September 20, 2022
Day 14: Maldon to Colchester
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The more we thought about it, the crabbier we got about our inability to achieve any reasonable distances, due to the English cycling conditions. We were crabby enough to fire up the Air Transat site and to check on just what would be involved in going to Gatwick and teleporting back to the sanity of Canada. "But wait", we told ourselves, "we've moved some distance from London, let's give England one more chance".
As we set off from Maldon, we were watching closely for evidence of the various cycling impediments that had been tripping us up. In that light we were not thrilled to be thrown first thing onto a gravel single track by a small river.
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As it happened the river and its boats were rather pretty.
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Pretty soon we got onto that type of road that is not all that bad, its main virtue being low traffic. As roads get narrower, traffic volume gets less, so actually a lot of them are quite usable. The one shown below also had that special feature - a centre line! The next one not only had a centre line but also a bike lane of sorts. Wow!
Next we were thrown onto a sidewalk, and here we see a walker blocking the way on it. But soon we were thrown back on the road. It's a bit dizzying, but still none of these variations were particularly troubling or holding us up. Hooray.
A "bloggable" moment soon came up, as we were preparing for a left turn. A left turn is the easy one here, the opposite of at home. Still I was watching closely as two drivers up ahead seemed to be demonstrating their own difficulties in making turns. I thought the white van was wanting to turn right, and the oncoming black Mercedes was also trying to turn right, creating a conflict. But the van driver was going ballistic, leaning out his window as you see, and screaming obscenities at the car driver. More than that, he began to threaten her, "next time I'm going to stab you, you f'ing slag!" With that he cut in front of the car, turned right, and blasted off into the distance. The car then made the right turn, and stopped by us. The lady, very shaken, then explained to us that actually the van driver was known to her and had some kind of grudge. He had been lying in wait in the side street, as she dropped her kids at a nearby school. She felt we had saved the day when the guy saw me with my camera.
We shared our photo to the lady and left our contact info. We had clearly heard the threat of violence, and obviously take a dim view of that.
From this point, the roads continued to improve, which means "shrink", and despite a bit of further gravel one track, we were very happy with the day.
With our new found mobility, we were also beginning to knock off towns that appeared on our map. If you look below at a road sign for some of them, you can be sure that this is not Bavaria, for instance.
There was not necessarily a whole lot to see in these towns, but there was one interesting church, in Totham, with a very old graveyard.
We stopped in to a general store/post office to see about our telephone plan, from which the company (Lycamobile) had succeeded in draining all the funds (they are good at this!). We noted how all the papers were still full of Funeral coverage. The pageantry made for a lot of great front page photos.
Later we were able to add our own final funeral coverage, with this shot from the floral tribute in front of the castle in Colchester:
The route threw up one last impediment for us, and a unique one. There were lots of these trees overhanging the path, and the spikey fruits could give you quite a bonk if your cycled in to them. Does anyone have an ID for these guys?
With no roads or traffic or gravel or farm fields or bridle paths or barricades to stand in our way, we rolled into Colchester with little effort and early in the afternoon! Here are some shots from the high street. It's poignant to see that banners still hanging across the street celebrate the Queen's platinum jubilee.
The hotel we had chosen was the Red Lion. It was immediately apparent that this was in a very old building. But we were later surprised to learn just how old.
The Red Lion can be found in history books. It was built in 1465!
We stashed our stuff in our room - not quite so easy, because it was up a lot of stairs and around a lot of corners - and set out for a look at the high street. We had lots of time, because we had cycled so quickly!
I am sure this is not a deep or permanent observation about Colchester, but the first thing I noticed was a certain level of innovation in the naming of shops. Have a look at these four:
Colchester is claimed to be the oldest settlement in England, and it certainly has a history, stemming from iron age tribes to Romans, Normans, and on. Lots of books can be found, focusing on aspects of this exciting past:
The jewel of the high street is the Colchester castle, and the gardens that surround it. The castle was built around 1068, by the order of William the Conqueror, but it was built on the ruins of a former Roman temple. The temple itself was at one point sacked by Bodica, who was a queen of the iron age tribe the Iceni. Bodica led a revolt against the Romans, in 60 or 61 a.d.
The castle has naturally undergone changes over time, with battlements installed and removed half way up, doors opened and blocked, etc. Excavations in front revealed foundations for further buildings, that are no longer there:
Inside the castle is a high quality museum, tracing its history. We felt too cheap and hungry too, to go around it. Still, we enjoyed the gift shop, which featured quite a few books focusing on various stages of the history. These were often targeted for kids, which would have made them good for us, but we have learned over time not to go buying such stuff, which has to be mailed home.
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The gardens surrounding the castle are very pleasant and well done, with lots of roses, especially.
We think there is a lot more we could be looking at in Colchester, but now that we seem to have our mobility back a bit, we are keen to move on. Still, as an example of the depth of stuff they have here, here is a book describing the history of dozens of the buildings along the high street.
Oh well, we are happy enough just returning to our 15th century hotel, and watching almost as ancient episodes of "Keeping Up Appearances" on the tele!
The crazy walk we did do:
Today's ride: 44 km (27 miles)
Total: 446 km (277 miles)
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