Finally got the visa applications for Russia, China and Mongolia off to Real Russia today. If you research Russian visas you will eventually end up on the Real Russia site. They seem to be the best, but their site and on-line forms can be frustrating. Being in the mood for visa applications is rare ! Best advice; fill the forms out carefully and when you are done messing around call or email Real Russia for fine-tuning. The staff were excellent, and for the price they should be. Let’s see if their service is as good…

Got a letter from Open University. Looks like I passed the Physics short course ! Completely chuffed. No idea of the mark – it just says ‘Pass’ – hopefully I get some more feedback. Now just the Maths ECA to complete (nervous).

Team MMB+3

Mountain Biking was great fun as usual and Betws-y-coed is stunning. We must go back there in summer. The weather held but we had a late start and took an easy cruise around parts of the Marin trial with a crowd from V’s work. I have now had enough of renting bikes. They are never setup how I like and there is always an issue – like having to get the bike back to the hire shop before it closes. When we get back from our travels I want one of these.. all donations welcome.

View from the top

Betws also has a serious selection of outdoor shops – V and I had a little time for browsing. You know it’s a cool shop when you can walk around all muddy in your MTB gear and no one notices ! So much more satisfying than browsing on-line when you can try the stuff on. We had big plans for Sunday; Visa applications, video editing, trip planning and the Tonale blog report, but these all failed to get off the ground when mission control had technical issues….. getting out of bed. Now we are really running out of time !

Well.. Forty Days and Forty Nights… left to go. I Thought about taking a trip out to a desert and fasting for the duration but the 50 Deg C heat in Oman last year has tarnished in my interest in deserts.. still very interested in desserts though. I think we’ll rather go Mountain Biking in Wales tomorrow.

[Insert elegant segue here] More RTW/2 gear arrived today. Ordering clothing online is once again proving to be a pain. Should have gone for the S not the M ! Patagonia Borderless Trek Zip-offs Odd name since they are going to have to go through a LOT of borders 🙂

Sunday will be more RTW/2 trip prep. Got to get those passports off next week for visas. Will also post more on Tonale and make a decent dent in the video editing.

The company I work for rocks!  Spoke to my line manager today about our travel plans and he is cool with me taking unpaid leave for the rest of the year instead of resigning. Since they have crap loads of work lined up for next year it means I will have a job when we are done travelling which will be quite usefull since we will be flat broke by that stage. Thank you Mott MacDonald.

Shitnal Railway Station

[Edited] We’re back from boarding in Passo Tonale – what a great time. Perfect conditions, great company, hellish neighbours, disastrous trains and a 26kg snowboard bag !

Hope to have the DVD in stores by the end of the month. It took 24hrs to get to the resort (38 hrs awake) and 12 hrs to get home. Eish… Long story… Good thing V took the time to write it up – I just edited. Boring trip drama after the break.

(more…)

We’re heading off to Passo Tonale for a week. Snowboarding and Italian food – paradise ! Conditions are looking good. Can’t wait.

This will be the last bit of ‘comfort travel’ for a while. A hotel to come home to, flights and transfers all booked and hassle free. Nothing like what’s coming our way in May….

On the Temtiwr trail

Incomprehensible languages !

Got to spend the day yesterday mountain biking at Coed-y-Brenin in Wales with V and a friend of hers from work. Beautiful place but their rock-garden trails are tricky, especially since it was V’s first time out with her cleats. The weather was great, almost ‘hot’ when the sun came out and infinitely better than the pouring rain we had previously. Great to get out and feel like we have done some exercise. More training definitely can’t hurt.

Today we got down to planning some dates and times for the Trans-Mongolian train and other stops in Russia. We want to book our train tickets in advance as recommended by many sites and also need to provide this information for the Russian visa. We’ll be booking tickets and sending off for visa’s when we get back from snowboarding (week after next).

I’m looking forward to the Star City tour, which needs to be pre-booked. They have to do a security check before letting you in. Would love a flight on the ‘Vomit Comet‘  or a hop in a Mig but both are prohibitively expensive so we’ll settle for the standard tourist sites and possibly some fun with AK47’s at a firing range.

Russia is already looking more expensive than we planned !

Time to stop messing around make this available to the whole wide world. There will be changes, upgrades and general messing about with the blog over the next few weeks – it’s one of my favorite things to do. Lets see what happens when I push this button… hmm… probably nothing… what a dissapointment.

After hours of searching over many days I’m officially bored of trying to find travel underwear online in the UK. I’m going with Jockey ! It must be something to do with underwear models – pretty sure their gym routines are longer than 30mins and they make me feel “Less Brad Pitt than Brad Pitiful” (Thanks Tim Minchin).

Would it not be more comfortable if V could shop for me, and I for her ? Shopping for lingerie is just so much more satisfying than shopping for  jocks 😉 … and to any outdoor clothing manufacturers out there, “Travel Lingerie ” seems to be an un-tapped market.

V off to work - Look'n Good in GoreTex

Look what arrived by courier yesterday. No, not V. The ‘Chilli Pepper Red’ Downpour Jacket. A serious piece of gear.. for a serious adventure…. serious. Should also come in handy for our snowboarding trip next week – will report back on how it performs in the snow.

And yes i’m also a gear junkie. I got a travel shirt yesterday – from Rohan (not the kingdom) and am wearing it today with the intention of hand washing it tonight in the sink to see if is dries by tomorrow !

BTW – We are both in pain having decided to start a tiny exercise routine, about 30 mins a night, to get us ready for the snowboarding and travel. I hope it makes a difference (doubt it), but I guess its better than just sitting on the couch (we do that too).