Rain, Pain and Peanuts

After leaving Lyon behind it took 5long days of skating through rain and wind that was fast enough to push back cars to reach Tours. Luckily I had made a new friend who lived there and gave me a place to rest my feet and sleep well. Tours was a very nice town with lots of things to see and do, including a restaurant with a waiter who in my opinion seemed a tad lost in the middle of France, he was from London and spoke in the strongest cockney accent I've heard making Danny Dyer sound like he was part of the royal family, which made going to the restaurant both hilarious aswell as tasty! And yet again it was time to move on and head north west. After leaving Tours I headed towards La Fleche which is about 75km nort west, by this point I was getting absolutely sick of my general diet when skating: my diet mainly consisting of peanuts, pasta and tuna. Peanuts are pretty good for you as they have lots of energy protein and minerals but after 3 weeks of eating them they become this sort of dreaded snack that you only eat because you need to! After about 8 hours of skating I was very close to La Fleche, I was going down a hill when I managed to lose my balance and came crashing down to the floor, luckily nothing serious happened just cuts and scratches down my right-hand side and a lot of pain! I had reached my destination and found a campsite to settle down for the night even though it didn't bring about much comfort as I knew I had to do about the same distance the next day...

This picture is from the river that ran next to my campsite, La Fleche was a very beautiful but small town.

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The people I meet: Fun times in Lyon.

So I spent a couple of days in Lyon and came across lots of different types of people, some are nice, some are interesting and some are just purely insane! First of all Lyon is probably the nicest city I've been to so far, it's full of beautiful parks, museums, churches and has 2 big rivers that run through it, so I was lucky to see the place during my stay even though I could barely walk. I met a nice English guy called Simon who lives and works in Tours, who I decided to go check out some of the local bars with, we ended up being distracted by our English needs and went to an English pub called the smoking dog so we could buy pork scratchings. The second night we went to a couch surfers night at an Irish bar called O'Gills which was a very nice pub, but sadly only 2 other couch surfers turned up so we decided to move to a more local bar. This local bar wasn't exactly a bar it was a small boat that made its own flavoured rums, it also had a couple of people playing acoustic guitars and singing which gave the place a very nice atmosphere. Overall my time in Lyon was amazing and I would like to visit it again, apart from the second night which I spent in fear of my kidneys being stolen due to a crazy person spending the night in the same hostel room as me. My time in Lyon was short but sweet and it was time to hit the road and head west onto more adventures!

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A few days later: The difference between stairs and stares!

What is the difference you ask?
Well in most cases stairs are made to help people get from the bottom or top of a hill to the other end, in my case they just get in the way and slow me down. Having to walk up a huge set of stairs thinking that it will cut a corner just to find out the direction you needed to go is back at the bottom of the hill is really not fun when your bag weighs around 10-15kg. So in my opinion all stairs should be removed just to make my life easier (it would also help cyclists and others who are bound to wheels). Whereas stares are something beautiful that everyone in the world can enjoy! For example you can stare at a sunset anywhere in the world and feel content (more people should once in a while stop to breathe and enjoy the beauty of nature). Stares also help achieve things like understanding one another even though there's about a mile long language barrier, giving a happy stare and pointing at a ridiculously too large a scale map gets you along way! So to conclude I think more people should enjoy staring at beautiful sights and boycott using stairs.
Please take your time to enjoy the smaller things in life!

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Day 1: You think you're lucky?

So on my first day I set off happily towards Savona on a seemingly endless skate when after 5-6 hours and about 55km I reached my first destination. I became overwhelmed with happiness and emotion because of the sheer beauty of the Italian coastline and how succesfully this section had gone. I then decided to make a change to my route for several reasons, firstly the state of my shoes and my feet which were pretty much falling apart. Secondly because the coastline has a lot of cycle paths which enables me to progress faster rather than fearing getting hit by a car or truck every half a second. Lastly the sight of the mountains was enough to stop any sane person from venturing towards them (even though you could argue that im not excatly sane). After skating for around 10 hours my legs and mainly shoulders were screaming so loud telling me to stop that I decided to try something new: hitchhiking, a very useful approach to getting places fast if you are lucky. Thankfully I am fairly lucky and hitched a ride in about 30mins from Finale Ligure to Imperia, where I tried to find a nice spot to sleep. Apparently my luck had run dry for the day so I ended up sleeping in an uncomfortable place for cars to pull over on, cars kept whizzing past and to top it off as I fell asleep a train came flying past on my other side!
Besides the downsides my first day was probably the best I could have hoped for!

A little note: Some people may claim hitchhiking is cheating but due to the state of my shoes (which made it pretty much the same as skating barefoot) I think I can let it slip.

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Breakfast in Italy

So after probably the most pathetic breakfast I've seen in a hotel I am ready to start skating through Genoa heading west. Im only hoping that this day wont bring about anymore let downs! Atleast it is the most beautifully sunny day outside.. Note to self: don't trust Italian breakfasts!

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Start of my journey

So yesterday I arrived in Venice and spent the day walking about and enjoying the beautiful city! Then evening came and I had to wait till the morning for my train to Genoa, this could have been a very boring and lonely night but luckily I bumped into an assorted group of travellers bearing all sorts of instruments and stories. There were 2 girls from Germany, 2 guys from Iceland (they had all the instruments, 2 japanese flutes they had made, a guitar with 4 strings tuned like a ukelele, and a few other random instruments) and a group of 3 who were from Israel. So over all this became a lovely experience even though sleeping outside a train station is cold and uncomfortable.
Today I am on my way to Genoa to start longboarding towards Cuneo and after which I will head south towards Nice. I hope I get to meet more amazing people along the way and make this journey unforgettable!

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Equipment and packing

So I will be leaving next Tuesday and I've been busy sorting all my equipment out making sure I have everything I need. In the photo I took there is most of my main equipment (clothes not included) here's a little list:
1 single man tent
1 sleeping bag + sleeping bag liner
1 sleeping mat
1 mosquito net
1 travel towel
1 venture 40 rucksack
1 compass
1 trangia cooker
Various hygiene supplies (first aid included)
1 subsonic century longboard
2 sets of wheels (1 set orangatang durian, 1 set big ziggs pink + lime)
1 pair of loaded slide gloves

That's my main equipment that I will have with me, obviously I will have clothes and a phone + maps.
All I need to do now is to wait till Tuesday!
Wish me luck!

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