15th-19th October - Lisbon, Portugal

Had to get up at 5am after catching 3 hours sleep due to this crappy cold.  It took until 1.30pm to make it to our Lisbon accommodation but overall the travel was fine.  We stayed in a small AirBnb apartment on Rua de Lazaro for approx $85 AUD per night.

Apparently I was still feeling pretty rubbish, but it was shorts & thongs weather so we headed to the Barrio Alto district for dinner.  Apparently this was 'the' place to go out at night but we found it all a little touristy.  Was still feeling sick so went home after dinner.

16th: Went to Cascause for a day trip! a 40-minut, $4.30 Euro return train ride from Cais do Sodre.  Started off with some Piri-Piri Chicken, that was awesome!  Visited a vape shop & went sight seeing to the Santa Maria Lighthouse & Boca de Inferno (Hells Mouth). Everything is within walking distance and by the time we got back to the town centre we spent some time writing & reading & looking for some little mementos for the trip.  Encountered some loud Irish women disturbing the peace before getting some Santini Gelato & catching the train back to Lisbon before it got too cold!

Returned to Lisbon & the apartment to smash some 50c beers we'd purchased earlier from the Pingo Doce *supermarket).  Then travelled down to Martim Moniz square for a kebab and another beer or two.  This square was great on a Friday & Saturday with lots of food options & cheap drinks.

17th:  A day to do some touristy things in Lisbon.  STarted off walking to the main square & Arc de Triumph before stocking a map from tourist information.  Visited the covered markets which ahd HEAPS of 5-star food options with plenty of places to sit.  We went with a Prego each, portuguese steak sandwich, and had to stand at the table to eat because the place was so popular.  Laura spotted a nice rug in a strange store inside the market & we couldn't say no!  Took it back to the apartment & swigged on a strong Portuguese Coffee & Pastel de Nata (bruned caramel tarts) for some ridiculously cheap price at a local cafe.

Next is was off to the castle at the top of the hill, we were feeling lazy & thought we'd take the famous No.28 tram up.  That was until we saw how long the line was to get on!  must can been 4 trams worth of people.  Decided we weren't that lazy after all and walked up.  Got to the top after a little bit of grumbling about the climb to find the castle closed due to the wet & windy weather conditions.  Continued down the coastal side of the hill to look at the very solid cathedral.

In the main square Laura was busting for a toilet & found one that cost a euro to use.  It had some advertising out the front slating it was the sexiest toilet in the world? Laura came out very confused.  Apparently there were different coloured rolls of toilet paper available for use as well as benches inside the cubicles.  We can only assume the toilets were actually for having sex in, although we weren't in the kind of mood.

After a few Estrella in a small little bar close by we returned to Martim Moniz & smashed some dirty burgers, then went home to polish off the wine we'd purchased earlier!  I managed to torrent The Martian movie on my phone & get it playing on the TV streaming over wifi so we had a movie night with a bottle of wine!

18th:Today we completed all the transport & accom bookings for the rest of the trip!  From now on we just have to follow the calendar and enjoy the ride!  Had a little time to kill before watching the Aus vs. Scotland rugby match so went for a walk to a park north of us and got a great view of the city.  Also slammed a massive kebab but we weren't overly proud of ourselves for that.

Caught train to the British Pub aptly named 'British Pub' and watched Australia undeservedly win against Scotland in the final minutes with a penalty kick.  Laura found us a great tapas house with good house wine before we called it a night.

19th: I woke up feeling like a giant bag of snot.  The best cure is usually a hot shower to clean you out so off I went.  Got some gunk out as the shower was slowly filling with water due to a clogged drain.  Gunk was just floating around my feet.... Coughed up more gunk, started to dry-retch, too much, eneded up spewing up last nights dinner.  Now standing in pubble of snot and spew, had to get out and let it drain.  Definitely one of the worst showers I've had...

Ended up staying the the apartment all day I was so ill.  Spent most of the time sitting on the toilet and wiping my bumhole until it was raw.  Pretty sure the chicken kebab I had was to blame as it was the only thing Laura didn't eat.

Managed to leave the apartment for an hour to walk to a partk where these strange Turducken animals roamed about.  Only spent $2.41 between us today on a supermarket pizza for dinner.

With my newly acquired phone-torrenting skills we were able to watch Inside-Out and Southpaw.

10th-14th October - London

After Oxford we caught a morning train to London.  Before we knew it we had arrived at Waterloo Station where Mike met us and took us to his apartment.  Mike was kind enough to let us stay at his apartment whichwas just awesome.  OVerlooking the London Eye & Big Ben, this place was one of the best locations in the city!

Once we'd had a shower & put on some clean clothes we got taken on a personal guided tour of London. We saw the changing of the horse-guard, Trafalgar Square, Bond Street, Picadilly.  I was loving being able to cross off so many Monopoly board positions.

The tour had a strict timeline as we all wanted to watch the Aus vs Wales Rugby World Cup match.  No tries scored by a good game overall that Australia probably won purely by luck.

That's where Mike left us for the day & we retired to the apartment with some fast-food chinese & a few beers while watching Jason STatham & Tropic Thunder on the telly.

11th: We were meeting Mike & Viv at 12 today so they could take us to Greenwich, so had a little time to kill in the morning which we filled by going for a swim in the apartments pool & then walking down the Thames to get a closer look & The Eye, Big Ben & Government House.

Mike & Viv met us @ the apartment and then proceeded to take us back down to the Eye where the ferry, The Thames Clipper, leaves from.  It's worth noting that from Friday to Sdnday there is a great food market open alday just down the steps from Festival Hall in Waterloo.  The ferry was sweet, we flew along the Thames seeing clear views of all the famous London skypscrapers & buildings while Mike * Viv argued over which version of history was correct for each building!  Between the two of them I reckon we may have gotten the equivalant of a paid guided tour!  Whether the information provided was accurate is yet to be determined.

In Greenwich we were treated to some cheap Pie & Mash before walking up to the Royal Observatory.  I'd told Mike previously about my interest in seeing some of the chronometers designed by John Harrison, in particular the H4 which won the Longitude Challenge many hundreds of years ago.  Laura& I spent a few hours in there looking at all the watches & clocks & the prime meridian *where time begins!) while Mike & Viv chilled out somewhere.

Had a beer at a bar called 'Meantime' (great), while Mike smoked out a family of children with his stinky pipe.  Luckily Mike had just recieved an e-pipe in the mail which he was quite reluctant to advise me of the price while Viv was around!

Finished our beers then Mike & Viv showed us their true Londoner colours by pushing past a queue of people to catch the ferry back to the eye!  We slow Australains have a lot to learn about jumping queues apparently.  Early night again, this time with homemade pizza's @ the apartment.

12th: Today was our museum day, a time to spend all our day in some of the larger museums, mainly the Natural History Museum & the Science Museum.  We decided we would walk the 3 miles rather than take the tube, which was exhausting!  After 1.5 hours walking and a detour around Buck Palace due to some massive parade we finally made it to the Natural History museum.

We a bit too lethargic after the walk so had to make a quick stop in the French Quarter for a baguette first.  Delightful sangas @ $14 pound all up!

The best part about the natural history museum was the building, cool patterned bricks with individual animal sculptures everywhere.  Unfortunately the museum itself did not live up to expectations.  Dusty displays, faded animals and generally run-down interior made it a very sorry sight.  You coudln't even see the stripes on the Tazzie tiger anymore!  I'm sure the kids still enjoy it but the realitry definitely paled (get it!?_ in comparison to what my imagination had initially conjured up.  We did find some things we liked; for Laura it was the technical drawings of plants & animals.  For me it was a room full of some of their most precious gemstones.  Of no use of course but so very very pretty!

That place tired us again so we went for a coffee @ Le Pain Quotidian.  What a shit experience.  Jerk waiter treated us with disdain, coffees were uber expensive, then he had the nerve to add a 70c Service Charge ($2 AUD).  What I should have said is 'Do you get paid extra for being a prick?', but we just paid and got out.

The science museum asked for a %5 pound donation before entry, didn't pay, still feeling ripped from coffee!  this museum was in much better condition than the last.  We raced through teh seam engines & space room & headed up to the area designed for kids to learn about science.  Was pretty cool, nothing like interactive science displays.

On our way home picked up some AWESOME milkshakes from a place called MEATMarket in Covent Square.  Cooked more pizzas at home & headed out to Soho to see some blues jamming at a bar called 'Aint nothing but blues'. We got there a little late though and there was a slow line in so went to a bar called 'Red Lion' for the cheapest pint in London (sub $3 pound!).

Managed to get into the blues bar afterwards and had a ball.  random musicians getting up and jamming together in a tiny little bar that everyone squashed into.

13th: Spent most of the early day planning for Portugal before going to meet Mike & Tom at the Tate Modern.  I was sad & angry half the afternoon coz I felt battered by all the things that annoy my travelling companions; deaf, lack of confidence, walking style, driving style, etc.  Get it, but had enough of it that day.  Times like that made me ready to go home.

Met Mike, no Tom.  Raced around Tate Modern as we wanted to make it to St. Pauls for Evensong to get inside for free.  The Tate was alright, would have liked to have spent a little longer there but ah well!  Walked across Millenium bridge for a good view of the Cathedral & went in.  Gorgeous. Huge. Cavernous.

I then went to meet Craig Smith while Laura met Jen from her work.  Met Craig at Garlic & Shots in Soho and smashed some beers & garlicky food with him & Sophie his GF.  Laura caught up with us a bit later after some struggle getting in contact with each other.  Lauras session with Jen went for longer than thought, and she was unsure I would still be at Garlic & Shots.

Meatmarket was so good for Milkshakes we returned for a burger & chips.  Delicious but super unhealthy.

14th: Pretty slow start again today because be could!  Picked up a bottle of Jura 10yo & prepared a few e-cig juices for Mike as a thank you for having us gift.  Hopefully appreciated & used in times of need!

Laura had an interview for a compay that was based in Aus, so I left her to concentrate on that and visited the NAtional Gallery & Portrait museum.  The great thing about these museums is they're all free, so if you're not enjoying it you don't have to stay and get your monies worth!  I surprised myself by quite enjoying the National Gallery but had had a little much of paintings by the time I reached the Portrait Gallary so didn't stay there long.

I liked the look of Soho after spending some time there yesterday so went that way looking for a place to chill & drink a coffee.  A lovely young lady approached me on the street to enquire if I was looking for 'Business', only $20 Pound! I politely declined & found a coffee.  No sooner had I got my wifi & coffee, Ryan *who was by chance in London @ the time) was wondering how long til I could meet him at a pub I'd chosen earlier (Bunch of Grapes).  It wasn't exactly around the corner so I picked up my coffee & double-timed it to The Shard.

3 miles & an hour later I made it, looking very sweaty mind you!  Spent the night drinking with Ryan, Adam, Adams dad (roberto) & Laura.  Went to Jamie's kitchen for dinner, we were all a bit haggard so departed.  I started to get a blocked nose & flu.

7th-9th October - Oxford

After our top sleep at the hostel we walked through the London streets to Liverpool station.  Got to briefly see St. Pauls, the Gherkin (dildo) building, the financial district and the tub!  Mnaged to get caught in peak hour crowds while the tube dealt with signal faults.  Still ended up making it to Oxford by about midday.

Visited a food market a short walk from the station and the Ashmolean museum whichwas recommended by Mike.  The museum was packed with soo many artefacts from all ages & all continents.  We decided it was just too overwhelming and ended up walking rather briskly through some of the floors.

We wanted to go to the movies but it was too pricy at $13 pound each ($30 AUD), so ended up cooking and having a few drinks in the hostel.

8th: Hired a Fiat 500, a gas-guzzling, gutless shitbox.  Thrashed it over to Bletchley Park to visit the National Museum of Computing.  Got to see the Collossus, a machine designed by Alan Turing to quickly decipher encrypted messages from the Germans in WWII.  Wasn't just some metal & wires, it was fully functioning!  This place had more computers & servers than you could poke a stick at.

The next town was STratford-Upon-Avon, a pleasent place with a picturesque river running through it.  We picked up a 4-pack of Fosters & sat by the river eating some chicken wraps.  Once that was done, headed to the theatre ran by the Royal Shakespeare Company to watch Henry V.

I've never seen a Shakespeare play before but this was awesome.  Really well done and kept everyones attention for the full 3 hours.  Think we will have to organise a few more when we get home!

Got back to the hostel around midnight.  Had a turkish guy in the room who spoke loudly while everyone was trying to sleep, followed by another snorer and a loud yawner.

Had a pretty good final day in Oxford.  Had a boost-bar shake to die for, visited the science museum that had a chalkboard with calculations pencilled by Einstien himself when he visited many years ago.  Delish pie & mushy peas at Pieminister. Then used all that pie-energy to visit a few of the colleges with their lovely green squarews that no one is allowed to sit on!

Had a pint at the Bear Bar which was the first pubin Oxford, opening in 1242.  Then changed hostels to the Oxford Backpackers because it was a bit cheaper than the YHA.  Another dodgy hostel.  Stoned-looking inhabitants sleeping on the couches & gangster-wannabes smoking pot in the hostel entrance.  All good though, we got a bed and we slept!

Before sleep though we met an Aussie bike rider named Phil who'd been riding all over Eastern Europe. Then we visited Turf Barem, the place where Bob Hawke skulled a yard-glass of beer in 11 seconds, entering the guinnes book of records.  Also the place where Bill Clinton supposedley smoked a joint 'but didn't inhale'!  Really low roof in this bar too!

Well those weren't the only crazy things that happened in the bar.  While we were sipping pints Laura was distracted by a familiar sounding voice.  After a few minutes contemplation and Facebook stalking it turned out Laura was right, the voice was that of friend Fiona whom Laura hadn't seen since high school 12 years ago!  Apparently she was in Oxford while her husband studied some crazy religion-affirming course.  We spoke with them for an hour before everyone went home.  We made the mistake of buying the worst chips, cheese, gravy I have ever eaten.

4th-6th October - The Hague (Den Haag)

Took about 3 hours via the trains from Gent to The Hague.  We stayed in StayOkay Hostels & got a room to ourselves with ensuite & balcony for the same price as a dorm room for two!

We walked around the town aimlessly but happily and found a Sunday market & some tasty sandwiches before catching up with Phil Topsahalidis, who'd moved there a few months prior for a eftpos security job in Delft.  Had a great time catching up over 9% beers & chuckling at S.Cathies recent adventures!

Before we let Phil go home I forced him to find me a coffee-shop to buy a joint.  I had that 'When in Rome' feeling, until I started smoking it of course!  Was still good though but said our goodbyes and bought some Capsalon before bed.  Capsalon is basically the innards of a kebab served on a bed of chips.

I was really keen to go to the Escher museum the next day until we realised it is closed on Mondays...  So instead we bought the strange 'sausage' rolls with sauce inside them & headed to the beach on Tram 1.  Spent the afternoon walking the beach, headed back to city centre where Laura instantly got hungry and couldn't find something healthy to eat.  Sorted that out and sat with a beer reading The Martian (great book).

Afterwards we met my old Europe pal Avnert @ his favourite pub 'Huppel the Pub'.  Stayed out til 11.30 with him and his friends before going home.  Pub was great, lots of specialty beers on tap and we'd arrived on 'from-the-record' night where locals come & play their favourite records.

On the 6th we said goodbye to the mainland, or maybe that should be 'see you later'...  Anyway, caught a ferry from the Hook of Holland and made our way to London via a train, train, ferry & bus.  Took about 10-12 hours all up.  Got to watch Antman in the ferry-cinema, pretty average, corny superhero movie.

We arrived into a rainy London & to our YHA Hostel near St. Pauls Cathedral which had about 100 Matthew Flinders students blocking every corridor & stairwell.  Laura & I both copped loud snorers in our rooms.  Mine was so bad at one point around 3AM an English fella yelled 'For FUCK's SAKE would ya SHUT IT!!'.  On he went snoring.  The beds in the hostel were also stacked wierdly so most people didn't know how to get in and out of bed (see image below).  Also had an Irish bloke ask me the time @ 7.30am using his outside voice haha.

Thank god we were only staying there until our train to Oxford the next day!

1st-3rd October - Gent, Belgium

Before catching the train to Gent, we picked up some Printen, a local baked good very similar to ginger bread but usually covered in chocolate.

We had a connection in Brussels that we missed because border protection was in full force.  Was ok though as Laura found anothe train heading the same direction 20 minutes later.  I made eye contact with a strange looking Belgian bloke on the train who turned out to be quite friendly & offered me one of his cans of beer!

Gent is another (!) one of those cities that when you first arrive it just blows your mind how pretty it is.  The hostel we stayed in was inside a building built in the 1500's!  Within sight of the front door are 3 old churches, a bell tower & a canal overlooking the busy part of the city.  Picture perfect from all directions.  Also a university town, the locals buy beer from the supermarkets and take them down to the canals to drink & eat on the stones (while getting stoned).  We followed suit before heading to an all-you-can-eat vegan buffet.  It was Vegetarian Thursday, a Gent thing where everyone only eats veggo each Thursday.  They also call it the vegetarian capital of the world, with over 200 vegetarian only restaurants.

On the second day we checked out a flea-market which was mostly 2nd hand junk but I managed to find a cool scarf for $1 Pound.  Laura was very jealous.  Also went on a free walking tour which was guite good.  Passed through & explained many of the buildings & monuments which we had seen the previous day.

After the tour we settled down on the canals again with veggie burgers, beers & frites.  Frites being a national dish of Belgium.  I believe we had enough frites to last us a month.  Samurai sauce was the bomb.  Laura found a pub playing free live music & it ended up being pretty good!  3 of the 4 bands were great, which one of them being from the Isle of Lewis in Scotland, the same place as the old rascal John Davies from Kirkby Stephen!

At some point during the free shows these three Rebels without a Cause waltzed in and danced merrily right up against the stage whilst zapping their little hand lazer about.

The 3rd was AFL Grand Final day back home and we found an Irish Pub that said they would play it for us!  In Belgium the game started at 7am so we got up early and headed down only to find the pub didn't open until 8am :(  Managed to at least see the last half so it ended up being fine.

Purchased some waffles to show Laura what they are like.  Devoured...  More frites were had & we also argued over something stupid because we were both pretty tired.

Went back o the hostel to get a beer before the rugby, ended up joining this drunk disorganised group of hostel-stayers who, by the time we finally left the hostel, walked around aimlessly like a bunch of zombies for 20 minutes.  As luck would have it we stumbled into another free gig with an insane Zylophone player.

Oh we also walked a very long way down to a park earlier in the day where we sat reading for an hour or two.  The park had two large abandoned uildings, one of which used to be a casino we were pretty sure.

30th September - Aachen

The 3 days actually riding the bikes seemed to go so fast.  After so much bother buying them, transporting them and fixing them it seemed a real shame to sell them but we had no plans to use them further and they cost too much to keep putting on trains.  So todays main goal was to palm them off whatever the cost.

We made a crude sign in English & German

[insert sign here]

Starting at the train station holding up the sign got some interest but no buyers.  Some locals suggested we try selling at the University which was our next plan, so we headed there and set up in front of the main Uni Cafe.

It wasn't going great at the uni for the first hour until some students advised we should post on the Uni's trade/sell facebook page.  I found some wifi, posted on the group, tweeted it and had HEAPS of responses.  Another 45 minutes and we sold both bikes within 5 minutes of each other!

We couldn't believe our luck and were elated to have sold them before 2PM and have the rest of the day to ourselves.

After that we visited the Newspaper Museum with papers dating back to the 1300's all the way through to present day.  It was 5 Euro entry and was more a description of the journalist occupation & how media sways public opinion, however it was still nice to see.

That night Laura picked a cheap noodlebox takeaway joint for dinner.  We had Doner's instead because noodlebox was crowded with Bandido bikies & about 10 cop cars haha..  Chomped on Doners while drinking spanish wine in the town square.

27th-29th September - The Vennbahn Trail

So we knew the bikes were pretty average, but over the course of this bike ride we FULLY appreciated just how shit they were!

We caught the train from Lux City to Troisvierges (pronounced 'Twaa-vee-air'), that was easy because it was a sunday morning, also only cost us 2 Euro each for a ticket.  Troisvierges is where the trail begins (If you go the direction we wanted!).  It's a 132km rail-trail with a lot of history behind it due to the proximity of so many countries borders.  We had planned to ride approx 35-45km a day.  Should be a breeze.  no.

The moment we reached the start of the trail we hit a 10% gradient.  On decent bikes you'd piss up that without breaking a sweat, however we quickly learnt that Julie's bike (a fixie) was only mildly possible to ride on gradients up to 4%.

We lucked out though by riding the direction on the trail that was more downhill than uphill.

We pushed through on day one and after 35km arrived at our destination, St. Vith.  We stayed at the Jugendherberge (Youth Hostel) in which we were the only occupants.  This place was massive and built in a square formation with a grassy area in the middle, so it felt very creepy walking around at night.

Ate some Italian for dinner & treated myself to a Belgian beer when I realised we were in fact in Belgium!  Side Note:  It will be interesting to see how many times we eat cuisine that are not authentic to the country we are visiting.

Day two was a planned 42km trip to destination Monschau, it didn't look to harmful gradient-wise but still appeared to be the hardest day on our bikes made of bricks.  After about 12km, I realised that my front tyre was giving up on me.  The tread had ripped down the middle and the tube was bubbling out of the rip.  Consensus was to keep riding until the next town (Waimes) and find a bike shop.  No bike shops in Waimes, fuck.  Tyre blew up on the ride out of the town...  The only option left was to ride the remaining 28km to Monschau on a flat tyre, so that's what I did.

The banging of the flat tyre destroyed my wrists and loosened up all other bolts on the bike.  This forced me to do some bush mechanics, but in the end we made it to Monschau.

Upon arriving at our Monschau-Hargard Hostel, the owners immediately attacked the task of fixing my bike!  They ended up driving us to a bike shop, helped translate, buy the new tread & tyre, provide tools AND help replace everything!  It was just the best thing anyone has done for us all trip.  I would not have been able to fix it without their help.

The hostel was occupied by a school full of children but it was fine and I was too happy to let niggly things like that annoy me!  A note to anyone else wanting to stay there on the ride:  It's about 3KM off the Vennbahn trail, 1.5km downhill, then 1.5km uphill.  Hostel is also situated about 1km uphill from the town.

I forgot to mention the old bloke we met and asked directions off before we got to Monschau.  He did not speak a lick of English but proceeded slowly describing instructions to get to our accom.  He knew his shit.  I'm now led to believe everybody in this town is awesome.

Went down to the small but beautiful old shanty town for dinner & got a 3-course meal for 12 Euro!

We were ready for Day 3 (29th) of the ride, despite our really sore bumholes.  We knew today was the longest ride at 47km, and we knew we had a hard start uphill, but we also got about 25km downhill which was just awesome after the last painful 2 days.

We still arrived at Aachen pretty wrecked but we had made it!  This city was another good looker, it had Germany's first UNESCO world heritage listed Cathedral, a large university and a lot of cool streets, shops & buildings.  Had some Lebanese food at AKL.  Huge portions, cheap price.  Julie ate so much she felt ill the rest of the night.

26th September - Luxembourg

Trying my best to catch up to present day diary news but it's not easy, here goes again!

We had high expectations of Luxembourg City and in the first few hours of our arrival it was looking to meet them.  Caught a decent train from Trier to Lux where we could secure our bikes easily with a seatbelt AND get a seat.  Arrived in Lux City, walked for an hour through the hilly city to our hostel.  Was a little early to check-in so locked up bags and spent a good hour taking in the views across the city while walking around some of the historical sights.  Even stopped at a free art museum which had a few nice pieces and some art by Turner & Victor Hugo.

That's when life got real painful...  Checked into the hostel fine, decided we would wash our clothes using the hostel washer.  It was a five-hour ordeal...  The only washing machine they owned was also used by the hostels cleaning staff.  Someone must have washed with some serious chemicals because it smelt like methylated spirits & paint brushes inside the machine.  Not wanting to risk all our clothes in that, we searched online for a Laundromat, closest was 20km away...  Went to get a refund from the hostel counter, he offered to wash & dry our clothes in the staff facilities.  Naturally we thought this was awesome.  2.5 hours later we thought the clothes would be dry.  Super wet.  Didn't want to hassle the guy anymore so went and hung all our clothes in our room.

As we were hanging them, I thought they smelt like BO and was concerned enough to mention it to a French guy staying in our room.  Turns out it wasn't our clothes at all but the French guy who stank!

During this whole ordeal we were also surfing the net looking for a cheap place to eat but could find nothing, so felt like the city was just trying to destroy us...

Luckily Julie decided to turn down a dodgy strip-joint street on our hunt and we found some cheap Chinese food & a kebab shop for the next night.

Our second day in the city was much more successful.  We went to a market to buy some fresh dips & olives for lunch which we chowed down upon on the steps of city hall.  Perfectly timed a free organ show at a large church.  Went on a walking tour of the city.  It's worth noting that the only walking tour we could find was the official tour run by the city's tourist office.

Finished up with some pre-planned kebabs for dinner in strip-town & prepped for our epic bicycle journey from Luxembourg, through Belgium to Germany!

25th September - Trier

After all that binge-drinking in Munich, it took us 3 days of going sober & eating healthy to feel good again.  I couldn't believe just how quickly I got fat from 3 days sitting down & drinking.  A lesson hopefully remembered for a long time to come.

The train ride to Trier with our bicycles was pretty exhausting.  We had to catch 4 trains over the course of 7 hours.  1st was a Munich metro train full of locals angry about the space we took up.  2nd we had a nice spot for the bikes however we had two severly disabled & annoying women sit in our 4-seat section even though the train was mostly empty.  If they weren't calling Munich shit and weren't yelling at each other, they were pulling apart a roast chicken with their fingers and grossing up the joint.  3rd train was fine.  4th was another regional train full of locals on their way home from work.  We stood for an hour on that train with our bikes and all our gear.

Eventually we made it to Trier and made it to our AirBnB accommodation which had it's own kitchen.  Laura eagle-eyed a vietnamese restaurant on our way to the accom, so we ate Pho for some tastes from home & hit the hay.

After our train woes in Munich the first thing we did was check our tickets to Luxembourg were in order.  Turns out for that train you don't even need a seperate bike ticket.  While there at the station, saw a lot of what we believe to be migrants trying to sort out train tickets with minimal English skills but with huge wads of cash in hand.

Today was spent going to all the toursit sites.  Trier has over 2000 years of histoy beginning with the Romans, so there was plenty to keep us busy.  One of the main attractions was one of the original city gates built by the Romans in 200AD!  This thing must have towered above all else back in the day, incredibly tall for such an old piece of architecture.  It is named Porta Nigra or "Black Gate" due to the discolouration of the stones caused by bacteria.

I was interested in seeing Triers Amphitheatre, an arena used for fighting & performances, so we headed there but Julie's blood sugar levels dropped dramatically so we turned back to get her some coffee and sandwiches first!

They have this tourist card called an 'Antikencard' for 10E so we bought some of these which allowed us access to the main town museum & two other historical sites 'of our choice'.  Starting at the museum they had HEAPS of artifacts, more than I think they knew what to do with!  spear-heads, pottery, jewelry, coins, gravestones, mosaics, etc!  Laura's favourite section was of the intricate jewelry designed for the horses of well-off Roman families to exude their wealth.  I think my favourite was the area of floor-sized mosaics pulled from expensive Roman houses from the around the area.  Apparently the residents of Trier keep digging for construction jobs and just keep finding more stuff.  One example being over 2000 gold coins from 4th centry AD in an old chest of a collapsed basement!

Visited the amphitheatre, full of icky spiders but very cool.  Then realised our tourist card did not allow access to the place we wanted to go so ended up climbing up the Porta Nigra before retiring to our kitchen to make Herring Stirfry Curry & ice-cream for our future trip planning session.

23rd September - Munich Oktoberfest

MUNICH (19th - 23rd)

Our first night was very timid.  Spent a little time searching for fealmarkets & bike shops so we could ride on the Vennbahn Trail from Luxembourg to Germany.  Google lied to us about where one was located and the second shot was closed until the day before we left Munich.  After the search we settled on a doner for afternoon tea and a farmers plate of olives, cheese, dip, breat & crackers for dinner in our hotel room.

Ibis Hotel was great!  Cheaper than Joe & Aime's hostel and they supplied breakfast too!

Day 2:  Involved meeting up with everyone at 9.30am.  Joe, Amie, Brendan & Andy all looked a bit seedy but they soldiered on & led the way to the massive Hofbrauhaus tent in Oktoberfest.  By 10.30am the tent was already full and roudy with person after person standing up on the benches & skulling entire steins!  There was a loud american bloke on our table that got kicked out by 11am coz he was (a fuckwit) too drunk.  A chick on the table next to us who decided it would be a good idea to skull two steins before 11.30am.  She followed that up by promptly spewing back up into the glass and spending the next 4 hours with her head in her hands.

We started putting bets on when she would recover with the longest bet being 4pm.  We all lost.

Brendan managed to pick up twice.  By the end of the night while they were engaged they toppled off the chairs onto the floor, an action shot which I missed on the camera by about 0.25 seconds.

Any stuck with pretzels all dayto save cash on food until he realised that he'd spent 15E on pretzels & could have purchased half a chicken for that price!  We ended up being in the tent for 12 hours and left in darkness back to our hotel :S

Day 3: Met everyone at the more respectable time of 11.30am at the Oktoberfest gate.  Today was Tom's first day so we all had to back up yesterdays effort!  Went to the Paulaner tent this time & sat on a table with this old swiss bloke in a fluro shirt named Roberto.  He started off being a bit of a drain on the table but managed to join us dancing on the benches by the end of the night.  I kept managing to order crappy sausages off the menus somehow.  At about 6pm I left the tent to go pick up this crappy bike I found on a trade website.  The tent was prett ycalm when I left so it was a suprise to return at 7.30pm to see the whole tent up on chairs raucously cheersing & dancing to the band!  Left tent at night and bought a massive pizza which we devoured on the bed back at our hotel.

Day 4:  Each day our meeting times became later & later!  Today we met at 12.30pm and graced the Lowenbrau tent with our presence.  Best beer at the festival was here in my opinion.  Light, fruity & went down easy after two full days of drinking.

Laura & I had a prett ysuccessful morning though, buying a bike for her at a shop for 75E.  The bike ended up being a piece of rubbish, but more on that later.  We had a stein in the tent and left to organise bike tickets for our train ride to Trier.  It ended up costing us another 70E to get the bikes to Trier because we had to buy tickets to a different train that initially purchased.  Lesson here is always buy your bike tickets at the same time as your train tickets.  And if you are travelling near Oktoberfest, book them in advance!!

We returned to the tent and partied on with some older German women before Brendan got grumpy because a group of women jumped on our table & they weren't drinking!  They weren't enough fun for him so we moved & then hugged everyone goodbye.

19th September Manchester & Stuttgart

I've decided to stop the daily script I was so scrupulous at maintaining over the walk.  Not as fun to write as bunching a few interesting points across a few days.  So here we are, currently on a train headed for Munich to meet Joe & Aimee for Oktoberfest.

MANCHESTER (15th-17th)

We ended up having to catch buses all the way to Manchester from R.H.B.  Train tickets were going to cost us 95 pound as we didn't pre-book, so we went with the 44 pound bus tickets through York & Leeds.

Even though we only passed through on the bus, I've decided that York deserves a few days of investigation if we ever return and decided I could happily never visit Leeds again.  York just had this clean & grand architecture that was really appealing while Leeds just felt unclean, oppressive and stagnant.

I am happy to report that first impressions of Manchester were quite good.  We were aching for a good indian curry and read that there is an area called The Curry Mile in town.  It must have received it's name a long time ago thorugh as when we arrived it appeared that the Indians had up and left, while a bunch of Turks & Afghanis had taken up residence.  We aren't fussy as long as it tastes good, so picked up some kebabs and shawarmas that Laura advised were the best she had EVER eaten.  Not bad!

Manchester has a distinctly similar vibe to Melbourne.  There always seemed to be live music, sport and art events to attend, while it also had a good food & cafe scene.  We managed to tick all of the boxes with the exception of sport, however I did attempt to return a soccer ball to a group of youths on the 5th level of a parking lot!  Won't be signing any lucrative deals anytime soon.  Ball landed in basement floor.

Blimey!  I almost forgot to mention the bloomin' Walkabout Hostel!  5 star! ... Out of a possible 20.  Honestly, it was only 11 pound per nich each, so we didn't expect much, and it met our expectations.  Clean bed, quiet room & good location.  Had to go to the bar twice to get checked-in then get our key working.  The following day had to go to the bar again to get our key fixed again, only to have it STILL fail and we ended up having to wake the occupants for entry.  If low on cash, a fine stay.  Just be warned.

Getting quite warm on this train at the moment.  We recently changed trains at Ulm, which is the birthplace of Albert Einstien.


STUTTGART (17th - 19th)

Took us the whole day to fly to Stuttgart & catch the train into the city.  Our first meal in Germany was a traditional American burger with a pint of Dinklelacker Export to wash it down.

We only had one full day in Stuttgart, but didn't get out of our hostel until 1pm (A & O Hostel) as we had to organise what we were doing after Munich.

A nice city with uber amounts of construction in the works (Manchester was similar actually).  A shopaholics dream with some pleasant sights included!  We spent the day walking around the city & parks & the afternoon at the Mercedes-Benz museum.  The museum was very cool,m reckon I took more pictures there than I have in the last two weeks combined!  8 stories of building that starts at the top and slowly winds its way down from old to new, incorporating some 19th & 20th century history at the same time.

We haven't made it to Munich yet, early reports from Joe are that it's crazy busy & was apparently impossible to catch a train from Austria to Germany due to German sanctions that were imposed to stop the flow of Syrian migrants into the country after they recently announced they would home 500,000 migrants a year from the IS conflict.

Will be interesting to see how the city copes with such a sudden influx of festival-goers and migrants at the same time.  An exciting time to be visiting the city, although i have not heard anyone mention migrants on the train.  Most sound too excited for the festival!

14th September - Grosmont to Robin Hoods Bay

Our final day walking replayed the terrain from the last 15 days.  We had a little bit of everything: 33% incline hills, tarmac, soggy moors, forests and about 2 hours too much mud.

Felt great to finally make it to the North Sea after 190 miles.  The weather 'just' held out for us however the mud did dirty our moods!  As did this female couple who kept passing us at high speed, only to slow down & look at their map when they had no one to follow.

We arrived 'Suitably Disheveled' to Robin Hoods Bay, had a show at our B&B at the top and finished the last mile in style, walking down to the sea in jeans & smelling fresh!

Picked up a celebration whiskey at The Bay H which Laura spilled after standing to hug Janice who was also there celebrating.

Picked up some amazing fish & chips, drank & ate merrily a bus stop by the sea.  Met the Aussies & Americans one last time for a few pints before getting their twitter tags and closing out the day.

Tony Abbott's last day as prime minister was today, replaced by Malcolm Turnbull 1 year before elections are due.

13th September - Blakey Ridge to Grosmont

Feels wierd that we only have one more day of walking left :S  We saw the North Sea today so reality really hit home.

Today we walked to Grosmont (silent S!) about 13 miles (6 hours) walking with breaks.  My body felt pretty exhausted, I guess it required a lot of energy to keep warm during yesterdays walk and had not quite repaired itself ye.  Saw lots of Pheasants & Grouse.  Tired body made it a long hard walk despite the mostly flat terrain.

Made it to Grosmost House, a huge impressive building that was built in the 1860's.  Was a shame then to find such a shitty bathroom in our room.  No fan, felt like I was showering in a cupboard.  Water took 3 minutes to warm up & then just went scolding hot with no way to turn down the heat without turning the shower off!

Can't forget about julie the lord of the sheep when a paddock full of sheep came running over to us.

Watched some T.V.  now off to the pub for dinner.

12th September - Europe Diary

Woke up, it was dark, raining & windy.  Packed all the wet weather gear for the day.  And we thought yesterdays weather was bad!  Got driven back to Clay Bank & got instantly blasted with cold rain.  Threw on my water-proof pants instantly but was too late, pants were soaked.

Luckily we knew we only had 3-4 hours of walking to the Red Lion Inn so we punched up the speed to high gear and did not stop until we arrived at Blakey Ridge.  Eating our sandwiches while walking.

Didn't matter how fast we went.  Julie's pants & boots were soaked & squelching while my boots stayed dry but my shirt was soaked despite my waterproof jacket.

Had some hot chippies & pints before calling our accom August Guest House to pick up up.  Michael was a funny bloke who never stopped joking & they treated us very well, drying everything & driving us to the pub with a salt-of-the-earth aussie walker named Janie.  She was from Foster in NSW & ran her own small hobby farm just like what we'd like to do.

What did I miss...  Every walker at The Lion Inn was soaked, no matter the combination of gear.  Some poor soals had another 9 miles of walking that day.  Thank god we booked here.

11th September - Europe Diary

I may have a few swear words for today.  It was about a 6 hour walk with a few breaks.  Started off with a slow long climb through some nice forests & a calm moor.  Then before we knew it we were being hammered by wind at the top of the moors.  It was a relentless 3 hours of wind.  Julie described the Yorkshire Moors as 'Just fucking shit', and by the end I was describing today's walk as 'a cunt of a day'...

Once we descended those moors we found Lordstones Cafe.  When I asked Julie if we should stop I received a resounding YES.  Julie picked up some awesome chutney with a kick from the cafe before we headed off to do 3 more climbs to make it to Clay Bank Top.

We got picked up from Clay Bank car park by the owner of Dromonby Bridge BnB, an older bloke with long grey hair tied behind his head using a string.  Very friendly guy who had a very original style!

We had dinner at The Swan Inn at Kirkby with all the crew staying at Dromonby:  the Germans, the Aussies from Kew & some English couple who I can't remember the names of...  Good night & conversation.

Dromonby Bridge was a GREAT B&B!

10th September - Europe Diary

Short 3 hour walk today through paddocks, past loud scary pig sheds, farmers baling hay, crossing the busy London-Edinburgh railway & busy highways before arriving at Ingleby Cross by midday!

We were staying at The Blue Bell Hotel which had a very friendly bartender.  Room was prety plain but it did the job!  When dinner-time arrived we walked in the pub & there was a family of women running dinner.  They didn't say much so we just went to a table until they spoke up asking if we'd booked.  Yep, went to our table then waiting 10-15 minutes for someone to serve us (we were the only ones in the pub mind you!).  Being served involved the teenage daugter coming over with a chalkboard menu with 4 options & she waited for us to choose, all without saying a word!  I've got a feeling they just couldn't understand my accent but maybe that's just looking for a nice reason.  The food was fine and I'm sure they were just starting out, so still worth a visit for the cheery bartender at least!

Saw the Belgians for the last time, they even bought us a pint as a goodbye present!  Not that I believed them at first haha.  I thought they were trying to trick me into asking for my free beer but no, turns out they actually did buy me one!  great blokes.

9th September - Europe Diary

Today was about a 5 hour walk to Danbe Wiske.  First half of the walk consisted of some paddocks followed by a detour that saw us walking along the side of a busy road for half hour.  Then sent us walking back by the river.  After a quick cheese & chutney sandwich for lunch we were directed to walk on a quiet tarmac road for about 2 hours!

About the time we were getting sick of the road (the most scenic thing we saw were R.A.F jets flying above for training) the path led through a paddock of angry steers.  We decided it was best to give them some space.  It also took us through a horse paddock where the horse was blocking the gate so he could get out the second we opened it.  We gave the friendly chap a pat and climbed the fence instead!

We arrived into Danbe Wiske to a bunch of walkers waving us into our pub, The White Swan.  Wasn't a terrible place to stay but it was really fucking cold and they didn't have any fire list!  I ended up going & getting y beanie to survive through dinner.  Thought maybe they had run out of matches!

Laura really wanted Fish & Chips but suprisingly the pub had none, so instead we got some meals that were heavily covered with gravy.  The bar-keeper was a bit of an unwelcoming bozo.

8th September - Europe Diary

Well our accommodation was like nothing we'd experienced over the whole walking trip.  Everywhere you looked were writings from the bible, pictures telling you to go to church & books questioning whether evolution is fact or fiction.

It gets better.  When we went to bed we weren't really sure where we were meant to go for breakfast.  I'd seen a sign on the back of the bookshop door that said 'dining room' but thought nothing of it.  In the morning we walked into the bookshop & they had pushed some stands aside to make a breakfast table for us in the middle of the bookshop!  Very sweet of them.  They had plenty of great cereals for breakfast that were all fairtrade, including coffee & jams from countries in South Africa.

Pretty wet/cold walk today but a nice easy one without too much climbing involved.  When we arrived in Richmond we were a bit overwhelmed by all the cars & noises.  Big town compared to the last few.  Still only like 15,000 people though.

Made it to Easby Cottage & got treated like king & queen.  Coffee, pikelets & crumpets with jam infront of the fire with a very friendly and vocal cat that LOVED pats.

Got Indian (Amontola) for dinner, real f'n good.

7th September - Europe Diary

Absolute scorcher of a day in the sun for our walk to Reeth.  Was a pretty cruisy 6 hours following the low valley route through 3-4 tiny hamlets.  Sweat our faces off on the walk from Gunnerside up to Blades.

Arrived at Reeth & had some ice-cream :)

Our accommodation is at a place called The Temperance Hotel, which is a small B&B above a christian bookstore.  They are very nice people here but I was a little afraid we weren't going to get to go to our room without a half hour chat first.  Our room was decorated straight out of whatever decade loved pink.  Pink walls with pink floral quilt covers and a writing/beauty desk which must be from the 50's or earlier.  Took a picture for proof.  Took two.  Of particular note was the ornate wooden chair that was apparently built by the shop-owners father.  I'd decided that I would not sit on that chair for fear of breaking a family heirloom!

We went to The Kings Arms Hotel for dinner.  Julie had investigated the price of meals at every pub in the whole town, and this won for being the cheapest.  They did not skimp on the food, Julie smashed the biggest Yorkshire Pudding I've ever seen for dinner.

Lots of talk on the news about Syrian refugees entering the EU to escape I.S.

6th September - Europe Diary

7 hour day to Keld.  Got a full veggie breakfast & Laura decided to eat all of hers and some of mine (specifically the veggie sausage).  Well for the first hour or two she regreted it while her stomach was in pain.

This was the first day we put our gaitors on, it was DANG BOGGY!  The author of our book described the bogs as 'reminiscent of the Somme during WW1' and he was not wrong!  Managed to keep relatively dry and had fun dodging knee-deep bogs!  Couldn't imagine having to do it in bad weather...

Julie slipped over once and I managed to rack up some pretty impressive chafing while Laura's toe blisters were not getting much better.

After arriving at Keld we had a pint with a few others walkers at Keld Lodge before having dinner round a small friendly table at our accommodation 'The Butt House'

Despite the name, they couldn't do much for my chafing.

5th September - Europe Diary

Today was only about 3.5 hours walking from Newbiggin-On-Lune to Kirkby Stephen.  Given how short the day was, we took a different path to get a closer look at Smardale Bridge & the Smardale Viaduct.

Probably over 2000 years of history on that one hill.  A disused railway from the 19th century, a packhorse bridge & ruins of a pub (16th & 18th centuries) and the giants graves which Laura tells me are lumps in the ground from neolithic settlements.  All in the middle of no-where.

Arrived at Kirkby Stephen, got a pie and some delish chutney from the bakery.  Checked in at the Black Bull and had a pint or two with a famous local vegetable grower named Stan Davies.  This 80-year-old fella tried to give me his walking stick but I wouldn't tare take it from him!

Most restaurants were booked out, but we managed to pick up some take-away Chinese & eat it in the church grounds!  Saw some Macau's fly by while we were eating.

Apparently I have to send Stan a christmas card now :S  hard enough to send a postcard home!

4th September - Europe Diary

Breakfast was delightful, Margaret once again outdid herself before seeing us out.  We set off out the back of her garded & ended up having to find a footbridge to cross the M6 Highway.

Once that was done we set off walking on what ended up being a very nice flat rolling track.  It took us around 6 hours all up to arrive at our accommodation in Newbiggin-On-Lune.  We met John on the track again, this time with his son Robert who works in Cumbria.  Cris (John's partner) had taken another day off walking to rest the legs & blisters!

We spent the whole day walking with them which was great.  Turns out John is the MD of a ASX listed company.  Also turned out that a lens cap I picked up 4 days ago was his!

We split with them when our town came up and arrived at Brownber Hall which is a huge stone farmhouse on a few acres of land.  Another amazing place to stay!  Upon arrival we were told they'd already booked us in for dinner and offered a beer on the house to let us fully relax!  They'd also booked us in the front room with a great view across the paddock.  I reckon tonight we be a night of reading, dining & sleeping in!

3rd September - Europe Diary

We knew today was going to be a big day of walking, so we set off by 9am.  We were also pretty stoked about it being the last day of steep climbing.

Kept passing & repassing this sheepdog that really didn't like us.  Climbed up the hill beside Patterdale to walk around the pristine Angle Tarn, apparently the place to go fishing around here!

After another hour or two we peaked Kidsty Pike which was a nice view, but it was a smidge cold & windy & we'd seen a lot of views on the previous days, so after a small break we headed down to Hawkeswater.  Jules told an interesting factoid that apparently there is only 1 lake name as a lake in the Lakes District.

After hitting the lake it was a VERY decent slog around the lake, down to Shap Abbey & up to Shap.  We stopped at the Shap Chippy for an early dinner & I was convinced by the waiter to get Smoked Haddock.  Not the best, but only available on Thursdays apparently.  Funnily enough, later in the trip I was told that Smoked Haddock is quite popular & that some other walkers went in later than us and they had ran out.  They then went on to blame me who didn't even really like it all that much!  Popular old joint though, after we arrived it constantly had around 10-15 people at the counter getting take-away!

Oh, todays walk took about 8 hours all up.  We had booked accomodation at a placed called Brookefield House, which was about 1km out of town.  We booked it because it is said to be one of the best stops along the entire walk!  Well despite Julia & I being a little skeptical, especially after a long day, it was most definitely worth the stay.  Margaret the owner treated us to tea & cakes upon entry.  She'd been up since 6.30am cooking the cakes & mentioned that back in 1988 Wainwright himself had actually stayed the night!  We spent the evening reading in the warm sitting room & then went up to drink a bottle of wine we'd purchased earlier!

2nd September - Europe Diary

Loaded up on brekky and then went in search of an ATM.  We were a little worried we would not have enough cash to afford dinners AND pay for B&B's when they didn't have a card option.

Oh also, Julia's wet feet & blisters were mostly resolved by getting some better insoles for her shoes & going down to 1 pair of socks instead of two (despite what the internet advised!).

Another good short day at 5.5 hours.  Views not as great as the last two days but still a good walk.  We took the route called St. Sundays Crag to Patterdale.  Made some Mackerel sandwiches for lunch, crunched on wine gums, reached the top when the mist rolled in and swiftly started descending.

The descent of St. Sundays was shit.  Views were OK but the steepness was unnecessary & caned the knees again.  After calling the mountain a few vicious names, we made it to the bottom to the White Lion Inn where our american group were also staying!

Patterdale is pretty small, think I'll sink a few pints & hit bed early for the big day tomorrow!

1st September - Europe Diary

Today's walk was much shorter than yesterday, took us about 6.5 hours, which we were greatful for!  We chose the valley route (low, easier route) today to rest our legs and it was well worth it.

Slow gradual ascents with some wonderful views.  We walked with Miranda, Richard & Peter who we met the night before at dinner.  They were great, calling us "The Athletes" because we are 40 years (25 prob) younger than them!  Despite this, they looked to recover much quicker than us!

Thodays theme song was Beat It by Michael Jackson.  Guess I was beating the pain out of my legs.

When we were walking into Grasmere a fighter jet hammered through the skies between the mountains.  Was epic.  For a second there I thought maybe we'd encountered some Tomorrow When the War Began scenario, like we'd gone bush for a while only to return to England at war with Russia or something!

Stayed at the Chestnut Villa where we encountered our 5 female american friends who we keep seeing along the trail!

31st August - Europe Diary

Day 2 of our walk.  The staff at the Fox & Hound kept calling us 'Our Residents', we were pretty sure others were staying in the hotel, but when we woke up for breakfast there was a table set for 2 and no-one else around except for us and the chef!  Talk about good service.

We hoofed of, found some workable 'walking' sticks and made our way around the amazing Ennerdale Water (Lake), pased an american bloke looking for a red-speckled mushroom then passed a large group of people before making it to the start of our climb.

The official Wainwright walk doesn't actually go up where we did, however our book advised us that it was worth the effort so we ascended a very steep incline to a peak called Red Pike.  Virtually 600 metres straight up!  It took us about 2 hours just to reach the saddle of the mountains.  We weren't too fussed about taking a while until we had to descend slightly only to climb the next peak (High Stiles), then do the same over again to climb Haystacks!

The view from these peaks is awesome, could still se the ocean & the Isle of Mann and had 360 degree views from the summits.  Walked by the tarn on haystacks where it is said that Sir Alfred Wainwright's ashes had been spread.

We thought after Haystacks that we wouldn't have to much further til home.  How wrong we were...  By this time it was 5pm & we believed we had to make it to our next hotel by 7pm in order to make it in time for dinner.  Because of this, we stepped up the pace, with Julia taking the lead and storming ahead.  By the time we got to the bottom I was really shitty because my knees were sore & we were descending at what I would call a dangerous speed.  My stick broke & I just wanted to sit down!

I forgot to mention, Julia decided the theme song for today was 'Dont stop, never give up" by S Club 7 as we were straining up the hill to Red Pike!!!

Back to our descent, we made it to Rostwaite by 7pm at our residence The Royal Oak after much rushing only to find out that dinner started at 7.30pm.

Well, all up it was a 10 HOUR WALK!

When I first took my boots of they just superheaded and thorbbed in pain until dinner.  We met lots of other Coasters (like Sliders, but less technologically advanced) at dinner, one who was particularly happy because we also didn't reach the peak of a hill, saying "it's called the coast to coast, not the summit to summit!".  Not here to bag peaks obviously!

We both stuffed our faces on the 3 course dinner, so much so that Julia didn't have any room for cheese at the end, which is just unheard of.

Anywho, by the end of the night my calves were shockingly tight and Julia had caused some nasty version of trench foot on her heels for having sweaty feet for 10 hours.  zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

30th August - Europe Diary

Started our walk.  St. Bees to Ennerdale Bridge.  Got to see some awesome birds called Black Guillemots, native only to this coast.  Pretty much my favourite bird now coz they look like little jet planes.  Could see Isle of Mann, was a very clear day.

Wasn't too strenuous & the new hiking socks I bought are great!  Have got some padding on the bottom to stop the feet getting sore.

Had lunch at Cleator Cricket Ground, Julia went to the toilet & had a spider drop in her pants while she was on the loo.  I believe the spider survived for about 0.25 seconds before Julia squashed him dead.  1 litre of water was probably not enough, despite loading up before leaving the B&B.

Made some C2C walkers grumpy because they followed us down a VERY steep 'unoficial track' which hurt their knees.  Hopefully they follow their own tracks next time!

Took us approximately 7 hours today.  I believe tomorrow may be even longer.  Might be an early night.  Lots of cows, sheep & horses along pretty much the whole trail.

29th August - Europe Diary

We are currently bunked up in our room at Tomlin Guest House in St. Bees after indulging in some hearty meals at the local pub.  The two main pubs were almost fully booked, so we're a little concerned we are going to have to start pre-booking dinner!  Anyway, in our room early because i'd like to finish/stop carrying this bottle of whiskey I have!

Wasn't much happening at Whitehaven when we arrived yesterday.  Had to kill a few hours before our check-in time as the lady wsn't ready for us.  This was a challenge!  Walked around the town & marina, got a coffee, visited a few shops, even tried to call/email/tweet the Marina guard to help free a distressed seagull that was stuck in an old quay building!  All of that and we still only just snuck in at check-in time!

Had this mega double bypass burger for dinner, should have downsized.

As mentioned earlier, in St. Bees now.  Have visited the beach & spotted the start of our walk, now prepping!!!!

28th August - Europe Diary

Spent 3 nights in Carlisle.  Was a reasonably sized town & a great spot to use as a base for day trips.

Thought I'd also jot down this tasty meal we made out of a strange mix of cheap ingredients from TESCO.

MACKERAL CURRY STIRFRY
(Makes 2 serves)
1 capsicum
1 carrot
1 can Hot Chilli Mackeral
2 mushrooms
2 pkts curry flavoured instant noodles
2tsp Hot Sauce (Tabasco)

Fry up the vegetables, hard ones first, mushrooms last.  then add mackeral, hot sauce & cooked noodles.  Wash down with the cheapest cold beer you can find.

Visited Carlisles war memorial which is held in a park where cows roam to keep the grass down.

Checked out Carlisle Castle which is packed with history due to it being so close to the border of Scotland.  Great visit, wish I took more pictures.

Got a cheap (but REAL chewy) steak & pint for 7.95 pound for dinner. It filled a hole.

One of the days we walked 15km along Hadrians Wall from Housesteads Fort to Greenhead.  The sun was out & we managed to get a bit burnt, however the wind also wanted to display its power y spending the whole day blowing straight into our faces at around 40km/h.  Was a great day though & the bus driver on the AD122 was super helpful, leting us know how we could wal a mile to the next town rather than wait an hour for the bus to do it's loop.

Got back to our hostel, someone managed to eat all of our Cruncy Nut cereal (half a fucking box!) which we were saving for breakfast.

Julia really wanted to go visit Beatrix Potters house in Hilltop, however with public transport it was looking to take like 3 hours each way to get there!  Plus I believe the connections were something like train-bus-ferry-bus...  So we hired a car instead for the same price.  Got to the car-hire joint & because we didn't pay online the reservation got cancelled, so we spent an hour looking or another cheap car hire (enterprise UK) & walking the wrong direction because i'm a goose!  In the end we got a new Ford Focus for about 24 pound overnight.  Was great to drive with plenty of power, steering was a bit heavy though.

Followed our Here Maps app to Hilltop, terrible idea.  Ended up driving down these skinny roads with trees encroaching on both sides.  After a few swear words we made it.  Serene rolling hills cascade around Hilltop & Ms. Potters property with the clasic veggie patch, spade & egg for all the fans of the book.

Was unaware of Beatrix's artistic talent; there were some large canvas paintings in her cottage that were just awesome.  Turns out the old lass was pretty entreprenuerial too, owning 15 of her own farms.

Took the car to Keswick where we sunk a few pints, ate at this quiet hotel because the popular pubs were full & booked out.  Only other couple n the hotel were these old dears whom sounded like what my grandparents would have sounded when they were travelling!  We couldn't help but laugh when they were quite put out by the fact that the hotel did not have any trifle available for desert!  You'll be pleased to know that they ended up settling for the vanilla & strawberry icecream.

Spent the night at Keswick YHA, which is right on the Derwent River, fell asleep to the calming sound of water rushing over stones.

Keswick is the home of the Derwent pencil!

Dropped the car back of at Carlisle today via a much less arduous route and now we are on he train to Whitehaven.  Train is chugging along the coast slowly, offering us scenery of the Irish sea & a swath of Wind Turbines.

Staying at Glenfield B&B tonight.

24th August 2015 - Europe Diary

Went to watch Dundee United vs Celtic at Tannadice Park on saturday.  This was the main reason for driving all the way to Dundee, along with a Laggan resident telling us that they have a 'cool hipster scene'.  Celtic utterly dominated the game causing the Dundee fans to get VERY vocal.  more cuss words than any AFL match i've been to!

'Lift ya feet ya fucking shite cunt!'

After the match, drove past Stirling Castle & the William Wallace monument on our way back to Glasgow.  Dan mutilated some frozen cod we bought for dinner & Julia & I stayed in.

Sunday we went to the Hunterian Museum (not art gallery) which had a great cariety of stuffed animals, things in jars & old scientific devices.  well worth the visit.  FREE!

Then visited Modern Art museum.  crap.  got a few pints to pass he time in a rock bar then a blues pub.  Bought a bottle of wine and sat in our hotel room (Smiths Hotel) watching news & rude tube.  Saw our first ecig ad on the telly!

Today we cleaned out the van by putting the couch cushions back where we found them!  Drove her back to Prestwick Airport.  She was a bit dirty compared with how we picked her up but there were no issues.

This is where we left Dan who continued his journey to Barcelona & Cuba.  Will be nice just to be Julia & I for a while.  Got a bit tiring having to notify Dan where we were headed all he time.

Julia & I are now attempting to make our way to Carlisle via the buses.  We had read & were told that the quickest route was to go back up to Glasgow first.  But that didn't stop us trying to navigate via 4-5 smaller towns instead!

Caught a bus to Ayr, then Cumnock, timetable had changed and we had an our wait before heading to Dumfries to catch a train to Carlisle.  Bus driver was a chery chap whos heart whent out to the Melbourne Bikie gangs after watching an episode of Ross Kemp.

Trip cost to Carlisle: 2, 4, 4, 10 pounds.

Reason for Carlisle:  Wanted to stay in one place for a few days after rushing around in he van for 10 days.  It's a good distance closer to our Coast to Coast walk and seems to have some interesting sights in the vicinity.

Staying at the Carlisle City Hostel (17 pound per night) & hope to see Hadrians Wall & Beatrix Potters house!

To travel 100 mile, it's looking like it's going to take us 6 hours :S...  All good, gives me some time to write in this bad boy and read Snow Crash.  However!  I believe it would have been 3 hours had we just gone back to Glasgow first...

21st August 2015 - Europe Diary

Drove all the way to Dundee in some of the most horrendous weather we've had thus far.  n the top of the hills, the caravan in front of us was sliding sideway on the road due to the wind and because the road was so wet from the torrential downpour.  Motorbikes we passed were riding on a 20 degree angle just to stay upright.

Dundee is looking like a cool litle down.  heading out shortly to check it out.

5 or 6 bars worth checking out, mainly in the West Port area.  Spent some time lubricating in the hostel with a cheap bottle of gin & some Irn Bru.  Must have had a bit much, mixed with a severe lack of sleep.  Ended up accidentally hitting Julia with a ping pong bat during a match and retreated to bed before the others were quite ready.

20th August - Europe Diary

Fark!  Despite our attempts of slowing down this was ANOTHER massive day of driving.  Only have ourselves to blame though because weve only been organising 1 day at a time.

Dan wanted to go to Loch Ness and in all fairnes we should have stopped on the way from Skye!  But we didn't, so we drove that direction first stopping off at Balmoral Castle where he queen & her posse were currently staying.  Couldn't get close enough to see the castle despite Dan trespassing on the royal golf course, but found out there was a distillery called the Royal Lochnager close by that we tried out.  Great tastes but well above our price range!

Next stop was Tomatin distillery, a designer of cheaper blended whiskies which were pretty good for the price.  Upon leaving the distillery some ol goose in his Fiat 500 decided it would be best to drive in the wrong lane while looking out his side window & came about 2 inches from smacking head on into us.

We chuckled afterwards as we considered how we would have explained 'that' to the hire car company.  'We had a crash... At a whiskey distillery...  Yes, we had been drinking...  No, we weren't moving when we were hit!'

After taking tiny hobbled roads through the mountainous farm land we finally arrived at Loch Nes.  It was pretty windy but Dan managed to snap a pic of the famous monster!

Wasn't much else along the south side of Loch Ness except a dodgy walking trail that we had to retrace our steps on because the signage just ended about 75% of the way through the walk...

We ended up driving til 8pm past Form William before finding a busy picnic area on a Loch.  Spent the night drinking some rough whiskey called Scottish Leader while writing & playing chess.

19th August - First Half of Scotland

The last 6 days have been a rollercoaster of driving, emotions, sights & whiskey.

On the 14th we picked up our van from the airport.  Turns out we chose the most distant airport (Prestwick) to pick up the van, so it took Julia & I 3.5 hours to get there, pick it up and return to Glasgow to get Dan.

The van was a brand new VW Transporter with 58 miles on the clock.  After scouring Glazzy to pick up blankets & some old sofa cushions from the back alley of our hostel we shot off and made it all the way to Glencoe to set up for our first sleep in the van.

Dan looked a little unsure & quiet once we'd set up the cushions & blankets but once we had the first night ironed out it wasn't so bad from then on.

The 15th we climbed up the Lost Valley walk just outside Glencoe which was reasonably steep but quite short and offered some amazing views and pristine water that looked as clear as glass.  From there we drove all the way through to Broadford on the Isle of Skye.

The next day Dan described as 'a long day of doing nothing'.  We got to Portree where Laura & I had booked accom and proceeded to drive around the entirety of the North point of Skye, stopping at a few nice points for views, peat mines, dianomite quarries and the occasional hairy cow.  Quickly visited Julia's ancestral seat in Dunvegan before driving back to Portree to check-in to our accommodation (The Portree Independant Hostel).

5 seconds after entering, we were having an argument with the desk clerk (rhymes with jerk) because we had booked a female in a male-only dorm.  There are many arguments to be made against this stupid rule, however we chose to argue that their website was shit because it allowed us to book a female in.  Plus, we heard two other couples make the same mistake on the same day, which only helped justify our case.  If it wasn't for this one guy being a prick, the hostel would have been amazing.

17th:  We went north to a walk called 'The Old Man of Storr'.  A touristy slog up a rocky track to see a great big rock sitting precariously on its tip.  Definitely worth the climb.  We extended this by attempting to navigate around the Old Man and his mates until the track started to disappear and we were alone with no other tourists in sight!  Needless to say, we turned and backtracked the way we had come for fear of getting lost.  To give you an idea of how high we were, Julia was succumbing to some serious vertigo on the way back down and had to push through it slowly, but eventually we made it.

It was now time to leave Skye, but I really wanted to visit the Talisker Distillery before we left so we drove to Carbost & took some pictures.  The tours were fully booked so we could only peek from the outside.

On the same day, we drove all the way to a roadside stop near Laggan in central Scotland.  This place was midgy central, little flying bugs, thousands of them, all up in your face and biting you, leaving you red & itchy for an hour or so.  These bugs are the pits, forcing you to stay locked up in the van even if its still light outside.  This didnt help our need for some space from each other but we drank lots of whiskey and all was well.  Oh, Dan also bought a ham hock for breakfast and by dinner time it was so juicy & smelly that he was sickened just looking at it so left it on a log for the night.  It did not deter the midges...

18th:  The reason we drove so far yesterday was to make it to Dalwhinnie Distillery on this day.  We got there spot on midday.  Julia & I both ordered the 3 whiskey deal (9.95 pound) & Dan went the 6 whiskey deal (14.95 pound).  Both deals come with a chocolate matched to each drink and a free dram glass!

The 3-drink deal was all different Dalwhinnie malts, while the 6-drink was all different brands.  It was pretty good & the chocolates were the best ive ever eaten but in hindsight it was more expensive than other distilleries (so far!).

We'd originally planned to get all the way to Dufftown but ended up stopping at Aviemore for a bit too long, so stayed on a beautiful loch there.  Tried a deepfried haggis puddin which Dan ladly finished for me! taste: a bit dry & mincey while being slightly offal-like in texture and really sticky inside the mouth.  Someting I may never try a second time!  Worth mentioning that all the lochs we saw around Aviemore were just awesome.  small but gorgeous.

Lets not foret about Ruthven Barracks which were a nice sight of an 1850's barracks that was well signed :)

Paid 2 pound to stay in a carpark by a loch..

19th:  Got up at 9am & headed straight to Glenlivet Distillery.  We didn't expect much but were pleasently suprised.  This was the best distillery we visited in Scotland.

Free tour plus free tastings PLUS cheap drams (2.50ish pound) of some other offerings (a reserve usually 9 pound, Scarpa & I think an Oban 18).

Our final destination for the 19th was a small town on the east side of of The Cairngorms called Aboyne.  Julia booked a nights accom at The Huntly Arms Hotel when we werent sure what to do next.

Before we got there though we looked at Braemar Castle (dont bother, boring) & Braemar Village which was more like a retirement home than a town.  Some of the smelliest toilets Julia had used apparently!  She blamed the stinky old folk.

Huntly Arms:  Good stay, great building.  Should have got a picture...  Had to take about 8 turns & two staircases to find our room.

Got a tip from a seedy looking bloke outside of our hotel that we should try The Boat Inn for dinner.  good tip, big & delish meals at a pub that allows their patrons to bring their dogs inside!

Then it was bedtime, however Julia [add later]

13th August - Barcelona to Scotland

Feetup Hostel was great, low cost & relaxed vibe.  A lot has happened since then!  We visited the beach to see what all the fuss was about. Turns out people live to get a tab lying on fine grained dirt and occasionally wash off in a rubbish-tip themed ocean.

Spent one day walking around Montjuic & it's citadel that overlooks the entire city, forward by an insanely salty (but delish) seafood paella. 17€ each. Barcelona caught a bit of rain which kept the city nice and cool for the next 24 hours.

For our last day we caught the train out to Les Planes and trekked for 3 hours through the hills surrounding Barcelona. It was here where we found the best view of the city.  More tapas of olives, Iberian ham and Russian salad was had before prepping for our journey to Edinburgh on the 10th.

No trouble was had getting out of Spain. 

When we stopped over in Brussels the customs officer declared us as illegals because we never recurved a stamp when we flew into Barcelona. It was an empty threat though because he promptly stamped our passports and moved us along.  We regretted going through customs so swiftly though because we got cut off from all the cheap food options. Found a bar though and started hearing reports that the Brussels Airport's ground staff were on strike and some travelers had already encountered 3 hours of delays. It didn't end up being a problem for us though & we caught our tiny, scary plane to Edinburgh.  It was scary because half way through the flight there was a strong odour of burning electricals coming through the vents which caused the hair on my arms to stand on end in fear.  It didn't help that at the time I was reading a quarterly essay on ISIS...

Dan was awesome enough to greet us upon arrival at e airport with a bottle of Black Bottle whisky and lead us back to our hostel.

Geez, when they said that Containers Hostel was on the docks, they really weren't kidding.  Was a super well set up Warren of about 10 shopping containers all placed to create a wall to surround the hostel and paths through to each room.

We spent our two days in Edinburgh going to free comedy shows at The Southsider Hotel as week as one paid (but terrible) comedy about fan fiction.

Arthur's Seat was a short walk with terrific views of all of Edinburgh.  We took an hour out of our day just to relax at the top.  Despite being so high up you could still hear the bagpipes being played down in the city centre.

Bars of note:

- The Royal Oak for cheap whiskey

- The Cowshed for free live music

- The Bar Bados because the floor was covered in sand but otherwise the place sucked.

13th:  We took a bus to Glasgow (7.70 pound) and spent the night in Bunkum Hostel where they were quite friendly until the clock hit 10.30am at which point we may as well have been trespassing!

We haven't spent much time in Glasgow, basically stayed a night before picking up our Van.  Managed to have a fiery argument with Dan around where we should go and why.  Never really sorted it out but just acknowledging our different travelling styles at this point which has gotten us by, just!

The trains in Glasgow look like they were shot straight out of the 70's.  Bright orange & white tubes with car horns to alert you of their presense!

By the way, on our 2nd night in Edinburgh we slaughtered some massive kebabs on our walk back to Containers.  Well worth mentioning I reckon!

7th August - Tramp around Barcelona

Yesterday was dedicated to some of the most popular tourist destinations.

We visited Christopher Columbus who stands tall at the bottom of La Rambla, pointing out across the sea in the wrong direction, away from America.

Walking north through La Rambla we encountered a small protest against tourists.  In most parts of Barcelona during our stay we found stickers & graffiti stating "Tourist, Go Home.  You are destroying our neighbourhood".  Never mind the fact they probably couldn't afford the stickers without the tourist industry...

Then we visited the market which was busy but had an amazing selection of food & tapas bars.

The Gothic Quarter (Barri Gotic) was next.  Thin winding streets with blackened stone houses and cathedrals. Most impressive were the remains of a 4th century Roman wall & tower which during is heyday protected a large portion of the Gothic Quarter.

Afterwards we checked out the beach which was crowded with thousands of people, before heading back to the hostel to prepare for our tour of La Sagrada Familia.

I forgot just how large the church is. It is epic and well worth the 20€ to go in.  As you enter you are in awe (well I was at least) of the amount of open space inside.  Spires that required Computer Aided Design, stained glass windows that change the color of the interior as the time of day changes.

Stained glass awesomeness in La Sagrada Familia

Today we have checked out and headed to another hostel further out of the city that borders the mountains. It's called Feetup Garden House Hostel & apparently it's key features are 'culture' and 'older travelers'!! Well see, have stopped in a park close by but will provide an update on the hostel later.

Chilling in park above Barcelona velodrome

5th August 2015 - Flight to Barcelona

Our journey began on flight QR905 at 10.55pm on the 3rd of August.

As unpleasant as long distance flights can be, this one was pretty uneventful.  Until my partner Laura felt sick, couldn't open the sick-bag in time and vomited on the both of us.

The cause?  Laura blamed it on eating too fast, but I blame it on Qatar's sick-bags needing to be ripped open before they can be used.

After that event, we spent the next 12 hours travelling in slightly smelling clothing arriving in Barcelona around 2pm on the 4th.

We are staying at Sant Jordi Hostel in the Gracia district, which is kind of like a Spanish version of Fitzroy (in Melbourne), only cooler.  Thin one way streets bordered with an amalgamation of houses, bars and markets.  Occasionally these streets open up to large squares where all the bars and cafes place tables and chairs to create a relaxed and inviting atmosphere.

Sant Jordi Hostel Rooftop & a nice quiet street in the Gracia district

5th: Today we had breakfast at Placa del Sol, trekked in the humid 30C heat to Parc Guell looking for a shady spot to read while chomping on some cheese and bread (get used to it).

Organic Gaudi bridge in Park Güell

However we have found ourselves lazing in the Parc de la Ciutadella, where the grass IS greener.  Later at night we dined at a Syrian restaurant chain called Ugarit.  Cheap, tasty & sizeable meals.

Pretty green-water fountain.  rather impressive