Portugal, Southern Spain, South West England, Belfast

im still rocking up the travel miles, now that i have a motorbike i can see Europe a different way. this was taken on a ride to southampton about 75miles from london.



During the easter break i travelled to Portugal with Kirsten. We visited the monuments, checked out the capital, Lisbon




drank some fantastic wine and port and saw a 'fado' performance which is sort of like an opera performed in a restaurant

at the end of April, Lucy and I travelled to Southern Spain for a week. We had a hire car the the duration and rocked up 850k's. The roads in the city centres of spain are insanely narrow and complicated and without Dan's GPS navigation we would still be there. We visited the big cities of Granada, Cordoba and Seville, as well as some smaller rural and coastal towns.

this is the little town near cordoba where we spent a night.



we visited Seville when they had a massive festival where everyone dresses up (women wear their flamenco dresses) and parade the streets in horse drawn carriages.



for about 400 years, muslims ruled in southern spain (until about 1400). some of the palaces we saw were beautiful. this is a timber carved ceiling in the palace in spain, the craftsmanship is impressive



we spent two nights at a little seaside town near Cadiz and spent one day lying on the beach. i have never been so burnt in my life.



the view from the top of the rock in Gilbraltor was amazing, you can see Africa from here.



the famous monkeys in Gilbraltor, they try and snatch any plastic bags they see from tourists (looking for sweets)



For the may day long weekend, michael and i headed off on a 850k 2-day bike ride to the south west of England. sticking mostly to regional roads along the coastline, we passed through the counties dorset, devon, cornwall and exmoor. we stayed overnight in a town near plymouth.

on the way we visited a famous little 13th century village in devon called clovelly and had a traditional ale sitting on an old stone jetty.



last weekend i flew to Belfast for the weekend to visit my relatives for the first time. belfast is a lot more modern than i thought with new buildings going up everywhere. it was quite an experience coming out of the airport and meeting all these strangers. i remember thinking, ok which ones are related to me (though my grandfather brother and sister were quite obvious). i stayed with my cousin Neil who was my tour guide for the weekend.



on the sat we went on a open top bus tour through the city. this is one of the famous murals in the heart of where all the troubles occurred.



hopefully i'll be heading back there in August for a week and Neil and I will travel all around the island

so thats what i've been up to the last few weeks. i'm starting to feel a bit exhausted from all this travel and will be slowing down a bit in june/july. i'll be spending the next long-weekend in Paris with Lucy (she soesn't know that) and Pamploma in July for running with the bulls. but there's no rest for the wicked as in august i hope to go to Ireland and then at the end of the month the big bike trip through Europe begins.