Nine Years Down
It is now April 2026 and it has been 9 years since I left the UK in 2017 and once again I have to report that I have still yet to complete my RTW trip.
My last post was in May 2025 summarising how my South America trip came to a disastrous end in the town of Taltal in Chile because of a mechanical failure in the gearbox of the bike.
This post is a summary of what I have been doing since I returned to Spain in May of last year although it has nothing to do with riding a bike since the last time that I was on one was January 2025 when its gearbox blew up on me.
On returning to Spain I spent the summer in Galica at the home of my good friend Graham doing nothing much in particular and by the time I had thought about getting another bike September had arrived. I decided that this was not the right time to buy another bike for a couple of reasons.
Winter would be arriving soon and I did not relish the prospect of riding through yet another European Winter especially as I had no destination in mind. The second reason was that all roads to the East out of Europe were still closed. The third reason was that I have a personal commitment to attend to in Panama and as a result I need to return there before November of this year.
Instead I do what I always do when I am not riding a bike, I coach American Football. A team in the city of Dax in the South west of France had contacted me and I agreed to start coaching there in the middle of October. I left Galica at the beginning of October as I wanted to visit friends whom I had not seen for a few years.
I caught up with some friends in Reus then I flew from Barcelona to Budapest when I caught up with another friend and his wife. The last time that I was in Budapest was at the tail end of the Covid nonsense in September 2022 where everything was closed so it was good to see the city back to normal.
Whilst I enjoyed my time in Budapest I had a tight schedule to keep to and I then headed to Poland. I spent a few nights in Krakow and Katowice catching up with some Polish friends and it was good to see that both cites had not changed much since the last times that I had been in them.
I then flew from Krakow to Copenhagen to visit the guy who owned the American football team that I had coached with in Krakow. It was good to see Rolf and his family again who very graciously allowed me to stay with them for the duration of my visit.
During my time in Copenhagen I also caught up my friend Dennis whom I had became friends with when we met in Panama. Dennis is a good guy who is very down to earth and I enjoyed my time with him sitting in a bar in Copenhagen drinking beer and putting the world to rights.
I then flew from Copenhaen to Biaritz via Dublin. After a few hours sittng around in Dublin airport I caught my flight to Biaritz and by early evening I was in the city of Dax where I would remain until the beginning of March to coach with the team.
I had passed through Day on a few occasions previously whilst riding around Europe but this was the first time that I had stayed in the city. My schoolboy French came in very useful as although English is taught as a second language most French people over about 30 years old do not speak any English.
Dax has a thermal spring in the middle of the city where a giant pool of hot spring water is housed in a very Romanesque looking building.
The rest of the city is just like most small French cities except that it has seemed to have escaped the worst of the decline that I have noticed in larger French cities.
In December 2025 I decided to visit the city of Bordeaux which was only an hour away to the North by train. The last time that I had spent any time in Bordeaux was in 1987 and I was interested to see if the city had changed.
I decided to walk from the train station to the river and I very quickly saw that the city, though still architecturally beautiful, had in places slid in to a third world like shit hole.
At the side of the river I came across a street market that seemed to only to sell goods catering for an Arabic population, much like most of the people who were shopping in the market.
As I walked along the riverside and in the streets surrounding the train station all that I saw were large groups of African migrants sitting about drinking alcohol and watching passers by in much the same way that lions watch antelope.
At the beginning of March my time in Dax had come to an end and although I had enjoyed my time with the team in Dax it was time to move on. I had planned to return to Budapest to take up another coaching offer that would keep me busy over the summer however a problem arose that eventually caused this plan unfortunately to fall through.
I bounced around in small towns near Paris for a few weeks considering what I would do next. I chose not to stay in Paris because of the giant shit hole the city had degenerated in to since my first visit to it in 1984.
Then I unexpectedly received an offer to coach in the Republic of Georgia so I headed for Tbilisi where I met up with the guys who had recruited me to be the Head Coach for the Georgian National American football team which I was to build from scratch.
I have only been here in Tbilisi for a few weeks now but I like what I have seen so far.
The city has the feel of an old European city and the Georgian people are very friendly and also seem to be culturally European. The city dates back to about 1100 and some recent excavations have unearthed parts of the old city walls that date back to about the 12th or 13th century.
The city is obviously undergoing extensive modernisation as the large number of buildings undergoing renovation or construction attest to. The city is very clean and graffiti is almost non-existent.
Not long after I arrived I was invited to a meal with some of the players and their families. I enjoyed socialising with the players who all seem to be good guys.
I was also in another restaurant which made good use of beer barrels and metal beer kegs in the gent’s toilet.
Near to the old town one of the river banks is formed by a very imposing cliff on top of which sat a large statue of a warrior on a horse and an old castle like building.
A cable car goes from this river bank to the hills above the opposite river bank on which sits an old fortress undergoing renovation and where the botanical gardens are situated. Needles to say I never felt the need to visit either by taking a cable car ride over a wide and deep river.
Near to the cable car station is one of Tblisi’s main attractions “The Bridge of Peace” which is a very futuristic looking pedestrian bridge made of glass and steel.
As I was crossing it I was pleasantly surprised to see the bridge getting its morning clean by city workers.
Seeing the bridge being cleaned make me think about my time in he UK before I had decided to leave on my travels and what I had seen whilst on my travels over the last few years. What I realised was that apart from my time in Poland this was the first time in a very long time that I had seen anywhere, city workers taking care of public infrastructure.
This simple observation made me realise how civic pride had disappeared or was never really present in most places that I have visited and how I never really noticed its absence in my own city until I had seen it again here in Tbilisi.