Hellooooo,

It’s been a LONG time since I last updated, so here comes a big update 🙂

I’ve been back from Antarctica for more than a month now, time is flying. I’ve been keeping busy with work, but also quite a lot of distraction as I bought a new bike 2 weeks ago!

It took me ages to decide which bike to buy, this is the first new bike I have ever bought so I wanted to do it right. And what I was looking for was a bit strange (at least for the UK, I think I would have much less trouble back home): a touring bike but without dropped handlebars. Finally I decided to go for the Dawes Kara-Kum. I had to order it online, I tried hard to find a bike shop that stocked one, but no luck. Here’s a picture of Christmas in March 🙂 and the precious bike:

It was quite a nice day on the day it was delivered, so we decided to go for a bike ride north of Norwich. It was fun!! I really love my bike, especially the so-called “butterfly” handlebars! You can see what I mean in the first picture.

We cycled for a couple of hours, it was a really nice afternoon. We even saw some windows screensaver landscapes 🙂

A few days later, I bought some really nice panniers (those) and a cycle computer (it’s blue and it has a thermometer!). On Saturday we decided to cycle to Cromer. Well we never made it to Cromer, not even to Fakenham, as we were out in the open fields with strong winds all the time. Plus we got lost.. euhm we maganed to cycle for 10 km and come back to the same place! At some point in the afternoon we decided to turn around and go back to Norwich – we did a 100 km! That’s a lot, I was so exhausted when we finally made it back.

In the first three photos you can see a deserted station. The cycle path we took is an old railway line that is not in use anymore, and made into a cycle path. Very convenient, it’s only for bikes and pedestrians and since trains (and Hannekes hehe) don’t like hills, it’s mostly flat (sometimes you are quite high compared to the rest of the landscape, on a dyke). It goes for about 20 km to the north of Norwich (to Reepham), it’s a nice way of getting out of the city. And you can find some old stations on the way, most are turned into houses. But this station was the place we came back to after a detour of 10 km, so we don’t like it that much anymore 😉

We went on another cycle tour last weekend, this time south of Norwich. I have lots of photos of that trip, but they’ll have to wait for a new blog, this one is long enough already.

It’s been really nice weather earlier this week, I enjoyed long lunch breaks outside and getting my freckles back hehe. Today it’s cold and misty again though… I hope Easter will bring some nice Spring weather, we are going to Wales for 5 days! We are staying with Paul’s parents who have a house there. I’m really looking forward to a break and to see Wales!

That’s all for now, more photos soon! (I promise!)

Hanneke