Liquid rain, liquid trails

England. No I didn't kneel down and kiss the shore as I landed, but I almost wanted too. In true British fashion we were an hour late arriving, then we had to go through customs and convince them that we weren't here to stay. They had two customs officers to process the entire ship, so we snuck into the middle of a bunch of harley davidson riders and as they just pushed their way to the front of the queue, well we were just innocently taken along for the ride.

Then just past customs were all these wonderful information signs for cyclists. We headed off to the big shopping centre neaarby and gorged ourselves on stuff that was written in English - adverts, books, maps, menus ... Oh, it was so good! After several hours of this, we figured we had better go find somewhere to stay, so set off along Hadrian's Wall route.

Somewhat worringly, we spent a lot of time dodging broken glass, and the first two people we met on the cycle way were 'cycleway rangers' whose job (can you belive this) was to cycle around and see if any work needs doing. What a job. Anyway, they were nice enough guys, we had a good chat then continued on.

The next two people we saw were policeman. In fact it wasn't for 8 miles (when we got into Newcastle itself) that we actually saw pedestrians and cyclists. Newcastle looked interesting, but we wanted to get out of town, so off we went to see Hadrian's wall. We had four days to get to Glasgow, so figured two days along the wall, and two days to Glasgow or Edinborough.

Sitting in a pub that night in Ovingham, about 25 miles west of Newcastle, we had just finished our pub meal and were chatting to a guy who had earlier given us directions to the campsite we were staying at. It was about 8pm and he started talking up the quiz night at the pub and asked us if we were going to hang around for it. Having noticed that it was on the Tuesday night, we said we'd love to but had to hit the road, when he said, "but it's only another hour." "No mate, it's tuesday night", "It is Tuesday night" he said, looking somewhat bewildered. Yes, it dawned on us, we'd forgotten a day. We only had three days to get to Edinborough. Not good.

The next day involved a massive U-turn back to the coast. We continued another 20 miles or so on to Hexham and visited some beautiful towns along the way, before crossing Hadrian's Wall (Still not having seen the stupid thing) and then heading North on cycle route 68. Several hours later, and quite tired we peddaled into this town to find our that, contrary to what our map said, the campsite had closed 5 years ago, so it was another 12 miles to the next town (Alnwick) where we managed to camp on a rugby oval. It was a strange night as this other two guys rocked up and with the whole campsite to choose from they proceeded to pitch their tent 1 metre away from hours and then cook their dinner and chat loudly on their mobile phone well into the night. Grrr....

Having discovered, that Alnwick had the biggest second hand bookshop in England, I cried because we still had many miles to go and couldn't hang around. We hit the coast that morning and proceeded up to Berwick upon Tyne. It was great riding except the headwinds and some cold rain. We met some other cyclists heading in the other direction and had a chat, and wathced some farmers trying to move their cattle as we had lunch. After settling into a nice campsite at Berwick, we walked into town and decided to take the easy way out - this whole pushing ourselves to be somewhere business wasn't working for us - and booked ourselves on the train the next morning to Edinborough. we managed to get cheap seats so it was only £8 each, including bicycles. I found an excellent chinese takeaway so sat in the tent that night and ate chinese as the rain buffeted us.

Friday was a lazy day in Edinburgh, before Kim's tain arrived from London around midnight. The first time we'd been up after dark in a very long time. We hired a care the next day and drove up to Fort William / Glen Coe area where we spent the weekend having an excellent break. It was so good to have some company from back home, and after a nice walk in the foothills of ben Nevis on Sunday morning we spent an excellent afternoon canyoning (gotta go and check the pics out on the link below). Kim was the undisputed Canyoning Queen, being the only one of us who did the high jump (and we've got the blur to prove it). I chickened out having previously perforated my ear drum jumping from a similar height in New Zealand many years ago. We also met a great group of guys on the trip, who we caught up with again that night in the local pub aty Glen Coe. Finally got back to our B&B around 11.30pm having watched Spain beat Germany in the EUFA Cup.

Next day it was a race back to Edinboroug to return our car, then after a bit of sight seeing, I wandered off and left Kim and Christie chat away over coffee (OK, I snuck away to another chinese restaurant). Then after seeing Kim off on the train around 4pm, it was back into our smelly cycling clothes and out of town. We followed the Union canal cycle path out of town and went about 30kms to a little campsite in the Beecraigs forest, and then yesterday had the muddiest day of our ride so far along the Union and then Forth and Clyde canals into Glasgow. Everything we owned was just covered in mud. However we did get to see the Falkirk Wheel (This unique lock system) so our lives are complete.

Spent last night with Baldrick and his partner (Tess). It was just so nice again to spend an evening catching up with an old friend over a huge plateful of veggies and couscous, before a great night sleep. And now we're procrastinating a bit, it's about 11am and we just don't know where to go next - Ireland? London? Skye? Where do you go when you have five weeks of holidays left ... I think we'll just jump on the bikes and ride.

IN the meantime check out the UK photos ...



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