UK to OZ 2003-?

We returned from a RTW three years ago having travelled to South East Asia, New Zealand, Fiji, Cook Islands, USA & Canada. Extended travel was always something Julie, my wife, and I had wanted to do. We'd always done the foreign holiday thing, but somehow two weeks in Corfu it was never enough. In 1998 we sold the house, both took career breaks, bought two RTW air tickets and flew off into the sunset. We had a great year. On our return we set about buying another house and resuming our careers.

This is the day I picked up the bike from 'Overland Solutions' Ernie has worked his magic on strengthening the rear subframe and new pannier frames for the 'ZEGA' panniers. On the panniers themselves he replaced the standard catches with heavy duty ones and annodised them to stop the'Blackening' which marked everything that came into direct contact with the alli'. He also fitted a sidestand with large foot, wrap round crash bars which protect the rocker covers, headlamp protector and a custom made instrument console to replace the original I removed in order to fit the 43ltr HPN tank.

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We are currently in CARCOSSONNE in the South of France. The weather has gone completey stupid and on Sunday reached 102f The oil temp gauge was reading 130c for most of the day, but the bike didn,t make the horrible rattly noise it usually makes when it,s overheating. The scenery and the hospitality in France has been fantastic. We stayed in a friends house for four days. These were the only days we,ve managed to stay within our budget, hopefully things will even out when we reach Eastern Europe and Asia.

We've travelled through France, Italy, Slovenia and are now in Croatia.

Alot has happened since my last entry. We travelled down as far as Split in Croatia. The old town was pleasent enough so we chilled out for a few days, window shopping and swimming in the clear water. We had intended to continue on down to Dubrovnik, but time was pressing on and we found that our cash wasn't going as far as we'd thought it would so we decided to head back up into Slovenia and then Hungary. Back in Slovenia we happened accross a great motorcycle museum. It was owned and run by a local guy, Peter, who had started the museum 12 years ago after returning from Italy.