Just back from Malawi. Would like to introduce you to our new Skedaddle guides, Wikus and Wesley. You should see them biking… their training ground… riding with Zebras and Elephants! They are grand and what a trip!

I was lucky enough to go and stay over with Naomi for a week in Sardinia. She has a lovely new place which as well as being her home is the new base for Skedaddle Italia operations!

                Cycling diaries
   (not Che’s … but mountain biking)     

Avenidas run norte and sur
creating a grid with oriente and poniente calles
around the parque central
in Antigua Guatemala

When people think about cycling in Spain, the destination that usually comes to mind is the Pyrenees.  So when a group of us talked about arranging an offroad cycling holiday in Spain in May, no-one quite knew where the Picos de Europa were, or what to expect when we got there. The tour company bumph said it all: “Blessed with all the ingredients for a truly memorable mountain biking holiday, and surrounded by a panorama of majestic, snow-capped peaks, the Picos de Europa remains Europe’s best kept secret”. Lovely, evocative words on paper, but what would it really be like?

Canyonlands - a bunch of rocks and sand .. well yes but also the destination for yet another group of intrepid Skedaddlers keen to hone their riding/hiking/drinking/altitude acclimatising skills.

To describe a Skedaddle holiday ( sorry - adventure ) involves many superlatives - Canyonlands is no exception!

I caught the train from King’s Cross on Friday nite to Settle via Leeds. Met a girl Barbara on the Settle train who was also doing the mountain bike weekend. Andy the tour guide picked us up in the van and we then drove to the cabin near Ingleton. The stone walls along the way are spectacular. They are (dare I say it) better than those in the Cotswolds. The rolling hills (not a lot of trees around) reminded me of the highlands in Scotland.

“What I don’t want is a weekend surrounded by testosterone charged blokes who’ll make me feel inadequate on a bike” that was my plea to the man from Saddle Skedaddle, organisers of mountain bike holidays.

I must admit, it was the name of the company that caught my eye. It sounded fun.  Adventurous but light hearted, not taking itself too seriously. How I like to see myself I suppose!

September in the Rockies
There cannot be many places in the world where in the space of two weeks, in more or less the same mountain range (OK, so I am not a geographer), you will see such a variety of different landscapes. From the granite faces of Banff, through the red rocks of Glacier National Park and high grasslands of Montana, via the brittle, yellow, steaming cliffs of Yellowstone, finally to the awesome beauty of the Grand Tetons around Jackson Hole. We certainly did not expect that almost every day of the trip would at one point or another take our breath away.

This superb desert biking adventure focuses on the deep south of Morocco, a land of big skies and stark mountain ranges where mud-brick kasbahs appear to rise up out of the desert, sitting in tranquil palm oases and framed by dramatic backdrops of snowcapped mountains. We ride along Morocco’s dirt roads, taking us from Marrakech to the Tichka Pass, the highest in the High Atlas, and then southward, descending along the Draa Valley to the fringes of the Sahara Desert.