I’ve recently republished some of the posts I wrote during some of the cycles of the past few years. I was wondering if there had been a few days when I had been cycling in each of my five ‘cycling years’. Alas the answer is ‘no’…

…but I find the above diagram interesting nevertheless. Peak European cycling time (for me) has been the start of the school summer holidays of course in the last third of July. In 2013 I took unpaid leave to squeeze in the cycle from Greece to Portugal and in 2015 I had quit my job enabling me to start earlier in the year. The UK cycles were much later in the summer. The two blank years incidentally were not without ‘action’; in 2011 I was busy writing the first book and in summer 2012 I was working as a volunteer at the London Olympics for about a month.

As for 2016… Well, I’m deserting two wheels this summer for two feet. The plan is to drive to Geneva towards the end of July and then take part in a two-week organised walk from Chamonix to Zermatt along the classic ‘haute route’. I hope my knees are up for the challenge.

I have never walked and blogged before, just cycled and blogged. I hope you won’t mind that for a few weeks, CyclingEurope.org will be more ‘walking Europe’. There should be some stunning pictures. The last time I visited the Alps during the summer for a walking holiday was back in 2006 (to walk the southern half of the Tour de Mont Blanc) but the only a small number of pictures survive. These have been rescued from my Flickr account… I look forward stocking up on more Alpine views later this summer.