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Bank holiday cycling tour

We are an adventure-seeking family of 3 from the sleepy hills of North Wales with the dream and ambition of escaping our mundane lives and seeing the world. From here, you can track and follow our journey as we plan, prepare and train for our big cycling adventure, along with the challenges and triumphs we’ll face whilst on the road.

Preparations – The planning, training and practice runs before the big event can be just as stressful as the journey itself- follow our progress here!

Calgary to Vancouver – The first ‘leg’ of our journey tracks our progress from our departure at Manchester airport, through the Rockies and towards Vancouver.

Vancouver to San Francisco – The second leg will see us following the west coast, heading south towards California and, we hope, warmer weather!

Our preparations begun over 2 years ago with a far-off ambition to travel; but started in earnest once we booked our outgoing flights to Calgary, Canada on NYE 2011. On April 30th, 2011, we will take the first tentative steps of our dream by undertaking our first significant cycling adventure together as a family. We will be touring on our bikes from Calagary in Canada, across the Rockies to Vancouver, and then crossing the border to work our way down the west coast to San Francisco. Whilst our route and timings are yet to be determined, we are looking at cycling over 1,300miles together as an introduction to the world of touring by bike.

With our belongings and tent attached to our bikes, we will be looking to live simply and get back to basics in order to appreciate the truly spectactular aspects of nature that both Canada and the USA west coast have to offer. Our mutual love of the outdoors and our desire to explore the unknown will push us to venture outside our comfort zone and see what more the world has to offer. Equally, we believe strongly in the importance of learning through experience and want to offer our son the opportunity to taste a life and culture other than his own, to gain invaluble experiences and broaden his horizons to fuel his love for knowledge and hopefully encourage a similar respect and love for travel that we already share. Whilst he may be too young to recall much of our first venture, we believe nonetheless that it will lay an important foundation for the life-long lessons and adventures we hope will follow in years to come, and as such, will help shape him as he continues to grow and thrive.

Our basic theme for our trip will be ‘cheap, cheap, cheaper and free!’ and as such we will be working out a careful budget and looking to take any advice, help and support on-route that we can get. The more we save, the further we can go and the more adventures we can have in the long run! Whilst our initial decision to take this trip was an act of spontaneity, we have spent years dreaming and the best part of the past 2 years following families who have undertaken similar ventures themselves to educate ourselves as best we can. However, if you have any suggestions or ideas for us, we’d love to hear from you- please contact us!

Our blog will follow our journey as we plan, prepare and train for our mini adventure, along with the challenges and triumphs we’ll face whilst on the road. And if, as we pray and hope, this is only the beginning of the toddlerontour threesome… perhaps it will follow our ventures for many years to come.

To find out more about us, take a look at our ‘About Us‘ page. You can also follow us on Twitter, @toddlerontour, or on facebook by searching for our page, ‘Toddler on Tour’.

We look forward to sharing this amazing episode of our lives with you!

Matt, Becki and Theo