Then we cycled back towards Abano Pass in fine weather, down the Pirikitis River, surrounded by steep green slopes with lots of wildflowers. We met three enthusiastic Tushetian sheepdogs, which I could have done without on a birthday, or any day. Tushetian sheepdogs are trained to aggressively guard their sheep, or cows in this case, against threats which include wolves. If the shepherd is around, they call the dogs off. If the shepherd isn’t around … you try to find a way around the flock. We did a bit of waiting and then a bit of riding out into the paddock beside the cows – you have a big problem if the flock is in a narrow part of the valley where you can’t go around. Only one of the three dogs chased us – there appeared to be a chase dog, a middle flock dog and a tail-end charlie dog. Chris kindly cycled closest to the cows (it was my birthday, after all) so the dog chased him. It either nipped at his tyre or banged it – he could feel the bumping but neither of us were looking too closely at its actions. In similar vein, we don't have any photos of dogs – when they were close we weren't thinking about taking pictures. The tyre wasn’t damaged, anyhow. Afterwards I asked, “Didn’t you feel scared?” He didn’t admit to feeling scared but I’m pretty sure he was!

We cycled up a 500m climb to get back to Omalo. We thought about camping at the top of the hill but it was only 1pm so a bit early to stop for the day. We continued on to the base of the big climb up Abano Pass, another 25km and 400m further uphill. We ate our khatchapuri as we went and fuelled up on ‘Georgian snickers bars’. These are nothing like snickers but are pretty good – they are walnuts strung on thread and then coated in grape juice thickened with flour. Quite a laborious process but no plastic packaging required.

We camped in the river valley beside the Khisos River. Huge raindrops started to fall just after we put our tent up and we retreated inside to cosily cook our couscous dinner. I snacked extremely happily on peanut butter (particularly good peanut butter that Sarah persuaded us to take from the UK) on rice crackers – I love how good simple food tastes when you have few options. When you are in your house, it is hard to get so excited about peanut butter on crackers. It’s good, but you have too many other choices. The reduction of options when you are in the outdoors is one of the best things that happens. No dilemma over what to eat because you are carrying a minimum quantity to get you through. No dilemma about what to wear because you have one pair of shorts, one pair of longs, and two warm tops or one cool top for when you aren’t biking. No worries about whether your clothes look good, or are a bit dirty – who is looking? No worries about what is happening in your email, on social media, or in the world, because you don’t have an internet connection. The world is reduced to what you have right now and you value every item because you can’t replace it easily – down to a precious twist-tie that you need to secure your milk powder bag and which you had to take off your phone cable because you didn’t bring a spare.

So that’s my favourite type of birthday … when I get to realise that what I have right here and now are all I have and to enjoy it maximally as it happens.

We are in the orange WTF on the left hand side just below Commies