I LOVE MY BIKE!!!

It is my favourite possession, bar NONE! It was a nice day so I decided to go for a ride along the Oxford canal and a few hours later, I found myself in Kidlington! Not particularly wanting to spend the same amount of time biking back, I just folded the thing up, hopped on a bus, paid £1.50 and took the easy ride home :D

This beautiful ride inspired another travelling dream for me: cycling across the UK! I'd start in Brighton and end up in Northern Scotland somewhere (maybe catch a ferry to the Orkney Islands or something) [EDIT: i found this after some more research - apparently it's the tried, tested & true cross-country cycling route]. Thanks to the National Cycling Network this dream isn't actually all that far-fetched. I reckon I'd need a few things though:

• a partner
• a real, solid mountain bike
• a better knowledge of how to fix said bike
• some spare parts
• good rain gear
  
• a map
• a tent
• a thermarest
• a sleeping bag

The only cost (after the initial investment in all of these things, of course) would be food. You could easily just find fields along the way to camp in, so you wouldn't have to pay for accomodation (except maybe in London or something). It would probably have to be done in the summer, and it would most likely take a while, but it's totally within reach. Probably not this summer, but maybe next, or the one after that. It's gotta be within the next few years while I'm still mobile enough to make it happen :P

In other news, I've also been thinking about the big move again. This Sunday I will officially have used 1/3 of the time on my UK visa (8 of 24 months), and while I do love Oxford, and have met some wonderful people here, it does sort of feel like I wouldn't be making the most of my time if I didn't travel and experience some more of the UK. So I'm thinking of investigating the capitals of the other countries in the UK: Cardiff, Edinburgh and Belfast. All are beautiful I am told, and would nice places to live. Now if this does happen, it probably wouldn't be until the end of summer...my friend Mark wants to do some travelling in August/September, so that would sort of be the ideal time to quit my jobs and move on (it would also mean I could sublet a room from a student for the summer and not be tied into a year long contract), but on the other hand it would probably mean that I'd be low on funds. So who knows, maybe I won't go anywhere at all...I'm definitely going to spend the summer in Oxford and then we'll see after that....