Heathrow airport. This is all I’m going to see of the UK – not exactly a favorable impression. At least I don’t need to change terminals and experience the true craziness.

Even though we flew across in an Airbus, we were deposited on the tarmac and had to take a bus to the terminal. I’ve only previously experienced that sort of treatment on regional jets.

We’ve got about three hours to kill here at heathrow. We got super lucky and grabbed some chairs without arm rests, but the DING of the announcement lady is very annoying and makes sleeping difficult. I got a good three hours of sleep on the airplane, which is pretty good for a flight, but it’s not so hot for a night’s sleep. We have twenty kilometres of cycling in Copenhagen to get to Charlotte’s place so hopefully I can get some more sleep before we get there.

It’s just about lunch time; I’ll have to have a pint with lunch to at least get a little taste of the UK.

Many of you do not know very much about this journey that Bethany and I are taking. In synopsis, we’ve packed our bicyces on to the plane to Copenhagen, and we’ll use those to get to Rome. We’re not going directly there, we’ll be taking a more scenic route which just by coincidence avoids the worst of the alps!

We’re going to spending the first four or five days on the Danish Island of Zealand where I have a number of relatives. From there we will be taking a grand tour of Denmark, heading towards the northern tip and then south. Our route then takes us through Amsterdam, Brussels and Paris. From Paris we will head to the Loire and follow it down to the Atlantic Ocean. We’re then going to head south through wine country near Bordeaux, and then cut across through Carcassonne and the Mediterranean. The French Riviera and Provence take us towards Italy. In Italy, we plan on following the western coast down to Rome, which should take us through Genoa and Pisa.

This is an ambitious trip; 4400 kilometers in 63 days. Not too bad if we were only cycling, but we also expect to spend significant amounts of time playing tourist. That takes first priority, so we may end up using the train to short circuit part of our trip to ensure that we get to Rome on time.