I say I'll be away two years when asked, leaving people taking a deep intake of breath. Views are varied from disbelieve that it is possible to be on what is essentially a holiday for so long, but most wish they were doing the same. My mother wishes I would stay at home and get a job. She is in her late eighties, is in good health, although her eyesight is bad which has curtailed her independents: she has had to give up the car and relies on siblings to drive her to shop and mass. There's an unhappy look of resignation in her face at this lose. And I feel sadly this could be a final parting.

The last day before setting off is one that combines bright sunshine and a sharp north west wind blowing in cloud darkening the sky. Out on the bike I'm caught in a harsh sleety rain. I am doing some last day visiting and am glad to reach the house and enter where the visitants are sat cosy at a warm fire. The sun is out as I set off again, but there's another squall of sleet before reaching home.

The morning I would leave home dawned battleship grey until the sun broke in a long horizontal line. On the road at eight twenty, the road to Newry had the sun's rays battling against thick low cloud. The ever reliable forecast gave a band of rain moving in over the west by dawn and reaching most eastern areas around midday. At least the wind has settled and it is mild, around nine degrees.

Newry is the last stop to rid myself of the ball of coppers, silver and gold pound coins that weight down my wallet, as from now and the foreseeable future I'll be in euroland, so I stop at the coffee shop on the corner of Canal street and Monaghan. I order a cake with white and pink marshmallows embedded with my cappuccino and take a seat on a sofa by the window to keep an eye on the bike against the railings outside. An elderly man who had been young in the hippy era, as he sports long silver hair and a beard, though smartly dressed in business suit and wool overcoat, comes across the pedestrian crossing and enters. He asks "okay if I sit here?" on the sofa opposite the coffee table. I nod, no problem and continue looking out at my bike. In the corner of my eye he is taping his phone, then he raises it to his ear and speaks. Minutes later when finished with the phone, he catches my gaze and opens "that's a well cared for bike" I reply, I don't know about well cared for, it's well travelled at any rate. I fill him in then on where I'm from and where I've been on previous trips and this time I'm on my way to Italy. "Yeah don't mind me saying" he has a softened Ulster-Scots accent " you look a man that is retired. Where do you get your money? if you don't mind me asking" "I sold a house" I reply summarily. "Well, I can say you've the attitude" he says and turns to a friend that had lately come in and taken a seat, "He has the attitude, the strength and the will."

He gets up and goes to the counter and begins chatting in a familiar manner with the young guy, the patron. He is in here often. I understand that he is telling him, that man over there is cycling to Italy. He did, but what I didn't see or expect, that he paid my bill, which I found out a few minutes later when I go to the counter and get my wallet out. I return to the sofa were the elderly man had sat down again and say you shouldn't have, I'm trying to get rid of change. "No, it's a pleasure" he replies "You've given me something to write about today. I'm a journalist with the local paper."

I didn't mind him paying and I pretty much rid myself of change in SuperValu buying porridge meal, pasta and sauce, food for the day. I exchange my remaining twenty-six sterling for thirty-four euros at a cottage money-changer just south of the border.

Before leaving the café I saw pedestrians outside with umbrellas up. It wasn't serious rain, just fine drizzle, and had stopped when I come out of the supermarket. And during the steep climb out of Newry and the gentile horse farms by Ravendale forest on the small byroads that avoid the motorway I pass through south of the border to Dundalk, the sky is dull, almost on the point of imminent rain.

But the rain never come. The cloud broke up and there is sunny spells interspersed with darker cloud cover when I ride south of Dundalk to Castlebellingham where I take a small road which takes me out along the coast. The sea is aquamarine in the sun, but opposite across the bay, the Mourne mountains, beyond which I started this morning, are shrouded in low cloud. It looks like a wet day there.

At a point, the sun shines brilliantly as I come to an old Norman keep, the castle stone walls overgrown in a thicket of ivy and above is the squawk of crows roosting among bare branches of tall trees and snowdrops carpet the grounds. There's also a few daffodils out.

I pass through a couple of villages approaching dusk and turn the corner into the estuary of the Boyne river. I'm riding with lights as I look out for somewhere to camp. I come to an open gate, which leads up through the wooded edge of a pond to a field of potatoes. Then I spot a sign saying "Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted", so I don't want to take any chance. I ride on along the marshy river mouth into the town of Drogeda, over the bridge and back along the other side, where before leaving town proper, I come to municipal wasteland on the estuary side, in which I find a well drained and level spot to camp, hidden from housing by clumps of gorse bush.

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