Anyway, tepee up, we trotted the actually-not-sixteen-miles into the festival fields. We were joined later by a Jarrad – fated to be the only boy for the weekend – Becca, Anne-marie and Alex. The IOW festival was relaxed, surprisingly family orientated (based on my only previous experience of a festival being V) and let down only by the discovery that I still enjoy drinking Smirnoff Ice and the foolish idea that packing ourselves into a small tent to watch N-Dubz along with hundreds of screaming teenagers would be quite amusing. We fled after less than 15 minutes and went to watch Blondie with the grown ups. Debbie Harry blows chunks over Dappy any day!

We saw Florence and the Machine who I loved despite Nicky and Rachel frequently complaining that you couldn’t make out any of the words to what she was actually singing. Jay-Z was just unbelievably cool. Crowded House and Shakespeare’s Sister were nostalgic, Blondie awesome, the Silent Disco was priceless, Pink was amazing and the whole weekend finished off singing very loudly to Hey Jude with Paul McCartney. The weather was gloriously warm and sunny…well until about 15 minutes after the end of Sunday when it started to heave it down. By this point I had been thoroughly lulled into a sense of false security so was in a t-shirt and flip flops, sans wellies and sans waterproofs. Drowned cat would be the appropriate description to insert here. But at least we got to stop off and buy Indian headdresses on the way home!

Despite the unlikely happenings with Icelandic volcanoes that threatened to make this trip an impossibility, ten years after first visiting the Island of Barbados

I found myself flying back to the home of my favourite rum. Four if us arrived on a hot humid evening and were deposited in a fantastic villa with a couple of cases of beer and a gazebo inticingly lit next to the pool. Compared to my last home in Barbados with cold running water, broken window panes and a dead bat in the shower, this was a considerable upgrade. Needless to say our first night was not an early one.

The next days were fairly arduous, walking to the beach, reading on the beach, occasionally sliding into the crystal lear waters to cool down before flopping back on the beach!

Saturday was the day of Theo and Olivia’s wedding in her hometowm, St James. The wedding itself was in a beautiful stone church among the trees where everyone fanned themselves vigourously throughout the ceremony and then afterwards sipped cold beers and cocktails on the beach at the Sandy Lane Hotel. The reception was then at the Sandy Lane country club where I absolutely did not steal monogrammed shampoo and conditioner from the bathrooms!

After the end of the reception the evening took a slight turn for the weird. We ended up persuading most of the wedding party to head to the Piano Bar along the west coast on the recommendation of Scott and GIles who had spent a comedy evening there the previous day. A fairly normal bar with a piano playing singer sporting a bizarre mix of air stewardesses, tourists and eccentric locals gradually descended – aided by much rum – into a lock in – odd conversations, Fiona persuading me to audition for the bar owner so he would let me sing Son of a Preacher Man with the pianist (which I duly did) and finally at 6am we ended up almost kidnapping the Spencer the pianist to head back to our villa for more drinking. Probably fortunately this plan fell flat and just the four of us stumbled back to ours in a taxi as the sun was well and truly up in the sky.

The following day we crawled out of bed feeling rather worse for the wear for the post wedding BBQ down on the beach. A huge amount of fantastic food later, home made lime juice, swimming the balmy water and a salad dressing called ‘Whoop-ass’ later I was feeling tired but far more human! I only had one day left after the weekend and we spent in lazing around our beautiful villa and had some of the guys up for a pool side BBQ in the evening. Like I said, it’s a hard life on the island!

I pulled myself away from London and spent the weekend with my friend Lucy in the Peak District. After a heavily wine-fuelled catch up on the Friday night we headed up to Edale, nestled in the hills and set up camp in grumpy Mr Coopers farm. We went walking up on Kinder Scout, laughed at the sheep, then headed down to the Nag’s Head for some cool pear ciders. We ate so much food on the BBQ that I thought I would explode.

After we’d allowed dinner and beer to settle over night we mustered the energy to have a fry up at the Grindleford Cafe where I promised Lucy not to show her up by asking for a Cappucino. Then we headed up to watch the bright shiny rows of motorbikes lining the road through Matlock before heading back for a few riverside beers in Long Eaton.

Finally at the end of our trip we ended up back in Havana, staying in Varadero just down the hill from the rather majestic front of the Universidad de la Habana. I loved Havana. Varadero is a residential area of wide streets, crumbling old colonial house, cracked pavements and shady trees. From here we could walk along much of the length of the Malecon, the road along with sea wall that sweeps around and up to Habana Vieja. We had some very good food in a leafy plaza, browsed the book stalls and craft markets, wandered through romantically run down streets, smoked cigars (well just me), drank amazing hot chocolate and caught a few local bands playing for afternoon mojitos. We achieved full propaganda overload at the Revolutionary Museum although I did adore the prominent “Wall of the Cretins” in the entrance hall featuring cartoons of Batista, Regan and Bush thanking them for helping to Cuba to make, strengthen and consolidate their revolution! We also spent a morning in the Cuban Modern Art section of the Museo de Belles Artes which has some really wonderful, really weird and really interesting displays of Cuban Art through the decades. Our final night in Cuba was spent in the magnificent Gran Teatro watching a Cuban performance, in Spanish, of the Magic Flute. It was undoubtedly the funniest and most entertaining opera performance I’ve ever seen!

We left our final Cuban experience for our final hours before catching the flight home. We went to visit a Coppelia ice cream, a Government-subsidised ice cream chain aimed at keeping the communist masses happy. We queued up for about 40 minutes to get a table and then tucked in to a spread of six heaped bowls of excellent ice cream and three bowls of cake. Incredibly unhealthy and completely wonderful!

We managed to persuade Caz to try horse riding for the first time and we organised a trip out to a nearby farm. Unknown to us, the pleasant mornings ride would actually wind all the way up a series of highly steep stony paths in the hills and then all the way down equally steeply. Not the ideal terrain to be on a horse for the first time. Caz managed to look fairly calm during the ride but afterwards quite definitely announced that she didn’t think it was the really the activity for her! Afterwards we walked an hour through the forest to a small waterfall that fell into a wonderfully refreshing swimming hole where you could swim into the cave behind and look up at the stalactites or jump off the nearby rocks into the depths. I managed to face plant into the water whilst doing this which looked particularly graceful!

Trinidad is only 11km from Playa Ancon, a sandy peninsula with a few large all-inclusive hotels along the stretch. We spent the day further down from the main tourist area in a quiet stretch of rock strewn white sand. The girls happily read and worked on their tans and I spent the whole afternoon drinking Mojitos and playing a highly competitive game of cards with a Canadian guy called Mike who stayed in our Casa for a night. He taught me a brilliant card game, the name of which is a mystery but the girls later christened ‘Mike’ in his honour!

The next day Kristy and Caz headed off to an offshore island of large Iguanas and I went diving for the day. The reefs around Ancon are cute but not quite the proliferation of colourful corals and fish that I’m used to. I still enjoyed the dives for the whole underwater environment and I did get to see a giant crab and lobster as well as playing around with Dad’s underwater camera housing! By the time I got back from the second dive and took off my short wetsuit I discovered my legs had helpfully tanned a very dark shade of brown below the suit line and the stripe was incredibly obvious. I decided to find a small palm tree along the beach and lay with my legs in the sun but with SPF30 on the bottom bits until the tan had evened out a little!

Santiago de Cuba
We flew from Havana straight down to Santiago de Cuba in the cutest plane that I have ever seen – complete with painted on beach and palm trees. Our brief hosts in Havana had humorously described Santiago as hot, in more ways than one. The men, we were told, are good for a night, and not good for much more. Intriguing if nothing else!

Santiago de Cuba is an easy-going relaxed colonial town, we pottered around a few museums and galleries, visited the unassumingly beautiful Cementerio Santa Ifigenia and its bizarre Monty Python style changing of the guards and relaxed in Plaza de Dolores and Parque Cespedes conducting important research into Cuba’s finest beverages; Cristal (a light, tasty lunchtime beer), Bucanero (a slightly stronger beer with those of hardier tastes), the Mojito (a Cuban classic drinkable at literally all times of day), Pina Colada (personally I don’t see the necessity of spoiling the run with so much fruit but the other’s liked them) and finally the Daiquiri (see Pina Colada)!

It would be impossible to speak of Cuba without mentioning dancing and music in the same breadth. There seemed to be some kind of band playing wherever we walked during the day and so finding some live music in the evening was certainly not hard. In the Casa de la Musica we were hijacked by a huge family of Cubans’ distributed among the older men for dance partners and eventually ended up in another bar drinking neat dark rum with the band’s two bongo players, salsa dancing and in my case speaking increasingly more recklessly confident Spanish. The next morning the lady who owned the Casa Particular (private house) we were staying in, brought us two thermos flasks of coffee looking highly amused!

Before leaving Santiago de Cuba (and our already beloved 4pm  mojitos in the Casa de Te on the main square) we hired a car for a few hours. The car was an extremely battered piece of engineering in which was squeezed Rafael, a quiet guy with a stomach the size of Mount Olympus which he liked to expose to the elements, rolling up his t-shirt and letting the brown mound bask happily in the sun.

Rafael and his stomach drove us down to the Castillo de San Pedro del Morro, a seventeenth century fort built overlooking an endless expanse of ocean. We walked along the battlements and attempted to decode the Spanish stories of pirates, invaders, Corsicans and bandits of Cuba colonial past. We also took a small boat over to the nearby island of Cayo Granma where the only afternoon activity was a serious game of dominoes taking place on the main path.

Our other excursion out of the town took us to Cuba’s holiest site. Communism and religion aren’t usual bed fellows but since the Pope’s blessing in the past decade Christianity has apparently persisted under Fidel. The Basilica de Neustra Senora del Cobre is a fantastically situated church nestled among green hills and houses the Yoruba godess of dance and love. Cubans come here to pray and if those prayers are answered return to leave tokens of thanks. These tokens, all on display, included everything from locks of hair, graduation scrolls to olympic medals.

07.30 Huddled with coffee along the side of Trafalgar square in the pouring rain becoming rapidly aware that my waterproof wasn’t. But we braved the rain to take photos for the start of our trip and then (after Cameron’s rather late arrival!) set off through the streets of London and out to the country.

09.00 I was under the impression that London at any rate was fairly flat. This gets shot to pieces as we encounter our first hill (I point out my definition of the word hill changed dramatically over the four days) right outside Croydon. Surely suburbs should not involve hills?

12.00 All going well, cycling along chatting to the Ferg and enjoying the English countryside now the rain had stopped. Then alas I found out why Turner’s Hill is so named. One village, one huge hill but lunch was waiting at the top. Have ham and cheese sandwiches ever tasted so good.

16.00 A whole day of admirable map reading finally goes to my head. I zoom off over the bumps along the south downs and merrily follow the signs to Newhaven. Onto the motorway, or nearly. I managed to backtrack (back up the hill) and was the last person to turn up sheepishly in Newhaven. Despite Cameron’s three punctures and Paddy’s brush with death coming off his bike down a steep hill we are all pretty much in one piece.

Day two

09.00 Finally leaving the hole that is Newhaven and heading out to Dieppe on the ferry. Ate, slept, drank coffee and played cards and tried not let the legs stiffen up.

14.00 In the pretty totally un-Newhaven like town of Dieppe and after lunch setting off across the French countryside under blue skies, white clouds and bright sunshine. This surely is what it’s all about.

17.30 We arrive in the unbelievably cute little hotel in Montville where we have our own little cottage style split level rooms complete with fresh bread delivered to your door for breakfast. Found a great restaurant and four course meal for dinner – I ate so much that I hurt!

Day three

09.00 Feeling very glad of the padded shorts this morning as my bum has started to complain a bit at the relenting saddle action. We headed off through the cute French villages on the way to Rouen.

10.00 Unlike the hoards of hard core French lycred enthusiasts out on the road a few of us get tempted into a bakery for fresh pain au chocolat and a quick coffee. Didn’t we just have breakfast?

12.00 Realising just how up and down the french countryside really is, although the down hills are so much fun. A steep drop takes us into Rouen and then the rise on the other side nearly killed me. It maybe a hill but on a bike it feels like a mountain. I get half way up before finally resorting to my lowest gear and wondering if it would have ben quicker if I’d walked up.

13.00 Stop for lunch in the pouring rain and end up sheltering, all 17 of us in the van eating brie and chorizo sandwiches. After lunch we are following the Seine through the country. Kieren has a nightmare with bursting values and punctures and the tool repair kits come into their own.

17.00 We arrive on the banks of the Seine in Le Goulet for beers, food, wine, more wine, more wine. At midnight the owners wisely kick us out of the restaurant and shut up the bar. I wonder what cycling with a hangover will feel like…

Day four

07.30 It’s not that I’m hung over but possibly regretting that fourth caraf of red wine!

09.00 No worries, the legs are on fire and it’s our final day.

11.00 Cycling through the cutest of the French villages with Olly, Julie and Ferg and hit some lovely down hill runs. Confidently decide I can go faster than this and speed off into the distance.

12.00 Coming up to Evencourt I approached my cycling nemesis, an 8km climbing road. Only of course, I didn’t know there were 8 kms, and each time it looked as if the summit had been reached, it just kept on going. I gasped, I panted, I promised my immortal soul for the ending of the hill and I had to eat half my Macaroon to get me through. I arrived in Boisemount rather quiet and sat reflectively eating my baguette, slightly scarred.

14.30 Zooming down a long stretch with the palace gates of St Germain visible ahead of us. From the gardens we could see across to Paris and our destination , le Tour Eiffel.

17.00 I took a while to get into Paris, all of us, wheel to wheel as we’d left London four days before. But finally there was the Seine and soon we were over the bridge and under the huge girders of the tower, drinking champagne, eating ice cream, exhausted but triumphant.

I hopped on a bus and travelled for 3 hours north of Dubrovnik along the most stunning coastline. I was dropped off in a tiny concrete bus shelter in what looked like the middle of nowhere but down the hill side nestled into the coast I could see the suggestions of a town and set off down the hill. Brela is a unbelievably cute little holiday town that sits in the middle of kilometres of small peddbly beaches and coves fringed with pine trees and clear turquoise waters. After following the promenade about two kilometres above the centre I soon found a small cove all to myself and settled down to enjoy my book and a swim in the sun.

I came back down the coast to Dubronivk to explore some of the nearby islands for my last day or two in Croatia. I took the local ferry an hour from Dubrovnik to Lopud and got happily lost walking around the island. The ferry was nearly not returning to Dubrovnik as, although the skies had cleared, the wind and whipped the sea up into a close replica of ‘The Perfect Storm’ and we were tossed about as the ferry zigzagged across the waves to get back to the port! The next day was hot, sunny and calm so I spent my last morning on the nearby island of Lokrum admiring the panoramic view from the old French fort atop the island’s centre.