So, when you are deperaretly trying to complete all your work so you can bugger off cycling for 10 days what do you most need?  That’s right….Speed Awareness Training.  No I shouldn’t have broken the speed limit, yes it serves me right, but what a futile exercise.  If you ever need to design a 4 hour course on stating the bleeding obvious Essex police have beaten you to it. 

Anyway that is all in the past now.  By getting up at 3:30 I have managed to finish my work and survive SAT; just a few bits of admin and I can head to Alan’s from where we will get a taxi to Hethrow tomorrow morning.  Alan is slightly less prepared.  Late last night he emailed me to say he cannot find his tent.  You might think that when planning a CAMPING trip you would check you have a tent a little ealier than this but welcome to the world of cyle-touring with Alan.  Any minute now I expect an email saying he can’t remember where he put his bike.

Fortunately for Alan the weather for Pisa in the next few days looks like this:

 so he will be comfortable sleeping under the stars.

Assuming Alan knows where his passport is we will hopefully report safe arrival and completion of the first 40 miles tomorrow evening.

Ciao