Days not Homeless: 5 Years, 7 Days ...and loving every second of this alpine adventure!
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...
OK, so it’s almost time to get back on the road after spending the past few weeks chilling out and recuperating in Kentucky. Early on Thursday afternoon we take a short flight to Baltimore before heading out across the Atlantic, via Iceland, to London Gatwick. Almost...
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...
I lived in England for 35 years so I have no excuse for never visiting the Republic of Ireland, a small picturesque country famous for leprechauns, its dramatic west coast and Guinness, amongst other things. Andrea and I decided to visit with my dad for a long...
The land of fire and ice, our first European stop, made for a perfect week long winter layover. Stopovers are heavily promoted by Icelandair with flights to the Nordic Island country costing around $650 return from Orlando, quite a bit cheaper than direct flights to...
It was now time to leave Namibia behind, the last week spent on the narrow strip of land in the extreme north of the country known as the Caprivi Strip. We had pretty much based ourselves out of the eastern most points biggest town, Katima Mulilo, due to the fact that...
Upon our arrival into Namibia’s main Hosea Kutako International Airport all we knew for sure was that we were going to be spending our first two nights at a decent airbnb in a decent part of the city, a perfect location for the short 5 minute walk to Joe’s Beerhouse;...
Sunday March 18th had come around far too quickly and although only a short 20km prologue day there were still nerves in abundance! The relatively late 10:27.55 start time didn’t help. Were we prepared? Everything was packed away into the very nice looking Cape Epic...
Going back two years I missed out on the Absa Cape Epic with Team CoreCo due to hip surgery, the following year timing and other events messed things up, bringing us to 2018. After receiving the green light from a very understanding wife I hit the submit button for...
Having made the decision that we would waste the better part of an entire day to country bag Andorra it would have been far better for us if the rental car had refused to start. We were spending a couple of nights at Mas El Guitart, a spa hotel in L'Hostalnou de...
The time being slightly after 8am during the week and having no espresso maker in our Funchal airbnb rental it was time for one of my frequent fifty meter walks to the local cafe and grocery store. It would have been far easier to fit in with the locals had I ordered...
Having just spent three weeks in Portugal the thought was why not continue in the Portuguese vain and hit the islands, beginning in the Azores before heading down to Madeira. The Autonomous Region of the Azores is located around 850 miles from the mainland and total...
Housesitting, whilst not an entirely new concept to us, was different on this occasion due it being our first overseas experience. We didn't intentionally chose Portugal but with neither of us having visited this European holiday destination before it made the sitting...
Nine years was far too long to be away from expedition style mountaineering and I was getting very itchy feet. Disappointingly I had missed out on the summit of Everest back in 2005 by a mere 1000', bouncing back three years later with success on Carstensz Pyramid...
Three years and six months after dropping $10,000 on Going Broke, a clean female 4WD Nissan Pathfinder, we happily, I mean sadly, no I really do mean happily, accepted Carmax's $1500 offer. South Florida may well be her final resting place. The premature grave was due...
Having more time than anticipated after hammering through the last batch of six highpoints we realised that the next six were still en route to Florida and all surrounding the city of Asheville, North Carolina. There was no excuse that during our week with a good...
Our love, (wait, did I say love!) for driving is once again taking us on a repeat route up towards Massachusetts, this time to bag more of those ridiculous state highpoints. Last time we were out this way we skipped six on the east coast as we were over driving,...
We are both feeling very fortunate to have gone from hiking the amazingly scenic John Muir Trail in California's Sierras straight to Durango and the San Juan Mountains of Southwest Colorado. Even better was lucking out on some typical Colorado weather for possibly the...
With the likes of Forester, Glen and Pinchot passes behind us we assumed that the second half of the John Muir Trail would be plain sailing - wrongly assumed that is! The entire 220 plus miles are continuously up and down. In fact, for us the most difficult and...
Typically time flew by and before we knew it we were sitting having Chinese, excellent Chinese at that, in Lone Pine, California the evening before our big departure. Going Broke, our SUV, was patiently waiting for us at Mammoth Airport and all we had with us was what...
It wasn't until our short time spent in Yosemite National Park a couple of years ago, then hearing from a friend how amazing a hike the 220 mile John Muir Trail actually is that we started thinking that this sounded right up our alley. The seed was set, the biggest...
Continuing on from an out-of-the-way Iowa our route took a very direct west towards the Dakotas. We had driven this same road 3 years earlier and had been close to the places we were now revisiting for our state highpoint goal - just wish this had been on the agenda...
An early exit from the Tour Divide bike race allowed us to take a non-direct route from Kentucky to our month long housesitting job in Bozeman, Montana. It would also enable Andrea to complete her quest to visit all fifty states, an achievement that took almost 44...
Sitting here writing this I'm still kicking myself for not currently being part of the Tour Divide 2017 mountain bike ride! Then I look down at the swelling and feel the tingling in the fingers on my right hand. Then I stand up and feel the grating along the achilles...
Continuing on from a successful Spring hike to the summit of Colorado's Mt Elbert we went back and forth between either Utah or Arizona as the next highpoint. Utah's Kings Peak, it turned out had a much better approach from the north and would have ended up being a 5...
So you want to know what we’re getting up to whilst traveling around the world right? Yeah, thought you did. So come on, sign up here right now and we’ll be sending you a new blog whenever we get around to writing one.