One of the things that has been on our bucket list for many years is the chance to sit on the side of the road in the French countryside and watch the Tour de France go by. Even though it involves backtracking about 700km we are determined to do it. After leaving the family in Pisa we rode through the western side of Tuscany until we hit the coast. We then headed around the coast passed La Spezia to Rapallo for 2 nights. This is our second trip to Rapallo, a pre...

Greg and Brett left Paris early in the morning on the 11th to ride to Florence. Their route would take them through the Mont Blanc Tunnel - all 11.5 km of it. Their ride was 1200km and they would meet us in Florence on the 12th. Stacey, the children and I flew to Florence. A taxi took us directly from the front door of the hotel to the front door of the terminal - no dragging luggage today. After a rather frightening flight - very turbulent and an aborted landin...

Our crossing from London to Paris on the Eurostar went very smoothly. King's Cross Station was only a 5 minute walk from our hotel so it was easy enough to drag the luggage that far. Greg and Brett had left the hotel at 7am and headed for the Eurotunnel at Folkestone. Their crossing was not so smooth as they were held up for about 3 hours because there had been an incident in the tunnel involving one of the many Libyan migrants who are attempting to get to the UK...

With our visit to Scotland at an end we head south. Stacey, Brett and the kids in their hire car and Greg and I back on the bike - hope the weather stays good! Stacey, Brett and the kids left the house about 10 and headed south to Carlisle then east to find Hadrian's Wall. This was something that William had done quite a bit of research on and was very keen to see. They found a Roman Museum to explore and then headed to an archaelogical site where parts of Hadri...

We crossed over the boarder between England and Scotland and it started to rain. Luckily it didn't last long and by the time we got to East Kilbride it was dry again - at least for the time being. First order of business was to find a replacement window for Neil's car. While we were staying in Manchester the back-quarter passenger window was smashed by someone hoping to get valuables out of the car. Little did they know there were none! There were some Bob Segar...