A big thank you to the girls in their final year at Oxford High School for having me come and talk to them last week. And to Rachael Pallas-Brown their teacher. A fun, perceptive and intelligent audience - I had a great time. At least until we were compared to the label of a peanut butter jar - at least I think that is …

Thanks a lot to all the year 10 and 11 students at Kelmscott school who sat patiently through my Hannibal talk the other day! A very generous and forgiving audience. One of the best questions of the day was "what was the most peculiar thing that you came across on your trip?" I had to think quite hard as …

The morning of our second day of riding in Tunisia was spent at a spectacular ancient Roman ruin: Dougga. There seemed to be no-one there except us and an army of caretakers restoring old walls. Dougga is on top of a hill and as you enter the site you hit the very well preserved Roman theatre. But there are a lot of …

And so to the last stage of our trip. Tunisia - a land dominated by President Ben Ali who was fresh from winning a recent election with 90% of the vote. His picture features in every cafe and car and on every street corner. We arrived at the ferry terminal in Tunis under his gaze and got a little worried when Sam was …

On a long trip like this interpersonal relationships become very important and are often the cause of the most interesting bits of the journey. I imagine it might make a pretty good documentary following a crew making a documentary? A bit like the new show we are thinking of pitching to the BBC: "Entertainment …

When you cycle day after day the rhythm naturally brings music to your mind. At the beginning of the trip I tended to hum fairly epic stuff as the wheels turned - tunes from the film The Dark Knight for example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfO3szikvnI&feature=related or some of those ponderous but very catchy …

We were reunited once again with the film crew in Milan. Andrea is directing the final two episodes of the documentary - amongst her many attractive attributes she laughs at all our jokes - which is very rare as they aren't ever funny. Francesco the fixer is full of concerned advice for us. His best so far being in …

We're back with the crew again at a campsite near Naples. I've had one beer and a swig on a bottle of wine and dinner should be soon but there could be time to write about Tarento, a strange place but well worth a visit. Tarento was one of many southern Italian cities where the people were split between supporting Rome …