Day 24: Canterbury Tales

August 6, 2024

Calais, FR to Painters Forstal, UK

The ferry port was a 20 minute ride from where I camped - I headed off at 545, as the 905 ferry checkin ends at 805. The reason to give lots of buffer time was just in case and also I was often waking up with the sun anyways (and choosing to go back to sleep) so this was only like 15 mins earlier than the sunrise.

I found the ferry entrance without much issue and passed through all the French controls quite quickly. I was the only analog bike on this ferry crossing - however there were many motor bikes in line, about 10.

Sharing the garage with not just normal cars but also these behemoths

I heard the English guards were always up for a little banter so I threw them a lob or two and it didn’t disappoint.

The conversation went something like this

Officer: Ooooh, an American! What brings you to our lovely country?

Me: I am riding my bicycle from Milan to London

Officer: I suppose if you want to get London you do have to get to the UK, makes sense. And what do you think of your trip so far?

Me: Well the food has been pretty good in France and Germany

Officer: Yeah well you haven’t tried ours yet.

—end conversation —

Don’t worry, I plan to eat plenty of Indian food, the cultural bastion of British food. I’ll also make room for some fish and chips.

On the UK side, it was a little hard to navigate by bicycle out of the ferry. Not terrible though. You have to go up a pretty steep hill then 20 steps of stairs (take the bags off and walk it obviously), then hang left through a woodsy overgrown trail. Then you’ll be on national cycling route 1 which will take me the longer scenic way to London.

If I knew I could take tardis instead of ferry I would have just done that?

Stairs… there was an alternative way to get to route 1 but at this point I’d already climbed 100m so I just took the bags off and walked the 20 odd steps. Nbd.

In case it wasn’t clear from earlier posts half of what I do is for my personal amusement (Liechtenstein, Bruges). Therefore, we will take the coastline to Deal then grab a sandwich for lunch in Sandwich, Kent. Only makes sense. Not that the area is known for good sandwiches.

This adds about 40km my overall route but regardless of it today is short or long I still won’t reach London till tomorrow anyways. May as well see a bit of Kent while I’m here!

One other thing to note is I now have to ride on the left side of the road. Mental if you ask me but nobody asked me so I guess it doesn’t really matter.

The ride was pretty nice overall, especially the early parts along the white cliffs of Dover then along the coast to Deal.

Oh hey! More castles! They have those here too

Afterwards were many farm areas. The further I got into Kent though the bike signage got a bit worse and it expected me to make some hairy turns onto big roads without shoulders. It was fine for today but the ride into London I expect to be thoroughly annoying - as anyone who has toured knows navigating in and out of large urban areas can be extremely time consuming on a bike unless you’re lucky to enter exactly where there’s a bike-only route (see Brussels).

I also realized last night I don’t have a UK adapter, only EU. So when I reached Canterbury I tried 5 different electronics and home goods stores until I finally found the adapter I was looking for. There wasn’t a US to UK one but there was a world to UK one because just UK things to be a little different.

I can’t imagine why there wasn’t a market for this product and it took 5 stores… (who forgets to buy or bring this? Just low planning individuals like myself)

The fact that the whole world can convert with one adapter implies the UK is the problem (jokes)

Anyways after killing an hour and a half on that I had to head to my campground and 15 miles down the road and with some more rolling hills.

The campsite was fairly expensive compared to anything in the rest of the trip - 20 GBP, all my other campgrounds were anywhere from 10 to 16 euros. But the owners were super sweet (even gave me a couple free cold drinks and the facilities were very nice). I had heard really solid things about this campground online and it’s just a camping ground attached to the owners’ farm. So I went anyways and had a really good night of rest. And no slugs or snails.

Dinner was to clear out the rest of my grocery bag. All that’s left is a couple sweets to fuel the ride to London tomorrow. Crazy that the trips coming to an end.

Thanks for reading.

Today's ride: 86 km (53 miles)
Total: 1,800 km (1,118 miles)

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Jon AylingWelcome to the UK!
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2 months ago

Om KelkarTo Jon AylingThanks - had a great time in the country!
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2 months ago