Why You Should Keep a Tour Log

One of the biggest benefits we had from JR's iPad on our Paris to Venice trip - second only to its help in navigating our way across 1440 km of Europe - was in JR's daily log.

Although many of L'Express' diary entries were phoned through to Tracey, at home in England, some of them were also emailed, and the iPad was a very useful way of collating and storing the daily records.

On a trip as memorable as Paris to Venice, it's hard to imagine you will ever forget the details of each day's pain and pleasure, but as I proved the last time we met, those memories can soon become confused and conflated.

I had a vivid memory of two massive climbs in Austria, following a long day that ended in a bicycle-friendly guest house. I remembered this day particularly because I struggled so much on the first climb that I found myself risking life and limb trying to get a drink from a trickle of water that ran down a slippery, moss-covered rockface.

I remember coming to my senses, dragging muyself onwards and upwards, and then buying two bottles of extortionately priced water just a few hundred metres from the summit. Then I remember the second climb seeming just as hard and us ending the day with a descent to another guest house in a high alpine village.

But apparently my memory is playing tricks. According to JR's memory (and he kept the log, after all), those were on two different days. The day we did two big climbs started with the one into a hanging valley - or was that the second climb of the day?

I do remember my first 'col', because it didn't seem that big, and it was in the Vosges on a quite beautiful and moving morning, near a perfectly-kept first war cemetary. I remember an horrendous thunderstorm that hit us as soon as we crossed the Rhine into Germany, and I remember a thousand other things on the trip, but the exact order in which they happended is becoming less clear - and there are a thousand other things I will have forgotten.

But I'm pleased to say I did keep a journal as well, and I will write it up into a proper account of the trip. Inevitably, I'll dip into JR's as it appears on L'Express blog for details of distances, altitudes and some town names, but my journal will be my memories, my thoughts and my experiences (mainly at the back of the group) from those memorable, but apparently also quite forgettable, two weeks.

And I'll try to do it soon - before I forget what I meant when I wrote it the first time!

Roy