Planning our Trip

After both quitting work and entering retirement we decided to broaden our horizons a bit by doing some travelling and at the same time escaping the worst of the British winter. We decided that our first travel adventure would be a 2,000 mile cycle (spread over 2.5 months) around SE Asia including Cambodia, Thailand, Laos and Vietnam. 

 

Our planned route

We started planning the trip in 2022 and I purchased on ebay a couple of 30 year old Dutch touring bikes for the bargain price of £125 each - fully equipped with touring panniers and brand new Schwalbe Marathon touring tyres.

Bargain eBay touring bikes


I was very pleased with my purchase and set about refurbishing the bikes ready for our trip. We took the refurbished bikes to Brittany for a test tour over the summer and they performed very well. The only negative was the weight of the bikes (19.5kg) as a modern touring bike should only weigh around 12kg. We also realised that we were carrying far too much stuff and would have to halve our load if we were going to make it through the mountains of Laos.

Nine weeks before our our departure disaster struck - Sarah fell off her mountain bike and broke her wrist ðŸŦĢ

Sarah​ ​after her wrist operation

After an operation and the addition of some metal plates it was clear that our holiday plans would have to change. Sarah won't be able to use the brakes or steer a bike for a few months. Luckily though we still have the tandem which will hopefully mean we can still do our SE Asia bike trip 😉ðŸĪžðŸ’Š

The tandem comes out of storage 

 We hope you'll enjoy following our blog over the next couple of months and would love to hear from you all with as many messages of support and encouragement as you can muster 🙏😃

 





Comments

  1. Jacqui7 December 2023 at 01:22

    2,000 miles! OMG!! Looking forward to following your trip. Stay safe! Look after that plate and enjoy your trip. Hold on Sarah... its going to be one hell of a ride xx

    ReplyDelete
  2. Matt Oakes7 December 2023 at 02:12

    Have a fantastic trip guys. I look forward to reading the blog as you go. I hope the wrist heals well. Enjoy yourselves and stay safe.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Steve and Tracey7 December 2023 at 02:12

    Max - you seem to have waited to the darkest wettest day in December to send this out to annoy us trapped in the UK doing spread sheets for the next 2 months! - can't wait to read Sarah's food sorry I mean cycling blog - have a great trip you two xx

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous7 December 2023 at 02:32

    Good luck guy's, looking forward to your updates, you'll love it 😊 xx

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anonymous7 December 2023 at 06:11

    Well done both. And best of luck. Still not happy you left me to look after Mike for a week in the mountains.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Rich7 December 2023 at 07:14

    Best of luck Max and Sarah, glad you got over the accident issues and have made it to SE Asia, looking forward to your updates. Love to you both xxx

    ReplyDelete
  7. Kevin7 December 2023 at 09:05

    Hope it all goes swimmingly! Keep us posted

    ReplyDelete

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