Here’s that rainy day

June 8, 2022

(If you’re late in joining us, this is the start of part two of our nine month, very circuitous ride from Barcelona to Nice. Preceding this was part one: Barcelona to Calais.)

It seems like one excellent riding day has followed another lately, and we’re starting to slip behind. Between getting rides in nearly daily and our unusually heavy social calendar over the past few weeks it’s been hard to keep up with the journal. So really it’s a bit of a relief when we get rained out on our second day in Amiens.

Weather will clear up in the afternoon and we’ll both take walks to explore the city before dinner, but before that I’ve got a few free hours to catch up on the journal and then turn to another task whose time has come: starting up the new one, for our three month horseshoe-shaped tour of England and Wales.

We described this part of our nine month journal in the introduction to part one, but I’ll repost the planned route here for convenience:

Surprisingly, the plan now doesn’t look much different now than it did when we first mapped it out. There’s been quite a bit of relatively minor detail change between the lines since then and now though. We booked the entire three month itinerary before leaving Portland back in March, but we’ve made a number of changes and rebookings since then to establish more multi-night stays where we can slow down, take a load off the bikes, and take a hike. In the main though the big picture is still pretty much the same.

We’re going to follow the same model with this journal and break it into sections and post a more detailed map of each as it rolls around, but they won’t be based on regions so much as time and duration. We’ll break it up into three monthly chunks, starting here with the ride north along the English Channel and the North Sea. Look at the terrain! It looks seductively flat and simple. I imagine we’ll think back on this first month with nostalgia when we’re suffering through the hills of Yorkshire, the Lake District and Wales.

United Kingdom, the ride north: Dover to Whitby.

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Polly LowAh: I see the plan -- stay on the east coast just long enough to get some decent fish and chips (at Whitby), then head for more civilised parts...
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2 years ago

Polly LowPossibly (?) a more helpful suggestion, with apologies if this is already well-known to you: when you get off the ferry at Dover, the key to a speedy escape is to look for the red line which is painted onto the tarmac; follow that line religiously through the port (i.e.: don't follow the cars/trucks) and you'll come to a closed gate; ring the small bell to the left of the gate, wait for a couple of minutes, and a hi-viz person will amble over and let you through (sometimes after a Very Searching Security Check, i.e. asking 'have you come off the ferry?'). Then keep following the red line, which whizzes you round the edge of the customs sheds and deposits you out on the bike path into town.
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2 years ago

Scott AndersonTo Polly LowNo, we didn’t know this. Neither of us has ever been to southern England other than that long ago trip to London with my first wife. I’m guessing there’ve been some changes in the interim. Thanks,we’ll remember this next week.
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2 years ago

Polly LowIt's a very low-tech system, but it more or less works! (UK passport checks happen at Calais, which slightly simplifies things at the other end.)
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2 years ago