The Winter Ahead

For the last two years I have been travelling almost everywhere by bicycle. Thats a rather long story which is told on my other blog here. I still want to continue travelling by bike over the winter, after I leave my temporary home in Munich towards the end of September, and I'm thinking about routes. It looks like I'll be heading south through Italy and over to Greece before heading back north and then towards the UK and the Channel for next summer. As it turns out, sticking close to the Mediterranean Sea might just be perfect for Channel training, as this temperature chart shows, the sea temperatures should stay at around the right level for preparing for the English Channel (in summer this is about 16 degrees C.) If I get this right, I might be able to train through the winter in the sea without ever having to go near a pool.

Taken from wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranean_Sea#Sea_temperature

Sea temperature (°C)

	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
Marseille [2]	13	12	11	13	16	18	21	22	21	18	16	14
Barcelona [3]	13	13	12	14	17	20	23	25	23	20	17	15
Valencia [4]	14	13	14	15	17	21	24	26	24	21	18	15
Naples [5]	15	14	14	15	18	22	25	27	25	22	19	16
Venice [6]	11	10	11	13	18	22	25	26	23	20	16	14
Málaga [7]	16	15	15	16	17	20	22	23	22	20	18	16
Gibraltar [8]	16	15	16	16	17	20	22	22	22	20	18	17
Athens [9]	16	15	15	16	18	21	24	24	24	21	19	18
Heraklion [10]	16	15	15	16	19	22	24	25	24	22	20	18
Malta [11]	16	16	15	16	18	21	24	26	25	23	21	18
Larnaca [12]	18	17	17	18	20	24	26	27	27	25	22	19
Limassol [13]	18	17	17	18	20	24	26	27	27	25	22	19
Antalya	17	17	17	18	21	24	27	28	27	25	22	19
Alexandria [14]	18	17	17	18	20	23	25	26	26	25	22	20
Tel Aviv [15]	18	17	17	18	21	24	26	28	27	26	23	20