Call the Sheriff!
We arrived in our 7 seater luxury at the Jacksonville North Carolina regional airport, loaded up Tilly and set off to find that the North Carolina abbreviation NC, means No Cyclists! The traffic was so different from Florida with cars coming soooo close to us that we used our 1.5m flag pole with the Union Flag on it horizontally attached to the tent to ward off the unwanted attention. This works well, but annoys the crap out of oncoming drivers, who now have to contend with the 12.6 Litre 5000hp pickups that hang a long way behind you politely, wait for a gap then accelerate only to find...
Read MoreFeet up time!
Our stay with the secret cousins was fabulous. Rob is my mum’s second cousin and we were all totally unaware of each other (despite at one time only living a few miles apart in Suffolk) until my mum’s cousin died and Rob materialised at the funeral, not in the Star Trek Beam down way, but just about as surprising! My mum and Rob hit it off big time and mum was so pleased to have found a another cousin, especially one as charming as Rob. We visited Rob and his wife Joy last year on our US cycle trip and had such a great time we’ve come back again! They have a great villa on...
Read MoreExhausted
Ok, we’re not looking for sympathy – we choose to cycle tour and accept the drawbacks that go with this as well as the great times – but we’ve managed to run out of energy, just as we reached our secret cousins. Which begs the question did we just have enough energy to get there, or is it merely psychological? It’s not all our fault though! Though thinking about it it probably is. You see, we had planned to stay in Mexico beach for a few nights as last year it was on of our favourite places on the Forgotten Coast. We’d even thought we’d stay at the...
Read MoreOnward to the Gulf
Having returned the car hire in Gainesville and got a lift back to Tilly we cycled on to an Airbnb in a Fifth Wheel trailer – a very big caravan that hitches into the back of a pickup, rather than being towed by a car. It had the obligatory multiple slideouts and was huge on the inside. Very comfortable, but a bit old fashioned in the decor stakes – dark wood, leather chairs and a sofa bolted to the floor. European vans are tiny by comparison but use every inch of space, with lots of bling, hidden lights and glitz, whereas these always have tonnes of unused spaces, doors that you...
Read MoreWeather
When you think of Florida the last thing youll probably think of is a dreary rainy day like we get in the UK, but that’s what we got just past Gainesville. We quite enjoy dodging the torrential downpours here as they are short and warm and if you get soaked it’s quite refreshing. Cycling all day in one however is not our preferred plan and when those days arrive we tuck up in a hotel for the day and rest.We duly did this and were going to move on the next day but my tummy decided to play up and so we stayed put which rather put a spanner in the works for our planned rendezvous...
Read MoreMoving on up….
The coast from Ormond Beach up to St Augustine gave us plenty of opportunities to stop and admire the sand and sea. Unlike further south it’s not wall to wall millionaire mansions fronting onto the ocean, through there are plenty of gorgeous houses sitting right on the beach here. It’s also less developed with some small towns with surf dude type bars and cafes and it’s got a cycle path the entire way. We loved it. St Augustine is the oldest recorded permanently inhabited town in North America being settled by the Spanish. Its still got a European style stone Fortress...
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