So it begins...

Welcome to the blog of a journey. That's journey in a physical sense, rather than the no-doubt more interesting metaphysical one - but if it turns out to be a good enough journey, I suspect there'll be plenty of that as well. I've resigned from my job, I'm packing up my house and I'm going. Soon. There's 39 days to go.



That's 39 days until we board the ferry at Portsmouth and float our way to Bilbao. I consider 39 to be the headline figure, but there are lots of other figures floating around. Delivery dates, prices, travel times - for a non-maths person, I feel like I'm doing an awful lot of maths at the moment. My personal favourite though is 7 - that's 7 working days to go. Not including today, which is more than half over. In less than two weeks, I'll be leaving work: not taking a holiday or a career break or changing jobs. Leaving work. Ah the joy.

But enough gloating. As this is the first post, let's recap - at the end of March, me and Grrr are going travelling. For the first six months, we'll be cycling around parts of Europe. This blog will hopefully record that journey. Here is a rough map of what the path of our journey might look like:

Ignore the vaguely question mark-shaped thing in Italy - the question has largely been resolved and the answer is 'no'. In fact, this is probably more of a guide than a route map, so much is up for grabs in the execution. What we know so far:

• we are definitely leaving from Portsmouth


• we are definintely taking the ferry to Bilbao


• we are definitely doing that on March 30.

So, plenty still open to negotiation, reconsideration and change. Got any good ideas? Based on our embarassingly scanty suggested route, any stops, diversions, or detours are welcome. It doesn't do to over-plan, I always find...

Anyway, this post is primarily intended as a rod for my back - I figure I need to start this blog in order to feel under pressure to keep this blog up to date. Much is going on, planning is frantic, and decisions are actually being made despite a hell of a lot of procrastinating about everything from tents to bottle cages, cycle socks to party dates and venues. And we haven't even made most of the big decisions yet. Despite *the plan* being hatched and committed to many months ago, it's taken quite a long time to get to 39 days, which will apparently now last about a week - or that's how it feels at the moment. It is time to get ready, decide things and do stuff. Sooner than I can possibly imagine, it is going to be time to go.

How much does that rock.

More soon...