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June 8 Thursday rain cold wind 12º C Bicycle touring England Our cycling tour of England is insanity at its finest. The weather is still awful. But we had to make a grocery run. We packed up our cycling gear and rode off into the constant rain. In Norwich, I elected to wait with our touring bikes while Sharon went in and shopped. I froze. With the windchill, the temperature feels like it will snow at any time. I waited next to a wall that acted as a partial windbreak. I was wearing my new bright yellow raincoat and red rain pants topped with a neon green ball cap. An old lady, dragging her groceries on a cart behind her, sees me and cheerfully says, "You look lovely." "Why, thank you, mam." Later, I caught a glimpse of my reflection in a store window and I saw what she meant. Lovely, indeed. ( We saw ourselves in a mirror at the Kukenfhof tulip site back in Holland. What a fright we gave ourselves! No wonder those people didn't want us camping in their backyard. Vagrants. I'm sure my scraggly beard doesn't help matters.) We met two policemen on bicycles. They said Norwich is the best place in England. There are only two murders a year. Not bad. Isn't that about the number of murders DC or Chicago experience a day? There are churches on every street corner. I went into an Outdoor camping store to buy candles for our bicycle touring candle lantern and they directed me to a Scout Centre located on the second floor of some church. We never did find it, but we must have seen forty churches. The country lanes are very nice for peaceful bicycle touring. I haven't figured out the signage yet, though. We will be heading to a town listed on a sign and at the next crossroads that town isn't on the sign. Huh? We cycled off in one direction. A few miles of cycling later, we came across a sign pointing towards two villages we had come from half an hour ago. Huh? Should we continue on to the villages and try again? Or should we backtrack and see where we went wrong? Ah, well, we'd probably end up back where we started. Talk about a circle tour. It's getting late, anyway. How about if we sleep on it and try again tomorrow? We find a huge tree with leaves shaped like an umbrella plant that hang way down to the ground. We tuck our small two-person Kelty bicycle touring tent in behind the tree and lean our fully loaded touring bikes against the massive trunk. It is raining, but no rain is getting through the giant umbrella leaves. We had supper beside a beautiful little river by Ringland. The inn was named Swan Inn and, sure enough, two swans and goslings were swimming in the river near us. |
