The STONE Ride (Part One – Gavdos to UK)

A well-earned rest day today…in the lovely old town of Sarajevo….now - it seems - fully recovered from the war. Blogging, washing etc etc Andrew headed off to a bike…

A whopper of a day! My longest ride ever! And a day containing the scariest moments on the ride so far! We had decided to make a bee-line for Sarajevo…to…

A relatively short…and relatively easy…day today…relative to our adventures of yesterday. As soon as we left town….we were straight back into impressive scenery… …..and then……roadworks! A full 30km of half-formed…

Our fifth border crossing in just seven days! Sadly…only the one full day in Kosovo. And so to Montenegro. What a great day of riding… To Peja (source of Kosovan…

Sadly…only the one full day in Kosovo. I believe it ranks well bottom of all European countries in terms of GDP…yet somehow if feels much more civilised than - say…

Before I start on today’s journey….a few photos from Peshkopi last night. The Albanian Giro!!  It happens everywhere in the country…between around 6 and 9 in the evening. Everyone goes…

Alas…we did not spend long in North Macedonia…as today we were crossing back into Albania….for the second time in just three days! And today was the biggest Google error of…

Fiftieth day!! OMG…where did that time go? And to celebrate? The shortest EVER ride……! Not all roses however…for we first had to push the bikes up around 50 steps to…

Monday today…it must be North Macedonia! Haha…like some whistle-stop bus tour of Europe! Three countries in two days! But nothing whistle-stop about cycling. Only the one night in Albania…but we’ll…

I (usually) like to break in new companions a bit gently! But today was not one of those days!! A big triple-tonner for Andrew’s first day!! But compared to Iain’s…

A day of breakfasting and wandering…… Ioannina has a fascinating and complicated history…Hellenic, Byzantine, Ottaman….and has only been part of Greece since 1913….after the ‘first’(?) Balkan war. The history of…

We had arrived into Ioannina a day earlier than originally planned…to allow Iain to leave on the Friday….and get to his cricket game on the Saturday! ….which meant that he…

Iain’s last day! Alas! That came around quickly! But we made it a day to remember!! Simply….the biggest day ever! My first ever quadruple-tonner! Who would have thought!!? I remember…

A relaxed day today……if you can call a 1,300m ascent relaxed!  We are planning a crossing of the highest pass in Greece…and Neraidochora is the last place I could find…

What a fantastic day of riding! Well…..75% of it! I’ll let the pictures tell the story really! But what a gorgeous landscape…climbing to over 1,500m… …and this is one of…

The sun was out again this morning…good news…for today we were heading back into the mountains! It was a lovely start to the day…sort of following the convoluted coast of…

After our busy holiday on Skopelos..today was a very chill day! More of this… Yesterday was really the first sweaty-hot ride of the trip so far! It’s been warm enough…

Departure day!!  After such a good week it was a bit of a wrench…particularly so early in the morning after a late last night! But Iain and I were on…

What a great week we had!! Family time at its best! This is where we were staying…Agnontas…one of the smallest villages…sort of like Greece used to be!! Just perfect! I…

The reason for the big day yesterday…is that we were on a mission to catch a ferry to Skopelos….and we did not want to spend last night on the wrong…

Yesterday was a wonderful big day! Today was just a big day! Of the above mileage…we cycled ‘just’ 133 km. And all of the ascent of course! Not an abnormally…

Tinos is not tiny!!! And not a tiny day on the bike either…as I set out to explore!….rather than the let the grass grow….as this Tinian cyclist seems to have…

I must admit to never having even heard of Tinos before planning this trip. But it was on the way. So why not!? Or maybe it was my subconscious anagrammatical…

Having been staying in tiny and largely empty places for the last few weeks….it was surprising to arrive at our ferry to find hugely long queues of folk waiting to…

The main road along the North coast of Crete…is big…and fast! So we opted to detour inland…and onto the ‘old’ road!  Great decision…as we biked up and down all day…

It has been a bit of a mission to get to Gavdos…lots of ferries…lots of not-a-lot-of-cycling! So….after a very relaxing day in the gorgeous bluetro Loutro…we were pleased to get…

Blue sea…blue sky….no vehicle access….perfect!! (…to be fair…today was one of those days when the sky was hazed by the dust from North Africa…but hey…it meant we did not burn!)…

After all the bike-pushing and climbing yesterday…my legs were sorer this morning than after any of the rides to date! So it was a good job we had nowhere to…

The short cycling days continue…as we fart around on ferries to get to our ‘destination’…..well, the start point…of Gavdos. So today…our ferry leaves - hopefully - at around 11.30. But…

Martin left this morning….good and early…too early of course….but we did make sure that he would not have to wait for more than an hour at the dismal bus yard!!…

Our ferry across to Kissamos does not leave until five, so it was a happily lazy start to the day! But I was thinking that I had maybe been a…

It was a nice relaxed start to the day…as we only had to roll down the hill to our 9am ferry. I had booked the trip on line…but had never…

A bit sad to be leaving Kyparissi. A real gem! And I vowed to myself to return within two years or so! It was a fairly daunting start to the…

A day to chill. The perfect place to do it! And…..that road? I made no progress really….except - apparently - that the original plan was to carry on North to…

With only 70kms to go today…it was a relaxed start to the day.  Muesli in mugs (which Sophia had nicked from the next door restaurant…to allows us to make ourselves…

After our big day yesterday…today/tomorrow’s rides are now a bit shorter! And they needed to be! I woke up in the night…and some bloody numskull (the Beano, remember..?) had turned…

Did I say something about a big day? Well…today was one! Martin’s first triple-tonner…and his second longest ride ever! Straight through the mountains of the north Peloponnese…which rise up to…

A bit of a bitsy day really. It was just the way the ferry timings worked. So a 9am ferry over to Kefalonia….but then no ferry onwards unto 14.45. So…

I do love this is island! With a population of only around 3,000….it is raw and beautiful. The mythical home of Odysseus. A nominal rest day today….but having got my…

It turned out to be a surprisingly big day today! Three islands. Two ferries. And a heap of climbing on the bikes in between! There are two routes between Lefkada…

A shorter ride today! By ‘mad’ standards anyway! But still a surprising amount of climbing….as we took the coast road, on the advice of our cycling fanatic host!  Not as…

It was an early start….for we had organised a bike shop stop to hopefully fix that spoke, straighten the wheel and replace some brake pads!! (..all Martin’s braking…hahaha!). And with…

Both Martin and I have streaming colds!! So it was a good decision to stay an extra night!! A very lazy day! A wander around town. A visit to the…

A great start to the day! Hard as a rock! My tyre, I mean! Such a relief! Today was hard….but beautiful. It must go down as one of the great…

A big day! Have I said that before? But the graphic above gives an idea about how the day panned out! A first…after all my rides…..100km of riding…..wobbling up and…

A rest day! So no great excitement today. Except my tyre is flat again! Pumped it up and took it to the one bike shop in town…but no ability to…

It was a wakeful night! Trying not to snore! Hahaha! The boat was late arriving. So it was not until 10.30 that we raced off the boat. First in line…

I had originally hoped to get a bit closer to Ancona yesterday but there is a bit of an accommodation vacuum on this route…so we risked the night in Nocera…

It rained. It rained a lot…. …in the night! But we woke to blue skies!! Well….they were a bit blue! Actually mostly cloudy….but IT WAS NOT RAINING!! And it did…

My prayers did not work! (Do they ever?).  It is hosing down!! But we have a long way to go…..and with our ferry leaving Ancona in 57 hours time….we just…

Not much to report today! On the ferry……very relaxed…..and not a bad boat at all! I was a truckie for a lot of the trip!! Whilst us mere mortals are…

The team are ready! Back at our favourite bar for a last coffee before setting off…for a very relaxed first couple of days! (We’ll be near Rome tomorrow!) Given the…

Why…”The Stone Ride”…? Simply a catchy acronym to hide the madness of the proposed bicycle ride from the Southernmost point TO the Northernmost point of Europe!! Roughly……: And that does…