Misty days, silly shorts and Don't Panic

The clock seems to be ticking faster and faster - from the trip being months away I find myself two days from flying. I leave Heathrow at 18:40 on Wednesday for Hong Kong, where after a bit of hanging around I fly onto Bangkok. I get in late Thursday evening, have Friday to look around then up at 7am on Saturday to be picked up and taken to my bike for the start of the ride.

The cycling clothes that I plan to take are in the wash so I am using old gear that I do not usually wear. The weather has not been that cold today so I wore a pair of shorts that I first used 25 years ago. (Yes I am a bit of a hoarder). The shorts look ridiculous as they are very short, but were remarkably comfortable and clearly hard-wearing - but as I walked in from a shorter run out ride this evening got hoots of laughter.

The weather is continuing to be changeable, slightly warmer, very dull and eventually turning to rain. As time it ticking I took a shorter route today (11Km/7miles shorter) and although dull because it was not too cold was quite pleasant, I wore a hat but had to take it off as my head was getting too hot. After mentioning the two-colour fields yesterday I took a picture of one. It was probably two fields at one time but with the trend towards larger fields the dividing hedge could well have been grubbed up. This was taken around 3.30pm and it was turning mistier by the minute.

On the way back the I took this picture, the mist seems to accentuate the different distances to the trees as the further way they are the more faded they appear. It was so dark that I had trouble keeping the camera still.

Tomorrow I plan on getting all my gear in one place and also ensuring I have all the leads and chargers for the various gadgets I will be taking. I will also need to charge up the various batteries, (2 cameras, phone, GPS, laptop, MP3 player) I also need to load up the software to allow my new phone and laptop to talk - although I will probably do that when I am at the airport if I run out of time tomorrow. I also need to ensure that the home printer has ink and paper to avoid having IT-support calls at strange times of the night.