temperature when coupled with the inexplicable lack of a clock in the room meant quality sleep was hard to come by. Following a hotel breakfast I decided the best course of action was to bid my friends goodbye and enjoy a leisurely walk in the Paris sun to the North Station.  This enable

Today was the day of the big game which we had travelled all this way to watch.  I realise that some of my readers may not be Rugby fans, therefore that is all I will say about that. The group met for an early-ish hotel breakfast which included some mini donuts so was not a terrible way to start the day, the coffee on the other hand was rather weaker than I would have preferred.  Post breakfast there was nothing planned so I retired to my room to await Alistair's arrival..... .....I then waited some more.  It turns out that letting the train take the strain really is the best choice.  A combination of a one hour flight delay and the pissburnt RER meant he did not arrive until it was almost time to meet for lunch.  Despite grand plans to go and eat somewhere 'really good' it was decided that in fact the best restaurant in Paris was the one immediately adjacent to our hotel, seems unlikely but true.  Being a creature of habit I had raw steak the same as I did yesterday, i

On a usual working day I have my alarm set for the beautifully palindromic 7:07 and when it sounds press snooze with the aim of hitting 7:17 then all the subsequent palindromes until 7:57 when it is game over and I finally get up (if anyone knows of an alarm that has an optional 11 minute snooze function do let me know).  Today I was too excited to sleep so got up at 6:26 with no alarm required. After an early morning trip to Mozzas, where I was able to enjoy "Pure Shores" by All Saints as I shopped, I went to the always excellent Green's coffee shop only to find they don't open until 8:30.  So I went home for a bit and returned for some eggs on toast to line my stomach ahead of what was likely to be a fairly booze centric day. The Cambourne contingent (Keith, Brenda, Chris, Louise) and I all shared a taxi to St Neots (SNO) where we travelled to King's Cross, a short walk to St Pancreas where we met the Oxford group (Craig, Jodie) and we were on the Eurostar. 

Since returning from my last trip to the USA literally tens of people have asked me "who would win a fight between a monkey and a badger?"  In addition to this at least one has suggested I do some more blogging.  The main focus of this trip is the France vs. England Six Nations fixture but the group I am travelling with are real culture vultures so I expect to be reporting on the contents of Paris' many famous museums and tourist attractions.  Or possibly just a load of bars.  Either way a badger would win. Preparation for this trip has been quite challenging, we were keen to avoid a repeat of last year's Ireland England £350 match tickets debacle  (would have been worth it had England won).  So this time we took a different approach and made sure we had match tickets before committing to a hotel and Eurostar booking.  Only kidding.  Everything was booked then the scrabble for tickets started.  Luckily the Stade De France is a bit bigger than the Aviva stadium so we