Photos!

I have now added some photos of the tour to my flickr-account. You can check them out here.

Barcelona!

So, I’ve made it to Barcelona, and my bike is already at the airport, waiting for tomorrow when I leave. The trip from Zaragoza was quite uneventful, but went through nice scenery with surprisingly much hills also. Barcelona was quite difficult to get into, and the airport was almost impossible to reach by bike.

Now its time to explore Barca, so I won’t write anymore. Thanks to everyone for reading and giving the nice comments. For the bicycle people out there I can say that a trip like this is much worth the effort, but 4900 km in 6 weeks is too fast a pace, at least for me. So next time I’ll take an easier schedule, so that I’ll have more time to enjoy different places, rather than always just moving on.

Spain!

Going over the Pyrenees was much easier than I thought, and when I reached the highest point of the route I thight that is this really it. When I reached Spain at the pass going at around 1500 m altitude, the whole road was inside a cloud, with visibility about 50 m, and the temperature only about 10 degrees. Coming down from the Pyrenees was fun even without the rear brake, and then I headed more west towards Zaragoza. There I made a mistake in the choice of the route, and went south too early instead of staying in the foothills of the Pyrenees. The road that I took went through a place that was almost like a desert, long straights with no trees to give a shade. There was some farming, mainly pig farms I think, and the smell was according to that for a couple of hundred kilometers. Setting up the tent was difficult with the soil being very hard, and then one evening there came a horde of very hungry mosquitoes, so that my first experience of Spain was something else than the paradise I had expected it to be.

I reached Zaragoza on thrusday, and things have improved a lot. The city is very nice with a history reaching back to the Roman times, and the weather has been warm but not too hot. I have spent a couple of nice days here with friends, and I have been able to get my energy levels back up to continue my trip. The food in Zaragoza has been very good, and it is something that I will certainly miss when I get back home.

Next I will go to Barcelona, towards which I will start cycling on sunday. I hope to be able to spend a couple of days there before my plane leaves on thursday. The rear tyre of the bike is now almost worn out (after some 4500 km), but I think it will easily hold on to Barcelona.

The Mediterranean Sea

On friday I reached the mediterranean sea,  which I hadn’t seen before. It was such a pleasure to swim there, and also camp on an isolated beach. Now I’m in Perpignan, trying to write this text with an impossible azerty-keyboard. After leaving Grenoble there was one day of rain and coldness (btw. the cycle pathway along the Isere continues all the way to St. Gervais and in three years will be extended to Valence), but After that it has been quite hot with the occasional thunderstorm. Now I’ll be leaving the seaside, and continuing to southwest towards the Pyrenees, with the intention of going over at Montfalgars, which has a pass at 1610 m. I’ve already been at over 1400 m on this trip, so this should be doable.

Down here most fruits are already quite ripe, and it is possible to buy them from many places at the roadside. Otherwise I eat a lot of snacks, and luckily I was today in some touristic town, where the shops were open also on sundays so that I was able to get some more snacks for the beginning of the Pyrenees. The restaurants are nice, but their opening times are rather limited so that it is not possible to eat in a restaurant every day (e.g. if I come to a town at 5 pm, I would have to wait 2 hours before any restaurant opens).

I bought a new bottom bracket for the bike in Grenoble, and that problem was fixed (special thanks to my local contact). Now, however the rear brake has broken and won’t brake anymore. It’s a problem with the hydraulic oil leaking. I try to fix it before having to descend the Pyrenees, and hope it  won’t break again, because coming down with only one brake working can be quite demanding. Fixing the bike is a dirty business.

Grenoble!

I am now in Grenoble, seeing some friends (very big thanks for putting me up for the night, and for hosting me very well). After 4 weeks on the road it is really nice to relax with friends before continuing the journey.

Germany ended with the black forest that has some really nice hill. Coming down from the Feldberg I had a nice 10% slope for 5 km (according to the sign), and more gently sloping downhill almost all the way to Basel. Swizerland was a nice place, but it is rather flat! From Basel I went south to cross the Jura mountains, but the climb was not very much, and in between the lakes there was some kind of plateau that did not have any difficult hills. In France, however, I’ve encountered some nice hills. I took the road from Chambery to Grenoble over the mountain range Chartreuse, and on a hot day that proved to be quite tough. It had three climbs on the about 60 km long route, each climb being about 300 to 500 m.

As far as camping goes, I’ve used an official camping site only once. The rest of the camping I’ve done in the ‘wild’, or not so ‘wild’ as can be seen in this map. My tent has been holding up since i fixed it in Poland, and I think that I’ll stick with it for the rest of the tour to allow it to retire honorably

The tour has now lasted about 3500 km, and the bike is showing some signs of fatique. The bearings in the steering seem somewhat warn out, but worse is that the bottom bracket is so worn out that the cranks are wobbling quite badly. Not bad enough yet to derail the chain, but bad enough to be annoying. On wednesday I try to find a spare part in Grenoble. The road goes ever on, and the trip continues towards Spain. I estimate it’ll take about 5 or 6 more days to reach Spain. Hopefully France has plenty of interesting things to offer still. Finally, here’s a picture of a nice road I climbed up in Swizerland.

Detours

So, in Germany I’ve decided to follow some of the nice bicycle routes, and it has taken me to quite some detours from the original route. From Nürnberg I started south-east following the Main-Donau channel, and eventually ended up in Donauwörth. From there I’ve followed the Donau to Donaueschingen, where I am presently (though I’ve no plans to linger here for much longer).

The football games have been very visible throughout the whole trip. First in Polande everyone seemed to have a Polish flag in their cars, and then in Germany, with the present success, some of them have even 6 German flags on the same car! I wathed the first half of the Germany-Turkey in Ulm, and the mood was great. Then it was too dark to cycle much, so I set my camp in the nearby football field, and could from the sounds hear who was winning (though there were a lot of people cheering for Turkey as well).

Due to the detours I’ve already done about 2850 km, and considering that 3000 km was supposed to take me to Geneva, I’ve done quite a bit extra. Therefore I’m a bit behind the schedule, and I now estimate my arrival to Grenoble to be next tuesday. I’ll make my visit to the black forest somewhat shorter than what I planned, so that I’ll reach Switzerland tomorrow. I’ll have to think about using the train at some point in France, because I would like to spend some time in Spain as well, but we’ll see how the schedule develops.

I haven’t run out of batteries in my camera, and I would put here a nice picture of the riverside of Donau near Sigmaringen, but the machine I’m using does not allow me to access the USB-drive, so I’ll have to forget about it for now.

First real uphills!

Now I’m in Nürnberg, and the trip from Dresden (where I didn’t see any dolls btw) to here was filled with hills. I’ve started to enjoy the uphills, and can’t wait to get to Switzerland. The downhills are also nice, but they seem to go on forever, making me wonder if I’m actually approaching the lowest point on the surface of the earth, some 10 km below the sea level Some of the uphills have already been several kilometers long (I think), but the toughest was just 1 km, but with a gradient of 12%. The people by the roadside were almost cheering, as I snailed up that one.

The German people have been kind and helpful if I ever stop to read the map, and they seem to be quite curious about my trip, where I’m coming from etc. Maybe it is that by now I certainly do not look like I’m just pedaling in from the neighbouring town. And the open baths, freibad (maauimala in finnish), are a real blessing as it has been very hot again. I was however quite surprised that none of the shops were open yesterday, as it was sunday, and I therefore had a small water crisis. Fortunately this morning was cloudy, and the 2 dl of water that I had left was enough to get to the nearest town.

Dresden

Greetings from Dresden! It is a really nice place, with things to see for even a longer stay, but I’m staying only one day (arrived yesterday, leaving soon). I’ve got my first taste of uphills, and leaving the Dresden centrum is about 1 km of uphill, which of course is just good excercise for Swizerland. Anyway, yesterday was the best day of the trip so far. I went to a nice open bath in the morning, and then toured the sights of Dresden for most of the day, with only about 60 km on the bike. Sometimes the best things are difficult to find when you are in an unfamiliar city, and finding such simple thing as a bath is not so easy in every town.

Now I should pick up my pace, and do some serious cycling again. After 16 days on the road I have done about 1950 km, which is more or less half the way. The engine is working well, except some small problems with the legs, but I think that yesterday’s “rest day” has mostly cured those. It may be that my prediction for the arrival in Grenoble was too optimistic, but it would be great to go there to see the final game Perhaps next update from Ulm.

Nice Juhannus to everyone

Further Schedule

Just a quick note on the planned schedule and the route to reply to some of the nice comments. I’ve been taking about 50% of the route I planned and going the rest some other way. For my friends in Grenoble, it appears that I wont make it there for Juhannus (its this week, right?), but I’ll be there about 1 week after Juhannus, around the 28th or something of June. I hope you’ll be as many around there at that time as possible.

Near the German Border

So, its been a while since my last post. These Internet access points are not so easy to find in Poland as I thought. Last evening I was able to check my mail using the computer of the hotel (sic!) reception where I was staying. I’m now in Saleci, still in Poland, but about 40 km from the German border. I’ll cross the border today:)

Poland has been very nice scenery indeed, and completely different from the gloomy and polluted mining colony that the lessons in school had made me expect. Its mostly farming, they say, and it shows with large fields and villages dominated by the smell of farming. But the roads that I so much praised in my last post have been getting a little worse since I came closer to the heartlands. Some heavy traffic on the ‘highway’ between Torun and Poznan, and then some of the smaller roads have been of very soft sand, where riding the bike has been virtually impossible.

So, what I’ve seen in Poland? In Poznan I saw maybe the most elegant shopping centre I’ve seen, built in an old brewery. I hear that its been built by one of the richest persons in Poland, so that it should be quite nice. I just wish that the architects in Finland one day realize how to use the old buildings as basis for the new ones. Another point of interest was Torun, which was the touristic attraction in Poland that I was aiming for (the old town being on the Unesco list of world heritage). It was very nice, and some of the buildings very old. And Copernicus was born there. Other than that, I don’t really recall the details so well.

And so that nobody would think its been just a bed of roses, there has been some hardships as well. The worst one is that my tent broke last wednesday morning (both of the supporting arcs durign the same night), and I’ve had to resort to hotels for some time. In Poznan I tried to find a new tent, but I was too late for any specialist shops to be open anyway (it was saturday). I was able to find a replacement supporting arc in a sports shop, though. I have my doubts though that this will work, because I had to make the arc about 1 m shorter than it was supposed to be. Therefore I plan to by a new tent as soon as I can find a good one. Since wednesday the widns have also been from south-west (which is the direction I’m going). and it has been raining for 3 days, but now it seems to be clearing up again.

Most of the poles do not speak any English, and Polish is so difficult that it would take almost all summer for me to master, so that the verbal communications have been quite limited at times. But many of them are so kind hearted that words are not really necessary for them being to help me. And one thing of beaty in Poland are the trains, which may not be the fastest, but which are from a different time. Here’s a picture of one of them.