Having given notice to our workplaces, informed our landlord about our leaving date, and told friends and family about our plans, there is really no way back. Less than eight weeks from now, we will be setting off from our flat in London, point the bikes east and head towards Australia. ||

The first time the idea came up was seven years ago. I was studying in Germany, and Guy was living in the UK. One day he phoned me and declared: “I’m going to cycle to Australia”. I decided that he was crazy and didn’t talk to him for three days.

Somehow, over the years, Guy has convinced me that a longer cycling tour is a fantastic idea, and so here we are selling our possessions on Ebay and cycling around Richmond Park with a combined 50kg worth of books in our panniers every weekend to train.

We’re moving to Australia after spending 7 years in the London, so we decided we might as well take some time off and go by bike, at least for part of the way.

The plan is to start slowly – over the past few years we’ve each had our share of cycling related injuries, and we want to give our bodies time to get used to the idea of cycling every day with a lot of weight. We will head to Northern France, then visit friends in Germany and follow the Danube river east all the way to Turkey. Once there, we will decide how to continue. We’ve had our challenge by cycling Land’s End to John O’Groats last summer, and this time round we don’t have our hearts set on cycling every centimetre of the way. Our main goal is to make the most of our time off and enjoy it.

For now however, we are busy losing sleep over the details of the trip and the fact that we will soon be officially unemployed.