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Overview

We have a combined age of 144, Mary being a few years younger than Mike. Mike has cycled all his life whereas Mary grew up in Central London and never discovered the joys of cycling or learned to ride a bike. About the time of our fortieth wedding anniversary in 2011 Mike found that a fellow KBTC couple were selling their entry level tandem and persuaded Mary into a trial ride. We later upgraded to a Thorn Touring tandem and Mary has recently started riding solo on a nice red Bike Friday.

This ride is about eighteen months later than originally planned due to some health issues but now we have finally completed it.

Others in our age group may still like to camp but we are strictly credit card. We prefer caravan park cabins as they have cooking facilities and we like oatmeal for breakfast, whereas in a motel you may not even have a microwave. Having said that we eat out every second night.

The Thorn tandem needed very little preparation.
I performed the Rohloff oil change at the end of February.
The SwissStop blue brake pads running on the Rigida Andra CSS rims have
hardly worn and I replaced the drive chain for the ride. The timing
chain was fine and the tyres still had plenty of tread.

We each had a clothing pannier of about 5kg and the two
front panniers were about 2.5kg each, the one with tools and first
aid kit and the other with food for a total load of about 15kg.

We recently acquired a Samsung galaxy tablet and its
730 grams was included in Mary's pannier. Thank the Lord for free
wifi! Great for finding the next day's accommodation.

We each carried a point and shoot camera but the older
of the two which I purchased to record my Adelaide to Melbourne ride
in 2009 failed at the end of the trip.