Finally after countless hours sorting, turning and cropping I am proud to say that the best photos from all 3 cameras are now online including Tom’s photos from his solo adventure as he took the Northwestern European route while we went West.

Countries that have been added to the sites collection include Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey, (and the amazing Cappidocia) Albania, Croatia Switzerland and the rest of our European adventures.

There are even more albums of our latest adventures can be found in the photo album section of the Baking Boundaries website.

Enjoy,
Jared, Tom & Katie

It came as a fantastic surprise that not more than 2 days later after getting off to a bad start and narrowly avoiding being washed away, Zee German (Thorsten) whom we had also said goodbye to in Istanbul sent us a message to say he had changed his plans of cycling the Ukraine to join us in Greece for the 2 week ride to Croatia.

Again out came the maps and our route went from a relatively straight forward ride, to trying to visit as many countries as we could while staying off main roads and picking nice big mountain passes.

8 countries and 2 weeks later without a day off we finally arrived in the small town of Omis on the Croatian coast for some much earned rest and relaxation.

During our two weeks off the unplugged from the matrix we managed to:

Have all our gear and tents flooded just outside of Istanbul

Be evicted from the forest by the Greek fire department only to end up sleeping in a park in the center of town

Slept in a caravan on the top of a 1550 meter pass in Kosovo

Have dinner in old bunkers in Albania avoiding the stormy weather

Learn that selling guns to buy books is possible

Ride through hundreds of clouds of small flies – not fun

Sleep in between the border of Albania and Montenegro

Party with Albanian customs and immigrations officers while they were supposed to be on duty

Be offered $30,000 for each American girl I could arrange a marriage with.

…..and much more

Of course there are stories and photos behind the above headlines and eventually I will get around to writing them, however for the moment I have gotten slightly distracted by beautiful Croatia, swimming in the Adriatic and enjoying good food and great company.

All good things do come to an end thought, and this Monday we will be thrusting ourselves back into wild camping and living on our €10 a day budget heading for Italy and the Swiss Alps.

This point in our journey will see us take some different roads, kinda fitting for a millennia-old crossroads. Due to differing travel tastes, we’ve decided to choose two separate paths from here to London. Europe offers such rich scenic choices that it would be a shame to miss the ones that most tickle our collective fancies.

I will be making a beeline, albeit a fairly scenic one, for London and Belfast. Beginning in Bulgaria, I plan to travel through Serbia and Hungary to Budapest before following the mighty Danube River upstream through parts of Austria (yes, IAESTE-folks, that does include a rest stop in Vienna) and Germany, finishing off with a sprint across Luxembourg and Belgium to the French port of Calais. Flat, fast and furious. Think of it as the cycling equivalent of blitzkrieg…minus the Luftwaffe.

Jared and Katie will be on a parallel course somewhere to my southwest. Their route will take them across northern Greece (Spartans, anyone?) and the Balkans to Dubrovnik, where they will cross the Adriatic to Italy before hopping over the Swiss Alps into France.

It’s a fairly clear-cut case of “You take the high road, and I’ll take the low road.” The difference in mileage is not massive, though crossing a few 2000m passes in the Alps clearly beats the Danube in terms of bragging rights. We’re hoping that we will be able to meet up on the road to London, schedules permitting. If not, there will be a nice bottle of Bushmills waiting at my house for anyone who cares to continue.

We hope that you, loyal readers, will continue to follow us through the last stage of the big adventure and stay tuned to the latest mishaps and goings-on (Youtube video clips will be back on the menu when we leave Turkey, where the site is blocked) here on the website. In fact, you really ought to be grateful we’ve opted to take different paths- this means two European holidays’-worth of photos and blog updates for the price of one [What do you mean we aren't charging them?].