Days not Homeless: 5 Years, 347 Days ...and loving every second of this alpine adventure!
Encouraged by feedback from a friend that had recently completed this 'hilly' ride through the French Alps we thought, why not, that sounds right up our street. Officially starting on Lac Leman in Geneva we would cut it short slightly by cycling almost from our front...
So here it is, time for another fairly long bike-packing adventure following the length of the mighty Rhine river. The other getaways I was toying with were either a north south traverse of Iceland on foot or a photography shoot in the Faroe Islands - for both it was...
Not what we had initially planned but more than happy that crap high mountain reports ruined our early spring 4000m peak bagging adventure! What was a loosely organised Monte Rosa trip, overnight turned into a well oiled Haute Route ski tour (thanks for demanding a...
Whilst Mont Blanc comes in at the highest mountain in western Europe its normal "Goûter" route is one of the easiest in the Alps. The 4810m snow covered summit looms over Chamonix, the lower glaciers of Bossons and Taconnaz winding their way down from the upper...
We knew that to escape the rainy Alps we would have to head south, the reasoning behind Nimes coming during our recent EuroVelo 17 cycle ride. On that occasion it was Avignon and Arles that got the attention, our route missing Nimes by a day - we felt that we had...
Would this be the start of bigger things or maybe just put us off long distance cycle touring? Fortunately for me this wasn't the first time spending back to back days in the saddle, whilst Andrea on the other hand was going to find out what is was all about! The...
The thought of being let loose on our own with fancy tech bindings and mohair skins, barely two weeks of skiing under our belts, was slightly intimidating to say the least! Shutdown had come far too early in the middle of March 2020, seemingly far too quickly followed...
Yes, we had views to die for, great winter conditions, amazing summer hiking, a bigger apartment, our own car; all suddenly becoming a bit less significant now that we had discovered the infamous French bureaucracy.... and taxes! We had arrived in France eight and a...
Seeing the ultra runners with their minimalist vests and lightweight trekking poles on Corsica's GR20 earlier this year set the seed. Whilst we hauled 20kg backpacks over the rugged terrain these guys passed us with ease, skipping through multiple stages en route to...
France had just removed its 100km travel limitation, Italy was about to open borders with its neighbors; still we were left with few options for a much needed vacation. We had been hiking like crazy in the Chamonix valley and needed something worthy of our fitness...
Every time we drove or cycled out of town, passing Les Houches en route to Servoz or Passy, we would see this huge chunk of rock dominating the view off to our right. Turns out this is known as the Fiz massif. A little investigation also told us that there's a decent...
Every once in a while we get the feeling that this is the place, the place where we'd like to discover more, experience new adventures, and spend a longer period of time. This time it was the picturesque Chamonix Valley. Whilst we had visited a few times before, once...
The thought was.. Well we've been to the Italian Riviera recently so why not spend a few days in between Morocco and Chamonix mixing with film stars and race car drivers in the French Riviera. Also known as the Côte d'Azur this Mediterranean coastline is famous for...
It wasn’t until reading an article on top hikes of the world that we jumped on the chance to hike the 110 miles around the tallest mountain in the Alps, a route known as the Tour du Mont Blanc. This was actually our second choice of European hike, the first being the...
In 2003 there was a mass departure from Leicester! I moved to Florida in the United States and two of my close friends from the club packed up their belongings and headed to the Dordogne region in France. They love living in France and have a beautiful country home...
With Ayutthaya being only an hour north of Bangkok it made sense to spend our last couple of nights there exploring the ancient temples. Once upon a time it was the capital of the Kingdom of Siam and very prosperous, until that is... the Burmese destroyed much of it....
Why did it take so long for us to make it to Thailand? What an amazing country, clearly with lots of places to explore - on this fifteen day trip we'd only have time for visiting Bangkok, Ayutthaya, and a couple of the many islands. Not sure of the reason but...
For me this was the highlight of an amazingly diverse country. The countless different tribes of the Omo Valley in the south of Ethiopia were unique, rich in culture, colourful, and often very extreme. Also very spoilt by the influx of tourism, of which we were...
A jeep adventure very similar to the Bolivian salt flats, only instead of being around 4000m in altitude this three day trip was often below sea level. The arid land we would explore was known as the Danakil Desert and covers almost 140,000 square kms of northeast...
Having been on the travel radar for some time, a good friend of mine from Everest in 2005 accompanied me on this adventure to Ethiopia, an amazing and culturally rich country. After a couple of days in Addis Ababa and completing Africa's largest 10km running race, the...
Did summiting Denali back in 2003 subconsciously set this somewhat crazy adventure into gear? I’ll never know but what I was hoping for is that this would be the end, the finale, the completion, the conclusion, whatever… of bagging the highest point in all 50 of the...
This trip went from being primarily about Seville, a city that we'd wanted to visit for some time, to Granada, Malaga, Cordoba, Cadiz, and even Gibraltar. We had no idea what we could knock off in a little over two weeks but decided that we would just keep on driving...
No idea why it had taken us so long to make it to Egypt but we're already raring to go back! This occasion was just a week long vacation to get us away from the cold of the Alps and for me to enjoy (if there is any enjoyment!) recovering from hip replacement surgery....
After what felt like an eternity it was a random email from a good friend in the US that prompted a plan of attack for the remaining 8 state highpoints. Unfortunately they were spread far and wide and included four that required some level of technique and multiple...
Encouraged by feedback from a friend that had recently completed this 'hilly' ride through the French Alps we thought, why not, that sounds right up our street. Officially starting on Lac Leman in Geneva we would cut it short slightly by cycling almost from our front...
It took us a long time to make it to Norway, but Oh was it worth it. The only plan we had before leaving on our long drive north from Chamonix was to meet friends in Senja for some ski touring. We just winged everything else and it worked a charm. The car was rammed...
With 2024 providing a brief glimpse into ski touring in Arctic Norway there was no way it wouldn't become a yearly ritual. Senja was fun but the Lyngen Alps to the north east of Tromso was destined to be an epic adventure. The crowd was pretty much the same; mostly...
Now that I had no desire to return to the US where I had spent far too many years where was I going to go whilst Andrea returned home? The most logical countries were Arabic speaking as they don't appeal to her! I had briefly looked at Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, and Saudi...
Unable to take a rental car into Albania on a prior roadtrip through Europe we made it a mission to discover what would turn out to be a gem, and not one of those expensive gems! EasyJet supplied the direct flight from Geneva to Tirana, public transport was dirt...
Not quite what we had planned regarding a big Swedish adventure, our 3 week Kungsleden hike turning into a city break in Stockholm. Oh well, it was still fun, and we got to explore another scenic European city. With EasyJet flying the dirt cheap route directly from...
The thought of travelling for two days to visit family in New Zealand without adding on a South Pacific island trip was now only a thought! After spending a little over a week in Niue on our previous trip where would we go this time? Whilst my mum had already been to...
With a few hundred Euros in TAP Portugal credit and no real idea of where to go that didn't involve connections and long flights we decided to just head somewhere warm and that we'd never been to before. The Algarve sounded like that destination. Unfortunately the...
Approaching Greenland ice shelf from the air was humbling, the size of the glaciers tumbling into the sea, the iceberg’s with their turquoise underwater colours, the sheer expanse… and we were barely north of Greenland's narrowest point - there was a hell of a lot...
So here it is, time for another fairly long bike-packing adventure following the length of the mighty Rhine river. The other getaways I was toying with were either a north south traverse of Iceland on foot or a photography shoot in the Faroe Islands - for both it was...
Over eighty days of skiing under my belt, it was time for Andrea and I to head to warmer climates. We had spent some time in the French island of Corsica a couple of years ago and now it was time for the Italian island of Sardinia. We had zero plans; just the desire...
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