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June 11 Sunday cold windy rainy 11º C Bicycle touring England Oh, my gosh. It's still raining. I was only kidding about the weatherman shtick. We could be waiting forever for the sun to shine on our England bicycle tour. We laid in our cycling tent yesterday, listening to UK radio. One caller said he was phoning from Sunny Sussex. "Is it sunny there?" the host asked. "No," the caller replied, "but I saw a picture once." He was 59 years old. It doesn't look good for us. Sharon wants to get this England bicycle tour underway. My back is getting sore from laying down for so long. Soon we will have Thermarest sores. We pack up our soggy cycling gear and sploosh off down the saturated lane. Some food stores are open, so we get to eat after all. A woman, out walking her dog, summed the weather up as, "Bloody awful." Hate to agree, but must agree wholeheartedly. We ate lunch on a church bench next to a massive rock church. No wonder the fields have no rocks. I saw the remains of a castle and abbey in Castle Acre. More uses for lots of rocks. We met three women German cyclists. They're from Hamburg. They've been cycling a week in England and said they are very glad to be flying home Tuesday. They have kind comments about England's Bed and Breakfasts, saying they have been comfortable, but they weren't too kind at all about the weather or the English food. We cycle past a tiny forest and don't stop. Which, an hour or so later, turns out to be a big mistake. We ride and ride, but we can't find anywhere out of sight. We rode along the Ouze (Ooze) River, but we couldn't even see the river as there's a brick wall and dike built all around it. We learned that this area was underwater until the Dutch came over and drained it. So that's why it looks a lot like Holland with all the flat farmland and the odd windmill here and there! We saw a bridle path going along a field and decided to check it out. No sooner had I wheeled my touring bike through the gate when my mule bucked me off. I don't know what happened. One second I was sitting pretty, the next I was picking gravel out of one palm and thistles out of the other. As they used to say in the old days, I went ass over tea kettle. |
