Sid and Doris Bonkers and their Epic Journeys
"Everybody is normal until you get to know them"
Hot air hand dryers – More reasons not to compete in the Tour de France – Vending machines – Stones on the roof – Major Bumsore – The Milestone Question – Prevailing winds, truly. 1. Hot air hand dryers I used to LOOOOVE hot air hand dryers when I had a motorbike. I remember sitting under one in a motorway…
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A place to park the occasional gem… “It’s a good job these shoes aren’t white any more or they wouldn’t match my trousers.” (In Amsterdam) “I wonder whether you get a lot of Dutch people going to Venice.” “I knew it (the route) was going to be bad when I rode past a construction site with all the bike path…
Read moreThe SS16 runs along the whole of the top/east/back-of-calf coast of Italy, and we’ve actually cycled up about half of it, now I look at the map. We started at Bari and left just before Pescara. And here are some things that flitted through my Doris-ian mind as I pedalled along it. We started in the “deep south” of Italy. …
Read moreAs we progressed south through Serbia and Bulgaria, we started to see a fashion for pre-booking grave spaces. The his ‘n’ her graves have been a bit thought-provoking, but in Apricena we find a huge newly-built mausoleum where you can reserve as many slots, for as many generations, as you want. Having seen a couple with their fronts off, I…
Read moreOK, we seem to have whizzed across Turkey and Greece rather faster than we had originally planned. We’d looked at finding a nice Neilson beach resort to chill out in for a week, but the dates were hard to coordinate and in the end, at Patras, we simply bought a Bari ticket and carried on. So here we are in…
Read moreI thought you would like this notice, which was posted at intervals alongside a very nice cycle lane somewhere south of Giovinazzo. Showing various famous Italian cyclists, it contains suggestions such as cyclists: I will run red lights with caution; pedestrians: I will jaywalk with caution; and generally: don’t be a jerk. Splendid stuff. Says all you need to know…
Read moreSo I mentioned Spotto and its variants. Part of the pleasure of this game is creating new versions on the fly – “Boato” has been going for a while and requires the boat to be in a very unlikely position/condition, for example in the middle of a roundabout. In Lesvos we were talking to some repeat visitors who explained that…
Read more1. Coffee OMG we are back in the Land of the Latte. Brits drive the Italians mad by calling it a Latte, obviously it is a Caffe Latte otherwise you will only get a funny look and a glass of hot milk, but ever since maybe Hungary we haven’t had a decent cup of coffee. In Serbia, Bulgaria and Turkey…
Read moreAs I mentioned, I got a bit philosophical while cycling across the Danube plain, and I decided it was time to focus on something other than war. 1. Mosaics I have always been fascinated by mosaics. I had “Mini Mosaic” as a child, fun to make the mosaics but a terrible challenge to prise the little tiles out of the…
Read moreThe mosaics in the Chora church were really fantastic and inspired me to Poesy: I am a Pasha With a hat I wear my turban Just like that Some people say That it’s too fat But I am THE Pasha And this is MY hat.
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