Epilogue! I stayed with my sister Jo and husband Steve for three nights. On the 4th we went out for a celebratory dinner (see photo). On Sunday 6 Oct it was time to leave, to cycle to Rotterdam Europoort and the overnight ferry to Hull and thence a final train to Leeds. Overall I really enjoyed this trip. The highlights were Mont Ventoux, crossing the Alps, Bologna, the days with my cousin in Ari, crossing the Alps again by the mountain railway, Strasbourg, Fr...

This was another day of long train journeys. I had already bought the tickets and bike reservations for the German part of the journey. The first train was the 1142 from the enormous Frankfurt Hbf to Wuppertal (famous for its 100 year old monorail above the river), arriving at 1440. Next was the 1525 from Wuppertal to Venlo, just over the border in the Netherlands, arriving 1656. I had been to Venlo a couple of years before with friends from Leeds on a cycling...