London to Auckland

We left Melk at 6.15am in attempt to make a 9am appointment in Vienna with the Austrian Children’s Cancer org. In spite of our best efforts the locks slaughtered us again and we were half an hour late. Beautiful Vienna put on some sun for us and we had a good stop for an hour [...]

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We reached the Danube River after a couple of hours and it was in flood. It was a massive body of brown boiling water moving at about 15kph and with a noticeable slope.The whole river was full of huge logs and debris and we were forever dodging stuff. The PWCs were relishing going down hill. [...]

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More locks, more rain and really cold. Playing a game of cat and mouse with the German water police. They are nice guys and I think we are winning but they are close behind. Today they sent in one of their helicopters to beat us up at 50ft and we got sprung speeding again. Reached [...]

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We’ve washed up Erlangen on the Regnitz River and, happily, we’re still on schedule. The weather’s been a bit cold and miserable and we’re a little tired of the terrain, being rivers and locks, but all good as far as progress goes. We’re going hell for leather to make a 4 pm meeting on Friday [...]

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We don’t speak German. We don’t read German. So imagine our surprise when we plowed into a nature reserve, populated by rather cross greenies. Apparently there was a ‘Do Not Enter’ sign. In German. Who knew? We did not make ourselves popular. The night spent in a campsite. It rained.

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In memory of Agnes Robertson The team hasn’t really seen each other since leaving London; predictably the riders are way faster than the support crew! Still, we managed a little catch-up in the pub, had a bit of a yell at each other and ended up happily talking through various issues. As a result, team [...]

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Leg two: In memory of Johannes Elberse Two days out from departure and the team are all pretty wired. We’ve slept a bit, but mostly moved, moved and moved some more. That and talk to media. Launch day from London was magic, camera crews from home, the BBC and Al Jazeera in attendance, as well [...]

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With the last day of preparation before the ride upon us the team is hard at work doing last minute alterations to the skis and it is looking at this stage that we will just ‘fall over the start line.’ With the team vehicle now covered in The Ultimate Ride stickers we really look the [...]

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Flat out today so this will be short and sweet. We spent the day getting jobs done and doing interviews. Travis and I trained into London for the live TVNZ Breakfast Show interview. Interesting but disconcerting as we couldn’t see Paul Henry. We were sitting in a darkened room facing a camera with two big [...]

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If you happened to be following us yesterday on the tracker you will have noticed that the tracker was playing up. It showed us launching at South End at 5.30am and then riding out a few km and then stopping for some 5-6 hours. If you were astute and knew about the massive sand banks [...]

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