Day 4 Montpellier to Brighton - Donneville

84 km to a hobbit house

Tonight we had hoped to make it to Toulouse but as the day went on it became clear that Toulouse was too far. So we staying in Donneville, in someone's garden in a tiny house previously occupied by Bilbo Baggins. We were pleased to get it.

A night in the garden shed

Day 3 Montpellier to Brighton - Carcassonne.

76 kms into a gale

To eat a sit-down lunch or not to eat lunch, that is the question.

Cycling and lunch>

Day 2 Montpellier to Brighton - Capestang

80km, some in the right direction!

Today was the first full day on our Montpellier to Brighton epic cycle ride: a great day, but with few learning points.

Day 1 Montpellier to Brighton - Sète

Getting here with 2 bikes on a plane from Gatwick was stressful. I know very little about bikes and Christine knows less than nothing. The airports at both ends were packed with people escaping for bank holidays and half term week and wrapping the bikes up in amateur fashion, on full display, was a tad embarrassing. Still it worked and dispite a last minute panic about our bubble wrap deficiency the bikes arrived at Montpellier in good condition.

Packed a ready - Bikes in CTC bags

Cycling from Montpellier to Brighton

Final preparations (otherwise known as mad panic) are now underway for our biggest cycling adventure yet, a trip from Montpellier in France to Brighton. Our bikes have been serviced and paniers test packed for departure on Friday morning.

Montpellier to Brighton

The route looks brilliant. There are hardly any hills and my guess is that 80 per cent of it will be traffic free. From Montpellier we head west along the coast to Sete and from there head along the Canal du Midi tow path to Toulouse. From Toulouse we follow the Canal du Garonne up to Bordeaux and then the Eurovelo Atlantic route up to La Rochelle. From La Rochelle to Ouistreham we follow the new long distance cycle trail the La Vélo Francette before catching the ferry back to Portsmouth. From Portsmouth it's about 50 miles back to Brighton.

The Camiño dos Faros - a walk along the coast of death

There is a lot more to walking in Galica than the Camino de Santiago

I'm just back from a walk along the Camiño dos Faros, or ‘Lighthouse Way’, around Galicia's Costa del Morte (Coast of Death) in northwest Spain. It was a wonderful trip. The scenery was great, the walk well defined, the food fabulous and I met some really nice people. I would definitely recommend this walk although there are a few things you should be aware of.

Camiño Dos Faros Day 6

Day 6 marked a disappointing finish to my journey along the Camiño Dos Faros. When we woke up this morning the rain was pouring down and we had to make a decision to walk or not to walk. The last stage of the route is a hard one and at the time it looked like the weather was going to stay bad for the whole day. We decided to get a taxi to Fisterra and if the weather improved do some local walking from there before heading to Santiago del Compostela tomorrow.


Arriving in Fisterra by taxi felt like a huge anticlimax made worse by the number of hikers there who had completed their journey along the Camino de Santiago. We walked up to the lighthouse, where most of the visitors had arrived by coach, and tried without much enthusiasm to take a picture. It's a surprisingly difficult place to take a decent photograph.