Monday, June 24, 2024 – Friday, June 28, 2024
So it finally begins!
After over two years of gradual planning and organizing, the day has finally come. We’re starting our long-awaited journey. Even though we had so much time to plan everything, there is still a lot left unfinished. But most of the important stuff is done, and we know that we will never be 100% ready. I guess we will just plan along the way and go with the flow.
Based on this, we don’t even have a predetermined path—just a general idea of where to go. Our first goal is to somehow get from our home country of Slovenia to Spain or Portugal. Along the way, we will travel through Italy and France, crossing the Alps and Pyrenees Mountains. From there, we plan to fly over the Pacific Ocean.
We can hardly say that we’re in the best physical shape, which is why we plan to start slowly. For the first week, we will ride across Slovenia, sometimes staying with friends and other days simply camping.
The last day before leaving was quite chaotic. We gathered all our stuff and tested if we could pack everything into our bags. Then we had a short photoshoot with everything we planned to take with us.
On Tuesday, we planned to start around noon, but unsurprisingly, we were delayed by a bunch of last-minute errands. Our official start from home was at around 3:30 pm. We made less than 10 km when it already started to pour, so we took shelter at a railway station for about an hour. We took it easy, slowly crawling up the hills and enjoying the descents. Not much happened on that first day; we just ate way more snacks than we should have. To be honest, we still haven’t completely processed the scale of our planned journey. It simply feels like any other short trip we’ve taken, with one difference: our bikes are really heavy, it’s like riding a cruise ship on the road.
At about 8:30 pm, we had enough of riding and found a nice spot to spend the night, hidden by waist-high grass. We pitched our tent in light rainfall. During the night, a large storm developed around us, with heavy rain, flashes of lightning, and rumbles of thunder waking us up several times. Neither of us slept very well.
We set an alarm for 5:30 am to avoid being spotted by passersby, but it took us over an hour to pack everything up. We rode about 8 kilometers before finding a nice bus stop where we could eat breakfast, brush our teeth, and do some morning stretching. We also spread out our wet tent on the grass to dry in the sun. Before we knew it, over two hours had passed.
We planned to spend a few hours at the railway station in Celje to work on our blog, but due to some minor inconveniences, we had to skip that and leave Celje. Because of these inconveniences, this blog is coming out later than planned. In Laško, we met some friends to say goodbye, then cycled to Rimske Toplice, where we spent another hour and a half eating dinner, snacking, and brushing our teeth at a bus station in front of a cemetery. Just as we were about to head toward Zidani Most, we met Nejc, who pointed us to Plaža Rimske Toplice (Rimske Toplice Beach), where we could camp for the night. By this lucky coincidence, we also met a nice group of friends and talked with them for an hour in their chill-zone on the Beach. Nejc and these friends are the first people who helped us, and we really appreciate it.
Once again, we had stormy weather that woke us during the night. After packing everything up in the morning, we hurried to catch a train from Zidani Most to Rakek at 8 am. The train was quite full of seniors, so we had to squeeze our bikes in and stand beside them for the whole two-and-a-half-hour ride. From Rakek, we had about 15 km to Iris’s home.
Friday was our rest day. We cleaned our bikes, washed clothes, and spent time with family. Primož also got a new bike horn! Try to spot it in the images in our future posts.
