Bike Touring Journals by Neil Anderson and Sharon Anderson

Bicycle touring journals

July 1 Saturday sunny hazy 25º C Bicycle touring Wales The B road we started our bicycle touring on this morning in Wales must stand for Beautiful. It was fast, smooth, and flat. Even better, a slight tailwind assisted us as we cruised under tree branches, along farmers' fields, past hillside castles and various ruins. To top it off there was little traffic. We even found some picnic tables. In Carmarthen, Wales, all the roads intersected and there was a long traffic jam. We went to a Kwik-Save to buy groceries. On a Saturday it was neither quick nor did we save much on the little bit we bought. It's tough to carry a week's worth of groceries on the back of a touring bike. Especially when one takes into consideration how much food a touring cyclist can pack away. I ran across the street to a flea market and bought a new journal to record our bicycle touring adventures. Lots of books for sale too, but I'm already carrying four in my front bicycle panniers. I bought red spray paint at the hardware store to spruce up my faded lackluster bicycle pannier covers. Sharon is shaking her head. I'm about the tackiest touring cyclist she has ever seen. I figure the red will go well with the Canada flag on the back of my bike. We cycled the A40 out of Carmarthen, Wales, and then jogged south to avoid the busy A route. Lots of steep hills to grind our way up on our fully loaded touring bicycles, but it's not as hot as yesterday. I was following Sharon. I could see her tire prints squish into the blacktop. My tires were snapping and popping tar blisters like it was bubble gum. Pulled our fully loaded touring bicycles to a stop for lunch in Meidrim, Wales. We're cycling on the north side of A40. Sharon says we're space aliens again. Everyone just stares at us on our overloaded touring bikes. When we wave to them, they just keep on staring at us. I asked a woman if there was a food store in town. "A what?" she asked. "A food store," I asked again. "What?" she said again, and moved closer. Maybe she was deaf? "You know," I said. "Food. Eat. Food. Food buy here?" I said, and pantomimed eating motions. "No food store here," she said. I was tempted to say, "What?" Now I know why they didn't understand my French when we were bicycle touring in France. Must be my American accent, as they have been telling us here in Wales. There were a couple picnic tables in a playground, so we wheel our cycles in there to eat. A gaggle of kids across the river are playing, riding their bikes up and down the road, or balancing themselves walking across the top of a bridge. I hear one say, "What are they doing in the park?" Guess they've never seen anyone eat at the picnic tables before. So that's what those are for! Near the end of lunch, an elderly gent comes walking over stiff-legged and slightly bow-legged. He wishes us happy Canada Day. I check my watch and sure enough, it is July 1. I figure he is some grizzled Welshman that has kept up with events in the colonies, but it turns out he is from Orangeville, near Toronto, Ontario. He has been cycling around Europe since mid-May. He introduces himself as Hugh Hewes and says he's 84 years young. He nonchalantly informs us he will be 85 in December. Wow, that's impressive. No wonder he's walking a little stiffly. He tells us that ten years ago he cycled solo across America. He was only 74 years old then. His friends told him that he was too old and was crazy to do it alone at his age. (Probably his mother told him that too, I figure. Those mothers can be worrywarts. No matter the age of their kids.) Hugh tells us that his wife, Elizabeth, died seven years before. "She had Alzheimer's," he says, "but she was a great cyclist. She remained active right until the day she died." And he was serious about that, tood. "She did 110 miles the day she died," Hugh assured us. Wow. Personally, I'm thinking that maybe it wasn't Alzheimer's she died from -- especially if she were bicycle touring Wales; the steepness of the hills here are incredible. (Sharon thinks Alzheimer's would haven been good for her as it would help her forget the pain she was in from all the hills we have done lately. In fact, Sharon's favourite saying of late has become: These hills are going to be the death of me.) Hugh tells us that he and Elizabeth bicycle toured Ireland on they honeymoon in 1938. He says, "Ireland is the greatest country for cycling. And it doesn't always rain like everyone says, either. We only had one spell of 36 hours when we stayed in the tent. The next day, Elizabeth went and asked at a farmhouse if she could use their toilet. 'We don't have one,' she was told. 'You'll have to use the hedges like we do.'" Hugh has also bicycle toured Ireland on a tandem with his good friend, Frank, back in 1936. He says they had just camped in the heather when a troop of girls went by with packages under their pretty arma. "What are they up to at this hour?" Frank and Hugh wondered. The next morning they met the girls coming back. "You should have met us last night," they told Hugh and Frank. "There was a big dance." The packages under their arms were their dancing shoes. Hugh rode in some 100 mile bicycling events in Europe when he was 69 years old. He got the award for being the oldest participant. He says he now comes over every three years to ride in the events and pick up his trophy. The last time he rode in the cycling event, there was a last minute surprise entrant who signed up, and the new guy turned out to be six months older than Hugh. Hugh said he was so disappointed that he wouldn't be getting the oldest trophy award that the organizers went out and bought another trophy just for him. The other day he left his bicycle touring journal and address book in a phone booth. Someone found it and mailed it to his next stop -- he's staying in B&Bs. I guess he's earned it. "I created quite a stir," he says. "Now they're writing back and forth to one another." Another time he left his bicycle touring journal in a different phone booth and got that one back, too. He tells us he was so proud of his trophy he was showing it around the pub the night after the ride. Then, the next day, when he left, he forgot to take the trophy with him. He phoned back to the pub and told them to mail it to him. I figure he should have just told them to leave it in a phone booth somewhere and it would get back to him. Hugh was riding along the coast. Some woman had parked her car on the edge of the road and was blocking his lane. He came pedalling along on his bike just as another car was approaching from the opposite direction. Hugh and the other car driver had to swerve to miss one another. Hugh pulled his bike to a stop and spoke to the woman who had parked her car on the road. "Why can't you stay on the motorways that we build for you," he said, "and leave the back roads to us cyclists?" Hugh paused, chuckling. "She had a real surprised look on her face hearing that come out of the mouth of an old codger!" We gave Hugh a banana and a peach. He was thinking of getting something to eat in this village too, and then found out the same as we did -- there are no food places. After eating the fruit, Hugh stiffly rose from his seat at the table. With a ramrod straight back, he walked, bow-legged, back to his bike at the playground entrance. "He walks like me," Sharon observed wryly. Sharon and I followed Hugh out of the park on our touring bikes. We continue climbing hills and sweating. Around 6:30 PM, we came across a river with a bridle path paralleling the riverbank. Before long, we found a terrific spot for free bicycle camping on a tiny gravel bar. I convince myself that a quick dunking is in order to get rid of the salt stains on the back of my cycling shirt. It worked, but it took me twenty minutes to work up enough nerve to plunge myself in. Lots of fish are jumping. Not used to the salt water? I spray-painted my bags red. Now I look like a real Canadian. I spray-painted a maple-shaped leaf and gave it to Sharon as a happy Canada Day gift.

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