I can highly recommend this type of holiday if you want to delve into the variety of accommodation on offer within Europe. Last night I was having a shower in a wet room and then donning a white bath robe in a boutique hotel in was of Europe’s […]
So… The next couple of countries are coming up fast; Montenegro & Croatia. Today is Monday 15th and the plan is: Tuesday 16th – Tirana to Ulcinj (Montenegro) This might be a long day in the saddle but I have just had a decent rest here in Tirana. […]
There isn’t a great deal to tell about today’s cycling (well shut up then!) but for the sake of completeness, here goes (at which point everyone has found something more interesting to do. Anyone still there? I could say anything! It’s all a lie! I’m really sitting at […]
While you’ve been watching the cycling or cricket or just tanning yourself in the UK sun, I’ve been hard at work on the terrace of the Hotel Vila Alba here in Tirana. This is my view over the rooftops…
So, here it is, the tale of an epic day in the saddle, all 172km of it. In fact I’ll start by reeling off the statistics. When I cycled to Italy in 2010 I gave the statistics at the end of each day on the blog. (One reader […]
Despite the very best efforts of the combined armed forces of Albania (the drivers & the roads), Reggie and I have arrived in the Albanian capital, Tirana. We are just about in one piece after the ordeal of the last few days and are going to be taking […]
…and they don’t serve food. It’s the bar under the hotel where I am staying for a ridiculous 15€ (I would happily have paid triple that; last night I paid double and had mice thrown in for free!). I sighed but they were very apologetic. I smiled, they […]
Like many probably most others I came to Albania with a number of preconceptions. In the main they have so far turned out to be false or certainly outdated. What I’ve discovered is a country that appears to be heading in the right direction from closed communist to […]
This is simply a stunning country…
Where does one start on a day like today? The beginning I suppose. Waking up in the hotel room in Saranda and pulling back the curtains was akin to taking part in a nuclear test in the 1950s but forgetting to have turned around. The sun was beaming […]
I’ve been sitting here for far too long… but I don’t care. The view is breathtaking (as was the cycle to get to get here…).
If I had any real worries about cycling into Albania (they weren’t for dramatic effect, surely?) they have certainly been dispelled by today’s events. Waking up at the campsite in Ioannina was a delight. Looking out over the lake and across to the mountains is the kind of […]
Put your tent up where you want, great view in the morning, green, friendly neighbours… (let’s just give the guy on reception the benefit of the doubt that he was having a bad day…)
This really is another side of Greece. Isolated in the mountains as it is, the town is frequented mainly by locals and a few hardy tourists but if Ryan Air opened up a boat plane service between the Thames Estuary & the lake here, people would flock! It’s […]
Sitting here in a café sipping coffee on a rainy afternoon in the mountains is very reminiscent of summer 2010. Over the last couple of hours my mind has been cast back three years on many occasions due to the wet weather since I arrived in town… Today […]
It was indeed a shorter day in the end and nothing untoward happened. Following coffee in Mitikas it was a relatively short cycle to the much nicer Paleros where I had planned to meet Ed Cox. Ed is cycling from Bristol to Brisbane and he had contacted me […]
From boutique hotel in Nafpaktos to this. Scruffy campsite, dodgy clientele, questionable facilities, somewhat derelict camping shower… The ironic thing is that I actually slept quite well. A shorter cycling day in prospect today. I’m meeting another cyclist called Ed Cox at 11am just 30km up the road […]
I’m in Mitikas. Didn’t arrive until about 8pm but more of that in a moment. I eventually dragged myself away from the café in Nafpaktos and headed back in the direction of the bridge. It’s a very photogenic thing and I spent a bit if time snapping photos […]
So, from the jaws of potential disaster comes another pleasant surprise. In this case it is the small coastal town of Nafpaktos. It’s quite bustling on this Monday morning as the residents wake up to another week at work, play or (let’s face it for most of the […]
There are some days which, however simple you think they might be, end up being anything but. Today was one of them. Lets roll the clock back to last night. I do get frustrated on those ‘rest days’ when I’ve done the resting bit or in the case […]
The reason for trekking all that way across the Peloponnese was, of course, to visit the ancient ruins of Olympia. I don’t want to make this to be too big of a thing but if you read my book about cycling to Italy you may remember that I […]
It pays to be up early at these places; I have the Olympic Stadium all to myself…
I’m not sure why I ever thought that I’d be able to cycle all the way from Corinth to Olympia in one day and then have time to have a look around the ruins here before setting off the following day for Patras. It was never going to […]
This really is a tale of two very different days. The full story later but the two graphs below show the route profiles of the two days. The first one is yesterday’s ride to Levidi, the second from Levidi to Olympia. I’m celebrating the crossing of the Peloponnese […]
If cycling day 1 had been a little bit of a shakedown for Reggie, today has been a shakedown for his rider! I set off early this morning from the campsite in Corinth with high hopes of settling into another campsite in Olympia later in the day. I […]
It took me an age to pack last night in the hotel. As per usual I had emptied all the panniers as soon as I had arrived on Sunday in order to find things which obviously necessitated replacing them before I left. If only I had a memory […]
Slight change of plan for tomorrow. The original one had been to cycle from Athens all the way to visit a WarmShowers contact in the eastern Peloponnese near a town called Astros. Before setting off at the weekend I plugged a few of my initial cycling routes into […]
‘Hang on!’ I hear you cry… OK, I’ve only done one cycling day so far but I couldn’t very well pass through what is arguably the birthplace of modern western civilisation and not pause for a look around. The Parthenon is the main attraction in these parts and […]
This whole trip is fairly green in an environmental sense but last night is was physically bathed in green in a wonderful rooftop terrace bar that I was taken to by local journalist & cycling blogger Manos & his girlfriend Katerina. A great evening and a fantastic introduction […]
I suppose it should be ‘back’ to Athens but… Before I start just a couple if quick admin points. Firstly, fear not those who did not read the blog posts back in 2010 but subsequently read the book ‘Crossing Europe on a Bike Called Reggie’. The book was […]
First time I’ve tried to do this at distance… Lights, camera… and action:
I’m not a list person but here goes… 1. Finish coffee in this great little local café just up the street from the hotel. 2. Go to the bike shop I have been recommended (just 300 metres away apparently – it looks promising from the evidence of the […]
After writing the post last night I lay on the sofa back in the flat in Reading but didn’t sleep a wink. By the time my colleague Stéphane arrived to pick me up at 4am I had moved all my things into the street including of course a […]
The day has arrived. It’s now past midnight and we are into Sunday 30th June 2013. My flight leaves Heathrow Terminal 5 in under seven hours. And yes, I’m nervous. Not that I have had a great deal of time to think about such trivialities as nerves today as I […]
A colleague at work – David Wall – gave me a card this morning; here it is. I am touched that anyone should go to the effort of doing something like this but he is not the only one to have passed on their best wishes as I […]
Well, it’s a preliminary pack but will allow me to cycle to work for the final time this academic year on a fully-loaded bike. The question is… what do you think I didn’t pack from the original spread of equipment shown in the second photograph?
Courtesy of keen cyclist & colleague at Gillotts School, David Wall, here is the official pre-Eurovelo 8 photograph of me and Reggie. I’m even smiling… (3 working days to go!)
They used to make a really cool little video showing a fly-through of the route of the Tour de France, but strangely, for the 100th Tour de France they have reverted to simplicity… Shame. My route this summer will pass over the route of the Tour de France […]
Not very waterproof but we are hoping for dry, sunny weather…
I’d like to think that all readers of Good Vibrations: Crossing Europe on a Bike Called Reggie take up this position when reading about my cycling adventures… Great photo courtesy of @iamjakamo on Twitter.
It has yet to be rebound and may be better as two volumes but here it is, hot off the chopping board… The Rough Guide to the Eurovelo 8; Greece, Croatia, Slovenia, Italy, France, Spain & Portugal (or at least the bits I’ll be cycling through). I have […]
Occasionally, readers of this website put such time & effort into writing a comment that it is worthy of elevation to an entire blog post of its own. The wonderfully-named Billy Romp (he joins Otto Sentieri & Lester Knibb as characters in my future novel, whatever it may […]
Here is a picture of most of the equipment I’ll be taking with me when I set off from the south-eastern corner of Greece in exactly two-weeks’ time. There is a full list of everything below the image. If you think I’ve missed anything, please do let me […]
Here are some exciting things being planned in West Yorkshire (the area where I was brought up) to tie in with the Tour de France visiting the region in 2014. Hopefully I will be involved in some way, shape or form…
There could be a film in this… Or perhaps not. Cast your mind back to late August 2010. If you were an avid reader of this blog at the time, you may recognise this picture. It is of course my bicycle, Reggie looking a little forlorn to say […]
Three weeks to go… Still so much to do in terms of planning and I am beginning to feel the same way as I did back in 2010 before I set off for the south of Italy; a mixture of excitement and anxiety. Excitement is the easy emotion […]
It arrived today and after school I erected it in the grounds of the school. So far, impressed…
Here’s an interesting press release from the European Cyclists’ Federation. The UK doesn’t do too badly in their European Union-wide ranking. Full list of countries and their ranks below the statement from the ECF; “The European Cyclists’ Federation (ECF) is using the run up to next week’s Velo-city […]
Last weekend when I was staying at my brother’s house in Yorkshire, my niece happened to be browsing through the travel section of The Sunday Times. She pointed out an article about ‘cycling-friendly‘ hotels, the first of which was in Provence, France and my ears pricked up. The […]
The picture here would have been far better with a wild vista in the background but when you live in a third floor flat it’s tiresome taking everything out of the building for the sake of one photo to mark the fact that in exactly one month we […]
I wrote at length a few days ago about my visit to Springfield Camping – A Visit To Tent Heaven – while I was in Yorkshire earlier this week. I looked at the Vango/Force Ten Nitro Lite 200+ and was generally impressed. I’m still very unsure about the […]
Pictures speak louder than words but here are a few anyway (the pictures are below). Just back from AW Cycles in Caversham after having picked Reggie up from his refit. What a smooth ride. No squeaks, no shakes, no rattles, no vibrations! And he looks good too. The […]
Surely not watching England play cricket must be one of the most relaxing activities known to man. I’m at Headingley cricket stadium in Leeds, Yorkshire and after having watched just under an hour of action this morning, I’ve just been spending a very pleasurable two hours wandering around […]
I was emailed yesterday by a guy in America called Angelo who is planning his own cycle tour of Europe. He had read Crossing Europe on a Bike Called Reggie and suggested that I might be interested in another book that predates my own by getting on for […]
Tent heaven or the nearest I have ever come to tent heaven can be found on the third floor of an old mill in the Calder Valley of West Yorkshire. It’s home to Springfield Camping and is the kind of shop that you really could live your entire life exploring. […]
If you are a reader of Cycling Active magazine and have an ability to spot detail amongst all the bike-related info., you may have noticed a mention of Good Vibrations: Crossing Europe on a Bike Called Reggie in the July edition of the magazine that came out last […]
The recent death of actor & comedian Paul Shane brought a few mentions of this film into the press. It was made in 1972 for BBC Television, written by Alan Bennett & centred around a cycling trip during Edwardian times by a group of cyclists from my own […]
Steve White has posted a comment on the Eurovelo 2 section of CyclingEurope.org and I think what he has written is worthy of elevation to the main blog. Over to you Steve: “Back in April I cycled part of the Eurovelo 2 route. From Bangor, North Wales to and across […]
A reflective film about cycling in Cambridge from a film maker called Bradley Stearn. Worth ten minutes of your time. See more of Bradley’s films by following this link.
Some critics were disappointed by ‘Good Vibrations: Crossing Europe on a Bike Called Reggie‘ as it was just as much a travelogue as a book about cycling. Well, I’m sorry, but if you were one of those critics you might want to stay clear of book two based […]
(Insert playing of the National Anthem here) Dear Andrew P. Sykes The e-petition ‘Promote cycling by implementing the recommendations in the ‘Get Britain Cycling’ report.’ signed by you recently reached 57,759 signatures and a response has been made to it. As this e-petition has received more than 10 […]
I’m fairly open about reviews; I don’t expect everyone to enjoy reading Crossing Europe on a Bike Called Reggie and where justified criticism is offered, I take it on board as helpful advice. I am in the fortunate position of having many more positive reviews for the book […]
This looks like a fun event in London on Saturday the 18th May. I may pop along (with a few copies of ‘Crossing Europe On A Bike Called Reggie‘ in my back pocket!) to size up the book market competition… Look out for me!
I can’t say when the entire film will be released… if ever 🙂
Those of you who are paying attention (no? not you?) will remember that Monica Piercy is also cycling from Greece to Portugal but that she is about two months ahead of me. On a purely selfish basis, this is extremely useful indeed as she can feed me with tantalising snippets […]
We live in a very connected World. Or at least I do and this website does. I spent last night trying to sort out all the connections to and from the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Flickr etc… and I think I have them mastered. In theory, this […]
I love eavesdropping on conversations in cafés. It’s like cutting into a cake; you only see one little bit of the cake (or hear about one little bit if someone’s life) but you make assumptions about the 99.99% you can’t see (hear about) based upon what you do. […]
As a fan of good quality design, I do like the front page of the website for The Milk Race. The organisers have resurrected the event in what appears to be a very different format from the Milk Races I remember in the 70s & 80s which were the […]
There does seem to be quite an overlap between my route from east to west along the Eurovelo 8 & some of the stages of this year’s Giro d’Italia which kicks off tomorrow. There is a good breakdown of each of the stages on the BBC website and […]
A couple of photos I took this morning when I arrived at work very early and was waiting for the doors to be unlocked…
Way back in June 2010 I wrote this post about the FreeLoader solar charger. It was just before I set off along the Eurovelo 5 in the summer of 2010 and I was hopeful that I had found a nifty solution to the power problem as I cycled […]
The Temple Of Poseidon is to be found in the very south-eastern corner of Greece. Very handy, no? It would make a fantastic symbolic start point to my journey along the Mediterranean to Portugal, no?
“Dear Reader This is a landmark day for cycling in Britain. We would not have got this far without your invaluable support, but we need your help again. Today, an unprecedented House of Commons inquiry publishes the Get Britain Cycling report, making 18 bold recommendations which call on the Government […]
It is by far my preferred type of accommodation. Usually. OK, when in a city centre, I am more often than not seduced by the attractions of a hotel but anywhere which is remotely green (and even not-so-remotely green), give me a camp-site any day. When I cycled […]
When I cycled the Eurovelo 5 to Italy, all my maps were Michelin 1:200,000 scale maps and there were ten of them in total – see the overview map of Europe here (I didn’t take the Belgian ones by the way as I cut off Belgium from my […]
It’s 7:10am on April 21st. In exactly 10 weeks (to the minute, hopefully), my cycling expedition across Europe starts as my flight from London Heathrow to Athens takes to the air. OK, if you want to quibble, there is much room to do so. I start the cycling […]
“This was a thoroughly enjoyable read from the moment you pick up the book. From the ride planning, apprehension and excitement, plus the doubting friends and colleagues, you can understand exactly how the author felt in starting this epic journey. All of the days cycling are covered in […]
Another 5-star review of Good Vibrations: Crossing Europe on a Bike Called Reggie at Amazon.co.uk (see below) but also a couple of new short reviews at Amazon.com (see bottom of this post). First up is ‘Alex’ who has titled his review ‘A truly epic adventure and book‘; “Feeling […]
It’s getting on for five years since I first came up with the idea of cycling to Italy during my long summer holiday from work as a teacher. At the time, in those initial weeks and months of frankly secret planning (I was never even sure myself whether […]
A few months ago I wrote about Neola, a cyclist from Halifax who is planning a trip across Europe this summer from Santander to Romania. I may well bump into her and her fellow touring cyclist as I make my way in the other direction across Europe. Neola […]
(Assuming that you didn’t… If you did, why not try not doing so tomorrow?)
Bristol is home to many things. Cycle paths carved into the paving stones of the streets, ice cream vans that are made by Mercedes, signs thanking you for not using your car (should you have one), pretty colourful houses in rows, intriguing street names & the first section […]
Graham Thompson writes on Amazon.co.uk: “Andrew Sykes is a language teacher, an admirable profession that to do well, I assume, must have some empathy with the countries and people who live and speak those languages. If this is the case then a tour across Europe should come as […]
If you can’t wait for my own little adventure along the Eurovelo 8 from Greece to Portugal, take a few moments to visit Monica Piercy’s website. She is going, as it says below, from Athens to Lisbon and she’s started! Monica is also on Twitter @mcpiercy. Good luck […]
We have now left the High Tatras and are making our way back to the western edge of Slovakia and the capital Bratislava. The plan is that we will arrive in the late afternoon – at 16:07 to be precise – and stay on a floating hotel on […]
The reason I’ve been blogging about visiting France last week and being in Slovakia this week is three-fold. Firstly it gets me back into the travel writing mode and I’ll need to be be in that mode as from the 1st July for this summer’s big cycle along […]
A significant amount of climbing was involved in today’s mountain exploring but fortunately it was courtesy of cable cars rather than our own efforts. More of that in a moment. Last week I was contacted by a guy called Julian from the European Cyclists’ Federation (ECF). He is […]
