It’s been such an incredible adventure and such a strange feeling to be back that I think we’ll be waiting a week or so to re-adjust to life in a more stationary setting before sharing stories or posting anything significant.

Suffice it to say at this stage that the trip has been deeply enlightening, a true journey of discovery and has changed us both as people for the better.

If you missed anything on our travels or indeed the entire thing, the tracker will be permanently archived here

It’s been a long time in the planning but it’s finally upon us! Shweta and I are off for a month around Eastern Europe, taking our own car over 6,000 miles, visiting in excess of 12 countries and reaching as far East as the Black Sea coast of Romania and Bulgaria.

As you would expect there is a little technology backing us up along the way and so if you click on the tyre tracks on the right or follow this tracker link, you’ll be taken to a dedicated trip page where you can follow our progress and share in some of the travel excitement.

We hope you enjoy our updates and we look forward to meeting up with friends upon our return to tell our travel stories!

Pursuit of the Northern most point in the UK took us on a truly epic and eye opening journey through our own country. Requiring us to employ a combination of the car, numerous ferries and our trusty hiking boots, the spectacular landscapes and friendly people we encountered gave us memories that will last a lifetime

Deciding to beat the Christmas holiday crowds we headed up to Yorkshire for an early December break, staying in York and Harrogate for two nights each, we did some sight-seeing and took some time out in the famous Harrogate spa

Shweta and I took my parents for a week’s holiday in Wales during Autumn. The camera captured some beautiful colours, landscapes and mysterious fog to boot.

Quand il y a du vin et du fromage, je suis toujours contente

Driving over 3000 kilometres on bone rattling roads, traversing vast national parks on foot, strolling on wind swept beaches and scaling dizzyingly high bird cliffs to get a glimpse of nesting puffins – Iceland really gave us her all

On a recent trip to Japan we were very nearly caught out by a timetabling anomaly for the Narita Express airport train service from Shinjuku so I thought I’d share it on the blog to save others some of the anxiety of arriving so close to check in closure time!

Basically the frequency of the service depends on the time of day. Up to and including 8am, the service runs almost every 20 minutes (great). After 10am it’s roughly every hour until nearly 8pm (not so great but manageable with planning). However from 8am there is nearly a 2 hour gap until the next service at 9:40am! This means that if your flight is at 11am or earlier, you must catch the 8am train or resort to other means of getting to the airport (including taking the Yamanote line to Tokyo and picking up the express from there where services are more frequent).

In short, either check the timetable carefully for your chosen boarding point taking into account your flight time or elect to always travel from Tokyo station rather than any of the other possible starting points as there are always regular services from this station.

A cursory search on Hyperdia would also seem to indicate that taking the Skyliner service from Nippori, accessed from Shinjuku via the Yamanote line, is quicker than the Narita Express anyway, and more frequent, providing an almost consistent 20 minute interval departure time throughout the day with an end to end journey time of just over an hour, compared with the express which is over an hour and a half door to door.