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June 2 Friday mostly sunny 20º C Bicycle touring England We're in England! Ready to bicycle tour England. We arrived at 7 this morning. English! After seven months of bicycle touring Europe in non-English speaking countries, we're ready to hear our native tongue again -- even if it's going to be with a bit of an accent. And it is them that have the accent. Must be. Have you heard those Brits sing? They sound just like us! Then, when they speak -- bloody accent. Bloody hell. What is going on? I can almost understand every word! Bloke. Wanker. There is a customs officer to check our passports. He asks what we're doing in the UK? Cycling. Kind of obvious, I would think, as we're bedecked in cycling clothes, cycling helmets, and are hanging on to touring bicycles loaded to the weight of an average rickshaw. "How long?" Six weeks. "How are you going to support yourself?" Savings, I say. We sold our house, Sharon tells him. If I wasn't so pleasant, I would have told him I had won the lotto. I'm retired. He stamps our passport (our first stamp!) and explains we can't work while we are here. "I wouldn't want to," I say. Felixstowe is close. We cycle to a park. A sign points to toilets. Ah, civilization at last. Several people go by walking dogs. All say "Good morning!" I almost didn't know what to reply, I've become so used to being ignored. We don't have to wait long before some kids start a game of cricket. A fellow comes along, out to walk his dog, Whiskey. Strictly medicinal purposes, John tells us. He saw us studying our map and came over to help. We only have an AMA map and its scale seems to be about 5 billion to 1. "Yes," he says, broadly gesturing to the map, "this is England. And there is Scotland up there." These free AMA maps leave a lot to be desired. John tells us how to get out of town, towards Lowestoft. Not one road he tells us to take is on our "map." I think we may need something with a bit better scale for bicycle touring in England. The new filling that Sharon got before we left home, so she wouldn't have to worry about her teeth, has fallen out. She asks John if there is a dentist here. John says to come back to his shop (he has an electronic fix-it shop for computers, VCRs, and TVs) around the corner and he will phone to make an emergency appointment. We did. He did. The appointment is set for 2:45 PM. Talk about service. He says the bobbies are great in England. No corruption. No bribing. If we ever need help for anything, just stop a bobby, he tells us. They are even nice to him, he says, and I'm a disagreeable sort, he adds. For instance, last week, one of the town's bobbies brought in a TV set to be repaired that his son was using for video games. "Don't repair this old set," John told him. "These old sets jump around so much that they're very hard on the eyes when one is trying to concentrate on watching a little figure in a video game. Guaranteed," John told him, "if your kid continues to watch this TV, by the time he's 12, his eyes will be like this." John pulled back the corners of his eyes so they were slanted. "It's too late," the Japanese bobby replied. John asks if we'd like tea. We go upstairs to his kitchen. He looks like a confirmed bachelor. Things are everywhere. Dirty dishes. Bread left laying out on the counter. Weights in the corner. Appliances strewn about the countertop. The English are really into their tea. Would we like Chinese tea, Indian tea, or English tea? What's the difference? I ask. "Barbarian!" John explodes. "Well," he says, calming down somewhat, Chinese tea comes from China, Indian tea comes from India, and English tea comes from Tesco's." Ha ha. Tesco's is a large grocery chain in England. John tells us they never drink the water in England by itself because it tastes awful ... it has so much chalk and calcium deposits in it that most people have gallstones by the time they are 50. Over tea we solve all of England's problems. According to John, England is one of the poorest nations in Europe now, and are in serious economic decline. The government policy for foreign competition did it all. There is no minimum wage. Some workers are paid as little as £2 an hour. (A pound was worth $2.30 Canadian when we cycle toured England.) If a person works 24 hours a week, then the government considers them "fully employed." So that's £48 ($110) a week. John says that minimum housing costs are higher than that. John figures it is about £75 housing plus £50 utilities, so it costs £125 a week, "just to get up in the morning," he says. And that's before any food. There are no food banks. The Japanese have started factories in England to build TVs, VCRs, and cars. They employ locally, but all profits leave the country. The government is afraid to enact minimum wage for fear the companies will leave to seek cheap labour elsewhere. Kind of ironic how unions in England were so powerful and workers were quite well off ... now they are back in the dark ages. No minimum wage. No workers rights. I can see BC heading down the same road where the British Columbia government is trying to break the teachers' union, the BCTF. The US bases have packed up and gone home. John figures the English government should build a giant five square mile factory with the leftover warehouses and start building a cheap reliable car for all of Europe that is so low priced that no one else could complete. Even the housing is there, he says. Sharon and I leave our bikes at John's and walk to a bank. I try my shiny new Mastercard. Guess what? It says my PIN is incorrect. Frick. Since it's a new card, I probably have to reset the PIN. I withdraw £250 on Visa. Sharon goes to the dentist. It costs her only £25 to have the filling replaced. I go to Tesco's. Got to get some of that great English tea. We look for a Michelin map, but can't find any. Guess Michelin is France, and hey, we're in England. Get with the program, bub. A map that covers just East Anglia costs £3.50, and we will cycle off of it in a few days. I didn't buy it. Maybe we can find a cheaper one tomorrow. The people in the stores have been very friendly. We eat a snack on the beach (Sharon doesn't eat much -- her mouth is still frozen from the dentist) and then walk back to John's where we've left our touring bicycles. We're unlocking our bikes, when a woman comes out of John's shop. She turns out to be John's wife. What the? Guess John's bachelor days are over. They are terrible housekeepers. Sharon says to me later that she doesn't know how a woman can live in such a pigsty. She can imagine a guy, yeah, but not a woman, she says. The Italians have a saying when their house is in an upheaval, "She did it the French way." I wonder if the French have a saying when their house is messy, "She did it the English way"? John's wife says she works across the street at the beauty salon (!). Their daughter gets married in July. I wonder if housekeeping styles runs in a family. We thank them for their hospitality, and cycle off, back to the park. Sharon has to use the toilet. She reports the public toilet is much cleaner than the bathroom back at John's. (Sharon tells me she didn't use John's washroom after our tea, after she went in saw how putrid it was.) It is late afternoon. We cycle out of town, following John's route instructions. We haven't cycled very far before it begins to rain. We duck into a bus shelter. I keep an eye out for passing cars coming too close to the curb so we don't get splashed with muddy water. In a few minutes, the rain stopped. We mount up and carry on. We cycle along, following the signs. According to John's instructions we are supposed to bypass Ipswich. We end up in Ipswich. We curve around, following a jolly bike path. It ends in an overgrown impenetrable thicket. We abandon the bike path and end up on busy A12. I suspect we're not allowed on it with touring bicycles ... or bicycles of any sort. We cycle along and see a bike path below A12. Unfortunately, a fence is between us and the bike path. Sharon leans her bike against the fence, climbs over, and goes back to read a sign to see where the bike path goes. I see a couple walking along the bike path and ask them the way to Woodbridge. Wow, it is much easier to ask for directions now that I can understand the instructions. Sharon comes back and I tell her the directions. We are supposed to cycle around the roundabout and take the right exit (I suppose that's correct ... after all, if we took the wrong exit, it wouldn't be right, would it?). That will put us on a quiet road to Woodbridge. We cycle around the roundabout, our fourth. A little scary on a fully loaded touring bike, especially when we're suddenly cycling on the left hand side of the road (welcome to jolly old England). What's with that, eh? Even the French drive on the right side of the road. A sign in the roundabout points straight for Woodbridge. Sharon wants to follow the sign and go straight. I yell at her to go right. She says the sign says straight. I say the guy told me to go right. She tells me that this is England, and he must have meant to go straight when he said go right, because they drive on the left in England. Sheesh. And she says I have no logic. I cycle off to the right and pull my bike to the edge of the roadway and stop to wait for Sharon to come back on the slingshot. She's frosted by the time she gets back. There are woods off to our side. We decide to call it a night and head into the woods with our fully loaded touring bicycles to look for a camping spot. There is a large Tesco's across a field. We push our touring bikes, walking along the woodland paths looking for a good spot to setup our little Kelty bicycle touring tent. Sharon is in the lead. She walks into a clearing and turns around quickly, aghast, with her hand over her mouth. I catch a glimpse of bodies through the bushes. Has she stumbled upon a gruesome murder scene and is in need of relieving her stomach contents? No. She is actually trying to not laugh out loud. I peer around her to see what the fuss is about. Two people are vigorously humping. He thrusts his butt into the air to hammer home that it is spring. Sharon tries to stop me from seeing; she wants to have all the fun. Maybe they'd like to borrow our cycle touring tent? I leave Sharon with our bikes and follow another path over to Tesco's to buy a map. I've realizes that bicycle touring in England just isn't going to work without a detailed map. As I walk over, I cross paths with the humper and the humpee. "Good evening," he greets me in a jolly fashion. "I bet it was," I reply. At Tesco's I find an AA map book for all of Great Britain at a scale of 1:250,000. Perfect. Cost: £1.99. Even better. Some people walk past us as we are eating. All of them say "Good evening." Man, these woods are busy. |
