Rome to London 2024

"Slept in barns, left again about 7:00, scenery getting finer, village delightful. Slept in Einach, most beautiful of villages. Glorious sleep" The above was Austen's diary entry for 28th April 1945 while mine below is not much different for today. "Slept in Gasthof, left Stadl am der Marau about 8:00, scenery remaining great. Rode 3km to Einach, a most beautiful of villages and took pictures. Crap sleep!" Thanks Austen for providing most of "MY" opening paragraph. The Aussies weren't keen on replicating the sleeping in barns bit (see Pic) so I was forced to spend the night in the hotel as well...  It is quite special being able to follow along and through the villages Austen marched through - he had to walk in the cold and through snow, we rode bikes on road carpet ashphalt on a pleasant day temperature wise albeit we encountered the odd shower of rain. We arrived at the hotel at Altenmarkt about 4:00 to a comfortable bed and hot shower - again tw

On the 26th of April 1945, Austen Deans began his march to freedom, having been held as a Prisoner of War (POW) for about four years. The last POW camp he was in, Stalag XVIIIA was located near Pols in Austria.  My good friend Paul Deans (Austen's son)  has shared Austen's march to Freedom POW diary with me and that is why we traveled to Judennburg so that we can then ride our bikes on the journey Austen took to his eventual freedom in April/May 1945 - 79 years ago.  Austen was a war artist and even though wounded in Crete and captured in 1941 he continued to paint in captivity, as he did during his entire life.  I had the good fortune of meeting Austen on many occasions and he was such a lovely man. What he endured during his war service and those four years as POW we can not even partly come to comprehend. So, this part of the ride is to see the country Austen traveled through, to put real context in to his paintings that I've seen from this era and in a way to say thanks

Today was a 500 km, 14 hour relocate by train day for us from Bolzano to Judenburg. We caught the 7:02 am train with a changeover at Fortezza on the way to Lienz, where we had an enjoyable day from 10:30 through till we caught the first of our next two trains at 5:24 pm through to Judenburg arrival time is 9:00 pm. We made our way the 250 metres from the station to the Centre of town, found a lovely Cafe and then spent the rest of the day sitting there eating and drinking sufficient to not be asked to move on... It was a little bit rainy so we relocated for the afternoon session to the warmth of the inside of the Cafe.  Peter and me both needed a new battery bank, mine to replace the one I left behind and Peter to replace his that was beginning to swell and burst at its seams (bursting, definitely not a good thing for a battery bank as the next step is perhaps a self combustion lithium ion fire which I hear are hard to extinguish). We are both very pleased with our new purchases.  Ther