We're going to be gone how long?!

April 17, 2025

Welcome to Jill and Dave's cycling journal, 2025 edition. This is Dave here. Normally Jill authors our daily entries, but I've offered to write this intro. And, yes, we really are planning to be away for six months. For those of you who have followed us over the past few years, you know that our cycling trips are usually three months long. So this trip will be a bit of a stretch for us. We had originally thought we'd spend an entire year abroad, but when we thought more about it, we decided that a full year away was simply going to be too much for us. Consequently, we pared back on our ambitions and opted for half a year instead. Honestly, I'd bet that if I hadn't been so cool to the idea of an entire year abroad, Jill would still have liked trying for the full Monty.

(Breaking news: Our original departure date was to be 10/18, but on the 16th we got a message from United warning us that there was a big storm heading into Denver on the 18th and that we might want to change our reservations. Jill immediately rebooked us to leave a day early on the 17th and we scrambled to finish packing, clean the house, meet our house sitters who had just arrived from Arkansas and head out for an extra day of our journey. This part of the journal is being written in the United Club at Denver International)

Ann and Scott Brandt who will be holding down our fort while we're away.

On board, ready to travel with our companions (don't judge!)

Our journey this year starts, as always, in Munich where we pick up our bikes which we keep in a public storage facility. We depart from Munich and head south to Provence where we'll meet up with good friends and former colleagues of Jill. After several days with them, we will work our way across the Pyrenees and drop into northern Spain. We'll ride a few days on the Camino de Santiago trail, enjoying the food and wine of the Riojas region.

We'll work our way to Bilbao where we hook up former colleagues and friends of mine. We'll split our time with this group between Bilbao and San Sebastian. After that, Jill and I will catch a ferry from Bilbao and sail to Ireland where we will begin the Irish portion of our trip. We meet up with a friend of Jill's in Dingle for a couple of days after which we head east towards Dublin, spend a few days there before heading to Belfast via train and bike. After a short visit we'll get on another ferry and head over Scotland.

We travel north along the Scottish coast, spend time in Glasgow and proceed west to St. Andrews where we'll join my nephew's family and celebrate my grandniece's graduation. Following that, we backtrack a bit to meet up with our neighbors and begin a two week adventure with them in central Scotland. We'll be making a loop which encompasses Cairngorms National Park. I'm told that there is a decent possibility that Scotch Whisky will be sampled while traveling. One can only hope!

This map show 2 different segments of our Scotland trip. Part 1 is the left most route while the route below and to the right is the route we take after leaving our neighbors in Edinburgh.

This is the part of Scotland we'll be traversing with our neighbors.

After leaving our friends in Edinburgh, we drop south and traverse Scotland's Border Region, eventually reaching Hadrian's Wall and then onto England. We'll work our way south through the North Pennines National Landscape, the Lake District National Park, the Yorkshire Dales National Park, and the Forest of Bowland National Landscape, ending up in Liverpool.

After Liverpool, we head south through Wales working our way through the Welsh interior to meet another couple in Hay on Wye (I'm told there is a renowned bookstore or two here) and the entrance to the Brecon Beacons National Park. We'll spend a week with these friends circumnavigating and exploring this park before leaving them off back in Hay.

Heading south again through Wales we will go through Cardiff & Newport and then cross into England and to the Cotswolds National Landscape, eventually landing in Oxford.

We are due in London the first week of September, primarily because we have play tickets. As for the next 7 weeks--who knows? We're leaving this part of the trip open. We'll either go to northern France and the Normandy beaches which Jill has seen, but I haven't. We always welcome riding in France. Our other option is to ferry over to Holland, something neither of us has done by bike. The decision will be based on the weather and how we're feeling in general. Either way we'll work our way back down to Munich, service our bikes, pack stuff back into our storage unit and head home on 10/21.

Jill is a travel logistics savant. It amazes me how much she enjoys putting the logistics puzzle pieces together and I've become quite spoiled being married to my personal travel planner. She tells me where and when to be, and I simply nod and say OK, knowing that the day's routes, provisions and lodgings have been well taken care of. She's worked overtime creating this 6 month journey which has been especially challenging given the number of friends we'll be meeting along the way. I could never do what she pulls off with such alacrity and skill.

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Scott AndersonInteresting. We'll be close. We'll be biking south toward London and arriving there at the first of October. Watch for us if you decide to bike north and catch the ferry to Amsterdam - something we did last fall.
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