Long Delay

To paraphrase Mark Twain 'News of my demise has been greatly exaggerated'. A more honest answer would be that after my road trip across Australia I lacked the enthusiasm to update the blog. Actually I nearly gave up! However after a couple of queries from readers (I'd almost decided there weren't any) I've decided to continue. The road trip from Perth to Canberra took six days. There were some long days of driving but I paced myself and took several breaks including a long break in Adelaide. It was good to reconnect with old comrades at the reunion in Canberra. Hard to believe 50 years have passed since we graduated. After the balmy warm Perth weather Canberra was a shock. Well probably not a great shock as I was anticipating it. Being a new modern city it is well laid out. I suspect being the Federal capital money isn't a major consideration. However I found it sterile and artificial. Not a place I would want to retire to. To each their own! My planned return trip was thrown into chaos by heavy rain in far north western Queensland. The terrain is very flat and the floodwaters made their way southwest closing the outback roads and tracks I had planned on using. That will now have to wait for another trip. Instead I drove directly back to Perth in 3½ days travelling approximately 1000km daily. A long boring drive on the blacktop. What now? The bicycle as been disassembled and packed. My brother kindly took me to Perth airport International Terminal.

I'm on my way for my next cycling trip. Our youngest son asked me if I would join him cycling the Loire Valley, France for two weeks. I agreed, but didn't want to travel back to Europe for two weeks. At the end of our fortnight together he will head home to Manchester and work Sad smile whilst I'll cycle back through northern France, Belgium and the Netherlands before taking the ferry from Rotterdam back to the UK. A after a 7 hour flight I arrived in Hong Kong where I had 9 hours in transit waiting for my onward flight to the UK. I'm starting to get very familiar with Hong Kong airport. This time I got slightly clever. As anyone who has travelled by air in the last decade will know carrying fluids is difficult. However the cost of purchasing water inside the airport secure area is expensive. Obviously the retailers know they have a captive audience. When in the transit area last year I noticed there were free water dispensing outlets. When exiting the aircraft after landing , this year I took the free plastic water bottle given to me on the flight. I ducked into the men's toilet before the security checkpoint and emptied the bottle. There was no issue carrying it through security. Then it was only a matter of refilling it at one of the terminal Water Zone stations.

Hong Kong was humid, wet and cloudy.

I should probably mention why I have again opted to head to Europe via Hong Kong rather than using the more usual route of Singapore or the Middle East. The reason is the baggage allowance. Cathay Pacific allows two pieces of hold luggage at 23kg each. This allows me to take the stripped bike (minus the battery) at 21kg with the second bag containing many of the heavier bike components. None of the airlines flying from Perth via Singapore or the Middle East have a similar baggage allowance All going to plan, tomorrow I'll be in Manchester reassembling the bike. Oh Hell! After writing this post in Open Live Writer I've discovered it throws an error when attempting to publish the post to Blogger. My initial reaction is that Google have made another security change inadvertantly blocking OLW. I'll cut and paste this post into Blogger then look to see if there is a solution to continuing with OLW.