I’m going to have to keep this blog fairly brief. This slightly third-world computer is causing me all sorts of headaches and however much you all want to know what we’re up to, I value my sanity over and above your curiosities.

Firstly I’m sure you’re all wondering what has happened to the dots above my I’s. Well they don’t have them here and that’s that. Be satisfied that I’ve crossed the t’s. But where’s ‘here’? Here is Turkey!

Yes, after almost 160 days we have marched happily into our 11th and final country. We left Bulgaria about 2 days ago and snuck across a little sliver of Greece into Turkey and thus were in three countries in a little less than 24 hours. The latter half of Bulgaria went by in a blur of rubbish-filled fields, dead dogs, and cheap beer. It’s best summed up with the same sort of sentiments as those that we had for Serbia. Wonderful people, but what are you all playing at? Sort it out, ok?

It seems like years since we were in Sofia though in fact it was only about 10 days ago. We’ve simply been keeping our heads down and tramping along as hard as we can. There are various reasons for this. Not only does Andy have a marathon to run, but people are coming to Istanbul and we mustn’t be late. But perhaps the main reason for our increase in pace is the ridiculous temperatures. It only needs the night-time temperatures to drop another degree or two for the surrounding countryside to be littered with our frostbitten extremities. But with just 8 days to do the remaining 270kms we’ll keep our fingers crossed while we still have them.

We hope to be on the internet again in a few days to pop up a couple more lines of blog. Keep checking and, more importantly, tell everyone you know that if they haven’t yet donated then they’re the reason that two poor ramblers cry themselves to sleep each night, sheltering in hedgerows as snowstorms rage across the countryside. See if that works at all.

Other than the above there’s not a huge deal to report. Plus we’re going to keep a bit of an embargo on the news in a cunning ruse to force you all to attend our party to hear how the last stages went. So keep the 25th November free, and we look forward to seeing you all remarkably soon.

I hope you’re all well, as, I suspect, does Andy.

Regards from us both.