Undertaking a long tour in the Northern Hemisphere is invariably affected by the simple fact that this half of the World is most definitely a four-season location. Even in my younger days, when I usually set a rather insane touring pace, there would be no realistic route for a circumnavigation along a northern route that would avoid the perils of winter. The Southern Hemisphere, in contrast, with significantly less land area at high latitudes, allows one to more easily avoid cold weather, though many areas there have wet seasons that must also be considered. However, since I had already toured most of the bottom of the planet on the Tour of Gondwana, I desired the route of World2 to be slightly more boreal in nature. That would necessitate some sort of accommodation to the cold northern months.

Many of the sites and locations I am interested in seeing this time around are in northwestern Europe, and fitting those in to my route plans proved to be tricky. I could have continued east from Iceland this summer and visited that region during the pleasant months of August and September. However, if I did that I would then have needed to find a place further south to spend the next five or six months, and none of the available options adequately piqued my interest. Instead, I included the section in the Neotropics, which was a region that actually had been my original starting point in the first draft of the Tour route. I could have stayed there for an additional six to eight weeks and then started the Eurasian section in the more comfortable days of spring. In that case I, once again, would have not had enough time to see all the places that interested me before the onset of winter in the following year. The only workable option seemed to be a European arrival at the start of February and spending the last six weeks of winter there in a lite touring mode with only a small amount of cycling involved. As it turned out, by the time I was finished in the tropics I had had enough of cycling in extreme heat, and was more than ready to spend some time in a chilly climate.

I had a handful of countries in that region on my short list of places to go, one of which has already been jettisoned from the route in order to give me a more relaxed schedule and a chance to restore some of the fitness I had lost during my health break in Brazil and the Atlantic crossing. Of course, I could not allow myself to adopt too slow of a pace, since Europe is one of the most expensive places through which to travel and continuing to exceed my budget for the Tour would be very undesirable. To my satisfaction, the CMA-CGM Saint Laurent would take me to the most convenient starting point for this late winter journey, namely the island of Great Britain.

Though that land has a reputation for chills and dampness, there are many excellent and well-known places of interest that would make this a worthwhile section of the route. Many of those are World Heritage Sites and so they will have their own posts later on. The first place I wanted to see, however, was turned down in its bid to become a WHS a few years ago, but that fact did not dampen my interest. It was Downe House, the home of Charles Darwin during the second half of his life, where he wrote all of his great works of scholarship. Located just to the southeast of London, it was a little time consuming to reach by transit, but worth the effort for me. During the Tour of Gondwana I had been to many locations that the HMS Beagle and Darwin had visited long ago, and seeing some of his original possessions and other aspects of his home workspace was very gratifying for me.

London itself is famous as a World-class city filled with many impressive attractions, but I was also quite surprised by how amenable it is to cycling and by how many people use the best mode of travel to serve their daily transport needs. I only made a few short cycling trips in the city, but with my bike finally back in good condition, and my own health back to normal, general level of fitness notwithstanding, I definitely found those rides to be completely refreshing.

A somewhat longer, though still mostly relaxed, circuit is upcoming in the less crowded areas in the southwestern part of the country, and if the weather cooperates I expect go enjoy that as well. Following that, I will cross the Channel and continue on the continental mainland, slowly riding myself back into shape. At least that is the plan for now.