Well, the sun is properly shining in the UK at the moment, a taster of the weather to come I hope...
I've now set my leaving date for June 03rd, all the chores and responsibilities at home have been done/handed over, the bikes are prepped, the van is serviced and we're good to go!
The Trans Euro Trail is a concept by a guy called John Ross, a military doctor who lives in the north of England. His idea was simple, ride unsealed roads as much as possible around Europe on trails suitable for bikes upto a KTM 690/Yamaha Tenere size. It is a community led project and not out to make lots of money, that said some kind of donation to keep the website running and deal with the admin is always welcome!!
I have no idea how long it has taken to get to get to where it is now from it's original discussion, but I've been involved for the last year and this has been the time of a rapid period of input from the 30-40 people in all the different countries so that now the TET is ready to have it's own website. John is now in the process of finalising various routes and cleaning up the many GPX files submitted by all of the people based in the individual countries. this alone takes hours of work! It iwill then be all ridden and checked before going 'live' so to speak.
I've taken various parts of the route GPX files to create a long, almost continuous, trip. Now is the time to go ride as much of it as possible this summer. Alongside this Lucy & I plan to visit a lot of places and meet a lot of people to get the most out of our time.
I doubt we'll get to ride it all in one go, but it's something to aspire to and, as if it is needed, it is an excuse to go ride my bike!!
One idea I've just hit upon is to visit all of the Wolrd Heritage Sites as we travel. I was looking at their list of sites around the world and it occurred to me to add this to any future trip! There are 1052 sites currently in many countries around the world. Some countries have more than one site so it's a reaosn to travel the whole country to get to them,now that's an education process!
814 are 'cultural' sites, so man made at some point I'd guess. 203 are 'natural' and 35 are 'mixed', whatever that means! When I looked at the list I've laready been to loads as I've travelled previously, so this is more of a continuation of that really!!
So with this and the HelpX website info, we have more than enough to keep ourselves busy when not on two wheels...
First stop for me will be Romania, then head south after this and slowly wend our way back west as the weather turns cooler... mmm starting to get a little excited now that things have finally fallen into place after months of killing time and waiting for various balls to line up!
I've now set my leaving date for June 03rd, all the chores and responsibilities at home have been done/handed over, the bikes are prepped, the van is serviced and we're good to go!
The Trans Euro Trail is a concept by a guy called John Ross, a military doctor who lives in the north of England. His idea was simple, ride unsealed roads as much as possible around Europe on trails suitable for bikes upto a KTM 690/Yamaha Tenere size. It is a community led project and not out to make lots of money, that said some kind of donation to keep the website running and deal with the admin is always welcome!!
I have no idea how long it has taken to get to get to where it is now from it's original discussion, but I've been involved for the last year and this has been the time of a rapid period of input from the 30-40 people in all the different countries so that now the TET is ready to have it's own website. John is now in the process of finalising various routes and cleaning up the many GPX files submitted by all of the people based in the individual countries. this alone takes hours of work! It iwill then be all ridden and checked before going 'live' so to speak.
I've taken various parts of the route GPX files to create a long, almost continuous, trip. Now is the time to go ride as much of it as possible this summer. Alongside this Lucy & I plan to visit a lot of places and meet a lot of people to get the most out of our time.
One idea I've just hit upon is to visit all of the Wolrd Heritage Sites as we travel. I was looking at their list of sites around the world and it occurred to me to add this to any future trip! There are 1052 sites currently in many countries around the world. Some countries have more than one site so it's a reaosn to travel the whole country to get to them,now that's an education process!
814 are 'cultural' sites, so man made at some point I'd guess. 203 are 'natural' and 35 are 'mixed', whatever that means! When I looked at the list I've laready been to loads as I've travelled previously, so this is more of a continuation of that really!!
So with this and the HelpX website info, we have more than enough to keep ourselves busy when not on two wheels...
First stop for me will be Romania, then head south after this and slowly wend our way back west as the weather turns cooler... mmm starting to get a little excited now that things have finally fallen into place after months of killing time and waiting for various balls to line up!
