Rig Ready to Roll

I have just about finished my packing and unpacking and repacking routine, and got everything to fit into two small panniers, a cylindrical dry bag and a seat bag weighing in at 16kg.




So what's in the bags?  An itemised list would be way too boring, here's a summary:

• RH pannier: stuff I hope I won't need too often - bike tools/spares & medical kit/supplies
• LH pannier: maps, papers, bike & civvy street clothes, washing kit, water fiilter
• Cylindrical dry bag: bivvy bag, sleeping bag & liner, thermarest mat, all rolled into one ready for rapid deployment at the end of the day
• Seat bag: well stocked pantry
• Orange bag behind the seat cover providing lumbar support: waterproof jacket
• Black bag hanging above and in front of LH pannier: drinking water
• Lunch box just behind handlebar stem: two cache batteries which charge from hub dynamo and power the phone and the GPS

 Please no emails to say what I've forgotten, there's no more space!

And finally... this will probably be the last blog update before I hit the road.  After that, news from the roadside will be tweeted when I can find wi-fi.  Thanks for recent messages and donations to RoadPeace which are already over £1,500 before a single pedal stroke - on a day which has sadly seen yet another cyclist killed by lorry in London, they really mean a lot to me and to RoadPeace, I will try to live up to your expectations.

Dog Stick & TBE update

Following on from yesterday's post, one of the ways I might die (very unlikely) or be attacked (highly probable) is by dogs. So I have fashioned a dog stick to bash and poke them with, mounted by thick rubber band (old inner tube) to the front fork for easy and fast draw on the move.  I have just had a practice run at this out in the street which did attract some funny looks from the neighbours.  I'm probably not yet as fast as Billy the Kid or Bob Munden so will keep practising.

There has been an amusing conclusion to the Europe-wide search for a Tick-Born Encephalitis (TBE) vaccination next week to top up my immunity to this common and widespread disease which people are most exposed to in spring and summer in the woods, ie. me.  This was the reply that had me concerned from an ideally situated clinic in Berlin:

Dear Mr. Evans, we have not the vaccination of tick-borne encephalitis, only Japanese encephalitis and FSME. Mit freundlichen Grüßen, Institut für Tropenmedizin und Internationale Gesundheit, Spandauer Damm 130, 14050 Berlin.

 I had no luck yesterday finding another clinic on www.istm.org to do this jab.  So I decided to enlist the help of a good friend in Germany who could ring round for me and find me a clinic.  To help him I did a google translate of TBE... in German it is FSME.  Hurrah!

Neither of the above is date-related, but my tweet this morning about changing plans and doing RTW by motorbike was an April Fool, did I get anyone with that?

Manic Monday Morning

So today I have...

• picked up the passport from Scott's agency with the Belarus visa in it
• bought a personal locator beacon because for the last week or two most people I've talked to have been helpfully advising how I may die on this trip but apparently a PLB might help
• visited the Vietnam Embassy again and got the dates changed as needed
• done a TV interview for ITV about my pothole crash two years ago and recent reluctant payout by Surrey County Council (6pm ITV this evening)
• picked up five different currencies at Best Foreign Exchange: US dollars, Euros, Polish Zloty, Thai Baht and Malaysian Ringgit (I got Russian Rubles yesterday from a local parkrun friend who had some left over so we cut out the middle-man)
• got an email from the clinic in Berlin where I was planning to get my second jab for tick-borne encephalitis... to say that they do not stock this vaccine
• launched a new continental search via www.istm.org for tick-borne encephalitis vaccine
• released a stressed pigeon trapped downstairs in the lounge... and closed the back door

Now I am going to have a cup of tea!

Visas and Vaccinations

The tunnel goes on but I can see a dot of light at the end now!

I did think that visas and vaccinations were all done and dusted now... but not quite.  Flying over China because I cannot get the Chinese visa means that I will get to Vietnam a month earlier than my visa is timed for.  I've been doing so much rushing about recently that this thought only recently occurred to me, as I was riding my bike the other day.  So I visited the Vietnamese Embassy this afternoon where at first I was told to come back tomorrow because consular services are only available in the morning.  While I kicked myself at the gate in the freezing rain for not having fully grasped the opening hours on the website a few hours previously, a kindly gent of distinctly oriental facial features appeared and questioned my business.  As I described my woeful tale the oriental features softened, and a moment later he had opened the gate and invited me up to the visa office where he entered into spirited conversation (one presumes it was Vietnamese) with the visa lady behind the glass screen, who had been the one, I think, to have informed me a few moments earlier via the intercom, that her office was closed.  Their brief discussion was amicably resolved and I was handed a new visa form and advised to return with the passport, completed form and £25 fee to issue a new visa.  Result! I can do that next Monday when I get my passport back from Scott's Visa Agency with the Belarus visa in it.  What could possibly go wrong?

The Vietnam Embassy was actually very conveniently situated in Kensington on my way back home from the Masta Travel Health clinic near Oxford Circus, which I had also visited today to get a vaccination against Tick-Borne Encephalitis (TBE), one that both my practice nurse at the GP surgery and I had both overlooked.  Our focus had been on South-East Asia which is chock-full of deadly diseases like typhoid, cholera, rabies, malaria, hepatitis A&B, Japanese Encephalitis... you name it!  I'm protected against all that lot, but we forgot about TBE which is prevalent much closer to home: eastern Germany, Poland, Belarus and Russia, as well as much of Scandinavia (where I was last year, in high summer camping wild in the woods, blissfully ignorant that I was putting myself at highest possible risk of contracting a potentially fatal brain damaging disease) and Austria where it is so common and widespread that all children are routinely vaccinated like ours are for MMR and TB.  The second jab must be given at least two weeks after the first, by which time I should be in Berlin, so now I've got to find a clinic there and make an appointment.

I shall be jolly glad on 5th April when all I have to do is JBP!

New improved route for 5th April

I'm getting the sense that there could be a fair turn-out for the ride to Harwich on 5th April, so I have been tweaking the route a little, searching for small improvements, the most significant of which is we can avoid the Bow Roundabout and all of the A11 as far as Stratford, hurrah!

Here is the new improved route: http://connect.garmin.com/course/5207397

If you are planning to join the ride and have a GPS device please load the route in so that if necessary we can split into smaller groups, because it won't be easy to stay all together if we are more than ten or so.

Ride info:

• Grand Depart at noon from BikeFix in Lambs Conduit Street
• about 120km at gentleman's pace, circa 22km/h
• bring a snack to eat on your bike, we probably won't stop till...
• dinner in Samuel Pepys, then...
• ferry to Holland at 23:15, or
• last train back to London at 22:28, or 
• ride home, or
• find lodgings and ride some nice quiet Essex/Suffolk lanes on the Sunday

International Cycling Family to the Rescue!

Finally some good visa news to report: my application for a Belorussian visa has been accepted, hurrah!

Following last week's post I decided to give up on Belarus and go the long way round to Kazakhstan via Latvia and Moscow (Ukraine's out of the question now the shooting's started).  A number of kindly Belorussians had been trying to assist so I emailed them my thanks but said I would not be coming their way because their Embassy would not grant the visa.  Within hours I received emails back from three different people telling me how they wanted to help, the most promosing of which looked to be from Michael Kuz'menchuk who is the Chairman of the cycling club Rucheek from Brest:

Today I spoke with the head of the consular department of the Belarusian Embassy in London - Yuri Alexandrovich Prudnikovichem. And we discussed the issue of your visa. He promised to give you a visa during the day, if there is a formal invitation from Belarus . The invitation will be the organization which I chair - "Brook" (in Russian -- "Rucheek").

A few emails later and I understand it's in the bag!  My visa agent went back to the Embassy today with my passport, application form and a copy of Michael's letter... and it was accepted.  Visa will be issued next week.  Belarus here I come, yahey!
  

The world doesn't want me, but I'm coming anyway

I wonder if the Chinese and Belorussian Embassies in London are colluding?

The other day the Belorussians also rejected my visa application - because I did not have a hotel booking.  So I booked a hotel.  Then they rejected it again, asking for a signed letter from the hotel manager to confirm the booking.  Today I provided that letter - not only signed but also officially stamped!  To no avail: now they want a letter from a travel company in Belarus accepting responsibility for me while I am in Belarus.  A sense of deja-vu creeps over, not to mention utter tedium.  At least they have provided a list of official travel agencies which I can ask for the letter, so in that respect marginally more helpful than the Chinese.  One fewer hurdle to clear.

I'm not sure I can be bothered though, in which case it's back to plan A or C: ride via Kiev if Ukraine is not exploding; or take a lengthy northerly detour to Russia via Lithuania and Latvia.

Hopefully it will all get easier once I'm on the road... in three weeks and two days!