Colombian adventure

Given that so much amazing stuff happened on my recent Colombian adventure I thought I would blog it up so that I can remember everything that happened years from now and so that people can read about it before I have a chance to bore them in person.

It also means I can share some of the 300 pictures I took - I work with the "take loads, one will probably look great" method since the invention of the digital camera....

My travelling partners were Vic and Sarah - they'd travelled together ten years ago through South America but had skipped Colombia. This trip was an anniversary for them and I managed to tag along after drunkenly meeting Vic at Sarah's birthday. 

Here they are rocking a "strong look". Strong looks became a big part of our trip and I will be featuring a catalogue of them here - ranging from the goggles+sunglasses look to the walking boot with adhesive tape look. I will be pointing out any strong looks as I go. 

Before I begin the first instalment, a word of advice for anyone transferring via the States. Contrary to what you might think and what seems logical (you are not actually entering the country) you DO need an ESTA (USA visa) and they will fingerprint you even when in transit. 

As you may have guessed, we did not realise this until we were stood at the check-in desk at T5. Certainly made for an exciting start to the trip..... but I'm not elaborating as this is a blog about the amazing stuff that happened.

We did manage to get there though and arrived at our hotel in the capital, Bogota (apparently the third highest capital city in the world) circa 1am. We'd booked the first couple of nights in a fairly nice place with a pool and sauna to give us time to get our bearings. 

And get our bearings we did - we'd been informed that the roads in Bogota were closed on Sundays for cyclists and that a great way to see the city was on two wheels. We made our way to the local bike shop to rent some cycles. Here's a look at the hot bikes and helmets we got:

The tour started off pretty well and we got to see some cool graffiti project by the local school kids. However, things then took a turn for the worse and it started to rain. Lots. Now, I am a keen cyclist commuter in London but a good downpour can make me run pretty quickly for the tube. This, dear reader, was not just a downpour - it was a hurricane mixed with a typhoon. probably.

The guide didn't really seem to mind and just issued us all with some highly ineffective ponchos - think Alton Towers log flume style. However this might have been one of the earliest strong looks of the trip:

A sort of rainbow KKK if you like. This is of us near the end of the tour - in a cemetery.  Sarah had sensibly decided by this point to stay sheltered at the entrance - she did miss a random blue grave where apparently "the misfits come to hang out and rub 20,000 peso notes on the stone" according to our guide (in the green). 

We also took in a fruit market:

A bar where you chucked heavy weights into clay whilst drinking a lot of beer - we also discovered in this bar that one of the guys on our tour was the acting ambassador to Panama!! Pretty useful: 

A second hand market. I got excited before I realised it was more junk metal rather than vintage clothes: 

A bull fighting ring - the current mayor has banned bullfighting so this fairly new stadium is now used for, errr, bike tours...

And finally a coffee factory!! I don't drink coffee but Sarah and Vic seemed to be big fans. I did try one cup here but I have to say it made me feel a bit queasy. I'm sure it's good quality though - the beans felt really nice:

And that was the bike tour - pretty fun but pretty damp. Unbeknownst to us, this would not be the first time on our trip that we would be damp for the majority of the day with no real means of getting dry. More of that later. 

The day ended with our first Colombian dinner - we tried to find the Tequila museum and failed after a long walk so ended up having.... lasagne. 

No matter, the next day we had a proper feast, traditional style. Meat/fish with rice and plantain. YUM. The first time round. We had this exact same meal quite a few times before the holiday was done. 

We also tried to get to the gold museum on our second day. No one told us that the museums all shut on a Monday. Added to this fact was the weather - it was not raining. A bike tour would have been ideal...

Next up was the big mountain in the midst of Bogota - accessible by a cable car or a funicular railway. Sadly the very steep, scary looking railway was shut so it was up the orange line:

to the top for amazing views: 

And down again for sight of our first llama!!!!! SO CUTE: 

And a traditional hot chocolate with cheese. I don't think it's supposed to look like this but it was tasty. A note - if you don't like cheese, South America may not be the continent for you - they love cheese. And deep fat fried maize. Both together is also a standard. 

That was pretty much Bogota done. Inbetween the above, we did also spend an obscene amount of time shopping for Colombian jeans and Masglo nail paint - both recommended by a beauty therapist as must haves. 

Up next was our trek in the jungle up on the Caribbean coast - that will be the focus next time and where some really strong looks came into play. 

getting lost and getting sunburnt

And here is the penultimate post for the blog - contain your sorrow, there's still one installment coming tomorrow morning.....


Currently sitting in the hot evening air having a glass of wine suffering possibly from sunstroke - yes, dear reader, I have arrived at saint jacut de la mer.

It's pretty lush, check out the all action snap i managed to take whilst cycling here. This was just before I bowed to temptation and went for an instinct detour.... I had left Dinan mid morning and it was roasting. Having made my way fairly easily onto the right road to saint jacut I realised I had gone pretty far down the Gaussian curve and set myself a pretty quick ride.

Thus when I saw one of these on the side of the road, I decided to follow it in earnest, even though it felt like it was the wrong way.

These signs have been scattered around throughout the trip - basically France lends itself to cycling, they make a big effort to create scenic routes for your enjoyment and they are all signposted with these green bikes - there have been several times I have spotted one and instinctively wanted to follow it... this time I did!!!!

It's a bit like the capital ring walk - basically a massive walk all the way around London that you can do bits of if you fancy - for people who live in stokey, look at the lamppost at the junction of church street and stokie high street, you will see the green man sign.

I have attempted twice to follow the green man signs with my good friend sarah davies - once not massively sucessfully, the latter time, a week before my trip, we did rather well out of him. Hence my confidence that it would be the same here and if I followed the little green bikes it would all work out.

It didn't - I got lost and was halfway on the way back to Dinan when I consulted the map, cursed the green bike signs and found my way back. To here:

random hotel in saint jacut, only one here. It was still roasting so I headed straight for the beech, the sea was still freezing but I got in there and finally went for a swim. Then had a massive sleep on the beach, got a sunburnt back, found an old copy of the Times at the hotel, knocked off the killer sudoku, the classic sudoku and the codeword before heading out for a massive dinner of seafood, cheese and pasta. Lovely!!!!


Also picked up this - not an amazing novel but now I am hooked and am defo going to make sdw read this

when I get back so she can tell me, in her professional literary opinion if I have missed the point......

from combourg to dinan

yes, yes, yes this post is unbearably late - I have left you all in a void of suspense without an update for more than 24 hours - what can possibly have happened??? Death, romance, eloping?????

Sorry, none of those things, just a lack of wifi - or weefee as they say here.

I did write my posts on time, so here goes:


Dinan - possibly my favorite place on the whole trip - I left late from Combourg in the morning and proceeded to get massively caught in the rain on the way to Dinan. No matter, it was only spitting and it was very humid so it made quite a nice refreshing change.

Stopped off, as planned at Saint Suliac for lunch - it was as pretty as promised, sea, sand, small cottages, a random virgin statue in a mini shrine on a mountain:

Also managed to get a little bit lost but not too badly - obviously I have made up bike trip rules for myself and one of these is that if I get lost, I have to detour back to the route on my map, even if I happen to have ended up on a road that takes me closer to where I want to get to.

My luck was in whilst following this rule for the latter part of the ride - it was chucking it down, so much so that I had to have my shades on to see - must have looked like a bit of an idiot wearing shades in the pouring rain but needs must - I can't see properly if i'm squinting against the rain.

Turned out that the route I had chosen for myself was actually a great cycle and walking only path right along the river into Dinan - the rain cleared up, there were loads of fishermen, it was quiet and beautiful - result!!! Not such a result that Dinan is massively cobbled and massively hilly - cobbles + hills is more than my road bike could deal with so I had to push all the way up the Rue Jerusalim (found out later this is the most famous road in Dinan).

Got to my charming digs, above a pub, showered, changed and headed straight off on the walking tour of the ramparts - the brochure the lady at the hotel gave me had two walking tours: old town and ramparts> I plumped for the latter as I figured I had already seen some of the old town and each tour was two hours so I could only squeeze one in before dinner.

Two hours my eye - after a mere hour I had finihsed the ramparts tour and set off on the old town tour - much to my delight this included several vintage shops!!!!! very well behaved, didn't buy anything, I think my frame and bags will crack if I try to cram more in.......

Dinan is very touristy but that's fine because it's sooooo cute and prettty:


Stopped off at the hotel for a G&T (please note the wonderful conical flask-esque glass, this would make a great gift for any chemist) before heading to a cute restaurant on the river for, at last, moules!!!! So many I could not finish the whole pot!!!!

flies in my suit on wednesday and today's (Friday's) journey

yes, dear reader, in an effort to keep this blog less confusing and up to date (only one day to go!!!! phew!!!) I am posting about what happened on the day before yesterday's trip and what I am doing today. I realise I have been a whole day behind for this whole blog but ho hum what can you do.....

Anyways, what happened on Wednesday - seems so long ago I can barely remember it!! Ah yes, I recall - I woke up in the lovely farmhouse, had the usual french breakfast - always seems as if they cut up an entire baguette and put it in a basket with some home made jam, plus a croissant - too much bread, and then headed off towards Combourg.

It was a pretty blustery day and has made me realise that whilst cycling in the rain is never a joy, it's much more preferable than cycling in a strong head wind - imagine me, dear reader if you will, struggling up a hill in rural france, crunching down to the lowest gear possible (I managed to use the lowest gears several times) only to reach the apex, try to tumble down the other side but find it impossible due to the wind - it was that strong that I could not get any speed up. There were moments when I was pleading, out loud, to the wind to stop - that's how bad it got.....

I also had to use a bit of instinct at certain times going through towns where the map was just not detailed enough - one such incident took me towards a motorway junction- I tell you, it was pretty terrifying, I thought I was going to end up actually on the motorway, it's really hard to tell whether there's an alternative to going down a slip road.... here I am contemplating my options whilst at one such junction....

And just when I got past all these massive junctions back onto the rural roads that I am getting to know and love, something else happened - I could hear a fly buzzing really loudly by my ear and went to swat it away - only to discover that it had actually found its way up my sleve and into my top. I pulled over obviously in a massive panic that it was going to eat me or something and the buzzing stopped - I assumed it had gotten out and ran my hand over my right shoulder just to check - I touched a lump and the buzzing started again - it was still stuck in there - cue much tugging of top to try and get it out to no avail - after a minute of this torture, there was only one thing for it, yes, dear reader you are correct, I had to take my top off whilst on the side of a french road. I think at least one car went by, if not two but the fly was out.

The rest of the day was plain sailing after that, I can tell you!!!!! The "ball pit" I was hoping for turned out to be just a lake but you could cycle all the way round and swim in it where there was a little man made beach - another non-swim due to coldness for me i'm afraid but I did get my toes in.....

Arrived at my nice little hotel on the lake in comnbourg, quick outfit change and then straight to the chateau - after yesterday's amazing gardens I am now big into the chateaus - check this one out, it was massive

Got to go inside although no snaps allowed i'm afraid so you will just have to look at the one above and imagine lots of rooms with old furniture - it was the home of Chateaubriand, the writer, and there were loads of interesting relics from when he was there - letters, seals, passport from when he was in the uk embassy. the tour guide was also amazing - she was speaking in french but kept telling all these ghost stories for the kids and screaming really loudly at various points in time - quite amusing if you have no idea what they are in relation to.

We also got to see the mummified remains of a cat (Look away now cat fans!!!!) - apparently it was custom to concrete a black cat, still alive, into the walls of a chateau to keep the bad spirits away - pooooooooor kitties, I don't think there was a provision of Whiskers left each day for them.....

Had a massive dinner and a massive sleep before heading off for Dinan, where I am now, sat in a sunny square writing and just about to head off on today's ride - again, getting shorter, as Rod rightly pointed out, down the slope of the Gaussian curve......

Today is my second to last ride, back up to the coast to a place called Saint Jacut de la mer - looks lush and I am hoping it will be hot and i can finally get the courage up to swim!!!!!!!!

today's (Thursday) journey

Gosh, getting spent to the max with all this blogging - so here's a standard, yawnsome post about today - fairly long ride again, making a detour to stop at saint sueliac for lunch - apparently it's the prettiest village in the region - and also passing through saint helen!!!!

garden action and an encounter with some french people

Just about catching up now if I can get a post done about my fun times on Tuesday.

I hung around at the hostel for ages as it was raining loads that morning. The sweet receptionist said it was fine for me to stay as long as I wanted and have as much tea as I wanted. She did warn me that the rain was due to continue all day.

It was working pretty well actually because I was not due to check into La Bouexerie until 1800 anyway so a later start was good.

Finally circa 1130 it stopped so I got going sharpish. Actually that turned out to be the last of the rain so I was very pleased. Enough talk about weather - although as this is about cycling and the weather really does matter when riding, I think I'm allowed to talk about it a bit...

The cycling was great - tough uphills followed by bombing it downhill. It was so much fun that I would routinely find myself doing a massive "wooooooooooo!" out loud on a downhill. This was the view from early in the day, remained pretty much the same throughout - rural France:

I also managed to not use the phone but just the map - trying very hard to not rely on the phone map and just use the paper map.

I got to the forest I wanted to visit around lunchtime - the zip line tree fun play things were closed but the sign on their hut said they were open again at 1300 so I stopped by a beautiful lake for lunch:








Alas, soooooo gutted that the hut just didn't open and there would be no chance for me to enjoy the swings in the trees - I think I would make a special effort to come back just to go there - it just looked epic:

However, it was possibly for the best as I had a lot of ground to cover and would probably have been on the things for hours if they were open.

The route took me actually through the forest for ages - and part way through I saw a deer in the middle of the road just hanging out. Tried to capture this magic bambi moment but the deer seemed to get frightened and ran off - strange, I am so good with animals, normally they flock to me as if I were doctor Doolittle.....

Then I got a tiny bit lost but bumped, almost literally into another brown sign telling me to go to a chateau.

I followed it and ended up here:
You couldn't go in the building but the gardens were open and the woman doing the door said the magic words - hedge maze. I love, love, love a good hedge maze so in I went.

She was telling me it had been remodelled to represent what an old style chateau garden might be like - I was expecting lots of toipery but it was so much more - this is probably one of the best places I have been so far.

She told me it had been designed with "13 surprises" to entertain the walker - I really enjoyed the idea of a "surprise" in a garden to keep you from getting bored.

There were indeed several amazing surprises - here's where I got really snap happy but I will only bore you with a couple of my favorites:

A window through the hedges into the adjacent garden.....










toipary (spelling, no idea!!!!):

A THEATRE - made of hedges - they actually stage shows and concerts here!!!! There were four wings and also several boxes - you can't really see from the snaps but the stage is raised slightly as well.

 And of course the maze- this is the signpost and also the outside of the maze - it was pretty big and quite dark and menacing inside.


Felt a bit like being some sort of fairytale heroine whilst wandering around the whole thing - minus the swishing hair and dress (I did not get changed to visit this garden.....).

Finished off the visit with a cup of coffee sitting staring at the other bit of the garden (the bit where there were no surprises, it was just massively chopped to perfection) and feeling pretty lucky that i'd followed a brown sign - who knew I was so into gardens??!?!??!

Anyway, enough happy snapping - on with the trip.

Again more hills and countryside - I was proper pacing it now so I could get to my digs on time. At one point, I had to stop and stuff a load of blueberries into my mouth as I was knackered and felt as if I had not eaten for days. Bumped into an old french man on a bike - we had a chat of sorts, although he spoke zero english.

I think we were talking about age and I think he said he was 76 - I also think he was telling me there was an english man who was 89 who lived on a farm to the right and that I should visit - he just kept pointing at the map, waving his arms and yelling "tournez a droit!!!!!". He then told me I had very good french!!! hahahhahaha.

I finally arrived at my lovely, lovely house for the night - a huge french farmhouse - and met my host. There was another english family staying at one of the gites next door and we chatted in the pool - very sweet kids, just doing gcse's - massively puzzled by the fact I was cycling on my own.

The room was just what the doctor ordered - homely, spacious and a bath - my back was very happy with the bath.

Then I had my first french dinner party experience - me, some old dude who lives in house (but is not a relative) and the husband and wife - food was amazing, vegetables!!!! I've missed having veg!!!! the conversation was tricky to follow to say the least but I managed to get across where I'd been and where I was going, I think I might have told them I was an engineer by accident..... hmmmmm. I was mildly drunk by this point in time as they kept giving me wines and ports......

slept so well and had delicious breakfast - loving the way the french eat, a meal is always a real occasion for them.

today's (wednesday) journey - ball pit in the forest???

after yesterday, I think today will only be a disappointment - it was so much fun and such a long ride!! However, I have already scoped the map and there is a chateau in the place I am heading to and in one of the forests, there appears to be a ball pit - is it ok for an adult to go in the ball pit? I think I will ride past it and see if anyone is around - if not, I will jump on in. I also suspect that google translate may have got this one a bit wrong as it sounds unlikely but who knows - may be the french love ball pits....

Legs seem to be holding up fine - had a bit of a left knee issue the day before yesterday but a bit of "on the road seat adjustment" action seems to have completely solved that. Felt like such a pro pulling over and whipping out my repair kit - granted it was just for seat readjustment but still, I think I probably looked highly professional to anyone passing.

I have also got much more used to using the drop bit of my drop handlebars - perfect for bombing down those hills (when the downhills actually materialise!!! I have this really stupid black spot that makes me think if I'm going down the map then it will be down hill - must pay more attention to those contor lines......).

And here at last is the picture you've all been waiting for - this is what I look like for most of the day, every day.

Cycling gear is hot......