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Welcome to our homepage documenting our travels by bicycle from Japan to England. We are not sure how long it will take us, nor exactly how many kilometres we will have to cycle, but we have given ourselves two years in which to complete the journey, or until our money runs out.

Our proposed route will take us across 14 countries; from Japan to Korea, and on to China, then through Mongolia, Tibet, Nepal, India, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Greece, Italy, France and finally England.

We are not taking the tiger line-or most direct route-but will rather take detours to visit places of interest. For example, we hope to meet the Tsaatan people who inhabit the northernmost reaches of Mongolia, where they herd reindeer much like the Sami of Lapland.

Furthermore, as you will have noticed from the title(taken incidentally from a painting by Turner), we love mountains and a good part of our travels will be spent in exploring them. Our first goal is to reach the imposing summit of Yarigatake in Japanﾕs Kita Alps. We also hope to try and get to the foot of some of the giants of the Himalaya and Karakoram. Of particular interest is Annapurna, first climbed by the French in 1950(it was the first 8000m mountain to be climbed). We also hope to stand before the incredible Raikhot face of Nanga Parbat, which rises 7000m from the gorge of the Indus to the lonely summit of this fearsome giant. Can your powers of imagination conjure an image of that wall of rock? We failed to do so and that is why we are going to take a look.

Our friends often ask us what on earth prompted us to put our conventional lives on hold, and embark on this crazy scheme, and also why we chose to travel by bicycle.

One reason we have chosen to go by bike is the difference in scale it brings to our journey. Thanks to those mile-eating monsters that are planes, ships and trains the world has become a smaller place and diminishes at an even greater pace from year to year. It is a sad irony that the easier it has become to travel the more difficult it has become to be a traveller. Everyone goes everywhere quickly and cheaply, and this, it seems to us, is an insult to travel. By travelling by bicycle we hope that the change of pace will reveal the world in a little more of her former glory.

Furthermore bicycles afford the greatest degree of freedom of any form of transport, and are inexpensive to run. Also they enable one to enter into the spirit of a place, to savour its smells and sounds and to meet its secret inhabitants, who tend to flee from the intrusion of other forms of transport. The pace at which one moves also encourages local people to take an interest. This often leads to an invitation to eat, and it is through the breaking of bread that the otherwise impenetrable barriers of language can be overcome, and the elusive magic of a place revealed.

People who like to travel will be able to give a long list of reasons as to what compels them to do so, whether the journey be short and easily accomplished or long and perilous, as the motives are often the same: for adventure and the thrill of the open road, for knowledge and self-improvement, for the challenge, or out of sheer bloody-mindedness because people said it could not be done.These and many more besides have fanned the flames of our desire to go.

Our travels will also be a pilgrimage to the simple splendours of this world, so often lost amidst the mayhem of modern life. Indeed it was the experience of cycling a road travelled frequently by car to and from work that sowed the seeds of this present journey. Travelling by bicycle, that familiar and seemingly uninteresting stretch of road burst into new life. Thus our journey is undertaken in praise of shadows and sun-struck dew on morning grass, and all those things that flash by unseen and unappreciated.

We shall endeavour to update this homepage as often as possible, and though there may be long silences, our story will continue to unfold in pictures and words. We begin on May 1st 2001 from Sapporo. We leave you with the finale from James Elroy Flecker's verse play Hassan, set 'At the Gate of the Moon, Bagdad', in 'blazing moonlight':