We took a local train to Tabor, about 100km from Prague. Riding on the sidewalk in Prague is illegal and the traffic is crazy busy, so we didn’t feel comfortable riding side by side with all the peak hour vehicles. Tabor is a popular start to the Greenways Cycle Route, which takes you from Prague to Vienna. When we got off the train we encountered something we hadn’t done yet: Hills! And plenty of them.
Starting at 7am as it was going to be a big day of riding we loaded up the bikes in the chilly rain. We were heading for Breda the next big town on the map and it was going to be our longest kms yet: 66km. We should have added another number 6 to that as every km totally sucked. The bike paths followed farming paddocks and field lines and the wind and rain came howling straight across them with no shelter or protection. For 6 hours (yup another 6) battling headwinds and crosswinds the bikes were reduced to a crawl with every rotation of the pedal a huge exhausting effort. The hours crawled by and we could do nothing but put our heads down and get through, soaked to the bone and freezing.
The idea of travelling long-term started as a ‘what if?’ daydream but became louder and louder in our heads. We wanted to travel for six months to a year at least, the biggest debates being money, stuff and time. We had an apartment full of 7 years of our lives being entwined, from the modular couch we agonised over at a furniture super centre, to the TV we had debated size vs. living room space, to the photos loving printed and stuck on the walls. Would we be able to give up our possessions? The constant debate on how much we would need for the trip, and how much we would need for re-entry was at the forefront. The budget affected which countries we wanted to visit, and how long we could travel for.
Days of Light 