Summing Up - What It Was Like - Grampies Go To England and France Fall 2022

November 24, 2022

Summing Up - What It Was Like

We are now back on Vancouver Island, and although the effects of the time change and the colder temperatures are still with us, the details of our tour are starting to fade. Thank goodness for the blog. But even without the blog, looking around me here in our dining room, I feel the great difference between where we are and where we have been. That's a good thing, because it shows that despite various forms of globalisation, there is still a lot of difference in perspective from country to country.

Interestingly, that country to country difference does not seem to require separation by vast oceans or distances. England and France, which are so close to each other, and which swapped rulers so freely when not fighting each other, proved to us to be dramatically different.

As cyclists, the first point of difference was the difficulty of logging any distance in England. We seemed to be forever noodling through suburbs, crossing cow pastures, following bridle ways, and facing down vehicles coming at us in the middle of the narrow roads, with cars parked on either side, and/or up on the sidewalks. And day by day, week by week, the poor quality of the food seemed to weaken us. Even now, the thought of another soggy "baguette" from Greggs makes me want to flee.

By contrast, the cycle ways and findable quiet roads (sure, with notable exceptions) of France gave us the feeling that we could head for anywhere, and actually have a good chance of making it, and on time. And for a baguette from an artisan boulanger, I would just about swim back there right now!

This is not to say that we totally hated England. There were the places and history that we know so well, the quiet countryside scenes, the sheep, quaint High streets, the university and cathedral towns, and people who almost universally were willing to greet you warmly and to chat.

In the opening page of this blog, we admitted that this time around we were not particularly looking for anything or trying to achieve anything, but yet we promised to scrutinize every aspect of seven mentioned things that we could: "we will still earnestly study and absorb every aspect of the landscape, architecture, food, crops, markets, social fabric, and people that we encounter". The list missed out a few things that we always include: churches, animals, bike paths. I feel that we did ernestly study these ten things, and that we got far more than our money's worth in experience about them.

Just for fun, let's go back and choose a representative photo for each of these aspects, for the two countries. That's twenty photos. I am not sure how many photos we selected to be in the blog, but I think we took over 10,000 in total. Yikes!

Landscape

Near Newmarket. England still has much of its gentle pastoral aspect.

Churches

Architecture

Who would think that a crumbly village could become an architectural prize. This is actually a street in Arles. Only bicycles can go this way, of course.

Food

I almost put in a Greggs baguette to see if I would feel sick. But we did like the Sunday dinners, offered in every town.

Crops

Crop and orchard land was not very prominent in England, but there were many orchards in Kent, mostly of apples. Here we see plums.

Markets

In France, a good market will have rotisserie like this.

Social Fabric

People

These guys at Noailles in Marseilles look "typical".

Animals

Swans were everywhere in England, and our favourites for photos.

Swans vs Camargue horses - tough choice!

Bike Paths

France had a super variety of great paths. This route verte is near St Remy.

Looking back through the England pages, we see that they are interesting. Still we can't deny that with every day we were in France, our enjoyment of the ride grew. And when we think of Paris, of Burgundy, of Provence, we only remember fun, that increased day by day, until the ride was just a pure joy. France, we'll be back soon. And England, you are the very type of country we would be glad to cycle again in, assuming we have used up all the other ones!

Stay tuned for statistics, especially relative costs in the two countries...

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Sandra LawnHi Steve and Dodie

I’ll miss your daily updates, for those of us not on any long tours at this time it’s always fun to follow a great journal.

I agreed the whole time you were cycling the UK….. the interesting tourist highlights are great but the cycling between places can be a nightmare, at the end of the day is it worth it??

I liked your southern France entries, now that’s a place worth going, always annoyed I missed the Carmague because my travel companion at the time couldn’t see the point in going there…..it’s on my personal bucket list and would love to follow in the ‘Grampies’ footsteps, such an interesting route. Of note will be finding the roast chicken and potato vendors, thanks for great food stories

Enjoy your winter at home, stay warm and safe, looking forward to reading about the Grampies on their next tour

Cheers
Sandy
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1 year ago

Steve Miller/GrampiesThanks Sandy! Perversely tomorrow we are going to try to replicate the British Sunday Dinner, including sticky toffee pudding and Yorkshire pudding. Both of these can be a bit tricky, and we found lots of variations on the methods and ingredients of the sticky toffee. One universal ingredient is medjool dates, which we bought a pile of today.
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1 year ago