This is about as dark as it ever gets at night here.
It was time to wash the sleeping bags. Partly because it had been years, and partly because I knew Rachel would soon be arriving and I didn’t want her to be stuck with a grody sleeping bag. My sense of smell is annoyingly selective, and while microscopic amounts of air freshener or perfume drive me insane, the funk of a sleeping bag that a college kid has been rolling around in could be totally imperceptible to me. The bags smelled okay but I didn’t want to take the risk.
I left them for a while to grab a snack, which was against the rules, and when I came back I heaped them onto the bike and coasted downhill to the park in front of the hotel. Plenty of sun here for drying. I just needed to make sure the wind got both sides.
It takes a very, very long time to dry a sleeping bag.
I sat next to the sleeping bags and poked my laptop for hours, and the day moved on. Clouds gathered across the sun and the temperature dropped, so I took the bags inside and draped them on whatever was handy.
Even with the hours in the park, I still had the urge to sit quietly. Andrew and Nick were still exploring and I didn’t want to just hang around in the hotel alone, so I decided to bike to a nearby cinema and see the new Indiana Jones movie. Not bad! It was late on a Sunday and the movie had been out for a while, so I had the auditorium almost entirely to myself.
When I got out of the theater I noticed a missed call from my nephew James, so I called him back and we chatted for about an hour. As we talked I rode the bike, turning randomly at intersections towards whatever seemed like the quieter part of town. Eventually I rolled to a stop outside a late-night bakery on Leith Walk.
The place had donuts filled with custard, as well as cheese and onion pasties, which I mispronounced as “pastries”. I bought one of each, then stood around on the sidewalk nibbling the chocolate off the top of the donut because I’m a “dessert forward” sort of eater. In the meantime two people came up the sidewalk trailing an enormous shaggy dog on a long leash. One of them went to in to buy snacks, and only a few moments later the proprietor came out with a small steak pie and sat it on the ground in front of the dog, who leaned down and ate it in one bite, then licked the sidewalk for a while as the humans chatted.
As I stowed my remaining snack and got on the bike, I heard one of the dog owners explain to the proprietor that she was worried for her housemate, because he had smoked way too much pot, and then started rolling back and forth on the floor repeatedly insisting that he was “an egg.” Her tone implied true concern, and I couldn’t decide if that was actually more hilarious than the antics of the pot smoker.
It only took five minutes to zig-zag my way back to the rental, and I spent the time chatting again with James while chewing on a warm onion and cheese pasty. When I stood up from the bike a small pile of crumbs tumbled off the front of my jacket.
The rest of the crew was already inside and settling down for the night. The weather was warm enough for us to leave the window open, and for a while I watched the birds churn around in the sky. We were technically as far north here as the southern tip of Alaska, so it never got truly dark.
We found a cafe in the National Portrait Gallery of Scotland, and ate a buffet breakfast sitting at the windows, with the bikes parked outside in view. As usual, lots of pedestrians stopped to scope out the recumbents, look confused, then move on.
Since we had to switch hotels in the evening, we had all our touring gear packed back on the bikes. It was annoying but we got by.
They walked from place to place in a big group, stopping at arranged locations and giving 15-minute performances. We saw them half a dozen times at least.
The Royal Mile is by far the busiest street in Edinburgh.
Every three blocks or so, a different person was stationed, playing the bagpipes. The effect was almost spiritual, like after 700 years of the instrument playing in this region (possibly as much as 3000 years), the sound of bagpipes was infused into the very stones and just vibrated out like heat.
The new hotel was on the north side of town, and our room was up three flights of stairs. There was no elevator, so we had to haul the bikes all the way.
When we settled in, the extra height was refreshing though. I opened the windows and was treated to a night time performance:
Exploring the cathedral took up the rest of our time in Rochester, and we boarded the train for the relatively short hop to London. It would have been great to stay on the official Eurovelo route into the city, but it would have cost another two days we didn’t have.
Emerging into London was exciting. Andrew and I had been here before, but Nick hadn’t. He was trying to look everywhere at once and we nearly lost him in crowds a few times. I asked him how it compared to emerging from the train station in Paris, and he said, “not as scary.”
While we lounged in Parliament Square Garden we saw a crowd of modern penny-farthing riders, standing around in a big group getting photos from other tourists. They were all embarked on a cross-Europe tour, and made much better time than we did. … Not because of the bike design, but because a fellow with a very large van was carrying all their luggage ahead of them.
Still, from one rider of weird bikes to another, me and Nick and the various French and English riders gave each other a lot of curious looks and stoic manly nods.
We shall fight them on the beaches… We shall wipe their craps off our heads…
Andrew only had a few more days in the country, and we needed to decide between exploring London or Edinburgh with his remaining time. We could potentially get a room here, then head to Edinburgh in a few days…
A consultation with the ticket office made the decision for us. They had three spots for bicycles on the train leaving today, but it would be almost impossible to get them when the weekend started, partly due to crowding, and partly due to the train strike that was still ongoing.
The Edinburgh train is what we want, but … which track??
The Edinburgh train is what we want, but … which track??
The departure time was vague. The office couldn’t tell us what platform to wait on, either. So we sat around reading phones in the station, which was a bit of a waste of international vacation time.
Don’t board any train without your emergency snacks.
The ride would take the rest of the day, so we organized luggage and sorted photos. Nick decided on a new favorite “road food”.
I chatted with a local about the Scotland route, and he insisted we try to reach the Isle of Skye. I chatted with Rachel and we looked at narrowing the schedule we’d booked for the Outer Hebrides so we could get a few days there. We found a very useful site that helped us rebuild our itinerary.
Unloading was a lot less stressful than loading, because the train was being decommissioned for the night. By the time we had everything roped back onto the bikes we were alone on the platform.
Dawn broke cold and damp, but we were expecting that. We all awoke around the same time and packed our gear in a steady drizzle. There was some mud to wash off from the late riding the previous night.
As we rolled out of the campground we encountered the manager, and he charged us a very reasonable fee for the space and water. We got to chatting and he couldn’t help showing us the amazing car project he had brewing in the garage.
“These were the car to have here, for a minute! High performance for the price! One of the first cars that someone who was not snooty and rich could afford.”
Rachel
(via text) “Yes! The period murder mysteries I devour have lots of lady motorists in Morrises.”
Me
“Most charming!”
Rachel
“Although of course the honorable miss Phryne Fisher went for the Hispano-Suiza — temperamental, but my what lines!”
Today’s first destination: Tiny local restaurant for snacks, while we planned the route ahead!
Back outside we reconfigured our rain gear. The weather service claimed the rain would stop, but the wind would remain stiff until we moved away from the coast a little.
The word for the next four hours was “bucolic.” The countryside put on a full performance for us, including sunshine, rabbits, birds, pretty clouds, rustling leaves, farm animals…
In the late afternoon, following the sneaky touring path between two fields, I came across a weird-looking tree creature. I had to stand there and gaze at it for a while, because the “Xenis Emputae Travelling Band” began playing on my phone, with the song “Littlebeck Trisagion: I – Elicona“. And oh my goodness, the “creepy nature spirit” factor of the thing just went right up into the heavens.
It was a great surreal moment and I was rooted almost helplessly to the spot while the song unrolled. Every 20 seconds or so a rabbit would go dashing in or out of the foliage at the base of the tree.
A few minutes later I rolled on and discovered a hillside that appeared to be bleeding trash. It looks like this disused area was a landfill for a good while. No wonder the tree spirit was so foreboding.
A little later I had to ask a question of The Duck:
Nick and Andrew were a good ways ahead of me, partly because I had to stop for a while and get work done, and partly because I had to stop a bunch of times to take photos, gaze at things, and pee in bushes like I always do. They had already found food on the road ahead, so as night fell I stopped at a take-out shop and bought some Chinese food.
I set out my chair in a little park next to the road, and as the gloom gathered around me I logged on for what was supposed to be a mid-morning status meeting on West Coast time. The other participants were a bit shocked to see I was sitting in the dark.
When I rejoined the rest of the group in town, it was pretty dang late. We had gone a good ways from Canterbury, but not quite far enough to stay on schedule. Reluctantly I decided that we’d better take a train out of town the next day, so we could spend at least a little bit of time in London before shooting north to Edinburgh on another train.
