"The Adventures of Ten Tonne Taffy"

and Tilly the Tandem

2021 – Land’s End to Scotland

Part Three – Edinburgh to John O Groats

As August turns into Winter, we’re off again… - After having finished the Lands End to London cycle we had decided that we really needed to do the Edinburgh…
Who needs Sunshine - We're beginning to understand more about the Scots now weve been here a few days. Firstly, they don't dress for…
Onward to Castlebay - Heading north from Tarbert we had two options, follow the minor road around the coast on 3 sides of a…
Running on Gin…. - We set out on our first proper ride in the Hebrides on a brighter morning and began our island hopping…
Flagged down by the Old Bill.. - Leaving Ullapool we joined the dreaded NC500 - the North Coast 500 - a touring route full of motorhomes, motorbikes…
Where’s the station… - Getting home from JOG with a tandem isn't easy. Most cycle tourers head to the nearest station and hop on…
The Last Leg - Ferry to Cromarty Top of hill overlooking Loch Ness No sign of Nessie! Castle Stalker The Jacobite Too scarey to…

Part Two – Land’s End to Ipswich

Madness I tell you, Madness…. - They say Madness is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results so why we have just…
Bring on the hills! - We arrived in Penzance at 8am having both had a poor night's sleep. I have to stress this wasn't due…
Have you got that the right way up? - I spend a lot of time planning our routes and we alway try to stay off the bigger roads, avoid…
Tilly can’t cope… - Tilly has been making a decidedly unhealthy sounding clunks when we hit pot holes and bump up on kerbs. I'd…
Uh oh…. - We left Bristol on the old Bath Railway, a gentle incline for 7km followed by a lovely roll down toward…

Part One – Ipswich to Scotland

And we are off again… - With lockdown relaxed and travel allowed we packed Tilly up and headed off southwards to Scotland. I know, Scotland North,…
The Cambridgeshire Alps - Day two started bright and sunny and we hurtled along BMW alley to get off the stretch as soon as…
Heading North… - On our rest day we decided to cycle into Peterborough, sans Panniers which felt really strange as Tilly handles so…
York - York Minster Someone's done the decent thing and put the Town out of their misery Entering Yorkshire from Lincolnshire for…
County Durham - The hills had been performing a pincer movement ever since we left York trying to hem us in and force…
Bonnie Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 - We crossed into Scotland having had yet another white van man moment where they come within a few inches of…
Round the World! - As you will know we are hilll phobic so we changed our return route to Edinburgh to avoid the Kinross…

2020 – Winter in Taiwan

All packed up and ready to go - This year we're off to Taiwan to circumnavigate the island in an anti clockwise direction, hopefully taking full advantage of…
Hello Taiwan - Everything went like clockwork for the journey from Ipswich to Taipei. The taxi turned up 45 mins early, we arrived…
On to Taipei - Our first proper cycle was good to get under our belt during the Chinese New Year with the much reduced…
Jetlag and Taipei - We've struggled (me in particular) with Jet lag this trip. On our first cycle we arrived in Taipei and I…
Well that was easy… - We retraced our steps out of Taipei toward the airport and had a coffee break at the Old Cermaic Street…
National Cycle route 1 - The national cycle route 1 goes all the way around the island. There appear to be variations of it as…
Wow! - Leaving the glitzy second city behind, (slowly) we had my front bag support snap off the handlebar on one of…
Onwards to the Tropics… - After our couple of wonder days we woke to a gloomy and cool day as we headed to the Tropic…
What the heck was that? - Our old foe the wind had plans for trying to ruin our departure cycle from Tainan so we outfoxed it…
The End of the road and Vampires - We were on the final stretch now southward to the most southerly point in Taiwan and the tropical playground of…

About Us and our Vans

We’re Jon and Linda from Norwich in Norfolk, England. We’ve been travelling in our motorhomes since 2004, though Jon’s first trip he remembers as a child is 1972 to Moscow in a Bedford Dormobile with his parents and brother. This is probably what got him hooked and poor Linda was just dragged into it by persistent nagging and an unrelenting whinging that only men and babies seem to be able to sustain. Though, to be fair she was pretty fed up sleeping in a wet tent and travelling in a Morris Minor.

We’ve had two vans – a Frankia I650 and our current beast – Ten Tonne Taffy, or FatTaf for short. Our Frankia we shipped to the United States, Iceland and Scandinavia and Taffy has been to North Africa, the Middle East and Caucuses and Russia and Belarus, leaving a trail of revolutions in her wake, which we hope are not connected to our visits.

Taffy’s a bit of a beast and pretty much self sufficient outside winter. We’ve carry 280 litres of diesel, 500 water and have a 3 week toilet tank. We have no gas – cooking and heating is by diesel – and have a domestic style electric fridge, kettle and dishwasher, all of which happily run off our 440ah 24 volt battery system and 900 watt solar panels.

Feel free to drop us a line using the form below