In a book called 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance', the author describes a journey he did with a friend in the 60's on a motorbike across America. In amongst all the travelogue narrative, there is a lot of philosophising about how zen buddhism becomes part of everyday life, and in his case, part of motorcycles. Well, it also comes into cycling. Let me give you an example, and sorry if it sounds pretentious. A lot of people, when they learn that you have been cycling for six weeks and have covered over 1200 miles on a bicycle look in awe, and then something approaching puzzlement, and after asking the usual questions about where you've been etc, say, "but what do you think about ?" The answer is, nothing. Or at least, the best times, when you feel most at one with things, you think about nothing. You just kind of feel, and take things in. This, as most people know, is a kind of meditation or zen state. This is how Tour de France cyclists, motor racing drivers and long distance runners all feel. You cut out all the thoughts, especially negative ones, and just concentrate. This can get you through some of the most tedious flat rides against gale-force headwinds, driving rain or freezing hail. It can also get you up Alpine climbs with a dodgy bike which every professional mechanic I had met had shaken their heads at with various degrees of sympathy / humour.

My bike started causing problems as soon as it hit a serious hill - and this b***** was a serious hill, winding up into the sky for seven miles, at a steepness of between ten and twenty percent. It wouldn't go into top gear to start with. On a hill, it refused to go into second. Furthermore, any attempt to change gear whilst on the hill was tantamount to suicide, and could result in anything from the chain falling off to snapping. So, it was a case of find the gear and stick with it. This I did, and after an hour and twenty minutes of puffing and panting in 25 degree heat, surrounded by swarms of flies, and with a bike which could implode at any moment, I reached the summit. The feeling of arriving there was good - better than usual, because I knew that this bike would get me to the end of the trip. Maybe not in its present form, but it would make it. With the correct movement of gears and fine care of the stress points of the bike, I could get it to Dubrovnik. And the view was great !

Another point made in the book is that some people, whilst riding their motorbikes, find every clank or squeak on their machine unbearable, and do anything to get rid of it, even if this means detatching a piece of the motorcycle. This is how I feel sometimes with my bike. I want to throw it down the mountain sometimes. Other times, I want to get to the heart of the problem and fix the damn thing. With certain things on a bike, you are just powerless to do anything; a wobbly bottom bracket, a worn out block or chain, a buckled wheel, even a squeaky brake - you simply can't remedy these things until you get to a bike shop, and sometimes even then the problem persists due to a mechanic's incompetence or cheap equipment. When you are on a mountain in the middle of nowhere, you simply have to get on with it, best you can. At these times, your feeling of oneness with things is destroyed, and you feel nothing but anger and hatred for the machine, an irrational feeling, but one you can't deny. The machine somehow feels to be a part of you, and it's like one of the fingers on your hand not working when you're going up a mountain and you can't use your two highest gears to get up it. It takes about 20 % more effort, and you feel that at the time, badly.

Anyway, I got to Lake Bled - one of the tourist hotspots of Slovenia - and was unsurprised to find it packed with people. It's an undeniably beautiful place, set in a lovely valley and surrounded by high mountains, with a picture-postcard island and church in the middle of it. I found Henry in the (very good) youth hostel there, and we went out and got some food, a good garlic soup and pizza. He was still ill, so I strolled along the moonlit lake to check out some of the bars. I noticed there were a lot of ageing Germans and Austrians there, and from the sound of a lot of the piped music drifting through the air - Anything from the Beegees to Frank Sinatra - and from the stately dancing of greying couples outside the bars, I kind of got the impression this would be an early night. It was. There were sevreal casinos, pricey restaurants and winebars to relieve me of my money, but I decided that my tiredness had won the day and I went back to a hostel full of chattering Irish, English and American students, one of whom must have been the dumbest person I've ever met. She was covered in bruises and cuts, and when I asked here how she got them, she said, "On a bike". When I asked her what kind of bike, she said "a motorbike". "Oh", I said, so you have a licence?" "no", she explained, "you don't need one to ride a bike in Croatia, stupid!", and with that, left the room shaking her head at my ignorance. Clearly I had missed something.

We cycled to Lake Bohinj the next day, just up the valley, having first spent a couple of hours strolling around Bled and getting some pictures. This relatively easy trip of 35 miles was quite beautiful in places, going through a deep sided gorge, with thankfully after the previous day no hills. On the way, I overtook a team of cyclists without particularly trying, and they seemed quite surprised to see me sailing past with my big bags on the bike. I fully expected them to catch me up, but ten miles later, when I stopped to take some pictures at a particularly spectacular bridge, they were still nowhere to be seen. A few minutes later they came past, a few waves and a few frowns of surprise - I don't know if they were a perticularly crap cycling team, or if I had just become mega-fit, but they seemed to respect my effort.

Lake Bohinj was impressive, in a less overstated way than Bled. There were far fewer tourists, and they all seemed to be spread out around the large shoreline of the lake rather than concentrated in just one area. We found accommodation much cheaper, and ended up in an old babcha's place perched up above the azure lake for 6 euros a night each. Not bad, and with a great view. We headed off around the lake, and then ascended a few hundred metres to a spectacular waterfall, reminisecent of High Force in Durham. Unfortunately, we couldn't get close to it due to a recent forest fire, so we contented ourselves with the distant view we were afforded, and headed back to the lake. An early night was again called for, as we had the mother of all clinbs coming up the next day: 1200 metres up the Julian Alps and over the other side to Italy. I bought a 6 pack and we headed home.