Entries by ADMIN

Day Zero: Syria to Lebanon

First challenge of the trip was to get to and across Syria's northern border into Lebanon. My wife and visiting sister-in-law had kindly agreed to drive me there from Damascus. Seeing "Lebanon" in big letters on a signpost, coupled with the map being used to keep my feet warm sent us carving a swathe to, as it turned out, the wrong border post. Crossing at this one would entail a long mountainous ride to our agreed meeting point in Kobayate, so after a brief animated discussion with some local border crossing groupies we put the bike back in the car, executed a slick three point turn and started heading in the average of the various directions indicated by the waving arms. At this point our fuel was getting lowish, but employing our typical brinkmanship approach, with 70km left on our "how much further can you drive before you are stuffed" indicator, surely we would come across several stations before we needed to fill. For this reason we confidently drove past one station with a big queue, not stopping to wonder why the queue might be so big…… 69.99 km later, after passing several closed petrol stations, our confidence, like our fuel, had pretty much disappeared. It was therefore with a great sense of relief that we rolled into a promising looking station with hardly any queue. Yes, they had plenty of petrol. Great we said, fill this baby up! Um, sorry, no electricity. Cannot pump. Oh Dear. This explained the reason for lack of queue and all the other stations being closed. We contemplated the relative merits of a night at a Syrian petrol station. 2 hours later the electricity miraculously came back on, we filled up, and were off again. This time we got to the correct border, and only 4 hours behind schedule I waved goodbye to the family and under the watchful eyes of several rather bemused immigration officials, cycled through from Syria into Lebanon.

The 30km ride to the first nights accommodation at a convent in the northern Lebanese town of Qbaiyet was relatively uneventful, although as usual the Lebanese were very welcoming and on the way I received two invitations for dinner, and lots of useful directions (they had obviously already heard about my questionable navigation skills). At Qbaiyet Max's friend Rodrigue took me and the bike up to the convent, and showed me to the accommodation….

Kobayate was short on accommodation, but the convent was an excellent alternative – clean and friendly, with great views of the verdant landscape, giving us a foretaste of what was to come. After an excellent breakfast prepared by the nuns using largely local ingredients, we were ready for the off.

Whilst staying in religious establishments it's probably appropriate to have a revelation or two. First interesting revelation of the day was that Max had somehow turned up without a helmet, sunglasses or cycle shoes. Doh ! Riding a carbon Trek Pro 9.9 wearing Crocs and an empty cornflakes box for a helmet didn't seem quite right. Fortunately Max knows nearly everyone in Lebanon, and it didn't take long to borrow all of the required items.