September 19, 2008
Ashwell - Sutton Saint Edmund, Lincolnshire
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I was up at 8-30. The sun was shining, but it was still cold. I got out the cooking equipment. I went to fit the camping gaz cartridge to the burner. It wouldn't fit. Why wouldn't it fit? It wouldn't fit because it was too fucking big. Why didn't that knotty-headed arsehole back in London, ask me what size I wanted?
I'd be doing without breakfast this morning. Well, not quite, I had a banana and made coffee with hot water from the tap in the shower block. It took me a long time to pack everything back onto the bike. I didn't get any better at this. I could expect two hours from crawling out of my sleeping bag to the first pedal stroke away, a little less this breakfast-free morning
I set out onto very quiet country roads. Any traffic consisted mainly of tractors working the harvest. I reached the small town of Potton. I really fancied a cup of tea. I could almost smell it. At home, it's my habit to drink strong coffee at breakfast time, then an hour or so later a cup of tea. How very English you might be thinking. If I'm travelling in France, say, this desire goes out the window. French tea, usually made by showing a photograph of a tea-bag to a cup of tepid water doesn't cut it. I enquired after a café. There was one on the town square, in premises still showing the shop sign of its previous owner, not obviously a café. I ordered tea and a Danish pastry. The only other customer was doing the same as me, but in reverse. He was drinking espresso coffee [something I'm wary of asking for in England because, like French tea, it's usually not very good] It turned out he had lived in France for more than twenty years. A carpenter, originally from Croydon, South London, Chris and his wife, at the time speaking no French, moved to central France in the 1980s. He had made a decent life for himself and his family in the department of Allier. He was in Potton, visiting his sister.
We sat and talked for more than an hour, until after mid-day. I had so far come about 6 miles, but I had no deadline. Like me, in his youth, Chris had a taste for travel and adventure; a more adventurous and exotic taste than mine, evidently. I've never paddled a canoe up the Congo river. We swapped stories and e-mail addresses. We've since been in touch.
Chris was due back at his sister's and it was time I got some miles under the tyres. I set off on a quiet B road towards St. Ives, where I planned to stop for lunch. In addition to the banana and the Danish pastry, last night's steak and kidney pudding provided enough zip to keep me going till then. There were slight gradients on the B1040, and I was faint-heartedly looking forward to the country beyond St. Ives, where I would be on the dead flat roads of the Fens.
I bought food at a supermarket in the town centre and asked directions to a suitable place to eat it by the river. St. Ives stands on the Great Ouse, the main drain of the Fens, which empties into the Wash near Kings Lynn. I found an empty bench and idly watched the swans on the river, while I ate. It was now hot in the sunshine. I was joined by two elderly ladies. I told them my woeful breakfast story. They were very helpful, they told me where I might be able to find a camping gaz canister nearby and looked after my bike, while I walked round the corner to get one. The shop, a sort of hardware supermarket, would not take my oversize canister in exchange, so I gave that to the ladies. They might know someone who could use it. It was four quid down the toilet just the same.
Out of St. Ives, sure enough, the road was flat. I rode on to Chatteris, where I stopped for more tea, at a scuzzy looking mobile hamburger stand. I wouldn't have eaten anything from it, but I reckoned boiling water and a tea bag never did anyone any harm. The plump arms of the woman behind the counter, well past her prime, were covered with faded tatoos. She was cheerful enough, although against the odds, it seemed to me. It's wrong, however, to under-estimate the profitability of selling tea bags in plastic cups and cheap meat patties in a bun. Soon after the woman and her husband, closed up the stand, they hooked it up to a nearly new SUV and drove it home.
I looked at my map and sorted out a back road route to March, from where I would be following for about twelve miles, the same route we took last year in the opposite direction: https://www.cycleblaze.com/journals/england/long-sutton-ely/
I asked directions out of town to the Maximum security prison at Whitemoor, around which is a bike path and nature reserve. I turned off the bike path north of the prison then followed the very busy, but slow moving, A141 for perhaps two miles. From last year, I had remembered a campsite sign, just north of Parson Drove. That's where I was aiming. I crossed into Lincolnshire at a jumble of signposts, including the one to the campsite. The traditional county of Lincolnshire is big, the second in the country after Yorkshire,and like Yorkshire was formerly divided into three: Lindsay, Kesteven and Holland. It would take me two days to ride out of it.
It was a little more than the advertised one mile to the campsite. I checked in. The owners were very friendly and helpful. Again I was the only lone camper. As I found out later, the site is mainly for static caravan owners, who use the site for a weekend break in the country.
Fishing is popular, to a lesser extent historical tourism [Peterborough, Cambridge and Ely are not far away] and there must be bird-watchers. Otherwise, the Fens don't offer much in the way of landscape, see https://www.cycleblaze.com/journals/england/long-sutton-ely/
I set up the tent, showered, then phoned Barbara, 'Where are you?' she said.
'Holland.''What?? How did you get there?''Holland, Lincolnshire.'
I set off on the bike back to Parson Drove, for a meal in the Swan Inn. I chose roast chicken and it wasn't good. I returned to the campsite [there was a bar] and joined the company of week-end caravanners for a beer.
I had never much thought of the Fens as a holiday destination, no matter how brief the holiday and yet here were all these people evidently enjoying their temporary liberation from urban England and sleeping in a tin can. The majority of the residents were around retirement age. Some had brought children and grandchildren. They were friendly, not overly curious about my little adventure, just ordinary, decent people taking a break.
Today's ride: 100 km (62 miles)
Total: 197 km (122 miles)
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This is great, thanks Michael, I don't think I saw this the first time round.
3 years ago
Our son went to University in Sheffield, as you may have read and now lives in Manchester. Pre-plague, I would devise various routes to cycle up for a visit to either of those cities. Consequently, I have become more familiar with the less touristy parts of the country. Grimsby's not so nice this time of year.
3 years ago
So I was surprised when I moved to the area just how nice scenery parts of Beds/Herts/Bucks has. Fens still freak me out a bit with their flatness, mind. Oh yes, I bet Grimsby's been pretty bracing!
3 years ago