1. Route plan.
I've been figuring out my route. Turns out there's some mountains I didn't know about on the way, so I will be practising pretty hard on the Pennines in the Easter holidays. I've mainly mapped out my route. It's approximately this:
Day 1 - Halifax to Hull. Overnight ferry Hull to Rotterdam
Day 2 - Rotterdam to Eindhoven
Day 3 - Eindhoven to Köln
Day 4 - Köln to somewhere in the mountains.
Day 5 - Somewhere in the mountains to Wiesbaden
Day 6 - Wiesbaden to Heidelberg.
For anyone who feels I am cheating by taking the ferry instead of using a pedalo or something, I will be doing a 2nd pretty large trip from Bavaria to Berlin in August, so don't worry, I'll be clocking up enough miles over the summer for even the most sadistic naysayers.
2. Equipment.
I've got aero-bars and clip-in pedals for my bike, so I've been managing to clock up some pretty high speeds. I've also aquired a rather fetching blue all-in-one cycling 'bib', which has about as much crotch padding as my bike seat itself does. Which is good news.
I've been thinking about what to take and basically i'm going to travel extremely light. Going to try and borrow a lightweight 1 man tent from somewhere. Going to only take 2 or 3 days worth of clothes and hand-wash them every day or two.
3. Training.
Carrying on with rowing at the moment (http://boatclub.hertford.ox.ac.uk/). Big week of racing is in a week and a half. Doing 4 to 6 intensive sessions a week and have been doing some bike rides round the Oxford ring-road as well.
I'll sort out some sponsorship pages, make this page look perty and find some easy way to put up route maps in the next few weeks.
UPDATE: I've set up a donations page at http://www.charitygiving.co.uk/jameshutton. This website doesn't take the 5% commission that justgiving.com does, so that's pretty good. PLEASE fill in Gift Aid details if you're elligible, it can add 28p to every pound you donate.
James
