June 22, 2015
Dover, England: Happy in the rain
I SLEPT well, too. And by happy chance, it started raining only once I'd packed away my sleeping bag. The downside to sleeping in straw is that it's not the moment to make coffee. I could justify sleeping in a barn, not setting fire to it.
So I rode on and stopped in a bus shelter, the luxury, free accommodation so familiar to cyclists. It was dark, wet and overcast. The few people about took no notice. Maybe people always make coffee at their bus stop.
Rain made the dawn slow. I smiled when I saw a sign for a campground. More coffee followed an hour, maybe two hours later when the first bars opened. The grey-haired owner, reading La Voix du Nord on the counter, hurriedly hid his cigarette. It's illegal in France to smoke in any enclosed public area.
When I made no protest, because I didn't want a fuss, he brought it back from its hiding place, before it set fire to tissues and dish cloths.
We discussed Calais and whether it was humanly possible to ride that far. We discussed the distressed Africans and others who, unlike those who had stayed in France or Germany or Holland, were trying to reach Dover in a lorry or train.
"We took all they had, didn't we?" the barman sighed. "We took them as slaves and we took their oil. We took whatever they had, and now we marvel at what's happening."
We could agree it was a human tragedy. We could have agreed on more but neither of us had solutions, so there was nothing to agree. It was a tragedy of African proportions here in Europe. Knowing the problem but not the answer made it so much worse.
It rained all the way to Calais. The oily sponge of clouds settled on the trees and dripped. Fast, and without inhibition. Undecided if my rain jacket was waterproof or if I was sweating like a donkey, I decided that either way I wished to be neither wetter nor colder. I acrobatically pushed a plastic bag between my jacket and sweater. I never decided if it made any difference but it provided mental solace.
You cross a lot of hills before the sea, which is what keeps the sea in its place. I rode up and I rode down and in time I stopped at traffic lights just as a flaxen-haired Dutch girl and her darker boyfriend halted on the other side.
"I'm from The Hague," she said, "or at least that's where my parents live."
She was cheerful considering she was as wet and less heavily dressed than I was. Her boyfriend was Swedish, a little older than she was, who spoke English but neither Dutch nor French. They were undecided where to go. They seemed happy to be anywhere, out on their bikes in the rain.
"Do you know the coast road?" she asked. She meant the North Sea bike route. I said I didn't but that the North Sea in France and Belgium probably had the romance it had - or lacked - in Holland. She smiled, because The Hague is nearly on the sea.
"Maybe we don't go that way, then."
They laughed the laugh that cyclists laugh out in the rain and we waved goodbye as they pushed the door of an épicerie to buy lunch.
The rain still fell and it seemed odd to run short of water. But I did, and I was glad to brake to a gritty halt to tour a cemetery for a tap. It was my second brush with the angels because I'd also sat in a rural church for shelter while I made and ate sandwiches.
For the third time today, I sheltered in an abandoned factory. I went out of curiosity rather than shelter, because abandoned industrial architecture intrigues me. For years it supports men and their families with hard physical work. And then it ends and a moment of history falls into ruin. It becomes forgotten, as though it never happened.
Down the road in Lottinghen, I asked an old boy for the history. It went back to the late 1800s, he said. It made cement and changed hands several times before Lafarge closed it in 1981. Since then it had been partially demolished and its railway line had become overgrown. It all seemed so sad.
There are several ways into Calais - those that everyone else uses and the quicker way open to any cyclist prepared to read a map. I was on suburban, sometimes even rural roads all the way to the gates of one of the busiest ferry ports in the world.
One day, I think, there'll be a bike path all the way. I passed a big bright sign announcing the construction of EV5, complete with a picture of cyclists in the bliss of coastal sunshine.
And so the ferry to Dover, an hour and a half to dry out and to find a meal before the conundrum of leaving Dover docks and finding my hotel.
Today's ride: 101 km (63 miles)
Total: 884 km (549 miles)
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