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June 13 Tuesday cold windy 12º C Bicycle touring England Woke up this morning at 4:44 AM. Instead of just closing my eyes as usual, I put my glasses on, which seems to focus the world into hazy reality rather than hazy surrealism. I woke Sharon up. She was still tired, she complained, but we agreed to get up earlier to ride when we went to bed last night. And, well, 4:44 AM must be it. Sharon made pancakes for breakfast. We used peanut butter and jam in lieu of maple syrup. We packed up our cycling gear and hit the tractor path. The tractor path ended. A concrete road went into a farmer's field, while a single track walking path went straight ahead. We chose to cycle the concrete path. Sure enough, two kilometres later it ended in a field of grain. We turned our sorry little touring bicycles around and backtracked. We tried cycling the walking path. It was great fun bumping along with grass as high as our waists. The bumpy single track path caused me to widen it in spots. We cycled up to a stile and helped one another lift our fully loaded touring bicycles over. A path cut directly across a field to another stile. We lifted our touring bikes over again and continued to a foot bridge. Beyond the bridge was a path through a farmer's field waist-high barley. So this is what bike paths are like in England. Great! A fellow with three muzzled dogs came walking along. He took one look at our overloaded touring cycles and suggested an alternate route off to the right that might be easier with our bikes. It wasn't. The brambles encroaching over the cycle path snagged and pulled at our coats and cycling panniers. Then it got worse. Muddy ruts, so deep my low rider front panniers hit bottom and stopped me. Next were pieces of brick and concrete block dumped onto the cycling pathway. I decided to get off my fully loaded touring bicycle and push. We finally cycled into Wickham. I'm sure it would have been much quicker to cycle around the long way on the road, but, hey, where's your spirit of adventure? Like they say: Better to have tried and got lost than never to have got lost at all. Or something along those lines. Bicycled a single lane country road which seemed ever so spacious after the walking path. That is until the freight trucks came along. Crikey. The first freight truck was so close, its blast of oncoming air sent me wobbling. As another huge freighter approached I gripped my handlebars tightly and repeated to myself, "I'm thin. I'm thin. I'm thin." Squeeze those elbows in. Whew. The next freight truck I saw about a kilometre ahead. When I got to a patch of pavement (termed a passing spot), I pulled in and waited. The trucked whizzed by, the driver smiling and waving and flashing his lights repeatedly in thanks. Whew! That's much better than being flattened by an 18-wheeler. "I'm flat. I'm flat." Gives a whole new meaning to "Shit. I flatted." (Which I say whenever my tire has a low pneumatic problem accompanied by a hissing sound.) At one of the pull outs for passing I noticed scorch marks on the pavement where a car had burned. A couple of pull outs later, we came upon a car that had been incinerated ... in fact it was still smoldering. Someone, it seems, takes a serious distaste to people parking in the pull outs. Mind you, the offenders probably won't park there again. And here I thought it bad when someone scratched the paint on my car. Personally, I prefer non-smoking cars. We cycled a little ways farther and came upon a bunch of people hand planting gigantic fields of bedding plants in nice neat straight rows. Very intensive manual labor. Looks pretty back-breaking for £2 an hour. We cycled a couple more kilometres and came across huge Clydesdale-type horses with humongous shaggy hooves. They were eating grass along the roadside. I must say, this is really turning out to be an interesting early morning discovery ride. In another kilometre we arrive at a Gypsy caravan camp. There are three beautiful hand-carved and intricately painted caravans. A fellow is just getting up. He waves to us as we ride past. "Those must have been their horses," I say to Sharon. Amazing to see both the horses and beautiful carts. The road becomes two lane and busy with people commuting to work in Cambridge. We arrive on the outskirts and stop at a library to check visa information for other countries we plan to visit. A young woman comes over and offers us muffins. We stand and chat. She works for Philips. She says her friends have gone off and cycled for six months in Asia. In Cambridge there are signed bike paths. After my experience in Holland of getting run off the road if I wasn't on the bike path, when a bike path is signed I am very alert to watch for bike path signs. Sharon and I cycle on the cycle path and almost got hit twice in ten minutes by cars crossing the bike path. The first that nearly hit me was a chauffeur-driven Jag. I had to swerve my touring bike to miss getting labelled by the Jag. The next car that nearly hit me was a little economy box. Its brakes mustn't have been very good -- plus the bike path is crappy in that it passes over numerous driveways. The second car actually nicked my panniers. And that was after I swerved around the car to get out of its way. These bike paths are treacherous. Not only do drivers not watch out at driveways, but the pavement is in disrepair, there's tons of potholes and cracks. Big curbs lurk at intersections. The Brits definitely could stand to visit Holland to see how bike paths are really done. Lots of cyclists go past on the roadway. We join them. Just because someone puts up a blue bike path sign doesn't make it good ... or safe. The bike paths are also shared with pedestrians, which brings about another hazard to safe cycling. Cambridge has 10,000 college students. Students have agreed not to have cars. So, instead, there are 10,000 bikes zipping around as they go from one college area to the next for classes. We parked our touring bikes alongside the canal and watched students drink beer who watched other students punting. Punting is done with a flat-bottomed boat in which people sit and drink beer while some poor slob with a long pole (who apparently chose the short straw) propels the craft along. We are told that this is a favourite pastime for Cambridge students. It was freezing with the wind. The poor punter has to stand on a flat deck section at the rear of the craft with no shoes on. Unless he wants to get his shoes wet, I suppose. There are overhanging weeping willow tree branches that must be negotiated through when there is an abundance of river traffic -- causing much glee and merriment from bystanders and onlookers as sometimes the noble punter is knocked from his unstable perch for an impromptu swim. We hear a punter yell. Another person from the bridge says, "Did he fall in?" "No," comes the answer. "He regained his balance." "Darn," the guy says. Now I know why they drink the beer warm in England. It is too cold to drink cold beer. Especially if one is punting on a cold and windy day and falls into the drink. Anybody for hot beer? The Mill pub overlooking the punters is busy. We scout out the campuses of Trinity and King's. King's College has a huge quad of expansive green grass covered with equally expansive "Keep Off the Grass" signs. Gotta love thee Brits. The old buildings of sturdy gothic style surround the downtown core. There is a small central core, but there are tons of people -- tourists, students, and even the odd resident. A woman sees the Canadian flag on the back of my touring bicycle and comes over to tell us that she used to live in Toronto. "Have you had any unfortunate incidents?" is the first question out of her mouth. Cute. That's always the first question I ask someone. "Murdered a couple of times on a bike path back there," I answer, and hold up the backs of my scratched hands as evidence. She lives in Cambridge, a couple of kilometres away. She asks us if we would like to camp on her lawn. "We wouldn't meet an unfortunate incident, I hope?" I say. She assures us we'd only have fortunate incidents. We accept. Then she remembers her daughter is studying for exams until Friday and she shouldn't be disturbed. "She'll have enough problems as it is," she says. "Will you be in the area until then?" Uh, I don't think so. At least that wasn't our plan. After all, it's barely drizzling. Best cycle touring weather we've had since landing in Britain. She says the King's College's chapel is a must see. I say after cycle touring in Italy and seeing the chapels there, I'm spoiled. She assures us that the interior is one of the premier buildings of the world. "I've been to Florence," she says. We cycle to the chapel. Sharon pays the £2 admission fee and goes in. I sit on a bench and read. I am a little ways away from our bikes. I watch people come by and point at our overloaded cycling panniers. After Sharon's chapel visit, we cycle off. A place selling chocolate cookies captivates Sharon's nose buds. We have to try several double and triple chocolate cookies for over a buck a piece. We cycle off and stop on a bridge to watch a few more punters. One guy loses his pole. He stuck it in to the river bottom to push off and it got stuck in the mud. Others punt over to a small island to drink beer. They are followed by a gaggle of ducks. We draw a line on our map from Cambridge to Tring and cycle off in a southwest direction. We bike past a row of communication satellites lined up in a field -- their receiving dishes pointing skyward like sunflowers seeking sunshine. A hump in the road causes excitement (not that kind of hump, or as exciting). A car comes flying over the rise towards us. Literally flying. All four wheels were airborne. Its tires screeched on landing just like a jet. Cool. Just like in the movies. We pull our touring bicycles to a halt at a park bench. We're in Haslingfield, looking for Barrington, but, apparently, I missed the sign. We are about to backtrack on our bicycle tour when a woman stops her car to ask us a few questions. Would we like to camp in her yard? Two offers in one day! Wow! Maybe it's not so bad cycle touring in England, after all. We jump on our bikes and follow her to a thatched roof cottage named "Cobweb Cottage." Joan and her husband, David, are touring cyclists also. They have cycle toured Mexico, Spain, Venezuela, Sri Lanka, and Kenya. (Joan and David Wooldridge later cycled from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. They stayed with us at our place in Coalmont BC for a few days while on that long distance cycling trip.) Joan was enrolled in night classes for Spanish. Apparently in preparation for their South American cycle tour. They have a huge property with garden, flowers, chickens, and a wild area. Their son Paul, 23, is an engineer. They have
two other sons -- the oldest was 28. David goes out with a buddy, Chris, to play snooker. David's parents go on cruises. They told him, "Those ships have everything!" "Do they have billiards tables?" David asked. His dad frowned, but David said his dad couldn't figure out why they didn't have pool tables when they seemed to have everything else. Sink all the balls with one shot if you wait long enough. Joan said to watch for nudist beaches in England. "They just pop up out of nowhere," she said. Actually, I'd like to see that. The weather doesn't seem that conducive to nudist beaches, however. Talk about an itty bitty titty. Not to mention a chilly willy. "One time," Joan said, "camping with our kids, we accidentally checked into a nudist campground." How the heck does one accidently check into a nudist campground? Isn't it a clue when all the cars are convertibles? "The kids went off to play while we made supper. It wasn't long before the kids came running back to get the binoculars. 'Isn't that nice dear,' I said, 'how the kids are getting all excited about nature.' It wasn't until later that we found out how exciting the nature was." I still want to know how one accidently checks into a nudist campground. Man, if I'd have known that, I wouldn't have spent this whole cycling trip trying to find free camping in the forest! Who's the favourite guy at the nudist colony? The one who can carry two cups of coffee and a dozen doughnuts. While bicycle touring Sri Lanka, Joan and David stopped in a village and were besieged by kids, as usual. Joan was handing out candy to about thirty kids when all of a sudden the kids ran away. She wondered why and then discovered her camera had been stolen from her open bicycle pannier. She and husband David went to the elders of the village to try and explain what had happened to their camera. The elders said they didn't understand English. They understood the word "police" though, Joan said. Soon the camera was returned. When Joan and David returned home and processed their film, they found their best shots of the trip were when the camera had been stolen. The kids had taken photos of themselves, posing in various positions like glamour stars and beauty queens and rock and roll heroes. "They're absolutely priceless," Joan laughs. Joan and David said they don't like how Americans always say that phony, "Have a nice day." Better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, I say. "Or a slap up the side of the head with a wet rag," Joan retorts. Surprisingly, Joan and David haven't cycled in Europe much. When I enquired why that was, they said they detest the French, because France surrendered during the war. Better to run away and live to fight another day, I say. Italy was a no go for cycle touring, too. Italians were bottom-pinching prisoners in England during the war. And they kept changing what side they were on! Belgium -- too flat for cycle touring. (Sharon and I managed to find some pretty steep bits in the Ardennes, though.) So where did that leave Holland? Cycle touring in Germany? Nope. I even figured that one out all by myself. They are still fighting the world war over here in England. Joan and David said the British didn't want to join the European Union. "We're not bloody Europeans!" (I think they were in agreement that yes, they shared the same continental plate ... but other than that, there was no connection.) No one can ever say the British have a short memory. "We'd rather join a union with some of our old colonies," they declare. The Falklands War cost more than one million pounds per person who lived there. That's not counting the sheep, though. When they cycle toured in Venezuela, the chicken soup was hot water with a chicken head and chicken feet floating in it. They brought back some dried grasshoppers from their Mexico bicycle tour. Not even dipped in chocolate. I declined their kind offer to sample one. We have plenty of fresh grasshoppers back in Alberta. We told Joan about seeing the car flying over the road hump back a ways from their place. She said that was quite common over that one. A friend's son did that in his old car. When the jalopy landed, it literally fell to pieces. As we head off to our tent for a good night's rest after our harrowing cycling day in England, Joan tells us that if we hear a sound "just like a rabbit being murdered, don't worry it's only foxes calling. Good night. Sleep well." Gee, thanks Joan. You too. |
