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Having been to Antwerp twice already, I didn’t hang around the following day but instead, set off mid-morning for Ghent. I cycled through the city and took the tunnel underneath the river that runs through it to the other side after which I made my way through the small towns of the Belgian countryside. You know that fantastic feeling when you arrive in a new place and you don’t know what to expect, what you will see or indeed, whom you will meet? Well this is precisely how I

Being The Netherlands and Belgium, I imagined that I wouldn’t need a map for such a short journey and I was proved, well, partially correct. It would have made the trip certainly easier but at the same time, maybe a little less daunting. I did indeed want a challenge. With a compass as a means of confirming my direction and by following road signs and asking various people I happened to come across, I didn’t go far wrong and was quite surprised at how easy it was to find my w

It was my intention to bring my belongings back to Manchester via train, and then head back to Amsterdam to start my journey from here. Waking up the other day and realising that a friend was driving around Europe and also through Amsterdam, I had a strange idea that I could actually just cycle home to Manchester instead of bringing my belongings back on a train. There's nothing stopping me from starting this journey here, and If I really do want to do this, I need to start s

Having no phone and very little access to the internet will surely mean that I won’t be able to contact people for fairly long periods of time. As annoying as this might be, it’s also one of the things I’m looking forward to most; being out of sight if you like. Having said that, there is a need to keep people back home updated as I’ll miss them and it assures people (my mother) that I’m safe and well. And so as my journey progresses over the weeks and the months, I’m going t