3,000 mile trip – on a bike

Published in an unknown newspaper

A 3,000 mile cycling holiday across Europe to Africa has left 21- year-old Alan Kinshott of Birtley Rise, Bramley, with a gigantic appetite. For the last nine days of his eight-week trip he had to live on bread and fruit, because his money was running out.

On Saturday, Alan ended his gruelling ride and said: ‘I could do it all over again after a bit of a rest, but I’ve got a lot of eating to do.’

Alan, who was accompanied on his holiday by Hugh Kendal-Ward (21), of Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, has just finished studying statistics at London University.

‘We had a bit of trouble with our bikes, what with burst tyre and a few thunder storms while we were returning,’ he said. ‘We cycled all the way through France and Spain to Gibraltar. Then we took a boat to Tangier: where we spent a couple of days. We both wanted to go to Spain, and we thought that by going that little bit further to Africa it would make the holiday different.

‘On our return journey we had to travel about 500 miles across Spain by train because we were behind our schedule and both of us had to back in England by a certain date.’Alan said that all the equipment they could take was a screwdriver, a spanner and a puncture outfit. If anything went wrong they had to improvise – usually with string.

Alan added that one of the unseen advantages of taking a cycling holiday was the attitude of the Customs officials.

‘We didn’t need our passports most of the time, and we didn’t have to bother stopping at most Customs posts. If the border police saw us cycling up a mountain or something, they didn’t bother to stop us but just waived us through, especially on the return journey.

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