I havn't updated this since I was in Lviv, Ukraine, where I managed to break my laptop screen, so what you're gonna get here is a quick rundown of the past few weeks. Just the highlights basically.
I left Lviv heading for the Carpathian mountains and the Slovakian border. I rode along a secondary road called the H13 which definatly hadn't been re-surfaced prior to the football last year...
Met this guy, Igor, outside a small resturant in Sambir, really friendly bloke, plus the resturant owner gave me a free meal when she heard what I was doing. Amasing.
Really enjoyed the carpathian mountains. Some fairly challenging cycling, beautiful scenery and not a lycra lovvie in sight thanks to the shit roads.
About five minuites after this picture was taken I heard an almighty bang, then another and another. I went round the back of the shelter and some local guy was throwing himself at the back wall of the hut and trying to break off some of the planks. Apparently he needed a few bits of wood off it to fix his house. Haha, man I loved Ukraine...
Ukranian Ferrari!
Yeah, no cols here, but still well worth seeing. The roads are horific. Quite a few times cars came at me from the wrong side of the road simply becasue the other half of the road was so rough.
An old Jewish cemetery.
It took me about one and a half days to get from Lviv to the Slovakian border. Had a bit of shit off the border guards, who wanted some paper encouragement, but eventually I was let through. I got stopped twice on my last day in Ukraine, once at a checkpoint on one of the provincial borders and once by a policeman on his 20 year old honda that looked like it had been hand painted by a 2 year old child, apparently its fairly common for forigeners to cross the carpathian mountains and sneak into ukraine without the required stamps, anyway all was in order so he left me alone. Ahh Slovakia, back in the Euro-zone, I remember thinking 'Its all domestic from now on'.
C'mom Slovakia, show me your teeth ladd! haha
All of my route from home to St. Petersburg, Moscow and through Ukraine up to the carpathians was flat, I was in for a shock.
Yeah, you can keep England, I'm moving to Slovakia haha. Nice smooth european tarmac aswell. Prices are also very cheap, I was renting little cabin things in slovakia for between 6 and 8 GBP a night.
Met this guy (gonna edit this and add names later, got them all written down, just can't remember them) at a petrol station just over the Slovakian border. His mate gave me a map of Slovakia which was really helpful (cheers pal). He even rode with me to the nearest campsite so I wouldn't get lost. Ended up having a few shandys that night ;) and spoke to my mom for the first time in 6 weeks haha. Also got bought a pint of half white, half black German beer by the absolute tank you can see sitting with his Mrs in the background. Nice one brother!
Trailblazing..
A Russian tank in Slovakia. By this point I was pretty shot. I didn't have one day off the bike on the journey from Lviv to Amsterdam. Not a problem on the flat when your on the flat but in the hills not resting kinda takes its toll.
This guy worked in Bristol as a trucker running stuff to Birmingham, small world! Touring on a 45 year old 50cc yamaha. Looked pretty fun. About 5 minuites before I took this picture I was stuck in a big line of cars behind a truck that was parked in the middle of the road with its hazards on, I thought he'd blown a tyre or had some mechanical problem so I scooted around the cars and overtook him. As I pulled out in font of him I realised he'd hit a pedestrian, not a pretty sight. The police and ambulance had already been called so there wasn't much I could do so I just carried on. A stark reminder of the dangers of being on the road.
Every car that overtook me after that, after having passed the accident, gave me a bloody wide berth.
Yeah, hanging. That climb was insane, about 1 km of 20%, you can see the road I went up in the right hand side of the picture. Nice bit of descent on the other side though. Slovakia definatly has teeth.
Me with another bicycle touring hero, Steffen Low from Germany, been on the road for a year, done over 13,000 kms and visited some pretty exotic places (Iran, Georgia etc.) jealous isn't the word...
'The sun may rise in the East at least it settles in the final location' ;)
Then into Austria, I rode along a trail called the 'Iron Curtian Trail' for a bit. Its on the Czech/Austria border. Pretty interesting.
One of the old Iron curtian bunkers. When the border was still up and running people on the west side could go right up to the fence and look over into the USSR. On the east side there was a 30km 'exclusion zone' which you had to have a special stamp in your passport to be allowed into, says it all really.
Vodka at 10am with this group of Czech canoists, great company although the sauce made the days riding interesting. 
And the Czech Republic, country number 13. Honestly didn't do Czech or Austria justice but both beautiful countries.
The original plan was to visit Bratislava, Vienna and Prague but I decided to spend the last few weeks of the tour spinning through the countryside instead. With the netbook broken it would of been hard to find places to stay in the city and I always loose a day when I visit citys just because I feel I need to get out there, take some pictures and do the place justice.
I rode through Czech to a place called Cheb, then crossed into Germany.
Stopped at a Chinese market on the German border to try and get rid of some of my czech currency. Had a poke around one of the shops and pulled out a T-shirt, a sleveless top and a pair of shorts. The little guy on the stall totaled up the cost on his calculator. I almost pissed myself laughing when he asked for nearly 40GBP for three items of clearly counterfit clothing. I offered him 8 quid; basically all my change and, after a bit of banter, he accepted insisting that he was 'doing me a massive favour' hahahah!
Of course for all the awesome scenery and interesting history its the people who make cycle touring so fun.
Helmut (god I hope thats right) and his wife, whose name I've forgotton like an idiot. The first English people I'd me for about 6 weeks (although I did meet a Scotsman in Ukraine!) Cheers for the beers guys and the fantastic stories (especially the one about your visit to Zimbabwe), hope you had a good trip back to sunny Essex.
Czech, cyclist I met in Germany, who wasn't too keen on the high price of German campsites. I've got to say I agree with him. In my books anything over ten euros is pretty extortinate, especially when you've gotta pay one euro for the showers too. According to team Esssex Norway is pretty bad for this (even the Germans find it expensive!). Cool guy, even though he didn't speak a word of English, we managed to get by with a wierd mix of German and Russian. He was cycling to Spain, good luck with the trip bud!
Met Peter outside a Netto in western Germany, immediatly clocked a proper cyclist when I spied the brooks saddle, koga randoneer frame and pretty awesome handlebar set up. Anyway Peter invited me to stay at his house and him and his wife put me up for the night. Great people. Even sorted us out with some dinner and brekfast the next morning! AND while I was there I managed to get my rear wheel repaired by the local bike shop, it had thrown three spokes due to the weight. Sometimes you need a bit of luck eh? A bit of luck and some good people. Thank you Peter, and happy cycling.
Wild camping in Germany!
Eventully I dropped off the hills somewhere in the middle of Germany and blitzed the few hunderd kms to Amsterdam. Nothing really interesting just putting the hours in on the bike. Well, nothing interesting except....
This fooking massive rat, look at the size of it!
So that was a very brief description of the trip back, I'm only about a week from home so I'll tell you guys all about it when I get back. Can't say I'm thrilled to be heading back to nothingtown after three months of balls out adventuring but hey, needs must.
To try and dull the pain me and Sherman Klump hit an all you can eat ribs buffet last night. The results were disgusting.
The Michelin man gave up after two racks of ribs, while I went on to equal the resturant record of five full racks of ribs. Yeah, I felt pretty ill afterwards...
I know theres much more to see in Germany, Czech and Austria. I didn't do these countries justice, so a return trip is definatly on the cards. South Germany is like a hill junkie's paradise.
I'm a bit gutted that I couldn't keep this up to date, I know quite a few people were reading it, so apologies for that but I hope this kinda makes up for it. I will probably stick another update on on the way back, let you know how I get on with the last 500 miles and I'll keep updating this when I get home.
Take care.
'Don't worry, don't be afraid, ever, because this is just a ride...' - Bill Hicks
