There were hardly any posts from my side here recently. I was not well, spending almost two weeks in and around my bed with a really bad cough. I am still not sure what I picked up, and if the West Highland Way attempt is partly to blame for it, but I am much better now. I started cycling again last weekend, with a nice snowy ride along the Union Canal to Linlithgow and back, followed by a rather wet and windy commute from Stirling on Monday. Understandably I am not at the level of fitness I used to be before that all happened, but I am still confident there is enough juice in the legs. So after thinking about the trip and laying out options for a long time, I have decided to cycle down to Germany again, and hopefully back as well (yet to be decided).

The plan is to leave Edinburgh on Saturday and head down south towards Newcastle. I have four days to get down to Dover to catch a ferry from there to Calais in France. From Calais I will pretty much head straight east through Belgium, The Netherlands and then over to Germany. There will be a tiny little bit where I am looking to take the same route as last year, but otherwise this is a new route to follow, and even longer than last year’s one I did in 14 days. With another four days left for the leg on the Continent I will hopefully be at my parents home in Schwobfeld on Christmas Eve.

With covering around 180 – 200k a day this won’t be any piece of cake, but the weather looks more favourable than last year. The biggest difference is that I am now equipped with proper lights to cycle in the dark, so early starts and late finishes are the main difference to last year’s trip. In addition I will take less gear as well, only the really necessary items, and plenty of chargers! I will try to track my progress as good as possible, during the days on Twitter, where you can follow me @reizkultur, and hopefully there will be some nice reports at night as well. If you know any people along the way that have a nice couch and love some good chat about cycling, then please send me a tweet or a text.

Is the trip for charity? Not directly, I just had not time to set things up in a week, but I would encourage you to donate some money if you like to, there are plenty of good causes out in the world, I leave that up to you. The biggest good thing you can do though is to take your bike and cycle! That helps many people more than a fiver in donations, keeps the planet as beautiful as it is, and also helps you too. Burn fat, not oil! I will surely burn a few calories the next days to come, no its all eyes focussed on getting the stuff in the panniers, check the pressure in the tyres and head off!