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July 27 Thursday sunny 27º C humid Bicycle touring Scotland Early this morning a crashing thunderstorm dropped buckets of water. That was definitely not a soft rain. I could hear raindrops smacking the roadway and beating the leaves on the tree above our heads. The rain stopped as suddenly as it started and we waited for the road to dry up. Still, when we packed up our bicycling gear and left, the undercover was still soaked. Big blades of swamp grass glistened with giant globules of water. The road we pedalled was surprisingly dry. There was an odd damp section in the shade and one humongous puddle that had collected on a corner and lay like a pond from the road edge to the centre line just waiting to swallow up inattentive touring cyclists. We asked at a castle if we could eat breakfast at a picnic table on their grounds. They politely informed us that they charge £2 per person for admission to the grounds. We declined their kind offer and bicycled down the road toward the town of Amman, Scotland, a little over 20 kilometres away. Most of the way to Amman was flat and through farmland scattered with Holstein cows. There were a lot of tiny black bugs in the air. As I bicycled through the bugs, they stuck to my face. With their annoying movement from trying to extricate themselves from my beard, they had me constantly wiping my face. Sharon, at one point, had literally hundreds of the wee bugs on the arms of her pink shirt. Luckily, my bicycling shirt is purple and I can't see them. We intersected with the road to Annan -- Lockerbie, Scotland, is in the other direction. Annan is a very well kept town with hundreds of cultivated red flowers in large flower beds. The flowers are set on a small incline that make an admiring display as we approach town. Annan's bakery and Co-op grocery store were glad to see me. I returned carrying three bags of goodies. "What are we going to do with all this food?" Sharon said, shaking her head at my foolishness. " Why, eat it of course." "I'm not sure I'm going to let you go into any more grocery stores without adult supervision." We bicycle to a park which has a strip of green adjacent to the river. There are benches and picnic tables with a paved walking path. A herd of cows is under one of the bridge arches. They are laying in the cool shade, silently chewing their cud. It is hot and humid. We choose a picnic table in the shade. Three young women come to sunbathe. They choose a spot just to the side of our picnic table that is in full sun. What luck! A few kids kick balls on the soccer field; other kids wade in the knee-high river. Other folks come on bikes, walk, push baby strollers, or exercise dogs. We watched a young mom with an infant in a baby stroller and the baby just didn't want to be strolled. The child would arch its back and lift its pampered butt out of the seat. Then, while hanging onto the stroller's edge, he would drag his feet or try to walk backwards. I could tell already that kid is going to be a problem. Had a long, hot, pulsating shower at the Leisure Center. I shaved off my beard -- I don't normally have a beard and I had never in my life had one before, but while bicycle touring and camping in the rough, it just seemed easier to grow a beard (or let it grow, rather) than trying to scrape off stubble every day or so. Sharon was happy. No more rough whiskery Brillo prickles on her soft cheeks. When I walked out of the men's change room, she said she had this faint feeling of recognition -- like seeing someone that she knew once long ago, but hadn't seen in a long time. The travel office had pamphlets on the ferry schedules. We noticed there is a price reduction in August, only a few days away since it's the end of July. So, instead of travelling in a reclining seat for £83 on Monday, we reserved a cabinette for £63 for Wednesday. The travel agents never mentioned the price change when we phoned. We have to find out about them on our own. Usually a day or so after. Anyway, we're booked to sail from Newcastle, England, at 7 PM Wednesday for Bergen, Norway, on Colorline ferries. As we were stopped curbside, straddling our touring bicycles while checking the map in the sticky heat, a policeman came and talked to us. As he was asking questions about bicycle tours in Scotland, a parking maid came up to him. She was without her hat. "I see you're going around topless today," he said. "Whew," she says, "if it stays this hot, tomorrow I may go bottomless as well." "That would improve my eyesight," the cop grins. We decided to have supper before leaving town, so we bicycled back to the park. A new groups of dog walkers parade by. I see my first Scottish wolfhound, the next breed down from Irish wolfhounds, I am informed. This Scottish wolfhound has grey hair, rather than the usual red of the Irish wolfhounds. We left town at 6:30 PM, bicycling towards England's Lake District. At the Scotland-England border, a sign reads: Last House in Scotland. It was an old blacksmith shop that, in the old days, used to perform marriages as a service to runaways. Passed through Carlisle, England, with a fabulous park of diverse flowers. There is a large walled castle that looks like a fortress. We couldn't find B5299 out of town and got lost in a residential section until we spied the road we wanted across a field. We took the cross-country route to it. Bikes are so handy. As dusk fell, we cut off the road and onto a bridle pathway, looking for a site to discretely set up our litghtweight Kelty bicycle touring tent. A farmer in a Jeep coming towards us stops and asks if we are looking for a spot to camp for the night. When we rather shyly nod that we are, he says we are welcome to stay in his field right beside us. They are harvesting in Scotland already. He warns us that the field has been cut though, and the stubble is poky. He says we can take straw from the rows to soften the stubble if we want to. But we find that with our Thermarest camprests, it's not necessary. The farmer said he was 65 years old. In November, he is going to New Zealand for six months to visit his brother. "Follow the summers," he says. Sounds like great advice to me. |
