Ups and Downs on the Downs

It’s been a few days since we landed in London. 

Lots has happened since then. 

Wasn’t it Hegel who talked about the dialectic? And then Marx and Engels put it to good work with the Communist Manifesto, or Das Kapital, or something . . . Of course, they weren’t English – but they did most of their work in London – so they’re kind of honorary Brits. Though I’m pretty sure the Brits wouldn’t want to claim them at this point . . .

Anyway, it’s been kind of a dialectic week for us. The good always seems to be accompanied by the bad – and vice versa. And the good and the bad, the yin and the yang, if you will, have always resulted in forward movement – into new and better places . . .

Let’s start with London Heathrow. 

We landed okay, found the bike boxes, made it through customs, and managed to put the bikes together. 

All good. 

But then we started biking. We made it about 100 yards before we were stopped. 

Orange jumpsuit guy: “You can’t bike through the tunnel!” And he’s gesturing ahead – into the maw of the night – which is apparently a tunnel running under the airport. 

So now we’re taking a Metro one stop – out of airport world – from which point we can presumably ride our bikes to our accommodations for the night. Kind of a bummer. And it’s not obvious where to go, how to pay, or how to get our bikes into the bowels of the subway system. 

Enter the dialectic. 

Two smiling and welcoming subway workers greet us with their heartwarming British accents. 

“Where are you trying to get to, luv?”

“Um, we just want to go one stop so we can ride our bikes to our motel.”

”Brilliant. What hotel?”

We tell them, they say they’ve never heard of it, but they direct us where to go, and how to bring the bikes down to subway level on an elevator. Oh, and they show us how to use our credit cards to “swipe in” and “swipe out” and they tell us there will be no charge because going one stop from the airport is free. 

There are several more yin and yangs for the night. For instance, we have to figure out how to navigate on the left side of the road – with all the cars coming the wrong way as well – when we’re dead tired because it’s now 2 a.m. Finland time. But we make it, and while the “hotel” turns out to be in a dodgy part of town, we meet a swell bloke, Taz, who helps us figure out how to find our key and our room. 

Staying up late didn’t really help on a number of fronts. Diana has still been sick these past days, and maybe the late night contributed to the general funk that I found myself in the first few days in England. 

But how can you avoid having a grand time while riding through a place like this? It’s like biking down History Lane. Every other building seems to date from 1237 or 986. Old churches. Old bridges. Old roads. Ancient trees and hedges. 

And don’t forget the British accents. It kind of doesn’t matter what the Brits say. It’s how they say it. Lots of “Dears” and “Loves” and “Brilliants.” It must be great to grow up around here. How can you not feel good about yourself with people addressing you this way all the time? 

But then, of course, it was not all good – otherwise it wouldn’t be a dialectic. Because wonderful as the countryside is in England, all the little twisty and turny roads never seem to add up to any real mileage. We’ll be biking for three-and-a-half hours and look down at our odometers, only to see that we’ve covered eight miles – in total. 

What?!?

Maybe it’s all the picture stops. I mean, you can’t rightly bike past an eleven-hundred year old church and not stop to take a picture, now can you? 

Or maybe it’s the cornucopia of foraging options? 

Apples – of course – and here they’re actually close to proper ripeness. 

Blackberries. I mean really good blackberries. Not the ones that have a hint of good flavor, but they’re really not sweet enough but we just politely pretend because they look like they should be good. No. These blackberries are better than the $5-for-half-pint variety that they have at the fancy grocery stores. Melt-in-your-mouth sweet. So good. And they seem to be growing everywhere!

Plums. Okay, the plums are no better than they were in Serbia, but they’re still pretty good. And, unlike in some countries, who will remain nameless, but who may have at one point been in an Eastern Bloc country that included present-day Slovakia, no one yells at you for picking a few. In fact, quite the opposite. We found a whole box full of sun-warmed fruit – with a sign reading something like: “Please take what you want.”

And figs. Diana was pretty sad earlier in the trip because there were about a million fig trees in places like Greece and Turkey – but the season was wrong and they weren’t yet ripe – and then we biked north and out of the fig zone. So sad. But we found a brilliant fig tree on our first night camping in England. I think Diana ended up picking about twenty of them. 

Oh. Where was I? 

Oh, yes, the roads. As you might expect when you’re riding on downs, they are [very] up and down. Not long gradual climbs where you can get a bit of a rhythm either. It’s up some blimey steep heart-attack-inducing hill, then back down for a bit, but with an abrupt right-angle turn at the bottom – so that you get no real benefit from the descent. 

And that’s not the only problem. There are all these footpaths and bridle trails everywhere – which are themselves brilliant. But, the thing is, they are, apparently, very confusing for our navigation app friends, like Google Maps and Mapy. 

Pretty much every day – right when we are maximum tired and ready to be done with the day – we end up on one of these trails – with a sheep staring us straight in the nose. It may sound kind of amusing – but let me assure you that there are times when a bleating sheep is not as funny as you might think. 

The end result is that we never seem to get anywhere. And the upshot is that we have routinely been arriving at our campground really late in the day – like 5, 6 or even 7 o’clock. Thus the lack of a blog these last days. And, really, just not a lot of time – out energy – to do anything except set up camp and crawl in the tent for the night . . .

Of course, this is a long way to go on this report without even mentioning the ultimate source of the dialectic. Pretty sure that Hegel must have come up with his theory while vacationing in Wales. 

Because Wales is the ultimate in dialectics. 

Take this morning. Pouring rain. Miserable. Which, I guess, is just par for the course around here. The Welsh are always telling us that the weather is “temperamental” – which, I guess, means that it could, and mostly does, rain at any moment. 

We finally start biking anyway. Because what else are we going to do? We have to get to the ferry in Holyhill, now, don’t we? 

We’re instantly wet – through and through. We’re getting pelted with big cold pellets from above. And from below – the spray from our wheels is making sure that we’re fully drenched – from head to toe. 

But here’s the thing. Wales is amazing. All this rain means that there is life springing from every little sprig of soil. Heck, there’s life springing from the very rocks. Lush, green, fuzzy moss covers everything. Even in the gloom of a downpour it’s beautiful – like the soft feathers or fur that covers baby birds or puppies or kittens. 

Side note here. Growing up I read a series of books called The Chronicles of Prydain. I don’t remember much about it other than there was magic and a strange vibrant land and I was transported to this wonderful place. Pretty sure Prydain is somehow Wales. I need to go back and revisit the series at some point. Anyone else read these books?

And now another parenthetical . . . I tried to read the Chronicles to our girls when they were growing up. No dice. They just weren’t interested. Maybe I started when they were too young? Or maybe it’s a generational thing? I don’t know. But there’s still time . . .

End parentheses.

So now we’re on our bikes and it’s raining and we’re heading up our last big climb of the day. It’s still beautiful – but Diana let’s out an exclamation . . .

She knows instantly. She has snapped another derailleur cable. So now we’re fixing Diana’s bike – in the pouring rain. Which kind of goes on the not-so-good side of the dialectic register. 

But out of this misery a good thing springs. Because before long Hew Johns and Sam Quelen (sp?) come biking down the road. They pull over to make sure we’re okay. Turns out they are aspiring professional riders. They explain that they don’t mind the rain because there aren’t as many tourists around and the roads aren’t as busy. 

“Not you, mind you. We’re happy to have you here. It’s those English we don’t like.”

”What’s wrong with the English?”

”They leave the place a mess. And there’s all the history. Like when they tried to outlaw our language . . .”

Obviously a lot of research to be done. How does my Chronicles of Prydain relate to Wales? What happened between the English and the Welsh? Where did the Welsh language and people come from? (Have I mentioned that I love Welsh? It’s just so darn fun to listen to Welsh. And all the road sides have both Welsh and English – so you get to see the crazy spellings of their words.)

Okay, last thing. 

We stopped at a bike shop in Shrewsbury a few days ago. Not a great store really. Didn’t have the lube that we were looking for. Which, by the way, after all these miles I have very strong opinions about. The wax based lube is just far superior. Works better. But also way cleaner. No daily crank-shaped tattoo on our calves. Better for us. Better for the bikes. 

The point is that we ended up taking a flyer on another shop: The Trailhead. Great idea. Great shop. Not only did they have the proper lube, they also had a brilliant raincoat for Diana (just in time, as it turned out), and, best yet, after thousands and thousands of miles of biking, I finally found a shop that has the right ointment for my Brooks Saddle (which is, other than maybe Diana, the single thing I love most on this trip). 

I guess I should have known when I saw the name of the place . . .

A few other must-mentions. 

First, we stopped in Oxford on our first day out from London, and had a tour from Diana’s cousin’s daughter, Ariana, who is a student there. Smart cookie. She’s a chemistry major. And Oxford. Wow. Arguably the most important educational institution in the history of the world. We were duly impressed. 

Then we basically just stumbled upon Stratford-upon-Avon – where Shakespeare lived and wrote. This place is just dripping with history. 

And we learned that a little town we were going by – Morda – was the inspiration for Mordor – the evil place in The Lord of the Rings. And the Shire comes from Shropshire – another region we biked through. I guess JRR Tolkien was from Birmingham and was inspired by many of the towns and things in the area . . .

The Royal Hill. Long story – but we ended up dining and camping at this out-of-the-way pub overlooking Rodney’s Pillar. The part that was funny – kind of – was when we arrived at The Squirrel’s Arms. Of course, the place was not serving food – because it was Tuesday – and isn’t it obvious that most pubs don’t serve food on Tuesdays? Anyway, we’re chatting with these blokes and it’s just like a scene from any number of British/Irish movies. Everyone knows each other. They’re all characters. 

“Hmm. Where to eat?”

”Not sure there is anything open ‘round here today. It’s Tuesday, you know.”

”What about The Navigation Inn?”

”Up the road toward Maesbury? Oh, no, The Navigation is rarely open.” 

“Your best bet is The Royal Hill.”

Diana and I glance at each other. We biked past The Royal Hill a while back – and briefly discussed stopping there – but we were planning to go to The Squirrel’s Arms . . .

Eventually we agree to go back there.

”You won’t regret it.”

”Brilliant!”

”It’s a proper good place . . .”

For the record, it was 2.3 miles back to The Royal Hill and it was pizza night – although, for reasons I don’t fully understand, Diana had chicken tika. The pizza was good. The tika? Not so much . . .

We’re on the ferry to Dublin now. Just cooking up plans for Ireland. What we had been thinking was biking to Galway, on the west coast, then hitting Dingle and the Dingle Penninsula, then Cork, and, finally, taking a ferry back to South Wales. But the problem is that we realized the first half of that trip was likely to be completely miserable – because there is supposed to be rain and crazy winds out of the west/southwest and we would have been biking right into it. 

New plan: Take a train toward Dingle – the furthest southwestern point on our journey – and then bike up the west coast (which is supposed to be amazing) to Galway, and then to Belfast, before taking a ferry back to England. That way, theoretically we’ll be biking with the wind. Which, I think, in most languages in the world translates to “more fun!”

There is only one small, tiny, insignificant problem with our plan. The train we’re scheduled to take tomorrow afternoon requires a reservation for bikes – but we were only able to procure one such ticket. We’re hoping to just play the dumb American tourists: “We didn’t know. We bought two train tickets. We just thought that we had it covered . . .”

We’ll see. Diana says the tickets are in her name – so maybe she’ll just use the one good ticket to ditch me in Dublin . . .