Day 1, leaving England 193KM

I left England in the pouring rain- everything (everything) was soaked through after the first five miles. To make things worse, I got lost at Somerford Keynes- less than five miles from the parents' place. When you're starting on a 1,100 mile journey, getting lost after five miles is less than pleasing. Once I reached the hills near Marlborough the rain had subsided long enough for me to take a photo.

This is as good as it got all day, honestly



Leaving home at one, only four hours behind schedule, I thought that 10 hours would be enough to reach Portsmouth. Well it would have been had I not underestimated a) the distance b) the speed of my bike fully loaded and c) the complexity of the road network near Portsmouth, in the dark. Oh yeah, and d) punctures - two of them, one my own fault. So I ended up lost, in the dark, arriving twenty minutes before the ferry left at eleven, to find they had already shut the doors. I had to buy a new ticket for a different ferry at some cost.



Not the greatest of starts!

Here's the bike fully loaded for the cyclophilic among you