Onward Plans & North Island part II

Well that’s New Zealand well and truly cycled. I pretty much went everywhere apart from Taranaki, Northland and Milford Sound and covered 5400 km in 259 hours of cycling. Some of the highlights from the last few weeks and some strange quirky things in New Zealand are in the latest video compilation so take a look to save me typing about them.

So I am now in Australia and it is not what I expected in terms of weather. It has just been pouring with a very strong South Easterly wind which since I’m heading down the coast from Sydney is not welcomed. I don’t mind the hills, in fact I like them, but the wind is tough. Oh well, just have to get on with it.

My original plan was to cycle from Sydney to Perth, but that has changed to Sydney to Melbourne for various reasons. Mainly as Mike, the guy I spent the last few weeks cycling with in NZ, is in Malaysia from early March and we have decided to cycle up to Hanoi together. So it is just 18 days in Oz with the aim of getting to Melbourne but hopefully also up the great ocean road. If I just go to Melbourne it will be about 1000 km and another 600 km to do the great ocean road, so it should be achievable.

On the 18^th of February I fly from Melbourne to Bali where I’ll have a couple of weeks to mainly finish off some things I need to get done and a bit of cycling around. The island isn't that big but is meant to be quite hilly. I’ll probably stay in one or two places instead of moving from point to point each day. In early March its then of to Singapore and about 350 km up to KL in Malaysia. It will then be up to Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. If I can get the required visas for central Asia I’ll cycle all the way back to Europe otherwise I’ll head through China then double back on myself through the Pakistan and Indian Himalaya regions towards Nepal. This way I’ll be there in the cycling period of July, August and September and miss out Tibet where individual travel is not permitted. If I do this I’ll then have to fly back to Europe missing out central Asia.

The football scores are really depressing at the moment and the run Villa had over Xmas must be the worst run of results I have ever known any team have. I am starting to fear for relegation which would be a total disaster.  Anyway, other than the football, I hope all is well back in the UK.

Cheers, Neil