24 May 2011

24 May 2011

We have had a very productive few days while staying with Johannes and his family in Groningen, Johannes has been a wonderful help with phoning people and helping us book the bikes and ourselves tickets back to Africa.  We have booked tickets to fly back on 9 June, just waiting for the company to verify my credit card and then we should be in business.  We are flying with Egypt Air so will probably have to haggle to get a seat!!  We still have not reached out turn around point, Halmstad, Sweden, but hopefully will be there this weekend, only 805km to go.  So PC, we will see you in a short while.  We have arranged pallets to pack the bikes onto, cling wrap and bubble plastic to wrap, lots of tape, tie downs etc, so should be on track for packing the bikes, ready for delivery to Schipol airport!  We also went to the post office today, and sent a large box of extra goodies, that haven’t been used, home.  Nearly 14 kg, but have saved a huge amount of space.   Our Heidenau tyres have been ordered and we will put them on the bikes once we get back and start preparing the bikes for transporting to Nairobi. We have done just over 21000km to date and (touch wood) no punctures and the front tyres are still good for our homeward trip so we are just replacing the rear tyres, wonderful mileage.  We plan on riding home slowly, through Kenya and Tanzania, exploring Zambia and Namibia on the way home.

We went for a ride around the area here last night got back at about 10pm just as the sun was setting, very typical Dutch country side, lots of pastures, very green and quaint villages every few kilometers.  The flying in this area would be fantastic, the only problem would be that we would never be at home with the sun only going down so late.

L & S