Planning the trip

Hello everyone,
Julie and I are heading off to France on 22nd May and will be cycling around the country for around 4 months before heading for the UK. We will be using this blog to upload photos during the trip and comments on our travels. The bikes we will be using are Cannondale hybrids that we have purchased from a company in the Dordogne that we used last year when we cycled around the South West of France for a month. This time we will be heading East towards the Massif Central and then North to meet the Loire, which we will follow to Brittany. We would also like to watch the Tour de France pass by and so are planning to be somewhere along the route from Le Mans to Châteauroux (Stage 7 on 8 July), probably around Tours. They have not published the route, which will be available in June, so we will adjust our plans on the way. We are planning to travel light, with just one small backpack each, so we will have no checked baggage on our flights and will not be encumbered when we are touring round. My pack is a Lowe Alpine 30 litre and Julie's is 25. We used them last time and they weigh around 7kg when packed. We will be taking an iPad to upload photos from a digital camera, sections of the route which Julie has planned on Bikely and also a Garmin GPS, loaded with a detailed map of France, which proved useful last time when we were on some of the minor roads where it was easy to get lost.

The trip is now only four weeks away and we are both well into our training. This morning we attended an rpm class at the local sports centre and Julie has been going there for over a year. I have been walking to work and running home regularly and so am a bit behind her with my cycling abilities although reasonably fit, but should be fine for when we leave. We will be taking it easy at first and have some light days planned. Our flights from Australia end in Bergerac, where we stay for a couple of nights before catching a train to Le Buisson de Cadouin, where we meet Robert with the bikes. Then it's off we go!