It’s been two months to the day since we arrived in Paris, and the trip has already felt like a lifetime. We’ve wandered through France in the cold and rain, cycled beside glaciers, lava plains and fiords in Iceland, enjoyed the unbelievable network of Danish cycle paths and nature camps, meandered through the lakes and forests dotted across Northern Germany, walked until our feed hurt in Berlin, and are now eating and drinking our way along the Danube.

So far we’ve spent 45 nights in our tent, 15 nights in an apartment or guesthouse and two nights on a ferry. Which means we’ve already put up and packed up our campsite more times than in the previous 2 years.

We’ve learnt a lot along the way too. From never really having lived together before, we’re now in each others faces 24 hours a day, living and sleeping in a tent that is about 2/3rds the size of a double bed, and much of the time we are tired, or cold, or both. So it’s given us a lesson in patience and in conflict resolution.

We’ve had some gear that has worked out brilliantly, some that’s been a bit hit and miss, and some that have been epic failures. We picked up quite a few new things for the trip, that we would not normally bother with for shorter trips back home. The Hilleberg tarp we took a gamble on has been the single best investment we have ever made in camping gear. Not only does it keep the rain and the wind out, it also manages to somehow keep the heat in, and it gets instantly warmer when you sit under it. The MSR Eta pots we brought in France have worked really well – to the point where we’ve managed to make pancakes a few times (which is something we would never have bothered to even attempt in our old aluminium cook set). One of the handles on the pots did fall off about a week after we brought it, but after emailing Primus they arranged for us to pick up a replacement pot when we were in Berlin (pretty impressive customer service). Our Exped air mats and chair kits have been lifesavers on the cold rainy days stuck in the tent (although we’ve had a little trouble with the poles getting stuck in Matt’s chair kit). Matt’s Busch and Muller charging light that he brought just before leaving Australia has been a continual disappointment. The switch that sits on top of the handlebars to turn the light on and off wasn’t sealed, so water flooded the switch in the first rain storm we cycled through. Matt did some jerry rigging with some waterproofing spray and tape, but then somewhere in Northern Germany the entire thing sprang apart, and now the switch is just down to the circuit board. Matt emailed Busch and Muller when we first started having problems, and got a pretty unimpressive and very unhelpful response. Really not what we expected for such an expensive product.

We’ve also just recently added a few new additions to our kit – a 4L Ortlieb water bladder (we’re expecting we may have to wild camp more through the winter as campsites close down), rain pants (why oh why didn’t we buy them before Iceland???), and a thermos that fits in our bikes water bottle cage (so that Matt can have a cup of tea in the morning without waking me, and so we have something warm to drink when it rains and we can’t find shelter). We’ve also installed kickstands on our bikes, as things to lean your bikes up against can be surprisingly hard to find at times and dropping them on the ground wasn’t doing our gear a world of good.