Sometimes there is a little lag between an adventure and the posting of an entry about an adventure. It takes me a while to recover, write, and then post! This page has been created to provide readers with a real-time update on where we are.

29 June -Ongoing 2006: Cycling Europe with a baby bike tour

Please see our latest blog entry and follow the link to our latest website!

11- 29 June 2006: Freiburg, Germany

Freiburg is Germany’s ‘bike capital!’ It is a city with streets full of riders and pavements full of bikes. Not suprisingly it is a far more relaxing and quiet city than you would expect for it’s size. Dylan, Timshel’s brother, is currently living and studying in Freiburg and so has played tour-guide, leading us to the best venues to eat and watch World Cup soccer games. We are camping in a great spot with wireless internet connection, so now I am sitting in our tent reading my emails for the last two weeks, updating this blog and building the ‘Cycling Europe with a baby’ website! Our bicycle, trailer and panniers have all arrived here and have been assembled. We will start our bike tour ‘Cycling Europe with a baby’ on the 29th of June.

5-11 June 2006: Taize Community, France

Taize is an ecumenical (all denominations of churches welcome) christian community of Brothers, who welcome thousands and thousands of visitors each year. Visitors join the white-robed brothers in prayer three times a day. The style of these prayer services are practised throughout the world: everybody sits down in a candlelit church, and sings simple chants together. It’s just lovely to be a part of. Most visitors to Taize are young people, but everyone, and anyone, is welcome to join them. At certain times of the year Taize runs ‘family weeks’ where a kid’s program is run and parents join together for a biblestudy run by one of the brothers. This was what we had come to Taize for. It was an educational, challenging and inspiring time.

23 May-4 June 2006: Avignon, France

We found a very lovely campsite full of soaring sycamore trees in Avignon, France. We arrived here needing a restful place to stay and “Baggatelle” has hit the spot! We will stay here for a while to regroup and re-establish our routines. So for now it’s a life of handwashing our clothes, toddling about the campsite and walking down to the campsite shop for the morning delivery of bread and pastries. When we need a little more excitement, (or need to attend to the arrangements of “Cycling Europe with a baby”) we walk into the walled city of Avignon.

25 & 26 May 2006: Orange, France

Our site in Avignon has provided us with a base for our 3 day ‘practise’ tandem tour to Orange, France. Sarah joined us, helping to care for Reuben and showing much patience in waiting during the food/drink/sunscreen/nappychange stops. We got lost at one stage but were saved by a party of 20 french recumberant riders!

20-23 May 2006: Rome, Italy

From the peaceful surrounds of Asissi, Sarah, Timshel, Reuben and I were thrust into the pulsating heartbeat of Italy: Rome! A hotel room in the city centre was our respite from the overwhelming colour, vigour, and buzzzzzzzz.

17 May-20 May 2006: Asissi, Italy

After leaving England, and flying to Bergamo (near Milan) Italy, we then travelled south to the beautiful town of Asissi. We were met by our friend Sarah, her Dad, and his partner. We are camping out of town in a site surrounded by olive groves.

Late March, April, Early May 2006: Northeast England

Timshel writes: We’re back at the Shogren’s Pilgrim House again in Esh Laude. Chris and Claire have packed up their house in Spain (where we visited them a week ago), caught the ferry and drove almost the full height of England to arrive here. So we’ll be having lots of fun squeezing 12 people around the dining table - until they head back to Australia in 3 weeks time.

The house is a spacious Catholic presbytery which, along with the attached St Michael’s church and a barn, was built in 1798, one of the first Catholic churches to be established in this area following the 1778 legalisation of Catholicism in England (it was prohibited by Queen Elizabeth I in 1559). For some reason it was built away from the town and in a way that a passer-by would think it a farmhouse, I guess because there was still a fair amount of hostility towards Catholics at that time.

The ridge field surrounding this place has a rich religious history - it is ‘Salutation Field’, because it was here that pilgrims travelling to Durham Cathedral could get their first glimpse of their destination. The cathedral is a significant site in Celtic spirituality: it contains the tomb of St. Bede, as well as a shrine to St. Cuthbert who (it is argued) may be buried within.

Mid March 2006: North coast of Spain

We are in Comillas, on the northern coast of Spain. It is the Europe of my imagination (and the brochures!); cobbled streets, stone buildings, double-storey houses with flower boxes and washing hanging from the balconies, tiny twisting lanes. It is very beautiful. No-one speaks English. Friends from Melbourne, Chris and Claire, have been living here for two years, writing childrens books and screen plays and leading a terribly romantic existence. It was great to share in a small part of their ‘Spanish adventure’!

Late February - March 2006: Northeast England

We are pilgrims in a pilgrim house: St. Michaels Pilgrim House in Esh Laude, near Durham in England’s north east. (I am trying to grow a beard, neglect my personal hygiene and walk with a knobbly old stick in a bid to appear more ‘pilgrimy’).
Our hosts are the Shogren family. Paul and Helen, and their children Casey (14), Dylan (12), Jerome (9), Sophia (7) and Aiden (5). Originally from Australia, the Shogrens have been living in England for nine years.
They seem to have a constant stream of guests who happily eat their way through a brilliantly stocked larder that is a large room kept cold by the hill-top winds. A statue of Saint John Vianney sits high on a shelf in the corner, he watches over the larder. Paul says that St. John, an ascetic who only ate a potato a day, seemed the best saint for the job.

February 2006: Edinburgh, Scotland

Our first foreign ‘home’. We are staying with the Igoe-Cochrane family. Marie Louise and David, Daniel (11), Robert (9) and Francis (3) in a old block of flats that has a huge red front door and big windows looking out onto the park where golf was invented. It has been wonderful staying with a local scottish family! They have introduced us to black pudding, white pudding, potato scones, wee sausages, oatcakes and orange cheese.
On arrival, Reuben was giddy with excitement at so many playmates and so many toys! We were giddy with exhaustion following the flight and sooo relieved to be with generous hosts and good friends.