Day off near Trieste. Spent the day on a beach. Ate fish, relaxed, swam, enjoyed. Now into town for food and a dance(?!).
Back on the bikes tomorrow.
Planting our way to Croatia
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Follow us on twitter!We are Jean-Michel Massey from Devon, England and Mike Pierce from Sydney, Australia. This August we will be cycling from Berlin to Croatia, crossing through 6 countries and over the alps.
The trip will surely be a personal challenge for both of us — both physically and mentally, so we're asking our friends to help us out.
Annie Peacock was the mother of three incredible young men (James, Tim and Jonny Rowden) who sadly lost her battle with cancer just a few short weeks ago. In memoriam to her, we plan to raise money for the Penny Brohn Cancer Centre who provided care and support for her and her boys throughout her illness.
The route will start in Berlin, Germany on the 4th of August. We'll head south to Prague, then across to Munich, we'll then head over the alps — taking the highest possible road — and toward the northern coast of Italy, heading south east toward to Croatia, ending up in Petrcane, Croatia about a month after starting.
Sourcing local saplings on our route, our aim to is to plant a tree every 100km of the trip. We'll take pictures and GPS locations of each sapling so we can follow the progress of their growth in years to come. In fact, we'll be documenting the entire journey right here on this blog, uploading photos, videos and stories as we go.
So we ask of you just a couple of things. Visit the site, leave comments and tips as we travel. We'll be relying on kind words and encouragement from you to keep us going. More importantly, if you can spare even a little bit, we'd love for you to make a donation here to the Penny Brohn Cancer Centre to help us reach our target.
Follow Our Progress
The purple line is our projected route, however it's quite likely we'll deviate from this quite often. The marker is our last noted location — if you're lucky you may even catch us moving if you refresh the page a couple of minutes apart during the day.
View this map in fullscreen
We totally planted tree 13 yesterday, but due to excitement of the sea, forgot to tell the internet! Slap bang on the Slovenia / Italy border. We’ll update this post with co-ordinates later. As we’d ran out of Ginko trees, we planted an oak donated by some friendly person on our travels. We both absolutely loved Slovenia, and recommend it to everyone!!
Today, a rest day. Beach, sea, sun, sleep, sea food, and we’ve met up with some friends from the UK. ;-)
Look who made it to Italia. Us. The answer is us. Pretty hot today, but we can literally smell the sea from here.
Hardest day yet. Incredibly hot, intense up and down hills, wrong turns, crappy lunch. You name it… The only thing keeping us going is the thought of a dip in the ocean this evening.
We’re about 45km to the sea. We took a shortcut, but it’s super hilly. 30degree heat, exhausting, power sapping- but still beautiful; thankyou Slovenia.
Tree number 12, our final Gingko carried all the way from Berlin, is in the ground outside of a small town called Vrhnika in the southern part of Slovenia. It’s on a little ridge over looking a small but beautiful valley.
Coordinates are N 45’57.412, E 14’16.504.
Blue blue skies, 29degree heat, no wind, and hard work. It’s not as much fun as it sounds. We’ve left Ljubljana now, and literally running to the sea now.
We’re really enjoying Slovenia, beautiful landscapes, beautiful, friendly, happy people. Not too many hills so far. Anyway, we made it to Ljubljana. And for the first time since Prague feel swamped by tourists. Anyway, it’s smiles all round. Just 130km to the coast.
We made up the most exhausting climb ever. At times gradient around 20%. Truly the biggest challenge of the trip yet. We’re now about 40km to Ljubljana. Looking for a campsite now!
See those mountains on the right, we’re about to climb up and over them. Today is tough, Hot @ 31’C, exhausting.
