Bike Hippies The adventures of two UK cyclists on a bike and a trike Statistics Unique Visitors: Total Unique Visitors: Outgoing: Total Outgoing: 12 0 72 3907

Articles from Bike Hippies

Monday 5th March - First flights 2007-04-12 06:49:00 After spending two relaxed days getting to Andalucia in southern Spain, the excitement of actually flying a hang glider was starting to set in. Yesterday Steve and I had met Rona, one of our instructors from lejair, and Owen and Soren - two students both starting a two week course. Soren is also writing about his experiences, mostly in Danish but he said he will leave some notes for Steve and I when our week has finished.This morning we started off quite slowly - a leisurely breakfast at 10 with Tony and Rona followed by some paper work. We also got kitted out with helmets and harnesses, the latter being somewhat uncomfortable when hanging from the glider while standing up, this ensures that there is a high incentive to learn prone flying as soon as possible. Our first handling instruction was done in a simulator - no fancy displays and controls here, just a few poles standing up for us to dangle beneath. This is enough to get used to basic handling, such as pulling the control bar sli ...

Friday 9th March - Coming back 2007-03-11 14:26:00 I wasn't sure until I got up on Friday whether I'd be riding my bike to Athenry that day, or throwing it in the back of a bus (according to the bus driver on Thursday, you can do that). It all depended on the weatherI couldn't have asked for nicer weather. I woke up a couple of times during the night to the sounds of wind and rain, and it was still quite windy when I got up at six, but the sun rose to reveal hints of blue sky and a brief trip outside determined that the wind was blowing the right way, so at about 7:30 I got on the bike and left. It was a lovely ride, there was the occasional dark cloud and threat of rain but it held off and I rode 45 miles with lovely morning blue skies overhead and the most fantastic tailwind - I'm really glad I didn't take the bus. I got to Athenry around midday, with plenty of time before the 15:18 train. Miraculously, it started raining as soon as I'd reached my destination (Something is not right with all this) so I ducked into a pub for a ...

Thursday 8th March - Cliffs 2007-03-11 13:51:00 I decided I had to see the Cliffs of Moher - they'd been quite influential in my choice of where to go in Ireland so it'd be silly to come that far and not see them. The weather was a bit better on Thursday and the wind had died down a bit so I decided to try cycling up there again. I didn't get far - my legs felt lethargic and tired and my bum hurt (maybe time for a new saddle) Given that I had a long ride the next day I decided to take it easy, turned round and went back to take the bus instead.When I got on the bus I thought I'd better check that there was one coming back again. Apparently there wasn't. I started to get off the bus again but the driver talked me into going anyway. "What're you going to do otherwise - sit in your room and watch it rain?" he asked. Fair point. "It's only an hour's walk back". In this weather? He assured me that the weather was going to clear up again.There was an American couple on the bus, also staying in Doolin, who were going to walk back, ...

Wednesday March 7th - Windy 2007-03-11 13:21:00 I've had a suspicion from the start of this whole thing that going cycling on the west coast of Ireland in March was probably a bit of a silly thing to do, especially when I was advised not to camp due to soggy ground and gale force winds - but I'm not so easily put off doing silly things so I went and did it anyway (the cycling, not the camping). Today looked a bit rainy and miserable from the start - so I put off going out on the bike until the afternoon, when it was still a bit miserable and quite windy, but I didn't want to waste one of two days here so set off anyway, in the direction of the Cliffs of Moher. I rode out of Doolin, and the road soon started to take an upward turn. At one point it got steep enough that I had to get off and push (note: if a road is that hard to get up, it's probably pretty scary coming down) The wind picked up quite quickly as I ascended, fortunately it was behind me - if it'd been against me, I probably would have turned back. When I reached t ...

Tuesday March 6th - it's further than you think 2007-03-11 08:37:00 Dublin didn't make the best of impressions on me - perhaps I was there at the wrong time on the wrong roads but the traffic was absolutely horrible, worse than London - it was almost impossible to join or cross a stream of traffic and the whole thing seemed to be a giant network of one way systems.It's a bit strange being in Ireland, it's sort of foreign but then again it's not really. They speak the same language, but it sounds a bit funny and I often can't understand it. They drive on the left, use the same power sockets, have the same magazines on the shelves (but different newspapers). The station announcements are in an English accents and the train toilets smell the same. They drink lots of tea (with milk) and watch Eastenders - but they use Euros and kilometres and everything's just a bit different. It's easy to forget you're cycling in a foreign country - you're on the left hand side of the road, you can understand the signs... and then you ride past a green post offi ...

Monday March 5th - Bike Hippy 2007-03-11 07:52:00 This trip is a little different to the previous ones. First of all, it's just me. It's my first cycle trip alone, in fact I'm pretty sure it's my first holiday alone.Secondly, I have rooms pre-booked for the whole trip. I will be based in Doolin and exploring the Burren region from there. It does restrict my flexibility a little, but also means lots of good things:* No need to bring camping gear, so only two panniers this time.* No stress of trying to find a room every night, finding everywhere's too full or too expensive.* I can leave lots of stuff in the room and travel much lighter during the day* More room to bring lots of non-essential stuff like knitting bag and a big fat book.Thirdly, it will finally mean I've been to a country that Dgym hasn't. :-) (although he's still got India and Canada on me)It's a long journey from Guildford to Doolin so I decided to break it up with a stopover in Dublin on both the outward and return trips. The SailRail ticket I got was from any ...

Ireland 2007-02-21 08:58:00 As dgym mentioned in the previous post, I am planning on doing something fun while he's busy chucking himself off mountains in Spain next month. Since cycle-camping around the Channel Islands sounded like my idea of fun, I decided to look into it.Unfortunately, it didn't work out as planned.My first intention was to concentrate on visiting the island of Sark, which is a lovely car-free haven of bikey goodness and apparently rather pretty. I soon discovered that the Isle of Sark Shipping company, the means by which one reaches the island, cannot carry bicycles over from Guernsey, therefore I would have to either walk around or rent one. At about the same time, I learned that Sark is about a mile across and probably not worth devoting five days to.So Sark became a daytrip plan. I decided to base myself in Guernsey, and explore all of the islands. Unfortunately, that plan has fallen apart since I discovered that (a) all three of the campsites I could find on Guernsey are closed until Ap ...

A nice place to live? 2007-02-13 07:23:00 We have been trying to avoid high house prices, mosquitoes , noisy dogs and unfavorable self employment laws for a while now. The further we go the easier things become financially, but it also becomes much harder to see our family and friends. We have even tried to persuade family and friends to come with us, but the response has been less than enthusiastic.If you can't find the house you are looking for, you can always try building your own. If you are prepared to do all the work yourself and use cheap materials you could end up with a nice place like this self built house for under £20,000. Of course we would have to change the name of our blog to Bike Hobbits, but but after that we should be all set.Early next month I am going on a hang gliding course in Spain with Steve. I am really looking forward to it, it should be a lot of fun and hopefully we will get some great photos of the scenery and not too many of hospitals.Hel has seen enough of Spain for now, and is planning on a l ...

hats and trikes 2007-01-15 09:55:00 dgym's new hat Originally uploaded by orangebrompton. I meant to post this before. We got awesome hats for Christmas (thanks aunty Mo & uncle Mark). Dgym's goes particularly well with the trike. Check it out. ...

The world's smelliest sausage 2007-01-15 09:15:00 In exchange for our selection of English goodies we were sent away from Portugal with a selection of the region's finest sausages. These included some tasty Jewish alheira sausages, which like a lot of Portuguese food, were strongly flavoured but really nice (especially with olive oil and a little piri piri), and some blood sausages - which Dgym wasn't keen on but I quite liked.The third type of sausage we took back with us was the "stomach full of ribs" - I don't know what its proper name is, but is exactly as it sounds - a pig's stomach stuffed with its ribs. In Portugal, as we observed and experienced on several occasions, they are not wasteful when it comes to pig-parts.This is the sausage before boiling. It was dried out and quite hard. We'd had it since December, but these things keep for months.The first step was to wrap it in foilmmm, easter egg.Boil in the foil for an hour and a half. They tend to cook with massive pans in Portugal, this was the biggest we had and it bare ...

What now? 2007-01-07 16:59:00 Having seen quite a few countries last year and found that most of them have quite a few good things going for them, but still not finding the desire to actually live in any of them, we are not really any the wiser as to where we do want to live.That's partly due to our changing requirements. We started out wanting somewhere nice and cheap where we could buy a really cheap house and live off the interest on our remaining savings. Which wouldn't be a lot, but in countries like Poland or Slovakia, it would keep us in dumplings.Our requirements now are slightly different. We don't want a huge journey back to the UK to see our friends and families (we have decided that we don't like flying, and we only like ferries if they stay away from the Atlantic - Trains are fine though). We have tried out freelance coding over the internet, and had some success - this considerably increases our budget. We want somewhere nice and quiet where the dogs don't bark all night, and we want somewhere th ...

Coming back. 2007-01-07 16:22:00 All this happened nearly a month ago. We've just been very lazy and not actually got around to posting about it. Well, we left Portugal after spending a final freezing cold night at the house (it was so cold in Portugal - we laugh now to think of all we said about having a nice mild winter in Portugal, especially given the recent weather in England). The next day, we booked a ferry from Santander to Plymouth, not wanting another three day drive so soon after the last one. We managed to squeeze the bike and the trike into the back of the car along with all the rest of our stuff, exchanged our piles of English goodies (we didn't stick around to see the full reaction, but we know the Wensleydale with cranberries went down well) for some local sausages, and said our goodbyes. We drove up the road and spent the night in Vinhais, in the same room we'd had on our last visit. The room was draughty but at least there was a heater, a warm bath and plenty of blankets - and no barking dogs to w ...

A lesser form of travel 2006-12-09 03:46:00 We arrived back in Portugal last night after spending three days driving here from Guildford, via the Dover to Calais ferry. A lot of this was boring (and sometimes expensive) motorway, but the best parts were spent following our cycles routes, either in reverse for the first part of France, or just as we did a few months ago across Spain.It is an interesting mix of pride and astonishment to see exactly how far we travelled each day. 50 miles a day may not sound like much but even in the car we would be lucky to do that in an hour. The hills aren't any less deceptive either, I actually checked to make sure my hand brake wasn't on at one stage, then released we were going up the same climb that had caught us out last time, it really looks flat but the engine was struggling and telling me otherwise.Yesterday we were in Spain for the sunset and it was absolutely gorgeous. Most of our route across was stunning, and on lovely quiet roads too. If only it wasn't so far from England, and so ...

Typical English grub 2006-12-04 07:01:00 We have been back in the UK for two weeks visiting a few people and getting some peace and quiet from that damn dog. It was a long and tiring journey involving a four-hour bus trip to Porto, a flight which reached Stansted at 11:30pm, a very long and slow queue for passport control and a long wait for the bus to Heathrow at 2:25am followed by another long wait for the bus to Woking, which dropped us off outside Woking Station at 6:30am. By this time it was raining so we hurried down the road to shelter outside Rachael and Pete's house until what we considered to be a good time to knock on the door and wake them up (about 7am, of course they may disagree about that being a good time :)Despite all the things that we don't like about the UK, it was unusually good to get back and indulge in things like showers that are hot for more than a minute, (relative) peace and quiet, a change of clothes, and of course heavy traffic, miserable weather and winter colds.We're not planning on spendi ...

Piri-piri brownies 2006-11-11 15:43:00 1. Make chocolate brownie mix. If you don't have a tried and tested recipe of your own, pinch somebody elses. I used this one from the BBC.2. Add as much chilli as you dare. I used a mix of piri-piri powder (lethal stuff) and crushed dried piri-piri peppers.3. Bake4. Eat5. Burn ...