00:00Day 6 of cycling from the UK to Australia.
00:03I woke up in this cool airbnb in Lille.
00:05It is a local dojo which mainly teaches women self-defense.
00:09Can't tell you how nice it was to sleep in a warm bed and have a nice warm shower too.
00:14The host Laurent was also amazing, what a lovely guy.
00:17We had some great conversations.
00:19He also gave me a couple of Zen buyers which are basically a Japanese flattened rice cake
00:24and also a charm one with engravings for good luck.
00:27The rice cakes were delicious by the way.
00:29I made a quick stop to this bike shop where they actually fixed my brakes for free.
00:33Sadly didn't have a derailleur replacement though.
00:35I then dropped by a Lidl's bakery, got myself a pan au chocolat and then I cycled into Lille.
00:40Lille was beautiful as to be expected.
00:43It had that lovely, you know, French old architecture look that everybody loves.
00:48And the majority of Europe tried to copy.
00:50But as much as Lille was lovely, I actually really fancied getting on my bike and cycling.
00:54So that I did.
00:55I cycled myself out of Lille and it wasn't long until we were in Belgium.
00:59The Belgium that I entered was a bit misty and foggy.
01:02Did kind of give it a cool look though.
01:04Kind of eerie.
01:05I then remembered the England game was on though.
01:07So I quickly tented up, put on some pasta and yeah, I watched the football.
01:12We were now just outside a town called Ronces.
01:14Not to be mistaken with Nantes.
01:16This meant that we had about 100km to get to Brussels.
01:19Anyway, that's for the next episode.
01:21Day 8 of cycling from the UK to Australia.
01:24Didn't really get much footage from this morning.
01:26But I took a short ride into Brussels.
01:28I dropped my bike off at the bike mechanic.
01:30Said I needed a new cassette and a new chain.
01:33And I then had to lug my bags over a mile to the hostel.
01:36After my hard work, I treated myself to a pastry.
01:39Look at this croissant.
01:40It had cream inside, chocolate icing.
01:43Yum.
01:44And I then started my walk around the city.
01:46As much as I'd loved cycling the last week.
01:49Being able to walk around without having to worry about my bike was bliss.
01:53Oh, and I tried my first kebab by the way.
01:55Honestly, I can't believe I even made it to Brussels.
02:05This journey has taught me so much already.
02:07And as I walk around the city, I couldn't help but feel grateful for the journey that I was on.
02:12We've had flat tyres, snapped derailleurs, ripped tents, forgotten passports.
02:17And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
02:19Absolute chaos.
02:20And I wouldn't do it any other way.
02:22And as I laid my head to rest on my hostel bed, I thought surely the majority of the craziness is over.
02:28Oh, how naive, little boy.
02:30How naive.
02:32Day 28 of cycling from the UK to Australia.
02:34This day goes from very good to very bad very quickly.
02:37But we started off the day with bad.
02:39It was very rainy outside.
02:40But the weather soon cleared up enough for me to get my stuff together and leave.
02:44We're only 10km from Bern.
02:46Not too far away from the panel shuffler either.
02:48And whatever these are, I'm really going to miss these.
02:51Then, wanked off.
02:52As I told you guys in the Basel episode, somebody was late for their train and ended up coming into the hostel.
02:57We sat up and had a good conversation for a couple of hours.
03:00And he told me he was living in Bern and that I just had to come and see it.
03:03Oh, when he saw that I was near Bern, he pinged me a message on Instagram.
03:07He offered to show me around the city, which I gratefully accepted.
03:10Bern is a really cool city and it's purposely kept its old look.
03:13Personally love the Canton flag of Bern.
03:15In Switzerland, you'll see that there's a lot of flags.
03:18Basically, each Canton, which is their version of a county, has their own flag.
03:22And they tend to be really cool.
03:24Because they try and preserve Bern's historic architecture.
03:27Their cathedral is actually the biggest building in the city.
03:30And it's not too big, but when you see the overview of the city, you can really see it towering over all the rest of the buildings.
03:36Side note, there was a suicide hotspot in the city and they actually put up this little sign there.
03:41I thought that was awesome.
03:42The colour of the water in the city was beautiful and apparently on good days, people actually float in the water.
03:47I then had possibly the best kebab of the tour yet.
03:50Then, disaster struck.
03:52So, when I went back to my bike, it looked like this and I tried to cycle on it.
03:56I got about five kilometres outside of Bern and then it burst.
03:59So I had to get on a public transport back into Bern and then stay in a hostel for the night.
04:04Yeah, I was pretty bummed and this was a really low moment of the tour.
04:08It meant that we were in Bern for the Switzerland versus Germany game, which was pretty cool.
04:12I managed to find a public viewing and yeah, the Swiss were very happy because they qualified for the round of 16.
04:18But England are about to knock them out in the quarterfinals.
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