Leaving Serbia

Entering Bulgaria and back into the EU

First sign for Istanbul

Dani our couchsurfing host in Sofia

Central Sofia had some really impressive building that wouldn’t be out of place in any other european capital

looks like it will be a fun cycle out of Sofia

After cycling out of Sofia camped with a great view of the city

You always begin to question your route when you see the mountains looming in the distance

We stopped here for lunch after hearing Bulgarian folk music blaring from a concert sized speaker. A group of 5 men ranging from 20 to 70 years old were working they’re way through a litre of vodka. After polishing off the bottle and having a dance on the bonnet of their lada they bought another bottle of vodka and drove off. We let them get a while down the road before following them.

We skirted south along the mountain range before turning east and crossing them.

EU funded motorway being built

They love the european union in Bulgaria

The state of a lot of the rural houses

Cheesey chips, yes please

Cycling up to ski resorts

On the look out for some icecream

nice pointy hill

Descents are the best way to end the day

Grabbing water from on of the many fountains on the roadside in the mountains

Some fishers came and fished beside us for a while

Descending’s great

Target practice

Mushroom fountain

Nearly there

Just what we needed after a day in the mountains

Better than pasta anyway

Leaving the restaurant it was pretty dark luckily we found a campsite just down the road.

Not only were the mountain villages picturesque but most of them had free open wifi

Picked up this peice of shrapnel on the descent

Hugo relaxing while i replace my tube

Another great camp spot in the Bulgarian mountains

Good morning

Any excuse to stop on a climb is welcome, especialy if it’s some sort of multi coloured beetle

Riding until sunset after being invited for dinner

Istanbul in cyrilic

Not bulgaria’s best roads

After it got worse we decided to try and get onto the nearby highway

This involved squeezing through a break in a fence.

Hugo removing a sheared bolt from his frame

The huge line of lorries waiting at customs did not impress Hugo

Bulgaria, Dublin to Nepal, Finnian's Galleries, On Tour

Bulgaria

Entering Serbie this is the only photo we could take as the gaurds moved us on when we tried to get a picture beside the sign

5 minutes into Serbia and we see this sign

The cars and roads changed as soon as we got into Serbia

There are fountains at the towns and people filing up big bottles and bringing them home

Camping in a little running park

Goooood morning

View from my bivy

3 euro for this huge club sandwich , great way to start the day

Milatary boats transporting tanks up the river

Not the most mobile home

Cycling into Belgrade

This place looked nice so we stopped

luckily it had airconditioning and we were able to relax

Old Belgrade

This building was a hunred metres away from a camp of Syrian refugees

Unfinished skyrise in the middle of belgrade

Old fort at night

Statue of the old fort

There are a load of tennis and basteball courts in the old walls of the fort

Evening riding

Another night spent under a bridge. This time the river was dried up so we camped in the riverbed

Dreary cycling on our way to the mountains

Learning cyrillic become pretty important

Flat roads leading from sofia to the mountains

Nearly at the mountains

These obituaries can be found in every town.

Nice orthodox church

The reason for this sign was obvious after we cycled around the corner to see a barracks full of tanks

After the barracks we coastred into a valley which housed some sort of idyllic holiday resort completely different to the poor house we were used to passing

This was the nice road after spending the morbibon an disused farming road. Less a road and more a collection of large and mis-shapen rocks.

Nice to have the good road for the descent

After lugging our bikes over an old tractor road we stopped at the first restaurant we found. We ordered “something good and were presented with the biggest burgers we’ve ever seen. The timing couldn’t have been better

Enjoying the smooth road after the old farm roads of the morning

A nice descent as well

More obituaries

Typical Serbian town

Riversides always make for a nice spots

Every town big or small has huge piles of wood

Glad to be off flat straight roads

Getting into the Serbian mountains was a nice break after the flat riding into belgrade

Typical graves, which were all along the roadsides

One of the many small towns we passed through

Thank you PE for making our ride a little smoother

We may have 20 km still to do but look at that waterfall.

Camping here was a no brainer

We spent so Long time relaxing after our shower under the waterfall we had to cook in the dark

Morning in the mountains was full of people cutting wood in villages like these

A nice descent out of the mountains into the planes leading to Sofia

Most rural houses looked similar to this

A lot of old industrial buildings near Bulgaria

Rolling up to border control into bulgaria

Dublin to Nepal, Finnian's Galleries, Serbia

Serbia

Make it about 200 metres over the border and stopping for some food

First trip to the supermarket gave us a pretty good idea what Bosnia is about

This road very quickly turned ….

to this road, which very quickly turned…

to this road

Relaxing at camp, a lake 1000 m above sea level

Setting up our little camp tap on my bike

We’ve really become camp pasta connoisseurs, adding pancetta and parmesan can really take it to the next level

Our fist night to make a camp fire

Riding the next morning was pretty remote…

for quite some time

We passed some ski resorts

We then crossed into a national park. After passing through this gate we had an amazing descent which seemed more like Cambodia then Bosnia

This photo sums up bosnia pretty well, old mercs,freshly built houses and mountains

Taking special note to stear clear from the mines

Graves covered the Bosnian country side these tall white gravestones are typical of muslim graves

Descent through the national Park

Bosnian Game of Thrones

Sarajevo

Old Square

View from our hostel of the Old square sarajevo

We stole the guy taking that couples photo to take ours, they don’t look too happy.

Too hot to cycle

A lot of abondoned building is rural Bosnia

Bosnia and Herzegovina, Dublin to Nepal, Finnian's Galleries, On Tour

Bosnia and Herzegonvina

Arriving Croatia

Our first sight of the sea Hugo was very extited

Too hot to cycle but perfect for a nap

Always nice when you find a good camping spot

A nice view of Cres

View from the camping spot

Breakie

The ferry to Cres we would be getting later

The climb off the ferry and onto the spine of the island was really lovely

I don’t know if the main activity of this trip has been cycling or producing salt

Some french guys on a tour of their own took this picture of us

Great views from the top of the Island

And great descending

The view of the main town on Cres

After a long break in the heat of the day we were trying to make up miles in the evening but the sight of two pigs on a spit stopped us in our tracks

Well worth the stop

Evening ferry from Mali Losinj to Zadar

More ferry shots

A lake After our stop for dinner

Little bays like this dotted the coast from Zadar to Split

However nice a bay is you always have to climb out

Split way of in the distance but first there was alot of roadworks and suburbs to pass through a struggle in the heat of the day and after our night ride

View of the main tower in split from our room

Breakfast on Vis

Bay at Vis

Vis

Vis was really fun to cycle through, until you came across cars. Not much room for both of you on these tiny streets

Clock tower in Vis

VIs

Tropical times

Heated debate with our dinner

Church on split

Vis in the evening

On another ferry this time for Korčula

Ferries are a great way to spend an evening

The dock must have been full

Neither of us can remember why hugo is so happy in this photo

Bay at Korčula

Starting off on our walk out to the headland

We came across this great mosaic

Island in the bay of Korčula

Still walking

We passed a hotel on our way out to the headland

Hugo found a stick

and i found a bug. These things are incredibly load and make noise all day and well into the night.

Nearly there

Should have picked a different traveling parter

Our final ferry

Croatia, Dublin to Nepal, Finnian's Galleries, On Tour

Croatia

No more passes

First sight of Slovenia

Celebrating our arrival at Lake Bled with Gin and tonics and wasabi and chilli nuts

Lake Bled

We weren’t long out of Germany and Austria before the bike paths disappeared, roads started getting narrower and the house a bit shabbier

Slovenia was full of rolling hills and little villages

” I’ve always wanted to camp under a bridge ” Hugo

A group of roadies cruise past us

Most of Slovenia had rolling hills like this

Hugo using our swat signal to stop

Border crossing into Croatia, all they wanted to know was if we we smuggling in cigarettes

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Slovenia

Arriving in Austria

At 34 degrees the first stop in Salzburg was for an ice-cream

Hugo loves a good church

Mozarts birthplace

The discerning art history major in his element

Look at that happy unicorn !!

After taking a wrong turn and walking to the other end of Salzburg we finally found our coffee shop.

Crawling under the children’s entrance to the toilet in McDonalds to avoid paying fifty cent is just part of the average day of a bicycle tourist

I never knew mozart was such a fan of chocalate

He had his own store and all

Salzburg

There was a pretty big climb out of Salzburg

Even at 7 in the evening it was hot enough to have me covered in sweat by the end of the climb

Sunset out of Salzburg

First sight of Lake Fuschl, passing the hotel on the lake we saw 8 Ferrari’s in the carpark. It felt pretty nice to be camping for free on the waterfront thinking how much it was costing the residents of the hotel

Sunset at the lake

Sunset at the lake with us

Waking up on the waterfront

The road back out of the lake

Ready for some climbing

Lake Wolfgang

To lazy to get the knife at the bottom of one of my panniers

Cycling’s great craic

This wasp wouldn’t leave our morning pastry alone so I trapped him leaving a very angry wasp attached to my pastry. Not really a better situation at all.

What to do now?

They’re getting closer

Taking a fully loaded touring bike on a BMX track is probably not the best idea.

After 500 metres verticalin 34 degree heat I spent quite some time rubbing all the sweat out of my eyes

No better reward after a climb then finding an open janitors closet and getting some free toilet paper

The descent after our second climb in Austria

Hugo carrying his bike to riverside spot

Bath time

Having a good scrub

Billa’s are shit

26 km of climbing up to our highest pass in Austria, pretty daunting

It turned out to be very gradual after the initial kick

Other than the odd group of motorbikes zipping past us it was quiet enough

Hugo picking up his precious jellies, you can’t waste any fuel

After stopping to fill our water bottles in the mountain stream

Thinking we were nearly at the top after some pretty steep climbing we turn a corner to see a sign telling us we have 300 metres left to climb. Seeing a turn off we stoped for lunch

A local dish ‘Specknorkrel” (gnocci with pancetta and onions) hit the spot

The view back into the valley we had just come up

Not actually at the top yet but any excuse for a break, the last 300 vertical were a killer

We made it

View from the tarp in the morning

The glorious tarp

A lot of heat in the sun even at 8 am

The view into the valley after our second last Austrian pass

Hugo after a great descent

With the quite smooth roads descending in Austria was great

Our last pass out of Austria turned out to be full of crazy steep percentages and Hugo was not impressed with the imminent switch back

After a while we were talking a break every couple hundred metres

More breaks

Austria, Dublin to Nepal, Finnian's Galleries, On Tour

Austria

: From rainy Belgium into rainy Germany

: A big group of bikers arrived with us into Monschau

: Monschau was old german town

: Looking forward to a hot meal after the rainy morning

: Kölsch is a type of beer only brewed in Cologne

: ” Dear Diary ”

: We had a great time staying with Siegfried and Heidi, they were very generous hosts.

: Our first sambo from a German lidl.

: Our first taste of the very comprehensive german cycle network

: I don’t know if frogs migrate but we came across one on our way into Cologne. It was hard cycling on the path there were so many frogs we were afraid we’d crush them

: Passed a huge pumpkin farm

: Poor Tenzin

: The beginning of our shop in globetrotter

: Choosing merino wool garments is serious bussiness

: Okay not that serious

: They had replacement parts for every Ortlieb piece you could imagine

: We had no idea turkey was so mountainous until coming across this map

: Or Iran for that matter

: Globetrotter was a four story outdoor store with a lake for testing the canoes on the ground floor.

: The camping coffee section was great fun

: As if Ortlieb was great enough already

: A titanium shot glass for the weight conscious drinker

: It really had everything

: A better selection of bike stuff than most bike shops in Ireland

: Canonball!!!

: We spent hours there

: The cathedral

: The same cathederal

: Still the same cathedral it was great

: Getting a better look

: Pretty impressive

: Up the top is Adam and Eve and it continues to the death of Jesus at the bottom

: The inside

: So this is the bishop at the time giving the cathedral to the people of Cologne

: I don’t know if this is an actual tomb

: A fine tabernacle

: Not the tablet the church is used to

: A nice painting

: A wooden carving

: This guy reminds us of how we feel on the bike

: You could pay money to ring the bell, there was no warning and it caught both of us off guard when we were right beside it

: The bell again

: Hgh street in Munich

: Tuckered out after our day in Cologne

: Choices choices

: Ralf was a great host who also had loads of info about Turkey

: A sign for the camino

: Bad omen?

: Lunch makes everything better

: We spent our entire lunch watching wasp transport what looked like bees into holes in the ground ?? if anyone know what was happening please let us know.

: A tree with the dates of important local events on the corresponding rings

: Park leaving Bonn

: All the way along the Rhine there were great signs

: This space shuttle simulator would have been great fun if it was open

: What used to be a bridge across the Rhine

: The other side of the bridge

: The filter working away

: The first use of the filter, a very proud moment for us both

: Hugo’s t-shirt rides up the same way every day leaving him this great tan

: My first taut line hitch

: Setting up the staged sleeping photo under the tarp took quite some time

: Hey there

: Tarp after it’s first night

: Breakfast on the Rhine

: The filter playing a stormer

: In our never ending search for the most calorie dense meal, we cavalierly spread coconut oil on top of peanut butter. While tasty it turned out to be an unsustainably heavy combination

: This picture pretty much sums up the Rhine, a barge a castle and a vineyard

: Nice flat riverside riding we enjoyed most of the days up the Rhine

: A castle, a barge and a Hugo

: More Rhine

: This meander took us on a huge detour

: The bikes having a rest

: “Fatties fit fine”, fat tires tires ofcourse

: A fine repair job

: Quick access to camp shoes is essential after a long day on the bike

: Another castle

: “Can we camp in there?”

: A town along the Rhine

: Hugo putting up the tarp while i sit down and take pictures of him, a job almost as important as actually putting up the tarp

: So important i took two

: looks like i actually took three

: Everyday its a challenge to see how much PB you can fit on a single day of bread

: Thre day after we spent all night up getting sick.

: Our hostel room to recover in.

: After staying a night in a hoste to recoverl we were greeted with a lovely ride the following day

: Not without it’s setback

: Riding through vineyards is great fun, there were this miniature tractors that could fit down the rows of vines.

: Even riding through towns was easy as every turn was signposted

: The industrial side of the Rhine

: Wonder where they got the idea for that?

: Whenever you’re on the bike you think there’s a strong headwind turns out today there was!!

: Just have to go around

: Really was windy

: This one was a fair bit harder to get around

: We found a camping spot near and industrial centre, at breakfast we could hear the deep thump of base coming from one of the warehouses. Techno at 8 am in industrial parks is yo be expected I suppose

: Our metrhod for crossing towns is to cycle to the tallest building and then keep going out the other side. Works pretty well.

: Crazy cathederals become pretty regular in Germany

: Town Centre of Speyer

: Main street of Speyer

: Another huge cathedral

: Stopping for a coffee and McFlurry on our 180km day to Strasbourg

: Flying into Strasbourg

: The city centre is a world heritage site and has some pretty cool buildings

: A bridge to the old town

: Traditions building

: Strasbourg is home to yet another very impressive cathederal

: Flora very kindly hosted us in Strasbourg, walking into her house was like walking onto the set of Amelie it was great

: Having started up the rhine at 700km we left it at 293km

: Crossing the bridge back into Germany

: What I can honestly call the most impressive private collection of garden gnomes I’ve ever seen

: Definitely steeper than the Rhine

: Sneaking onto a new road we had the whole thing to ourselves.

: We had the whole thing to ourselves, until we bumped into some workers who were pretty confused with our presence.

: Don’t really remember anything about this photo

: A great evening descent before climbing out of the village watching the sunset and camping beside an orchard

: We ended up on this strange private road it was huge and completely free from cars

: This kid knows what’s up

: Astronomical clock

: My stupid broken wheel strapped to the back of my bike

: Kristoff guided us the whole way into Munich while entertaining us with his crazy travels. He’s built a trailer which allows him to cycle his four meter long canoe around

: Bavaria has portion aimed at bike tourers

: remind anyone of when mary and pippin leave the shire. https://youtu.be/bmFnv-TZzRs

: Munich markets

: Daniel was a great host and gave us a lot of inspiration for future trips

: I’m back in Tübigen to fix my broken wheel

: Tübigen in the evening

: The riverside

: Very uncharacteristically German the train service was late meaning I had to stay in the youth hostel and get my wheel fixed in the morning

: Me and my wheel sharing a room

: Bike touring may be fun but carrying a bike wheel around Germany is also a nice way to travel

: On the train back I pass Ulm again with the highest church steeple in the world

: It was so hot on the train they were handing out free water

: Sunset after we left Munich

: Last bitta flat before we get to Austria

: The German regional roads were nice and smooth and usually very quite

: Just a nice candid frisbee shot

: Which way now?

: As we cycled across the south of Germany the alps loomed just in sight

: One of the nicer maypoles we saw

: Maypole, Munich and Muggins

: They’re getting closer

: A small shrine at the road side these have been pretty common so far through Belgium and Germany

: Most german roads had separated bike paths

: View from out camping spot at lake

: Well I suppose we’ll just have to go over them

Dublin to Nepal, Finnian's Galleries, Germany, On Tour

Germany

: Tom’s monastery door

: Arriving in Tom’s

: Relaxing in his living room

: Still relaxing in his living room

: Our room was an old seminaries quarters

: We had our own chapel

: The chapels organ

: Not the bars we were looking for

: The chapel

: David Rex

: And himself

: Our bridge descended to let us cross

: These magical machines were dotted across Belgium satisfying our bread related needs 24 hours a day

: We saw more cyclist in our first hour in Belgium than our whole time in the UK.

: The scenery of the canals was interspersed with great amounts of industry

: River bike

: The Stella factory Leuven

: Leuven city centre

: It was very hot and with chocolate bars melting in the heat it was hard to keep the chocolate smudges of everything including the map

: In the heat this guys got the right idea

: Leuven Cathedral

: The town hall with tributes to all the great contributors in Leuven history on the facade

: A Tree and a Church

: Hugo educating me on the finer points of Art History

: Turns out ‘Klein trnkwasser’ means ‘Not drinkwater’ not ‘Clean drinking water as we had thought. We found this out the hard way.

: The wetlands we camped beside, with a hot air ballon in the distance

: Days in the hot panniers had turned our tastey curry into a fizzing, bubbling living mess. We decided it would be best if we didn’t use it for dinner, considering it fizzed up to the top of the container when I opened it.