Even though we took our usual 90 (approximately) days for this trip, our distance just barely crept over the 4000 km mark. Does this mean the Grampies (already the slowest show on the road) are weakening and slowing down? Yes, we would like to know too!

It turns out the answer is, "Maybe, maybe not". Have a look at this chart:

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What we see is that of the 91 days tallied, there were 14 where we actually did not try to get anywhere by bike, logging zero kms. That's 15% of the trip. Add to this a further 6 days where we just sort of re-positioned ourselves,did a small local ride, or arrived somewhere important and stopped. These were days of travelling fewer than 30 km. That makes 22% of the trip where we weren't even trying to get anywhere (much).

In the remainder of the days, average distance was 56 km. That is a little low, but kind of normal for us.

The normal makeup of a daily distance for us is a combination of slow pedaling and being willing to stop at any bakery, church, or landmark that pops up. Then we compensate by spending a lot of hours out on the road, typically 8 to 11 hours from when we head out to when we pack it in. At 3-4 p.m. we are still happily plodding along, but often notice other cyclists already drinking beer on the terraces of their overnight stops.

So what was mainly different this time was days spent in Yutz, Oberreichenbach, Rothenburg, Verona, Venice, Milan, Nantes, and Paris. These were all glorious days. So maybe we just need more total days. Yeah, more total days! We're working on it.