Summer lovin...

Jaumes Meneses (Creative Commons AttributionSharealike licence)

Bags not sticking my finger in this baby.

Summer solstice and it is one of those days that seem to shout joyously at you ´you´re overseas, friend, and it is bloody weird over here´. From the copious windmills to the orange furry top hats on the tram, it was a very dutch time indeed.

image: Greg E (CreativeCommons Attribution-Non-commercial-Sharealike licence)

Mum and I are staying with Brian, a family friend, resident in an outlying suburb of the ´Dam. Together we drive to Harlingen along the giant dyke the dutch forged over a decade in the 20's and 30's. It´s a huge wall of rock, bricks, sand and now motorway that turned what was once a bay into a lake. (The original plan was to fill most of the bay in, but after a few polders, the locals valued their new lake more than the land that could be claimed from it.) ´With typical Dutch romanticism, they named it Afsluitdijk, which means the closing dyke´ Brian drily quips . We stop at Harlingen, the port where it seems most of Holland is leaving for the freisan islands, riding bikes loaded with several months worth of camping supplies strapped to any possible surface

Oh the bikes in the Netherlands! I could rave for hours. H.G. Wells said, ´When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race´ I´m the same, so in the Netherlands I am optimistic to the point of absurdity.

Image: Gen Gibson (creative commons attribution licence)

On the return trip to Amsterdam I follow the thinnest of leads concerning a gig by an up and coming soul band and we end up in the dormant satellite town of Monickedam looking for what I assumed was a little festival… Besloten Feest. After asking some locals and receiving some skewed glances, someone finally cracks the code for me… it is not Besloten Feest, but a besloten feest – a private party - one I wasn´t invited to and had little chance of finding. Luckily I have a good plan b, which is going to the city centre to watch the…

345 to South Kensington

It makes sense to write about local transport first - in London the topic fills our conversations, the printed page, and even the cinema. It is why my 35 hr week leaves me tired as. The underground system doubles as a navigation system - If you’re going to meet someone, chances are, you will choose a tube station as the spot. People find their way around London not by street names but by tube stations, in association with the Mondrian-esque trance inducing tube map. People didn’t know what to say when I told them I was a couple of miles from the nearest tube.

For the first couple of weeks, to get from Camberwell to my work in Chelsea, I would take the bus and then the tube. One upside was the the guide-book-sanctioned experience of emerging from the brushed steel interior to see the Gothic grandeur of the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben's tower. Once or twice I tried the 345 bus to travel the four or so miles to Chelsea, and found it took longer than a bus from Nelson to Motueka.

A quiet tube

And I didn’t enjoy standing all the way to work, I didn’t enjoy the feeling of breathing recycled air, I didn’t enjoy spending five quid it on it every day. I didn’t enjoy reading trashy free papers to avoid eye contact. (My sister sent me a text telling me to scan the tube map to find the only station name that contains none of the letters M,A,C,K,E,R,E,L. “something to do on the tube when you don’t know where too look”) So learning how to bike to work was good.

With the help of Sustrans and Transport for London's cycle maps, I bike through Camberwell, two hundred years ago a satellite village, now very urban, with its not-very-trendy bars, 'Sophocles Bakery’; an olive vendor, the smelly Chinese grocery, and evangelical churches. I keep pedalling, overtaking gridlocked cars and buses, through Kennington, dominated by the Oval, London’s second cricket ground. I dismount to navigate the tangled crossroads of Vauxhall (once 'Folke's Hall') I like to see the collection of contemporary architecture here- the very ostentatious spy headquarters, and apartment blocks that look like the construction of a hyperactive child and the new Vauxhall station itself, with token solar panels on the steel rooves sheltering those waiting for the buses.

[photo - Johnnie Blows - licence: CC ShareAlike]

Then I meet 'Father Thames' and follow him upstream past the wasted hulk of the iconic Battersea powerstation, past a particularly hairy and unavoidable roundabout, and to Battersea Park. I hesitate now, as urban oasis is an overused metaphor, but this collection of playing fields, tennis courts, a gaudy peace pagoda, gardens, cherry trees white-blossomed against a slate sky, is my five minute refreshment - and as I reach it, I stop pedalling, and sit up straight and swallow.

Then it's Albert Bridge over the river. Seeing it lit up after dark adds to its charm. It’s an old shaky bridge this one and troops are advised to 'break step while crossing the bridge'. From there it's a short ride across the latte suburb of Chelsea to my work on Old Brompton Rd.

Albert Bridge at Night

There's the question of the danger and difficulty of cycling, but I'll leave that for another post. For now, I just want to dwell on the fact that biking to work makes me feel the city is a much more varied and lively place than hurtling under it does. My 45 minute morning ride takes me from tower blocks to topiary, from grime to glistening marble. Freewheelin.

(unless otherwise noted, images are in the public domain or distributed under GNU free distrubition licence)

Things I learned in Paris

1) There are three types of trains in France with three types of cycle policy

a) the TGV - the high speed trains, (Train Grand Vitesse). Using them is unavoidable on some routes. The guards may fine you or threaten to throw your bicycle off the train if they find you with such contraband luggage. I ask why this is so. 'French Law' says one. Why though? 'It is forbidden' he repeats. Someone else tells me my bicycle is more dangerous than the massive sacks others are carrying. 'someone could put their leg through it'. Right.

b) the TER run on the provincial services. They love bikes.

c)the CoRails have an ostensible no-bike policy but will let you take bikes, I hear, if you wrap the item up and make it not look like a bike.

I have a vivid memory of sprinting around the Paris St Lazare (pictured, above, by Monet) station wrapping up my bike in salvaged clear polythene (no one would sell me single rubbish bags, only packs of twenty for more money than I possessed, ripping open salvaged hairties to help bind my package, ready for the last train to Rouen. In the end no-one even asked for my ticket.

2) The magnetic strip on your visa card can fail, leaving you with just 25 euros* to get back to the UK. I found nowhere I could get money out with just the card number and the right ID. Internet booking seems promising but it seems you have to swipe your card to pick up the tickets! Luckily....

3) Fellow travellers will lend you 5 euros to help you buy a ticket if they stand in line with you, watching and waiting that you don't run off and spend it on meths.

4) You can't sleep in French train stations. Unlike the hospitable Frankfurt train station, they close from 1am to 5am.

5) It's hard to do touristy things when you are finding out the above.

*1 Euro = 2 NZ$ approx.

Jealousy antidote

People sometimes express envy of my wanderings. Not surprising, I mainly write about the good things. Here's a bad day. It includes:

Biking through what used to be malarial wetlands, transformed by the order of Napoleon III to boringly spooky pine plantations.

Finding the 'piste cyclable' (cyclable road) is a cracked pavement, littered with branches that break two of my spokes.

Knocking over the camp stove and tipping hot stew onto my sock. Without access to running water, this results in a burnt ankle.

So, for me, please sleep snug in your cosy little homes.

Bonne Route

I am in a small town Lilande, on the Dordogne river.

Why? You may have read about my weariness of trains and my longing for the bike. Well, with my first income for several months on the cards (Tomas jacked me up with the sweet wine harvest job) I splashed out on a bike, and locks, and rad panniers that turn into a backpack and two bags.

And so I venture forth into Acquitaine, self contained, dodging the rain, feeling a little pain, (eating le pain, but that doesn't rhyme, I am discovering)

I'm intrigued by the prospect of the river valley turning into a gorge; much more so by the fact that this area is positively chokka with Neaderthal and Cro Magnon caves with their paintings and etchings and so forth. So I'm gonna go see them, of course. When I was little I dreamed about finding dinosaur footprints in hardened mud somewhere: this, I think, might be even more astounding.

On the other hand maybe I will feel like a man who has been a tourist for too long.




So far on the trip I have had two lovely encounters. One was a French couple inviting me into their house to watch the All Blacks vs Scotland, accompanied by sausage, bread, cheese, beer, then chickpeas, onions, barely cooked meat, wine, more bread, more cheese. Jaques was keen to practice his English "What do you think of the organisation of the cup?". Joele was more hardcore. "in my house," she said (in French), "you speak French". So I get frustrated and manage a few sentences an hour, but she teaches me a Moliere quote À vaincre sans péril on triomphe sans gloire.

In Sante Foy de Grande I meet Matt, an English guy who is in the middle of a years stay at Plum Village, a Buddhist community founded by Thich Nat Hanh. Worldly and kind, he is a fascinating character. I hope I see him again, perhaps when he is travelling the world as a clown.

Train Travel

A memory: In the train from Penrith to Oxford, travelling back the 300 kms I have biked, it is slightly depressing, the speed seems somehow sacrilegous. There is hardly time to see anything, let alone understand it. And everything closer than 5 metres is a blur.

Manchester

I only got rained on, lost about three times (Buxton information centre entirely unhelpful to cycle tourists heading to Cheshire), had to bike along the hellish A6, and fell off my bike into a muddy puddle while following tracks along the Mersey to Manchester. The shame!

But I´m happy to be here. Manchester is much less grimy than I expected. Perhaps it´s the good company. But the architecture is amazing. There´s loads of red-brick mills (industrial revolution again) which have become apartments, and a few blocky art deco things, but my favourite is the osentatious Gothic buildings, built with cotton money in the 19th century. The city seems proud too. Not as cosmopolitan as London, but quite left-wing. We walk past the spot where the Labour party (I know, I know) holds its annual conference and cousin Tullis shows me where the manhole covers are taped down to prevent terrorism. (Aside: I´m sick of the paranoia here, as the graffito in Oxford says, "closed circut TV is a crime". A ubiquitous crime, extending to country pubs and parks. In Coventry I almost have my hand luggage confiscated because I left it outside for a second and it´s full of bombs, apparently, at an airport containing around 50 people.) But back to the left wing stuff. There´s also the bafflingly eclectic People´s History Museum, containing a lock of Tom Paine´s hair, much info on the Suffragist movement, films of 1930´s football matches (with pitch invasions) and, my favorite, a chance to make your own badges. I make two. Mine has a picture of a needle and thread and the words 'please don´t raise my standard of living´. I make one for Tullis that says ´I love jamming´. Tullis is on a bit of a high, planning his trip to India. Apparently it is monsoon season, but his friends over there are assuring him he´ll be fine. The monsoons must have relocated here. I do not exaggerate to say there has been perhaps three days since I arrived in the midlands that it hasn´t rained. That´s how British towns get flooded, I suppose.

I am priveleged to hear the first recording session of the Noise Upstairs band (soon it will have a real name) It comprised Tullis on trombone and laptop Anton on guitar and effects pedals and Kate on cello. These music graduates made sounds like the swollen Mersey that flows through this city. Turbulent yet graceful.

As a last night out in Manchester, Tul reccomends the Nextmen (from London) at some club I don´t remember the name of. Innovative party hip-hop. I have one of those moments of realisation that I´m in a foreign country while riding in my first British cab, and then getting patted down at the entrance of the club. Weapons? No, they were looking for drugs... but they didn´t question the existence of a tealight candle in my pocket. Inside the party is great! a good vibe, and great sounds including a Dr Dre accapella mixed with a doubletime breakbeat. Thanks, Manchester.

Wirksworth-Manchester

It is time to leave old Wirksworth. (Or `Wazza´ as some call it). I´m glad of the company of Uncle Graham, who cycles with me to Buxton, in the heart of the Peak District. The name may conjure up images of our bikes ascending alpine pinnacles a la Lance Armstrong, but really it comes from the old English ´peac´ - rolling hill, and we biked along old railway lines. Mainly flat. And it was awes, man. We bike through the White Peaks - an area of limestone jutting like teeth from the green gums of pastures. Graham tells me that D.H. Lawrence (a local boy) calls this area the navel of England. It´s where the flat grain fields of the South give way to the hilly sheep and cattle pastures of the North.

A typical Ewan late start and it´s the mid-afternoon when arrive in Buxton. I fill my water bottles from the famous mineral water, flowing free like the speights tap in Dunedin. "It tastes metallic" Graham warns. Nonsense! Then, in understated English fashion, we part and I am travelling alone again for the first time in a month.

The best conversion of energy to distance/ is when your food is your fuel and your feet are your pistons.

I cycle north on my Uncle Keith's green touring bike through the midlands from Oxford. The countryside is a green sheet, punctuated. The commas of hedgerows, stops of tiny country villages. Church steeples form exclamation points and squirrel's tails make question marks.

It is delightful. I cycle through, not past the landscape, only slightly perturbed by the hazy smog that cuts out views. Cycling through a particularly lush avenue I raise my arm in glee, like a tour-de-france winner or a baptist testifying. The horse-rider approaching is confused. "The flies are bad around here, aren't they" she says.

I passed by more riders and walkers than I am cars. Two routes of the National Cycle Network (54 and 6) take me from Oxford to Derby, with only brief stints on major roads. They are detailed on a specially designed Sus(tainable)trans(port) map. Of course I lose the snaking cycle track (marked by little blue signs) about three times in every large town, but I am very grateful for this facility. Mad props.

My bike is laden with gear, which means I can't cycle no-hands (damm) let alone Vish's no-hands-no-bum trick. But it does mean I am self sufficient. I stayed my first night in a little thicket just off the road (shush). Tenting is great but it does make the brightness of the morning (4am at this time of year) very evident.

Solo cycle touring is also lonely, but I make friends rapidly through the couch-surfing website. Dave in Northampton is an accountant when he must, and a globe-trotter when he can. He is a very generous and fascinating host. Reevsie and Zena here in Leciester are lively conversationalists. They are also conservationists committed to living "low-carbon" lifestyles. There is a label on the plugs in the house detailing their electricity use. The cd player: "9 watts (playing)/7 watts (not playing) 3 watts (standby). Their dedication to their ecological footprint is both inspiring and challenging (a quota of two long haul flights for the rest of my life? gee.) I do feel at home when I discover they don't flush their pee, for water conservation reasons.

It's not all serious. Tonight Reevsie and I are making Willa Wonka sweets.