It's nearly time to tour, and while I'm feeling fit and raring to go, there's also the slight trepidatious feeling of being underprepared. I've been riding 30-40km rides twice or three times a week, some of them with significant load, and am generally having no trouble there - but I haven't ridden a long ride for a good few months, and am hoping I won't hit some kind of wall after my first 80km and conk out.

There's also been a lot of experimentation with the route, looking at online maps and acquiring decent paper maps. It didn't occur to me that my basic off-road route over the Polish-Czech border might be as mountainous as the Black Forest - but it turns out a naive route would take me over a similar 1000m, 10%+ climb. I'm not particularly keen to re-enact my lung-bursting ascent of Shauinsland from last year, so a fair bit of attention has been given to that part of the route - in the passes, it can be made very (possibly boringly) gentle. At least I have options now.

As a corollary, the most scenic crossing of the border seem to be a fair bit west of Wroclaw - and since I have no pressing desire t o visit it as a large city, that's been dropped from the itinerary. Instead I'll bear west through the towns of Lesno and Legnica, and likely cross the border nearer Trutnov than Nachod. I've scoped out quite a few national or state parks along the way, which will either provide camping or just good scenery and quiet roads.

After feeling rather smug about this, I did one last check of my train tickets - hang on, the 9th is a Friday isn't it. Bugger! I'd managed to book the exact right trains, exactly one day early. After the initial burst abuse of my own stupidity had subsided, I got straight on the ferry website to see what the damage would be (I'd booked an "inflexible" ticket, as I had for all the trains out). To my astonishment, without a car it cost a princely £3 to swap the day. An extra day off eventually secured from work, and my Frankfurt hotel booking easily changed, and I was good. Ho hum, one more day of touring - could be worse!