The big day arrived.

I've spend the last couple of soldering connectors for headsets, weeksexperiment with building compact portable camping stoves, setting up my PDA with GPS software, headset connections and data roaming to update our blogs and we've spend a whole day meticulously packing our bags to have the weight balanced properly on the bikes and just trying to have everything as close to perfect as you can possibly get it.

I went to bed at 22:00 unable to fall asleep for hours. I honestly think, the last time I was this exited about something was when we went on a holiday to the coast when I was still in primary school. (This is a big deal in South Africa, especially growing up in the desert.)

I eventually fell asleep way past midnight, woke up again at around 02:00 checking my watch to make sure I didn't oversleep, drifting off again till 03:45 waiting 5 minutes longer for my alarmclock to go off at 04:00 and just gave up, got up turn off the alarms and started dressing.

At around 04:40 I had the bike packet and the luggage strapped to it and texed Pat to make sure he's on schedule.

Pat arrived just after 05:00, on schedule and we took the last familiar route down to Rosslare in even more familiar Irish weather. But even rain and dark clouds today, could not affect the great mood I'm in.

Everything went to schedule, boarded the ferry on time and as we crossed the Irish sea leaving the familiar horisons behind one can not help but feel insignificant and small when you're surrounded by the vast ocean with no land in site. Not so long ago explorers risked and lost their lives to make this last crossing to the "end of the world", today this is just another modern day formality taken for granted by thousands a day.

We arranged to meet some mutual friends close to Cardiff and booked into Premier Inn for the night, turned on heaters and started drying out our gear.