The inspiration for the trip is a film from the 2006 Bicycle Film Festival. Adventure High documents 5 guys who cycled from Mongolia through the Gobi Desert into Tibet, I left the cinema thinking that these guys were totally crazy… off the chart bonkers…and was gobsmacked, but the seed was set. I saw this film with a housemate Jules. 2 years later saw him and partner Jess cycling from South America back to their families in Australia. (julesandjess.com) I thought they had lost the plot but agreed to join them for a week in Europe. It was pretty epic, they were race fit, we’d done a very little training and it was a lot of peddling to keep up, but great fun!!

In 2012 we started thinking about our own adventure and stumbled across a set of cycle touring videos on Vimeo, the trip of Mel and Kates ‘Cycling Silk’ gave us more than a couple of ideas: