Members enjoyed a fascinating talk on October 27th from author and Rail Trail promoter, Janice Simpson. Janice spoke to the club on Zoom last year about her work promoting the Maryborough to Castlemaine Rail Trail project, but this time she shared her adventures of some amazing bicycle journeys around Europe. A friend introduced Janice to bike riding after participating in the Great Victorian Bike Ride in 2004. Janice duly took herself off to a bike shop in Carlton and bought herself a "lovely, navy-blue speed machine" and that's when the adventures began. See "Read more..."
Whilst at the bike shop, Janice saw a poster advertising a bike ride from Paris to Istanbul called the "Orient Express". Even though she was a novice rider, her heart was "all a flutter" due to her readings of Agatha Christie, and she decided to "have a go". She paid the considerable sum of money required for registration and eventually fronted up for the six-week bicycle journey through France, Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and ending up in Turkey. Janice shared a number of hair-raising experiences from that trip with us, but one of the scariest was her encounter with a large pack of mangy dogs that attacked the bike riders as they rode through Romania. All members breathed a collective sigh of relief when Janice described her escape, and there was general agreement that we had all witnessed a wonderful presentation on the night.