Getting ready for Russia is taking many different forms. At the moment it’s mainly taking the shape of sorting out the route, and that means lots of tea and coffee, with large quantities of biscuits.

Stace working on the routeWe’ve also scheduled in some ‘training’ days – basically just getting some miles under our belt together.

On Saturday I joined Stace as he headed into deapest darkest Kent to The Cetral Pie shop, where we bought a large quantity of pies. No jokes please. Given we’d planned for the day to be maps and route planning we actually did a hell of a lot of riding before we even got to Standfords to buy £100 worth of maps!

In the end we covered 188 miles – it’s amazing how the miles can add up over a lazy day. In Russia we’ll be covering over 200 per day (except in Russia where we plan on doing 140-150). What I really discovered was how great Stace is to ride with. He’s really observant and I know I can pull up nice and tight and know we’ll take the same line around a corner without hitting each other – I can tell what direction he’s going in without waiting for a turn signal or lean, I know he knows exactly where I am, and I know that if I blast ahead he’ll wait sensibly. It was a real pleasure, if Saturday was a window on travelling across Europe then I’m a very happy man…

I’m already used to riding with Patrick (which is fun – but in a different way) so it’ll be great to get our first run with all three of us, planned for the moment to be a mile eating trip down to the south coast Bristol way – at least 300 miles each day. My poor bum.