Great photos.

If you had invited Bailey and I, Bailey could guard the bikes night and day. :)

A guard dog would be great! :)

That storm ended up lasting about 84 hours or so, and then finally the wind died and the sun came out.

This is a photo of our cabin ... the refuge in the storm ... on the morning after the storm blew away ...

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7275/8...96e4bc4c_c.jpg


There are lots of these cabins in caravan parks in Australia and France.


I've also added quite a few more photos of Switzerland.

Updated story ... :)

http://www.machka.net/RTW_2012/RTW_Europe_Main_2012.htm

Updated photos ... I've added all the Mont Blanc photos. Mont Blanc was quite an experience!! Absolutely breathtaking! We took a train/bus up to Chamonix and then crammed ourselves into a cable car which took us up to about 3800 metres for a good view of Mont Blanc.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/machka-...7631598534353/


http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8182/8...e386f7c6_c.jpg

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8463/8...ba8941a7_z.jpg

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8467/8...24e649e7_c.jpg

The trip up to the Aiguille du Midi is stunning, think of the job of constructing all of that on a spire on the mountain!!

There is a hiking route called the Tour du Mt Blanc that is fun and beautiful. We started and finished in Chamonix, hiked into Italy, then Switzerland and back into Chamonix. We stayed in mountain refuges, so civilized for mountain travel.

I've uploaded more Switzerland photos, taking us to the Switzerland/France border. On our last day in Switzerland, we cycled from where we were staying to the Switzerland/France border on the south side of Lac Leman (Lake Geneva). If we were to return to Switzerland (which I would like to do one day), I think we would catch a train to Evian, France (where the Evian bottled water comes from), and then cycle into Switzerland. It would be less expensive and less stressful than the method we chose this time. Cycling out of Switzerland was lovely, and the lake is beautiful. :)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/machka-bb/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/machka-...7631598534353/

The town of Zermatt, the Matterhorn, and one of the electrical vehicles. Internal combustion engine vehicles are not allowed in Zermatt (with a few work vehicle exceptions) ...

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8043/8...2b4aa24e_z.jpg


Cycling route/path near Martigny, as we were cycling out of Switzerland ...

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8467/8...95fc3211_z.jpg


Lac Leman (Lake Geneva), taken on the French side of St Gingolph ...

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8469/8...dfae7cbf_z.jpg

(Click photos for more)

Did you see any private electric vehicles? Or any other kind?

The type in the photo were the most common, and came in several different sizes.

There was a large parking lot outside of town where visitors to the town would park their cars, and then these little busses transported people into town and to their hotels. Each hotel appeared to have several of them. Zermatt is a town of hotels ... I presume that there might be some private residences, but it was kind of hard to tell. And there may have been private electrical vehicles too ... perhaps the smaller ones were private.

Ummm... Wow. :-)

I know ... it was just stunning. We spent about 3 hours just standing on viewing platforms and looking at it all!

I've updated the story ... the second UK section all the way to our flight to North America.

http://www.machka.net/RTW_2012/RTW_Europe_Main_2012.htm

We were in Perpignan, France about a month ago ...

According to one article I read, Perpignan has "several" km of cycling lanes and paths, but that they are thinking about adding more. We discovered that "several" means 500 metres here, 20 metres there, 150 metres over on the other side of the road ... all adding up to "several". And quite a bit of it was indicated by a stencilled bicycle symbol in a narrow motor vehicle lane, indicating, I suppose, that motor vehicles and bicycles were to share the narrow lane.

While we were there, we noticed Perpignan's attempt to install cycling infrastructure. They were stencilling bicycle symbols on the road ........ suggesting that cyclists either tangle with busses, or ride into the path of oncoming traffic!! Have a look at the photo I took ...

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8468/8...01172042_c.jpg

Apparently they are planning to connect all the surrounding villages with cycling lanes and paths. That would be good for that area ... at the moment, cycling there is a bit of a challenge!



Aside from Perpignan, much of Europe has quite good cycling infrastructure, both as part of the road network and as separated paths. And in many parts of Europe it is not illegal to ride on the sidewalks/footpaths, and is even encouraged. That took some getting used to.

Now we have to get used to riding where there isn't much in the way of cycling infrastructure again.

I think you've got that wrong. On the left side of the street, the lane is for bikes & buses ONLY. On the right side of the street (the side with the white car), it is bikes only. The red sign with the white line indicates vehicles cannot enter, but the word "sauf" (which means "except") and the bike symbol says the bikes are allowed to enter. Not sure how the white car got there legally.

In Perpignan they've apparently adopted what is now fairly common in Paris. They have reduced the number of car lanes and made them for buses, taxis, & bikes only. They've have also added bike lines on streets which are one-way for cars going in the other direction. Washington, DC, now has a few bike lanes like that.

Trust me, we were there and watched the traffic flow. It's a totally one-way street except for bicycles. The vehicles were coming up the right hand side of the street. Hence Machka's musings about how the bike arrows point straight into the traffic flow with no real wriggle room between on-coming bikes and cars.

The white car actually is there legally and if you look carefully, you will see another vehicle headed up the lane right down the bottom.

In Paris & DC, the bike lane going against traffic has, at a minimum, a solid line separating it from the lane of oncoming traffic. (It's impossible to tell from the photo how wide the traffic lane is.) Not a brilliant design in Perpignan, I have to say. I've ridden on these bike lanes going against traffic in both Paris and DC, and I thought they worked pretty well.

We rode in Paris, too. Sometimes the bus/bike/taxi lanes are segregated from the other lane by kerbing, or rubber strips.

The centre of Paris, to me, is quite the city to cycle in once you are confident that the traffic isn't likely to harm you. The buses can be a bit of pain sometimes, but if you can get up to 25-30km/h, well you're pretty well on the speed limit anyway!

Bikes also are a real boon when the gridlock starts. We were on a bus tour during a rainstorm on one day, and we spent so much time going nowhere, that we eventually got off and walked to where we were staying. Bicycles had not issues getting through the traffic, of course.

It's also not unusual in villages in the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium and France to have one-way streets that allow counter-directional travel by bikes. The laneways sometimes are quite narrow, but the drivers generally give you room.

Quite narrow ... just wide enough for a van (like the white one turning into the road, down at the other end of the road). Definitely not wide enough for both van and bicycle.

This sort of thing was common in Perpignan ... most of the places they had "bicycle lanes", they were just a bicycle stencil painted off to one side of a narrow road, and were being driven over by the relatively heavy and aggressive traffic. The signs were being driven over ... we didn't see many cyclists around at all.

I've updated photos ...

-- finished Switzerland (lots of beautiful mountains)
-- finished Perpignan and area (Spanish or Moorish architecture - lots of red tiled roofs)

And now I'm moving toward processing the Bordeaux and area photos ...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/machka-...7631598534353/


A smoke haze covered the southern part of Europe for about a week ...

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8052/8...c86d57dc_z.jpg


On the Switzerland/France border ...

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8473/8...e62fe8d6_z.jpg


Looking at the Pyrenees from the Palace of the Kings of Majorca ...

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8194/8...22daceab_z.jpg

Asia Story (Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan) -- http://www.machka.net/RTW_2012/RTW_2012.htm
UK Story (mostly Scotland) -- http://www.machka.net/RTW_2012/RTW_Europe_2012.htm
Europe Story (The Netherlands, Germany, Luxembourg, Switzerland, France, England) -- http://www.machka.net/RTW_2012/RTW_Europe_Main_2012.htm

I have a little bit of work to do to finish the Europe Story ... some more photos and some "under construction" stuff at the end. And I've just started the North America Story, but haven't got too far on it yet.



Asia Photos -- http://www.flickr.com/photos/machka-...7630063348587/
UK Photos -- http://www.flickr.com/photos/machka-...7630125688286/
The Netherlands, Germany, Luxembourg Photos -- http://www.flickr.com/photos/machka-...7630913118566/
Switzerland, France, UK Photos -- http://www.flickr.com/photos/machka-...7631598534353/

I have loaded photos of Switzerland, Perpignan, Bordeaux, and Lacanau-Ocean in that last set of photos, so I'm about a month behind. I've got to do the rest of the west coast of France, Paris, and Plymouth. And I haven't started the North America photos yet. :)

We'll be setting off on the next part of our journey on Monday. We'll have had a lovely 10 days or so visiting family and friends in lower mainland BC. On Monday, we head east to Alberta, right into the teeth of winter, apparently. Evidently they've had quite a bit of snow. We'll take 2-3 days to get there, so ... maybe it will have melted?? :D

And then in early November, we go south.

Adjusted photo sets ... I had to split one of the European sets ... too many photos!! So this is a new set with photos from the west coast of France, and will contain some of Paris and the UK when I finish those ...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/machka-...7631877281412/

Easiest way to get boxes for air flight is to go to a bicycle box and get a box. disassemble bike as needed. use a lot of gaffa tape to close box. Never been a problem for me.

It might seem so on the surface, but there are quite a few obstacles can appear in a big city you don't know, overseas, at the end of the season when the shop isn't buying in bikes, and they have disposed of the boxes. Bike boxes these days also are coming in different sizes, as I discovered when I got two from a bike shop just before leaving Australia; my bike wouldn't fit at all, and Machka's only just squeezed in.