The story from Croatia to Albenga (beside Manaco) is rather uneventful compared to the excitement of the last 6 weeks or so. Rest assured that it will be uploaded in full and that we plan on producing a full, and very long, detailed account of the entire trip that will be available once complete in a few weeks time.

We are snowed under with problems at the moment and I will attempt to explain all now...

Firstly, the GPS has not been charged over the last couple of days due to it being at the back of our minds. Riding west from Venice towards Monaco, Sarah's bike began to overheat. Pulling over to allow it to cool, we slept under a self made shelter before heading west once more in the morning to a service station so that we could clear out the cooling system once more.

Once done, the bike seemed to work ok as it ticked over on the forecourt so we switched it off, grabbed a coffee to fuel our day that we hoped would see us 500 miles or so closer to our goal in Stonehenge.

Coffees drunk, the bike wouldn't restart and a nasty trickle of coolant began to pour from the exhaust...big problem. Knowing it to be most probably a head gasket, we panicked. Calling my dad to confirm our suspicions we then called our breakdown service, ADAC to get the bike towed to a garage for repair. This took a while as ADAC, whilst the offered service is great, have proven themselves to be useless. A payment we'd made back in February had apparently failed when we needed their assistance back in July. As such, we sent another 2 payment form in the hope that this would solve the problem and soon received confirmation and a membership card.

Now calling them for assistance, they claimed that the payment had failed and, sorry, but we were stuck here! Arguing our case got us slowly closer to their addmitance that it was in fact their fault as the payment form claims to accept Maestro and, only now, they claimed that it SHOULD read Mastercard!

4 days on and we are still arguing the case. The mechanics here will complete the work for 500 Euros and will take 20 days to do so (our UK mechanic claims this to be a 4 to 8 hour job) and so we have only 1 option - to return it to the UK where its warranty will replace the gasket free of charge.

My bike (everyone touch wood together) is fine and I do hope to finish the route as soon as Sarah is safely on a flight home.

So there we have it, use ADAC as their claims to be a worldwide service are true - having collected us in Albania - just make sure that you begin attempting to join them at least 6 months to a year before you actually need to use them as they refuse to accept any faults on their part...!

Hoping to be riding into Stonehenge by this Sunday, I would like to invite everyone to join us once I can confirm the date and time. You can meet 1 or maybe all of the team (who knows?!) and our instructors \ sponsors and then head for a big fry up breakfast in the fantastic local caff.

Soon after the eventful and fantastic trip is complete, we hope to hold a big return party that will combine a night of drink, music and dancing with a projection of all slides and videos so as to not put you all through the boredom of listening to us waffle on for hours!

Stay tuned and keep sending those blog comments as they are much appreciated.

Hope to see you all soon!

Mike.