Into virgin territory

May 1, 2006

It is always a disappointment to find your friends' knowledge of history doesn't match your own. Many, therefore, must have been those who raised eyebrows in despair at my ignorance of the American Civil War.

For not only did I not know that Virginia was in the South - it looks a long way north on the map - but I also hadn't a clue that Richmond, the largest city, was the Confederate capital. Again, it is a long way north and, on a map, surprisingly close to Washington. Things even got to the state where old George could look out of his windows and see Confederate flags on the other side of the Potomac river.

In those days, Washington to Richmond was a long way on a horse. And it feels the same on a bike. After three days of 130, 90 and 160km, I have now reached Chesapeake Bay, even futher south geographically and still further historically, because it was here that the British founded the first colonial settlements and eventually ran off with Pocahontas. Indeed, outside in the streets of Williamsburg, the era is gracefully recreated with reconstructed old buildings and guides wearing flowing skirts and large ribboned bonnets. It may not be the real thing but it's a long way from Disney.

Virginia is an unusual place. After escaping the grip of Washington airport, I have been riding as much as I can on country back roads. And they are lovely... except that they are rarely in the country. Instead, they are more like those lanes in Surrey in England where trees and wild flowers beside the road give a first impression of rural peace but where the reality of posh houses and their burglar alarms and ostentatiously parked big cars are just behind.

There are no hedges or gardens in Virginia because that is not American taste. Houses in the open are planted in the middle of flowerless gardens large enough to be fields. They stand there naked, like houses that have dropped off a Monopoly board. Americans, I think, all yearn to live on a golf course.

The houses standing behind trees betray their presence by roadside letter boxes shaped like cottage loaves and mounted on poles. The posher the house - and there is a strong leaning to the Gone With The Wind style - the more Anglo-Saxon the names on the mail box. People are called Elliott and Smith and Williams. Not once did I see a Grodzinski or a Bungelberg.

And so it has been almost all the way here, neither countryside nor suburbia. Just urbia. With posh names and impossibly long street numbers.

There's something else, too, that gives a feeling of never quite being anywhere. Unlike in Europe, where even the smallest country crossroads is likely to offer a range of destinations, in Virginia there are no signposts at all. Not to anywhere.

Well, to be fair, there are signs when you cross a big national highway, but anywhere else you navigate by street names and road numbers. You "take a left on Pool Road, then a right on County Line Street", and so on.

Why would it be that a nation that can get men to the moon has so much trouble directing them to the next village?

And villages don't exist in the way that Europeans know them. The density of housing may be briefly higher, or there could be a sparkling white church with a message from Jesus posted in detachable plastic characters, but that is it. No sign to tell you where you are, none to explain where you've been, nothing to say where you're headed.

...and the beast. America is a land of sudden contrasts, the poor and the rich living almost side by side

The people, however, cannot be faulted. Their friendliness is beyond belief. Any roadside stop of longer than nose-scratching length has brought the inquiry "Sir, may I be of help?"

It has been hot here - I can't say for sure how hot because they use Fahrenheit - and on the first afternoon I sat and soon lay on grass beneath a tree. My eyes closed, I heard footsteps. A large and elderly black woman who walked like a sailor in a storm waved and smiled (even though I was trespassing on the unfenced edge of her garden).

"Sir," she said, "I saw you lyin' there an' I reckon as you could do with a pitcher of coooold wadder."

And that's what she held out for me, the ice clinking against its edges. As she urged me to 'be sure you have a good day, OK?", she turned and hesitated. Looking back, she gestured into the distance and called: "I live just over there apiece. Anything you need, now, you jus' be sure to come right over and say."

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