Hello and welcome

Let’s get this started then shall we. I’m a 45 year old woman with a passion for mountain biking. After a second round of surgery on both knees, I was advised to start cycling. I’m not sure that’s quite what the physio had in mind back then but hey, it worked, kinda. Despite all the crashes over the years and more surgery, my knees are stronger now than they ever have been. I’ve been at it for nearly 20 years now, so you’d think I’d be bloody amazing at it wouldn’t you? Sadly not, but I keep doing it because I love it. I’ve been to some great places and met some great people along the way and still feel like I’ve barely got started. I like to mix it up a bit, so do a bit of everything really. Park, Xc, Downhill and Enduro. What I don’t do, is any road riding (which ironically would be the best thing for my knees) it scares the shit out of me! This last fact you may find amusing when I tell you what I have planned.

Nearly ten years ago now my parents and sister all upped sticks and emigrated to New Zealand. I stayed put in Blighty. I visited a few times but never really felt the pull to live out there. What I did fancy however, was to travel around the country for a few months and experience the place like they did before they put down roots. Well that time has come. For a variety of different reasons, I find myself in a position to finally do it. I put the idea to my new bloke after we visited my family at the beginning of this year. The conversation went a lot like this……

Me “did you enjoy it?”

Him “yeah, I loved it”

Me “Enough to go back for a bit longer next time?”

Him “how long?”

Me “Six months?”

Him (Slight pause) “yeah ok”

That was it, decided there and then. It took a bit longer for me to get up the courage to ask my boss for the time off. Thankfully he’s a bit of an adventurous type himself and he said yes so bloody quickly it thru me a bit. So much so, I had to ask if he did actually want me to come back. Yes, he did! A date of the 1st April was agreed. If I’m not back in time to plant the hanging baskets, they’ll be trouble. Fair enough!

So to New Zealand we are headed, but we wanted to stop somewhere on the way. I’ve not done that before, never had the time on previous trips. It’s always been about visiting the family. This time would be different. So after a trip to Trailfinders, it was decided we were heading to Indo-china.

First stop Bangkok, then because we fancied doing something completely non-cycle related for a change, we are cycling, yes cycling, from Bangkok, through Cambodia and into Vietnam. Inspired partly by the documentary Blood Road (if you haven’t seen it yet, watch it on Redbull TV) I wanted to see Vietnam and after talking to the cycle expert at Trailfinders, it was decided that this trip would be the best one for us. We will use their mountain bikes and will be 95% supported all the way with a local guide for each country. This trip will take two weeks and takes in a good deal of road riding (albeit not a lot of tarmac), somewhat amusing given my dislike of roads and hopefully a generous amount of off road sections, hence the hardtail mountain bikes and not road bikes. One of the highlights of the trip will be to see the amazing Angkor Wat, by bike we will be able to cover more ground and get away from the bus loads of tourists apparently.

Providing we survive that trip, we then head to New Zealand for about 4 and a half months and fly home, with a brief stop in Singapore for a few days. The bloke wants a Singapore Sling in Raffles – very “Bond”. To be fair, if he survives nearly five months in a campervan with me, he’ll deserve a couple at least!

Now just so you’re aware, I’ve never written a blog before so please bear with me, in fact truth be told, I barely use a computer. I work with plants, they require no computers at all. So it may be a bit of a rocky start but I’ve been asked by a surprising number of people to do this, more than two nonetheless, so here goes…..

With less than three weeks to go, final preparations have begun.