10 Days or so go!
Farewell drinks are at the Red Lion Inn in Bridge on Friday the 3rd of January from late afternoon 4pm ish. Share an evening with Bingo and Gringo and wish them well on the upcoming travels.
Happy New Year 2025
Month: December 2024
Gira 2025 Shirt and Packing
With less than four weeks before we start, it’s probably time to start getting all the kit together. We are really trying to travel light so we will have to be pretty strict with our kit choice by concentrating on the esentials and keeping warm.
I’m not much of a list person so I copied Bingo’s list and added a few items: namely prescription sunglasses, normal glasses, contact lenses and epi-pens (hopefully I will be cured from my recent wasp sting allergy thing, as I have been on an Immunotherapy course at Guy’s hospital, but still taking them!).
The spare bedroom has turned into a cycle touring kit room, with panniers and cycle kit all over the place. I’m sure I will get it in order soon, plenty of time!
Both Bingo and I have been using the touring bikes during our recent rides around the country lanes in East Kent, calling in all the local pubs. A big thank you to the Anchor at Wingham, the Haywain at Bramling and the Fitz at Goodnestone for keeping us well watered and supporting our little ride.
We are both happy with the bikes with no obvious rattles or niggly faults, so all good, another couple of rides before we strip them down and box them up. Managed to source a couple of bike boxes from Lockes cycles in Sandwich so big thank you to them. We are both reasonably bike fit so no need to over do the training, just ride, we will get super bike fit after the first couple of weeks touring. Just concentrate on the packing!
Adios amigos.
As has become the custom every ride has it’s own shirt. In the past the shirts have been in the classic red and blue of Snowdown Colliery Welfare Rugby Club but after a dozen years the team have had a little breakaway this year: the shirt for the Tour of Ireland last summer included green (of course!). The shirt still, naturally, carries the badge of SCWRFC, as they always have. The team will hope to bump into some local rugby clubs along the way, particularly in Argentina and Uruguay. They think however that they will be cycling in the off season. This wont stop them getting a beer in a clubhouse somewhere along the way.
In fact whilst we are here we can see that Ushuaia has a rugby team.
It might just have to be the first port of call!
This year the shirt features the colours of yellow, pale blue and red which are common on many of the flags of the South and Central American Nations.
The shirt has the peaks of the Andes represented and the flags of all the countries they will pass through.
I’ll leave you to figure out which flag is which country … bearing in mind that one of these flags is no longer a country though it was (briefly).
The back of the shirt has many parts.
Many will call me an adventurer, and that I am … only one of a different sort: one who risks his skin to prove his truths.
Ernesto (Che) Guevara
You will recall that that this revolutionary travelled through South America as a young medical student and was shocked by the povery he saw. Two fairly recent biographical films about his life story have been made (2008). Before that, in 2004, another film called “The Motorcycle Diaries” recalls his earlier life.
In Memory of and thanks to Auntie Irene (1936-02023)
all the House family
On a more personal note we’d all like to remember our lovely Auntie Irene who passed away last year. She was kind enough to donate funds to this expedition.
Our tour badge this year is this iconic image of the Incan Sun God. You may recognise it from the emblem on the Argentina national flag. Hopefully he or she will be on our side.
Across the shirt lies this ancient Mayan pattern. We don’t want to offend any of the gods of the renowned ancient civilisations of South and Central America!
On the sleeves, in homage to the great fauna of the Americas are stylistic representations of the Condor and the Jaguar.
Finally at the base of the shirt is the Logo and QR code for Slideaway which is again our preferred charity.
For a little bit of fun we’ve shown the Slideaway bear sliding down the Andes!
Ushuaia, Argentina
As you know the Cycle Tour of the Americas begins in the southernmost city in the world, Ushuaia at the southern tip of Argentina Patagonia. Let’s have a look at this city.
First of all how is it pronounced: Oos-swhy-a is a good approximation. Ushuaia is the capital of the Argentina Tierra del Fuego region with a population of about 80,000. It sits on the north shore of the Beagle Channel (that connects the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans) and to the south of the Martial Mountains (and Glacier). These mountains are the tail-end of the Andes mountain range with Ushuaia the only Argentinian city on the other side of the Andes. January is of course mid-summer in the southern hemisphere but you wont be surprised to know that even in mid-summer temperatures rarely rise above 10c. It’s going to be a chilly few weeks at the start of the ride.
The boys will find out that they will have to cross the Andes on the very first ride heading north out of Ushuaia! After that it will be many weeks before they reach the Andes again when crossing into Chile from the far north of Argentina.
The Beagle Channel is one of three routes between the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans. To the north is the larger Magellan Straits, navigated by Magellan in 1520. To the south is the open ocean crossing called Drake Passage. This was discovered by Francisco de Hoces in 1525 when he was blown south. Similarly Sir France Drake’s fleet was blown south in 1578, when one ship was lost another abandoned and only the Golden Hind remained. In 1616, the Dutch navigator Willem Schouten became the first to sail around Cape Horn and through the Drake Passage.
Between 1826 and1830 Captain Fitzroy took charge of HMS Beagle as they explored the channel which was later named after the ship. He returned in 1833 to complete the survey and it was on this expedition that Charles Darwin was onboard as a naturalist.
The House brothers will begin the epic cycle ride in Argentina but will have to nip into Chile to catch a ferry across the Magellan Straits back into Argentina.
The modern city of Ushuaia is these days the gateway to Antartica and it is from here that many of the expensive cruise ships leave and return for tourism trips of Antartica. Naturally many survey and exploration ships also leave and return to this port.
Naturally the Argentian Navy has a presence in Ushuaia. It was from here that the ARA General Belgrano sailed before being sunk in 1982. The city has a memorial to the 323 lives that were lost.
Culturally the city has something to offer. The tourist information is here. They include several museums dedicated to the Indigenous peopls of the area, the history of the settlement from its missionary beginnings and about the history of exploration of the southern oceans and Antartica.
As a final footnote Ushuaia had two prisons at one time, long since closed, which is now a museum. Astonishingly they built a railway from the town to the prison which still exists today as a tourist train – the worlds southernmost railway, of course. Here is the website!
House Rides 