Leaving

Time and time again, I’ve been told that the “leaving” part of a big adventure is the hardest part, and whilst I can’t confirm that until we get back, it’s certainly been a challenging and emotionally charged few weeks.

In hindsight, we certainly should have finished work earlier and given ourselves a week or so to move out and pack our bikes up. Instead, we finished work on the Thursday, before setting off on the Sunday. I knew that the extra few hundred pounds from working those extra days could fund a week or two out on the road - so I couldn’t quite justify doing this - which has left me a little frazzled now!

Setting off

Sunday seemed to roll around before we knew it. 

Bags packed, bikes ready, house cleared and locked up - it was time to set off! After all this time, it was amazing to finally start the trip until… SNAP… my chain broke - just 500m from the house on the first hill. Zach quickly took the broken chain link out and reassembled the chain, but suddenly ordering the reusable chain links to Zach’s parents house to collect along the way became a very silly idea. If the chain continued to break as I rode, I’d have no way of fixing it - setting out on Easter Sunday meant that most bike shops would be closed - not that we were passing any en route.

Quickly back on the bikes, the broken chain was behind us as we continued to cycle towards Kendal Leisure Centre, where some friends and my parents were waiting to see us off.
I heard the next chain snap, looked down at my pedals, and soon realised that it was actually Zach’s chain which had snapped - only 1km into the ride.

I knew this wasn’t normal, a quizzical look to Zach and he explained that he’d taken apart the chains which came with the bikes to wax them, then put them back together. Some time after this, he realised that you aren’t supposed to do that to these particular 9-speed chains… but thought it would be fine. Evidently, it wasn’t!

A little shaken, we turned up at the leisure centre and were surprised to see a lovely group of friends gathered to send us off, and a few with bikes to ride out with us.

Actually setting off

We finally rolled out about half an hour behind schedule - and thankfully my chain only snapped another one time that day. Storm Dave had made an appearance for the weekend, but luckily for us, this meant a strong tailwind - which was worth it, even with the hailstorms, sleet and rain which came with the wild weather. 

When we made it to our campsite in Kirkby Malzeard it had felt like a very long day!

On Monday we continued to Zach’s parents house in Selby, where we would be having a rest day to make any final changes to the bikes and our kit. 

There turned out to be quite a few changes we needed to make, from new chains to be put on, extra bar tape, making the panniers stopping rattling to making a tiny waterproof jacket for our little Herdy mascot 🐑 

The ferry

The ride out from Selby today (Wednesday) couldn’t have been more different to Sunday - we had no mechanicals, the weather was amazing and it was so flat, we could have already been in the Netherlands! 

Sat on the ferry now, I finally feel like I’m decompressing from the last few weeks. I’m looking forward to getting to the Netherlands (my first time), finding a rhythm riding each day, and hopefully getting sit bones of steel as I (fingers crossed) start to adapt to riding Pamela, my touring bike.