Being a keen cyclist I have often had the yen to ride a longer distance over several days and to go somewhere as a result. Quite a few friends had done Land’s End to John O’Groats as part of a supported group, I fancied doing something different.  My initial thoughts were that a more audacious achievement might be to go from John O’ Groats to Sicily. Having planned a route it would be about 3200 miles and 300,000ft of ascent, optimistically it would have been about 33 days of cycling and staying at lots of B&B and carrying limited kit. Then at a family meal, discussing the event my brother in law David, he said that he was interested in doing a long European trip in his camper van so maybe we could buddy up, we would have to work around other commitments though. We looked at potential dates and came up with a compromise cutting the route down by half and settling for starting from Oundle and reaching a half way down the west coast of  Italy. So my TDE dream was born, this my daily log and learnings along the way, sorry if I got a bit carried away (War and Peace and all!), but it was fun, there are some good pictures if you get bored with the text!