September 1, 2022
The Route - in England
The route starts in the UK, because as we've said, it is one of the few European countries that will have us, so soon after our last outing. Our only options are the countries shown in grey or green, and of these only England and Ireland are not in the looming shadow of Russia and Ukraine, or are Russia and Ukraine.
OK, UK it is, but our thinking is still constrained. We don't feel all in for a UK tour, else the LEJOG (Landsend to John O Groats), that is, UK end to end -1500 km, could have been a Grampies natural choice.
Instead we are thinking of a relatively tame toddle around the south, sticking mostly to what the British rather comfortingly refer to as the Home Counties, plus the close in Shires. We have read that the Home Counties are so named because you can make your home there and still commute to London, and the Shires are the pastoral further out areas. Shire actually seems just to mean County, because for example Yorkshire is awfully far from "home". Anyway, Shires makes us think of Hobbits, making them ok with us.
In looking at the map of England, we see familiar or familiar sounding locations all over the place. We favour ones that crop up in literature, in stories that somehow mean something to us. So for example, we would veer towards (or away from!) Midsomer Norton, that appears in the Midsomer Murders, or Oxford - for Inspectors Morse and Lewis, or we would look for Shakespeare in Stratford on Avon.
One place particularly attractive to Dodie is Shrewsbury (in Shropshire), the location of the Abbey that fictionally was the home of Brother Cadfael. "Brother Cadfael is the main fictional character in a series of historical murder mysteries written between 1977 and 1994 by the linguist-scholar Edith Pargeter under the name "Ellis Peters". The character of Cadfael himself is a Welsh Benedictine monk living at the Abbey Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, in Shrewsbury, western England, in the first half of the 12th century. The stories are set between about 1135 and about 1145, during "The Anarchy", the destructive contest for the crown of England between King Stephen and Empress Maud" (Wikipedia)
In practical terms, our route is mostly guided by the UK "National cycle Network" (NCN), which was set up and administered by the organization Sustrans. In 2012 we learned of Sustrans and got some of their maps. They really were a mess then, with missing or confusing on road direction signs all over the place. Lacking GPS then, we did a lot of aimless wandering. This year we are better prepared, and we hope so are they.
Some of the NCN routing is also part of the formidable Eurovelo system, and the whole thing can be seen and downloaded on super sites like "cycle.travel". More on how we downloaded and chopped up routes in a later page.
We learned that the Andersons also based their UK travel on NCN routes, but unlike us, they feel free to strike out on jaunts, presumably dreamed up by algorithms, such as on Ride With GPS.
Given all these various considerations, here is what we came up with for England:
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This route extends for a short 1800 km (oh, oh, longer than LEJOG!), which at 60 km per day on average, we should be able to cover in 30 days. Hey, that would put us just on track for sleazing back into the EU. (90 days from when we left on July 12 is October 10). In practice, we should get distracted by looking at some of England's little attractions, like London!, so we could be a bit late showing up on the other side of the Channel.
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Lis
2 years ago
But…aren’t your bikes in Leipzig? And isn’t Leipzig in the Schengen Zone? 😱😱
Jonathan
2 years ago