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Back home for a few days now and the jet lag is starting to wear off. You know you've been on the road for a while when the second night at home, both Kirsten and I woke up in the middle of the night at different times and wondered where we were ... oh yeah, at home in our own bed ... feels strange.

This morning we woke up to the picture above (ok, it was still dark when we woke up) and we both knew where we were. I guess we are now readjusted and its time to put down some final thoughts on this trip.

The Big Picture

Overall for the things we could control, this was a great trip. It was a little  shorter in duration than our last two extended trips, two months rather than three, and this was just right. We knowingly pushed the time-of -year envelope and got bit by it in Germany. However, based on the comments from most of the folks we spoke to in southern Italy, we got much better weather there than is the norm for November, so on balance, we'll call the weather a wash.

If (when) we were to do this over, we would probably start a few weeks earlier so we would finish up at the end of October. Better chance for good weather and also a little more life in some of the regions.

In many ways it seemed like two trips ... BM (before Munich) and AM. The need for me to be in Munich in mid October forced our hand at the start of the trip, the part K kept referring to as 'The Forced March' ... maybe it was prophetic that we went to The Long March Canteen when we were in Berlin! Joking aside, it did put pressure on our itinerary and we put in longer days on average than we would have otherwise. Lesson learned ... Don't mix work and pleasure!

The AM part of the trip was at a much more relaxed pace .... if you just look at distance per day and saddle time. When you add in the daily elevation gain / loss though as we moved south through Italy, it still added up to challenging cycling. That's good. Considering how much we were eating and drinking we needed the work! We do actually enjoy it too.

As for the overall route, although we really liked Berlin, Dresden and Prague, we came to the view that they would probably be best done as a separate city focused trip. The biking to get to them, at least Berlin and Dresden starting from Copenhagen, was a bit pedestrian. Even if we would have had good weather, they would not have been really memorable days. In hindsight, starting in Dresden, with a side trip by train to Berlin at the start, would have been a better overall trip. Once we hit Dresden, the cycling was very good / interesting. As for our route through Italy, for us it was great. There's almost an incalculable number of routes you could take to get from the north to the south, and apart from just riding down the east coast (which we have heard is not that great until you get to Puglia) they would all be good.

The Big Five

As K and I usually do on these longer trips, we pick out the five days that stand out above the rest for each of us. 

'Stand Out' is an intentionally ambiguous term and K's criteria will be much different than mine, and there is no set criteria for the days we each individually pick either. They just have to be memorable ... to us.

Kirsten's Big Five

1. Fussen to Telfs - Fern Pass and high alpine valleys - and sun!
2. Telfs to Scaives - Brenner Pass and more high alpine valleys
3. Trento to Peschiera del Garda- Lake Garda
4. Santa Maria di Leuca to Otranto - the east coast of Salento
5. Monopoli to Ostuni - Trulli and olive groves

Lyle's Big Five

1. Fussen to Telfs - Fern Pass and high alpine valleys
2. Poretta Terme to Bontinaccio - crossing the Apennines into Tuscany
3. Ariano Iprino to Candela - extremes - scenery, terrain, dogs and weather!
4. Monopoli to Ostuni - the sea, Trulli and olive groves - quintessential Puglia
5. Buonconvento to Acquapendente - isolation and amazing Radicofani

The Blog

As we've noted in previous journals, and other authors here have also noted, keeping a daily(ish) journal is a lot of work. However, I once again want to extend thanks to all the folks at Cycle Blaze for this site. It is quite easy to use for both input and output.

I'd also like to thank all the folks who followed along and gave us comments and encouragement throughout the ride. Cycle touring can be a lonely and disconnected endeavour and it was always a great feeling to see a 'cycle blaze notification' pop up on our phones. Having said that though, the main driver for writing a journal in the end is largely selfish. Without the daily rigour of writing something down, editing and uploading pictures and coming up with a song that we think captures something of the day, the days and weeks would blur into each other and we would be left wondering at the end of the tour .. what did we really do? With the journal, we can go back at anytime and tear the cobwebs off of those days and savour the memories. So thanks for reading along, but most of this is for us.

For anyone who's interested, here's a  playlist of all the SOTD video's. Enjoy!

The Gear

Everything we brought along worked. Our only issue is that we brought too much!

We were overly optimistic regarding how much camping we would do. Had we started in early September maybe we might have done more, but given when we did start, we should have just left the camping stuff behind. This would have had a knock on effect on the amount of clothing we brought  too. We had 3 sets of bike clothes and if you are camping that's the right amount, but if you are staying inside each night, you can easily get by with 2 sets as we eventually did.

I also brought one too many lenses for my camera. The 75 mm prime lens was only used a few times and really wasn't worth bringing along. I will continue to bring my camera, an Olympus OM-D E-M5II. It's half the size of a DSLR so it;s not a pain to have with me all the time in my front bag, and it knocks the socks off an iPhone for versatility and overall picture quality.

We will also seriously look at using a high end tablet rather than the small laptop pc we currently have. Although our laptop is small, once you add in the power cords and transformer, it's probably twice the weight, and half the performance of a new tablet.

The one piece of electronics that really paid it's way were our Anker 21,800 mvA external batteries. Although they are a bit heavy, they allowed us up to three days of constant charge on our phones (why do we still call them phones? ... nobody makes phone calls ... these were our main navigation devices!).

I’ve almost forgotten the biggest and most important bit of technology. We were able to get EU SIM cards through Kirsten’s cousin in Sweden. Massive amounts of data and we didn’t have to worry about them running out after 28 or 30 days. This was a ‘hassle’ that just didn’t happen for us. Thank you again Andres! I recognize that this option may not exist for most NA based folks who are touring in Europe, but for us it was brilliant.

As far as the bikes, they were rock solid and almost perfect for the variety of conditions we rode in. Other than replacing the brake pads half way through - another Appenine effect!... there was zero maintenance or problems with the bikes (one broken spoke - easily fixed). The only change we would make would be to run Schwalbe Marathon Extreme or Mondial tires rather than the (almost) slick Marathon Supremes. The Supremes are just that on pavement, but we had quite a bit of gravel and mud on this trip, and the Extremes would have performed better in that and still be good on pavement. Next time!

The Numbers

I am an engineer at heart so I have to do this:

• Total distance: 3,338 kms
• Total elevation gain: 25,480 m
• Total cycle days: 43
• Average daily km's: 78 km (93 km/d before Munich , 61 km/d after)
• Max daily km's: 124 km
• Min daily km's: 29 km
• Average daily saddle time (moving):  4:44 hrs
• Max saddle time (moving): 7:54 hrs
• Min saddle time (moving): 1:42 hrs
• Average daily speed: 16.4 km/hr
• Max daily average speed: 22.1 km/hr
• Min daily average speed: 12.9 km/hr

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What's Next?

Kirsten is still keen on a Gaspe and maritime Canada circumnavigation. We would have to do that much earlier than this trip though.

For me, after having to abort the full ride through the Dolomites, I've been noodling with a big circle route that would start and finish in Munich and take in all of the Dolomites, the Italian Lakes and then a swing back through Switzerland . More concept than plan at this point.

...And then there's the Pyrenees and the Spanish med. It looks pretty nice seeing what the Anderson's are riding right now ... and who doesn't like Cava?

And we can't forget SE Asia. The Mekong is calling! 

Good problems to have. We'll mull all this over as we are slogging uphill this winter. So until next time ... Arrivederci!