After-Afterthoughts

(More anorak stuff.  Feel free to ignore this until I start posting a more interesting travelogue from the real Big Ride.)

I’ve got the bug!  I’d love to do another, longer tour.  And I’d do it so much better now I’ve had a little practice; knowing what to pack, where to stow it, how to plan routes, how long to ride and how long to rest for maximum safety and enjoyment. 

Longer daylight hours or shorter hops are a must: two two-hour rides with a really long lunch hour between them, plus a leisurely start and finish to the day, would be excellent.  I really noticed how my riding got sloppy when I pushed on a little bit further than I should ideally have done and tiredness started to creep up on me.  Vocalising the ride, per advanced riding technique, kept me safe, but it made the ride more of a chore than a pleasure.  Tours should not be endurance events!

I should also put in more frequent ‘comfort’ breaks!  With my saliva glands fried, I need to sip water frequently.  Consequently, I also need to visit the loo more often than Private Godfrey.  I found that, in the riding position, one doesn’t notice a full bladder, but once you stop and get off; ouch!

My bike was more filthy than it had ever been by the time I got back.  Thorough cleaning took ages.  Next time, I’ll clean as I go.  It’s so much more pleasant to see a shiny bike waiting for you in the morning, and to know that small boys look on in awe as you pass by.  Having a little more time in the day would allow for the cautious application of a garage jet wash every other day or so.  Space is precious so I wouldn’t pack my voluminous cleaning kit, but a small squirty bottle of Scottoil FS365 would be worth squeezing in.

I will definitely not take homework with me again.  I had incoming work on the Friday before I left and took the work laptop with me to do it in the evenings.  Another job came in on the Wednesday just as I got to Lowestoft and I made a start on that in the evening before coming home.    I don’t mind the work, especially with long, dark evenings with nothing else in particular to do, but the personal laptop doesn’t have the software to do work, and the work laptop isn’t allowed to have the software for blogging, hence I had to find room for two laptops and accompanying cabling.   I’ll declare myself properly unavailable and leave the work equipment at home next time.

A couple of times, I really struggled to get the bike on and off its stand and move it around.  I wondered if I had been too lax with my exercises lately and was getting a bit feeble.  But once I was back and unpacked the panniers and top box, I realised what the problem had been! 

Funny thing: nobody tried to kill me for the whole journey.  I usually reckon on at least one homicidal lunatic on every ride I do.  (The trick is to see him coming and take evasive action in advance.)  There was one occasion in Wales where somebody coming in the opposite direction swerved slightly to avoid a pheasant, but he barely crossed the white line and I could see that he had seen me coming.  And in Norfolk, a couple of drivers came a bit close to my back end, but there is lamentably little unusual about that and I had a good handful of acceleration to spare if it started to get alarming.  Perhaps spotting the careless and dangerous is becoming so second nature to me that I don’t even register it now.

My bike is excellent.  It trundles around ancient market towns just as well as it munches miles on motorways.  It is more economical than many a smaller motorcycle, but it has the power in reserve to get out of harm’s way when necessary.

With an extended ride in different conditions, I could experiment with the screen position.  At motorway speeds, I found that the screen fully up, so I look through the top section, reduced wind roar to almost nothing.  In the fully down position, the wind roar is constant (though I wear ear plugs and have a good helmet so it is not uncomfortable).  Halfway up, the roar cuts out, but there is a random buffeting from the turbulence.  Curiously, fuel consumption was best with the screen down.  My irregular shape fully exposed to the wind apparently causes less drag than the vortex created by having the screen fully up.  What’s more, the pressure of wind on the upper body allows a comfortable forward lean without putting strain on the arms.

My gear is likewise spot on.  The one-piece suit kept the changeable weather at bay.  It was fractionally too warm, in fact.  The thermal lining is removable, and with smarter packing, I could have left space in the panniers to stow it away.  But I suspect I will only ever really need it in the coldest of riding weather.  Boots and gloves were also faultless.  I wondered if I would miss the heated grips I had on my last bike and toyed with getting some inner gloves – possibly heated ones.  But cold fingers were never a problem; the fairing keeps the wind blast off the hands.

My [not very] smart phone was a disappointment, once again.  I really should have waited longer before adopting this technology!  I’d already established that it wasn’t up to blogging on the journey as I had at first hoped.  Then the Sat Nav app that I’ve had for a while and have previously used to some effect suddenly decided to give up, just when I could have done with it.  (Still, the little holder that attaches to my handlebars,  designed to hold a Sat Nav, is also good for holding paper sketch maps and waypoint lists; my ‘flat nav,’ as it were.  A map in the map bag section of my tank bag might be a good idea next time, too.  Peering down at the tank to check a map while travelling along is not recommended, but it’s sometimes nice to stop and see what’s in the area; alternative routes, places to stop, a general feel for the lie of the land – things that a sketch map or waypoint list don’t show.  I went without it this time and found it inconvenient to keep stopping, getting off and digging out the map from the panniers. )

Music held on the smart phone and played back through the headset in my helmet was a bit tinny, but then if it wasn’t heavy on the treble, I probably wouldn’t hear speech when I make phone calls.  In any case, it was more or less drowned out at any kind of highway speed, though more satisfactory when pottering through towns.  And I find a little music with a driving beat and a not too engaging melody is an aid to concentration in the eyes-everywhere urban environment.  On motorways and when touring through pleasant landscape, it’d just be irritating.

The voice control app was occasionally useful, but definitely not to be relied upon.  My new basso profundo voice probably didn’t help, but the app never was particularly successful.

Perhaps on some future journey, a smarter smart phone that really does do everything – reliably – would be in order, but only if I come into some money or their price drops significantly.

In any case, I pine for another tour already, with or without assorted electronic aids.

Kings Lynn to Lowestoft, Wednesday 23rd

Castle Acre ... is for lovers
Naturally, on this leg of the journey, I had to call in at Castle Acre.  There's plenty to say about this little Norfolk village, but I don't suppose I could say much about its castle, its Norman bailey gate, its priory, its wool church and so on that you couldn't read about in any guide book.  In fact, I'd probably have to look most of it up in a guide book anyway.  But there is one thing those sources might miss out, even if they are particularly good on the extensive ruins of the castle.  It's that little window you can just make out in the small central lump of stonework on the skyline here.  Everybody calls this 'Dandy's Hole' for no reason I have ever been able to find out.  It is the one bit of the ruin that still has roof.  It's a passage about three or four yards long, running at an angle to the central castle keep and the curtain wall.  So it offers shelter not only from the elements, but also all but the most persistent of prying eyes.  This has made it a favourite haunt for generations of village courting couples.

Dandy's Hole; passage way in central bit of wall on skyline.

It seems the ruins still attract lovers, though it looks like the village boys will have no luck with these two.  Let's wish Izzie and Emily a long and happy relationship.
















Crossing Norfolk
Norfolk has no shortage of curious and interesting places I might have visited, but the day was already getting on.  I would need to get moving if I wanted to get to Lowestoft before dusk.  And besides, Norfolk was probably designed by some superior power to be a nice place for the touring motorcyclist to ride through; gently undulating roads, tolerably well surfaced, weaving through pleasant countryside and pretty towns and villages.  This being late Autumn, one just has to watch out for 'The Campaign.'  Farmers are hauling their sugar beet to the factories on tractors and trailers that come straight off the muddy fields.  There is apparently no time for the niceties of wheel cleaning.  Perhaps the farmers just like to share some of the land they own with the general public.  Whatever, the two-wheeler has to keep a sharp lookout for particularly slippery lumps of Norfolk on the carriageway.

Getting my kicks on route [A10]66
(Alternative caption: "Not Hastings?")










Ghost airfield
However, I was inspired to stop at one place by an article in this morning's Eastern Daily Press, an organ I now hold in the highest esteem.  It was about the R34, an airship that made a record-breaking voyage to America and back, starting and finishing at its home base of Pulham airfield.  A quick Google identified the airbase as being at Pulham St Mary, a few miles South of Norwich.  (Though, as is often the case with these little airfields, it's actually closer to the neighbouring village of Rushton.)  The Wikipedia article mentioned that the the airfield had later been used for aircraft 'disposal' by the RAF.  That means ripping out the re-usable bits and burning the rest, including the radium-painted dials on the instruments!  Ominously, the article mentions that signs of the consequent contamination of the area can still be seen.  Heavens! Whithered wheat? Glowing mangolds?  I had to see.

In fact, there's very little to see.  The monster hangars have long gone.  As far as my map reading can tell, part of the airfield - maybe the contaminated part - was probably under this scrap yard.

However, at the end of a lane that probably led to the airfield - it is actually called 'Airfield Lane,' which is a bit of a giveaway - I came across this massive gatepost made of what looks suspiciously like military grade concrete.














Lowestoft.  Aw.  Is it all over so soon?
I was pleased to arrive in Lowestoft with a couple of hours of daylight left.  Bro-in-law Nigel told me yesterday that there is a plaque somewhere here pointing out that this was Britain's most easterly point.  There was also a notorious bronze statue of a fisherman that I wanted to find.  Not much luck on either count!

Stop! Only the sea beyond this town.

















The fisherman I've seen before some years ago in the shopping centre.  When you looked at the statue, you got the vague sense that there was something not quite right about it.  The story goes - and I don't know if this is urban myth or not, but it's a good story - that the fisherman had originally been looking out to see with an arm held out towards the far fishy horizon.  The town's councilors thought this not quite right; he shouldn't be standing there with his back to the people.  So they arranged for his head to be sawn off, turned and welded back on.

I asked a local angler where I could find him.  He said the statue had been relocated and directed me to a bronze of about the same size, but most definitely of a lifeboatman, not of a fisherman, with a head most definitely on the right way round.  I could see no sign of the fisherman on a quick glance in the shopping centre so gave up on that one and went to find the plaque (another plaque!) that I could deem to be the absolute end of my journey.

Following the same angler's now suspect directions, I threaded my way through an industrial estate, past carpet warehouses, gas holders and a wind turbine, and eventually found Ness Point.  There is a peculiar twenty-foot concrete structure there that looks to be either not quite finished or starting to fall apart.  In front of it, there's a pedestal bearing ... nothing!  Somebody had nicked the plaque, presumably to sell for scrap.

A more difficult-to-steal compass rose set in the concrete quay confirmed that I was indeed at the most easterly point.
















Then I got a phone call.  More homework to do.  Better get going then.
I am staying tonight in Norwich with sister Gwynyth - ace chef, so that's dinner sorted - before the last long leg home tomorrow.
Just to finish off on a high, the road back to Norwich took me along the Acle straight, a ten-mile perfectly straight road across the flat Broadland, straight into a glorious sunset of the type which Norfolk somehow seems to routinely produce.

Afterthoughts
I could have cheerfully stopped at so many more places on the way.  Everywhere I looked I saw something interesting, beautiful, humourous or astonishing.  As I observed to David, the EDP journalist, when I get too old and unstable for a motorcycle, I could do a similarly blog-worthy journey on my mobility scooter between Poole and Bournemouth.  And so, I reckon, could anybody else.  Just go do it, I say.

The knack, though, is not to go looking for things that measure up to any preconceived notion of how things should be interesting, beautiful, funny, etc.  Yes, I admit I have adopted a somewhat mocking tone here from time to time, but I'm only poking fun at bad people who do stupid things like nick plaques or stick chewing gum cigarettes on the lips of worthies' bronzes, and at the officials that we pay to clean statues and replace plaques (with a material that has no scrap value, perhaps) but who plainly don't.  Behind that, I really do appreciate the weathered grandeur of Victorian seaside resorts like Aberystwyth and the stark 'brutalist' design of Ness Point.  I accept that some meals will be haute cuisine and some will be street grub.  Not every interesting building looks as if it was designed by a rich bloke in the eighteenth century; some are practical, modern working and living spaces.  Scap yards and tin cans in hedges have colour, shape and form just as do magnificent vistas.  I'm not saying that they are all equally 'good' - that's down to your own particular set of aesthetic values - but rather that it is possible to appreciate all of them on their own terms even if you would rather eat, live in or hang a picture of one on your wall rather than the other.  With the mind adjusted to that setting, you can take in so much that might otherwise be passed by as humdrum routine.

OK.  Rant ends.  Thanks for reading and for all your amazingly generous contributions to my justgiving site.  (If you haven't found your way there, the URL is http://www.justgiving.com/John-Seaman.)

And that nice David and his photographer friend Matthew put some words and pictures about me and this ride on the EDP's website:
http://www.edp24.co.uk/news/biker_completes_coast_to_coast_challenge_1_1134877
so you don't have to go all the way to Norfolk to buy a copy on Thursday, 24th November.

All the best

John

NEC to Kings Lynn, Tuesday 22nd

Centre of England III, and a centre for hats
Suitably fortified with yet another Full English, I set off from the Ramada nice and early for the urban warfare that is the Birmingham motorway network.  It's not that they're out to kill you - which is what wise motorcyclists usually anticipate - it's that they are all too comatose (or too busy on the phone) to even notice if they do.  So with the eyes in the back of my head wide open - another routine precaution the wise motorcyclist takes - I made my way to the A5 heading East.

Having seen two traditional centres of England yesterday, I wanted to take a squint at the Ordnance Survey's take on the matter.  With scientific rigour, they have pinpointed the exact point that is furthest from the sea in all England.  It's not a million miles from Meriden...

But hang on.  What's this signpost?  'Atherstone - Ancient centre of the hat trade.'  I'm a bit of a hat person myself - I have a small collection of thirty or so titfas - so I couldn't pass this by.  Sadly, an information board told me that "logistics was now the town's main employer." The enterprising Jill ('enterprising in that she opened her pub at 8.30 as a coffee shop) confirmed that that little did in fact remain of the town's former hatting glory.  A derelict building could be found beside the canal if one knew what to look for, but you'd need a local guide.

However, I did come across Mike - or, this being the Midlands, Moik - selling hats in the market.  I asked if they were locally produced, but he just laughed.








I proceeded to locate the true centre of England.  As far as I could make out from my dodgy map-reading skills, it was a field North of the A5.  As fields go, it's probably a very fine field, but there is no plaque, no ancient stone cross, no specially planted oak tree.

Unless you are really into fields, there's not a lot to see at the official geographic centre of England.

I went on a couple of miles to where the road crosses the Ashby canal, which is much more picturesque.









While contemplating the scene, I received a phone call from a journalist at the Eastern Daily Press.  Ma had told them about my journey and he quized me about it with a view to an article for the paper.  We agreed a time I would arrive in Kings Lynn so he could call round with a photographer.  I pointed out that he was as newsworthy to me as I was to him, so I'd take his photo for this blog, too.

At this point, a hen wandered past, giving me a beady look that seemed to say; "gosh, that was an astute observation, Mr S."










A small county and its county town
The plan from this point had been to head towards Coalville, near Leicester, where this is a shop that specialises in bikers' leather and has, according to it's website, a good selection of James Deany jackets at not too silly prices.  But with a deadline to meet now, I thought this would be a good idea to skip that trip.  It saves agonizing over spending yet more money on clothes for my already over-stuffed wardrobe.

So instead, I picked another item on my must-go-there-some-time list: Oakham, the county town of the country's smallest county of Rutland.  At first, I struggled to find anything particularly noteworthy about the town apart from its county town status, but then I discovered that it is twinned with Dodgeville in the USA.  Not a lot of people - outside of Oakham and Dodgeville - know that.

Oakham; little county town, big reach.


















Crossing the flatlands
After a quick bite of one of Oakham's finest bacon sarnies, it was time to crack on.  Perhaps after the US connection in Oakham I should have gone via Boston and make up some quip or other for this blog.  But time was pressing so I went more directly towards Kings Lynn across the Fens.  This is an area that tends to get a bad press, I always feel.  "Flat," people will say, as thought that were some kind of failing.  "Boring," they add.  Now there I do take objection.  It may not be interesting to you if you are looking for a bit of hill walking to liven up your weekend, but the whole area is teeming with life and general human enterprise.  From horizon to horizon - which is a heck of a long way around here - is bursting with produce, all tended by mechancial leviathans of all descriptions, and finally trucked out to the supermarkets of the world by a nose-to-tail convoy of artics.  What particularly fascinates me is the way tiny settlements - maybe just a single farm or the dog-end of a village - can be seen clinging on to slight rises in landscape; what were once islands in a marsh.

Very flat, Norfolk.  Yeah, and?











A typical and possibly alarming feature of the Fens is that major rivers tend to be higher than the surrounding land, held in by earth banks built a couple of hundred years ago.  The A17 goes up and over the River Nene at Sutton Bridge, crossing on a swing bridge that is a clunky great piece of Victorian ironwork.  A plaque (I'm becoming quite the plaque-spotter, aren't I?) reads "made and erected by A Handyside & Co Ltd, Derby and London, 1897.  Hydraulic machinery by Sir W C Armstong, Whitworth & Co Ltd.  Steel for girders made by the Staffordshire Steel Co, Bilston."

Handyside's erection.











Pulling in to Daseley Close, gesturing to Ma to put the kettle on, the journalist and photographer from the EDP turn up.  So does the rain.  They have me pose in the road on my bike for a few shots until the photographer is thoroughly soaked and fed up.  With a promise to call tomorrow roughly when I expect to end up in Lowestoft, they dash off for their next assignment.

Soggy journalists.

Great Malvern to the NEC, Monday 21st

Great Malvern
Maybe I've got a bit of a prejudice about towns, but when I got up and went down to my bike, I noticed a rush of pleasant relief; it was still there!  The thought that somebody might do it harm as it sat there all alone in a not-very-secure car park beside the hotel, within sight of a fairly busy road, had obviously been nagging away at the back of my mind.

I had a nice chat with the hotel manager, a youngish South African.  While checking out, I told him what I was doing and why.  I did my now well-rehearsed spiel about the Crab still coming to get you even years after you give up smoking, but that getting it in the throat is the best sort to get as it doesn't spread and is easily zapped - well, usually, and certainly for a sold-his-soul-to-the-devil merchant like me.  Then he told me his wife had died of breast cancer a couple of years ago.  That's another of those moments when I wish the earth would open up and swallow me.  But he was OK with it; in fact, he felt it was very positive that we could talk and swap experiences.  I recommended the Macmillan website which, while absolutely not a good idea for sufferers, is an excellent place for carers (who get the worst of it, I often feel) to compare notes and support each other.   When setting up the charity site dangling off this blog, it was a tough decision whether to ask for donations to Cancer Research or to Macmillans.  Both do excellent jobs.  In the end, head ruled and I opted for cure rather than comfort, but if you have any loose change in your pocket when you next pass a Macmillan tin, I'd say it's a jolly good place to put it.

A rainy start to the day.  Not that this is a problem for motorcyclists; we are equipped for the wet weather almost all the time.  It does make it difficult to capture a good picture or two from the top of the Malverns, though.  Which is a pity.  There is one of those fake 18th century illustrations in the hotel showing the views from the top of the Malverns.  It shows views to the South all the way to Chepstow, which seems a little optimistic to me.  I wanted to compare that with what I could actually see.

Not much chance of a view on a morning like this, but I road up through a cloud to the viewpoint anyway to check.  If Chepstow were visible, it would be roughly between the two furthermost trees.







Curiosity satisfied, I rode back down the hill and pulled over at a well I'd noticed on the way in last night.  A lady had been filling up a carboot full of various containers.  This time, there was a gentleman in a van similarly tanking up.  He told me this was one of several wells dotted around the town and people make full use of them.  (If you're reading this, sorry for the anonymous 'he.'  I forgot to ask you your name.)  He himself came from some distance for a supply.  I thought it must be good stuff and had a taste.  I got a definite straight-from-the-well taste, but also I thought it had a hard flavour as you'd get from a limestone spring.  That's probably my zapped tastebuds not quite getting it right, since this water emerges from a lump of granite, and only a few hundred feet thick from peak to well at that.

This isn't me.  It's the gentleman in the van. ...but I do notice that my hair and beard are starting to grow since I took a sip this morning.










The Bike Show
Next stop was the NEC in Birmingham.  A bit of a gotcha when going to a show like this as part of a motorcycle tour is that your panniers and topbox are already full.  (At least they were for me on this trip; I'll probably get the hang of travelling lighter on future trips.)  There's nowhere to stash one's riding gear while walking around the show.  I solved that one by passing my bike chain through the wheel, through the full face helmet and up one sleeve of my one-piece suit, folding it all into a tidyish bundle on the floor.  Luckily, it was dry and more or less clean underfoot!
I also had to make a mental note not to buy anything bulky ... like a James Dean style leather jacket that I might have had a hankering for, say.

Not the first to arrive, by a long chalk.












As it happened, I didnt find all that much to interest me in the show.  I spoke to a gentleman from Watsonian, the sidecar people, about the ins and outs of fitting a sidecar to a motorcycle, and checked out the Triumph stand to look at their retro-style Bonneville models that I thought would make a handsome match with a Wallace-and-Grommet sidecar.  Otherwise, though, the only bike that I felt compelled to stand and stare at with open mouthed desire was exactly the same as the one I had arrived on.

Even this big cruiser didn't appeal, but I thought Mrs S might like it so I made a down-payment.  It arrives Thursday.










OK, I checked out the leather jackets, but the only really James Deany ones were a bit pricey for something I don't really need.  I can do better than that somewhere where the retailer isn't paying out thousands for a pitch at the NEC.  In fact, I might know just the place...

Centre of England, I and II
So having 'done' the show by not long after midday, and the weather having cheered up, I thought I'd go to a couple of places I'd thought to visit tomorrow.  Another item on my must-go-there-some-time list is the geographical centre of England.  If you look it up, you'll find there are at least three, two of which I went to.
The first was Meriden, just along the A45 from the NEC.  Appropriately enough for a bike-oriented sort of day, this place is also the site of the factory of the previous, utimately unsuccessful, incarnation of Triumph Motorcycles.  There's no sign of that, but a gentleman in the local charity shop pointed out the stone cross and accompanying plaque on the village green that marks the traditional centre of England.

A much initial-carved, weather-worn, broken stub of a sandstone cross marks the centre of England.  Oh dear.






























I also noticed an unusual war memorial.  It's dedicated to cyclists who died in the world wars.  My mother tells an anecdote about how she saw a flying bomb come down while she was on her way to school.  Not knowing what it was, she stood and watched in awe, not noticing that her better-informed friend had dived to the ground.  I suspected that this memorial was not just to cycle-riders who turned out to be a little less lucky than my mother, and the charity shop gentleman confirmed that it was in memory of cyclists how served as despatchers.  The annual rememberance ceremony attracts a large crowd of cyclists, he said.

Among the most unsung of unsung heroes, I susepct.











With just enough daylight left for another visit, I went on to the competing historic centre of England marked by the Midland Oak in Lillington, a suburb of Royal Leamington Spa.  A youngish oak, said to be decended from the original Midland Oak, stands on the spot.  I couldn't resist doing the hippy thing and talking to it while I stroked it and walked around it a couple of times.  (Hey! I had my helmet on; nobody could have recognised me!)

A fine young oak marking the centre of England?  That'd be nice.























As I did my arboreal circuit, though, I noticed another obviously planted tree nearby with a boulder beside it such as might bear and inscription.  It turned out to be a memorial to the Royal Horse Artillery.  Good for them, I thought; dulce et decorem est ... to recognise heroes.  Then I spotted another tree with another plaque at its foot.  This one was in rememberance of a local vicar.  I begin to suspect this town, having done the Midland Oak, has a bit of a thing about trees.

More memorial trees.  I wonder if there's a committee that thinks up people to commemorate with a tree?

And back to the NEC
With evening coming on, I back-tracked to the NEC where I'd already booked to stay at one of the corporate hotels on site.  Comfortable and fully equiped as these places are, they are soul-destroyingly sterile.  It reminded me that I had promised one generous contributor to my charity drive that I would included the words "it's not as nice as Cotterdale" somewhere in this blog.  But comparing this place with Cotterdale is fairly faint praise, I'm afraid.  It deserves a better plug, so if you're familiar with corporate hotels, Google 'Cotterdale Town Head House' and you'll see what I mean.

St David's to Great Malvern, Sunday 20th

Left-most Land
First stop; the most westerly bit of coast I can find.  Traditionally, people say it's St David's head, but peering at a map, it looks to me like the two other promontories on the St David's peninsula are a tad further out.  Anyway, I'm in my best biking togs and not at all geared up for a long, muddy hike, so I set off by road through the village of Rhosson and on to St Justinians.  There are three houses, one ruined stone barn and a life boat station, tucked in to a fold in the rocky coastline opposite Ramsey Island.

The proud citizens of St Justinian erected a mighty pole to make the exact centre of their community.  They laugh when tourists mistake it for a telegraph pole.

Can't pass through St David's without taking a picture of the cathedral. In daylight, I see there's the ruin of an earlier one just behind it.








Coast Road to Aberystwyth
Now off North East on a wonderful coast road.  It's relatively early on Sundy morning so there is very little traffic.  The road is well surfaced and has just enough bends and hills to flatter one's IAM-honed riding skills without being tediously slow or particularly dangerous.  The weather is by turns misty-meditative and gently sunny - that's two of my top ten, especially for Autumn.

I couldn't resist stopping off at Aberporth airfield.  My company had an office there for a while to work on their unmanned air vehicles, taking advantage of a large volume of the lower atmosphere in that area being set aside for drones.  It's all very exciting technology; spot the bad guys and see what they are up to without ever having to endanger one of those clever pilot chappies.  But it's not terribly photogenic for the passing Sunday traveller.  Try as I might, I just couldn't get a convincing picture of a few cubic miles of controlled airspace.

Not much going on in the UAV centre.










So on to Aberystwyth.  It's one of those once-grand, now rather down-at-heel victorian seaside places.  At one end of a long promenade, there's a bit of a pier - probably a lot shorter than it once was - now almost entirely taken over by one-armed bandits.  At the other end, a gravity tram still runs up and down a hill overlooking the town.

Aberystwyth civic pride.  A bronze of some long-gone worthy outside what must have once been the city hall.
















Severn, Wye and Hergest Ridge
Now turning inland, the road turns into a regular scenic route.  It's quite on a par with roads I've travelled in the Highlands and the Black Forest.  I don't half miss having Mrs S along when I'm having a magnificent ride like this.  Such a pity her back won't let her ride pillion any more.  I'm calling in at the motorcycle show at the NEC tomorrow and I will have a very serious look at sidecars.  I could quite fancy something with a bit of a retro look to it (Triumph Bonneville with Watsonian GP sidecar) so we can go pottering around country lanes together looking like Wallace and Grommit - or if it's night time, Hagrid and Harry.

Two of my formative years were spent in an army apprentices' college on a spit of land where the Wye empties into the Severn and both become the Severn Estuary.  Looking back up the Severn from the college, it went East into Gloucester, then meandered northwards, tracking the M5, in the general direction of the Midlands.  The Wye, on the other hand, came from under the shadow of the Forest of Dean and appeared to emerge from the Welsh hills.  The one river seemed essentially English and the other Welsh.  So I was surprised when I followed them on a map and saw that they both rose on the side of the same Cambrian mountain not far from Aberystwyth.  Going to their source - only a few miles apart - has been on my must-go-there-some-time list ever since.
Well, I still didn't go there - best biking togs, again; long muddy hike - but I did get very close.  My route crossed over the Wye where it is a six-foot wide brook.  Looking on the map, I see it passes under the foot of a mountain called 'Y Foel,' which means 'The Bald One.'  That probably accounts for my attraction to the area...
A few miles on, I made a short detour to the town of Llanidloes, which is the first settlement of any size on the Severn.  I noticed that the Wikipedia entry for the town was ... hm... barbed, shall we say?  The people, it suggested, were at something of a tangent from the norm; due to the large proportion of aging hippies and what not.  The local police call the town 'Planet Idloes.'  In fact, it's really just another little 'ancient market town,' the same as many another.  Well, I did see one person in a layby not far away selling carved tree stumps from a dilapidated camper van, but there were no significant signs of fairy-lovers and crystal-sellers in the town.

The Wye starts up there somewhere, just under The Bald One.

The Severn is already quite substantial as it passes through Llanidloes, only ten miles or so from its source.








But that name; Llanidloes?  I've been studying my Observer Book of Welsh Place Names and have learned that the 'Llan' bit means 'chapel.'  So 'Llansteffan' would be 'Chapel of St Steven's' - or just 'St Steven's' we'd probably say in England.  And 'Llanfair' is 'Chapel of St Mary' ('Mairi' = 'Mary,' right?  Now change the M to F because it follows a consonant.  Then drop the final i because we don't want to make it too easy for the damned English, do we, Bach?)  And 'Llandewi' must be 'Chapel of St David.' (I suppose you can just about see that 'Dewi' and 'David' are related somehow.)  But what about all these other Llans all over the place?  Have you ever heard of a saint with a name anything like 'Idloes?'  Or just down the road, there's 'Llangurig.' Who was Saint Gurig?  I think they're making it up to confuse us.  Maybe they're sneaking in other things than saints' names; maybe 'Llangurig' actually means 'Chapel with a broken window in the vestry where Dai the Asbo chucked a stone.'

Llanripeforrenovation, just off the road above Rhyader.  It might well really be a renovation job.  There's a static caravan just along in the woods where the family could be living until it's sorted.  Watch out for it on the telly on Grand Designs.






Crossing the border into England on the A44, I saw Hergest Ridge on the right.  What Ridge?  Well, it might become famous for being a good place for grandfathers to hold shouted roadside telephone conversations with granddaughters to talk them through the tricky art of powering up a recalcitrant old PC so that it connects to the internet so they can do their homework.  For the few of us who sat around pretending to be deep n' meaningful listening to Tubular Bells (before everybody associated it with The Exorcist), Hergest Ridge was Mike Oldfield's other opus.  I've got it on my smart phone; it's quite ... quite... yeah, it was all pretty pretentious stuff, wasn't it?

Hergest Who?










The weather turned dull and depressing as the afternoon progressed, darkening an already too-short day.  This is my least-favourite weather; not cold, not raining, just ... well, sulking.  I especially hate it on a Sunday afternoon.  It pressages a sort of anticlimactic end to the weekend, with nothing to do but watch old movies, agonise over uncompleted weekend homework and wait for tea time to come and end it all. But hey! I'm on holiday tomorrow, so what do I care?  That said, I do actually have some homework to do, so I'm heading for my next overnight stop, Great Malvern, without further delay.

To St David's, Saturday 19th.

Autumn colours
Set off at 11, only an hour later than I planned, leaving just enough time for a straightforward run to the start of my left-to-right tour in St David's.

Glorious Autumn day ... or is it late Summer?  ... or early Winter?  It's dry and mostly sunny and warm enough to make me wonder if I should have left the thermal lining from my riding suite at home.  The hedgerow colours are magnificent, but confused.  Oaks are reseplendent in gold and green.  Hazel and birch is mostly yellow.  Willow is everything from dusty green through rusty brown to completely bare.  Gorse is a fanfare of yellow blossom against the deep green.  And this is mid-November?  The seasons have gone bonkers!

"The road goes ever on / from the door where it began..."  Actually, this one doesn't.  Not since they rerouted the A350 about fifty yards to the right.  But it's a nice little tucked away corner where I often stop for a gulp from the flask while out on my rambles.  The autumn leaves here are still thick enough to allow calls of nature to be answered without embarrassment.  



Crossing the Severn, Croeso i Gymru
Wow!  Now granted, I have a bit of a thing about civil engineering, but I reckon the new Severn Bridge is breathtaking.  Half way across and glancing through the barriers to the West, it felt like I was on a bridge over the open ocean.

The Magor services just after the bridge were outstanding, too, though in a different way. I used to think that Knutsford was the most hideous motorway services in the country, narrowly beating Fleet into second place.  But no, I was wrong.  All the time it is Magor that has been the standard bearer for everything that is tacky, shabby and downright shameful on the public face of Britain.

Scenic ride
Back on the road; what a ride!  Even the M4 is a pleasant journey.  A not-too-potholed motorway wriggling its way along the foot of the mountains, all brilliant green with their shawls of brown bracken tucked around their shoulders.
Then the A48 and A40 through Carmarther, St Clears and Haverfordwest.  Glorious!  Especially in the late afternoon light, with Autumn snuggling the wooded hills up for the night with blankets of mist.
Then the final hop along the A487 to St Davids, all along the edge of St Bride's Bay.  At a little place called Newgate, roughly at the mid point of the bay, magnificent Atlantic breakers were rolling in.  Where on earth are all the surfers, I thought.  They're missing a trick here.

Just made it to St David's by sunset!  I couldn't see much of it in the dusk, but it looks really pretty.  The cathedral - which gives the town it's claim to be the country's smallest city - is tucked in at the foot of a hill.  I'll take a quick look in the morning before setting off eastwards.  For now, it's a bit of work on the other laptop then a bar meal dinner.


Nice little hotel here on the market square in St David's.  I couldn't find a Gideon bible in any of the drawers, but there were these two hot watter bottles in the wardrobe!  Y'don't get that in the standard corporate hotel.



Atlantic rollers in St Bride's Bay.
(Rubbish photo! Sorry.)

A slight change of plan

It’s taken a while for me – and more importantly, Mrs S – to be sure that I am well enough to do my Big Ride.  We are now into the very short days with the Winter solstice just around the corner.  If I set off now, I would have to spend all the daylight hours in the saddle with very little time left to see places and take the odd picture.

So I’m putting the original Big Ride on hold until Spring.  Instead, I'll do a Not So Big Ride as a sort of precursor. 

I'm revisiting an idea I had in Summer to ride East to West across the country, tracking the sun on the solstice.  But back then, my energy levels were way too low for any kind of extended ride. 

This time, it being as near the Winter solstice as makes no odds, I'll do the ride in the other direction, West to East.  And since this Big Ride thing was always about visiting odd places and writing about them, never about any kind of endurance task, I'll spread it over a few days.  That will give me plenty of time to stop off at a number of odd destinations that have been on my 'must-go-there-some-day' list for quite a while.

(And, conveniently, the Motorcycle Show is on at the NEC in Birmingham!)

The plan is to set off on Saturday to St David’s, the most westerly place in the country, and amble my way ‘left-to-right’ across the country to Lowestoft, the most easterly, reporting on curious places I stop off at on the way.

Update

I'm pretty much back in shape now.  No more nausea or tiredness, and I can enjoy a normal diet (given a sip of water with every mouthful).  Mrs S is very fretful that I am not up to it, so I'll give it another week or two to reassure her, but I am very keen to be off before the winter weather sets in. Keep watching this space.

Introduction

There's nothing like a brush with one's own mortality to make one sit up and notice that life is short.  In my case, the brush was mercifully light; cancer in the throat, detected relatively early and eminently treatable.  Nevertheless, it got me updating my bucket list; all the things that I want to do before I'm too old or too dead to do them.  Better to do them sooner than never.

Fairly near the top of the list is a motorcycle tour, travelling the length of the country.  (In case you didn't know, I am one of those old men with a ridiculously large motorcycle in the garage.  'Midlife Crisis?'  At my age, I do hope so!) But not for me the boring old Land's End to John O' Groats that everybody does. I'm going from 'bottom right' on the map to 'top left.'  Dungeness Point to Cape Wrath.

It occured to me that I might combine this, by means of a fairly circuitous route, with my penchant for the more unloved corners of our country; the worn out ex-industrial places, the cheap and tacky fun places.  Think Bradford and Rhyll, for example.

"Now there's an idea," I thought. "Why not take a few pictures and write a few interesting (or at least odd) facts about these places.  I could post them on a blog like this and invite friends and family to contribute, say, a quid to Cancer Research UK for each bulletin."  I reckon I could drum up enough friends and family and enough interesting bulletins to aim for an initial target of, say, £1000.  Donations will be easy to arrange via JustGiving dot com.  That's all set up and ready to go.  Just visit www.justgiving.com/John-Seaman to donate from card, paypal, or even SMS if you're on Vodafone.  For those who prefer paper, just send them a cheque:  Cancer Research UK, Angel Building, 407 St John Street, London EC1V 4AD

And this ain't just 'charidy, mate.'  Giving to Cancer Research is at least part enlightened self interest!  About one in three of us will have a close encounter with The Crab in our lives.  Thanks to CR's work, more of us are getting detected early enough to do something about it, and the treatment is getting less sick-making into the bargain. 

When? At the moment, I'm still dealing with the chemotherapy-induced nausea and the radiant glow of radiotherapy, but that will pass in a couple of months.  I'm aiming for an Autumn run (but only if I feel sure I'm safe on two wheels; no point raising money for charity then costing the NHS a fortune if I fall off, after all.)  I'll post a few more details as the time approaches - though not the route; that would spoil the surprise of the bulletins from the byeways.

First, how many friends and family can I muster?  Drop me a line; email (jseaman@ntlworld.com) or comment on this post.  No commitment now - or ever; you just say you're interested in receiving my bulletins and might, if you think they're worth it, contribute a quid a time to Cancer Research UK.  (If you're an offline sort of person and somebody is reading this out to you, get them to send me your address and I'll post you a printout when I get back!)


Preparation

(This is Anorak stuff.  Do feel free to ignore it.)

This ain't 'Long Way Round' or 'Long Way Down,' that's for sure.  If you pick up a copy of Charley Boorman and Ewan McGreggor's books and flick to the back for a look at the list of equipment they took, then delete about everything from that list except 'motorcycle' and 'pants,' you'll be close to my list.  No expeditionary-strength camping gear or pick-up trucks with enough tools to stock a small workshop, here.  I haven't even taken the precaution of doing a special training on how to deal with gun-totting oafs like Charley and Ewan did.

Wheels.
I will be riding my wonderful Honda Pan-European ST1300, purchased earlier this year in place of my much loved but overworked Honda Deauville, and my now much missed Piaggio X8 400 maxi-scooter.  Six years old, but apparently too much for its two previous owners, it had barely done a year's worth of miles, and it had been immaculately maintained into the bargain.  Being a  well-maintained Honda, I anticipate no need for significant maintenance or running repairs.  Which is just as well, since I don't do spanners any more.  I've had my share of roadside plug cleaning and gap setting when I rode ancient British and Iron Curtain bikes as a younger, poorer man.  The bike was serviced when I bought it, but I'll have another full service done prematurely by Honda Bournemouth, explaining what I have in mind and instructing them to be as overcautious as they like in replacing bits and bobs.  (They usually are, anyway, judging by my past service bills!)  And if anything does fail on the road, I know a very nice man with an orange van who will come and get me.

Togs.
I bought new boots and a two-piece textile suit a couple of years ago and was delighted that it was all completely weatherproof despite being non-branded, cheapest-in-the shop stuff.  Then earlier this year, on a ride in to the Southampton office in the rain, the boots suddenly took on all the water-resistant properties of a pair of flip-flops.  That prompted me to move up a notch with the gear.  I've now got nice, new boots; branded, but not garishly so, and guaranteed waterproof.  Anticipating a similar sudden failure with the old two-piece suit, I'll leave that at home for short trips and fine days, despite the convenience of having a jacket that I could wear off the bike as well.  One alternative I have is a good two-piece leather suit (purchased second hand but virutally unworn), over which I could wear my flimsy Aldi waterproof oversuit when it rains.  That's a bit cumbersome, though, so I'm going for my very good one-piece fabric oversuit from Cycle Spirit, specifically purchased so I could throw it on over my work suit and go to the office in any weather.  I still haven't quite mastered the 'throwing it on' bit yet, but once on it is an excellent piece of all-weather motorcycle clothing; pads, lining, pockets, vents, the lot.  Upon my head will be my very expensive but worth every penny Schubert C3 helmet, complete with pinlock anti-mist visor and Cardo headset.

With the oversuit, I can wear a normal set of clothes underneath.  I think I'll go for my Mr Green look: green moleskin trousers, green many-pocketed waistcoat with thermal lining, matching shirt with tie.  (With tie?  Absobloodylutely.  A nice collar and tie is an essential piece of equipment for the motorcycling gentleman.  It avoids the inconvenience of being mistaken for a ruffian and invariably squeezes a 'sir' out of petrol station attendants and young police officers. See also 'hat.')  Under everything, long thermal underwear if it is really cold.  A sweatshirt - green, of course - will be to hand in the top box for the same reason.  The boots, being non-garish, are passable with this ensemble.  Choosing from my collection of thirty or so hats was tricky, but for convenience and squashability, I've opted for simply the black and the green flat caps, one for wear off-bike with black oversuit and one to go with the Mr Green look.

Peacock?  There are worse vices.

Luggage.
On the current plan, it'll be a bit late in the year for camping, so I am planning B&B stops only.  (A couple might be with family and friends, but they don't know that yet!)  It saves a lot of packing, too.  Maybe on a future trip I'll do the camping thing, trying out a prototype of my Riders' Tent design; a little business plan I'm cooking up - watch this space.  For now, it'll be just routine changes of clothing in my capacious panniers, sufficient for a long week away.

Other bits.
My Cardo headset will talk to my HTC smart phone, which wlll (sometimes) be mounted on a special gizmo on the handlebars, displaying satnav software, connected to a 12 volt socket in one of the 'glove compartments' on the bike.  The original plan was that the smart phone, with a text editor and internet access would do all I need to keep my blog updated, but on test, it proved cumbersome in the extreme.  I clearly swtiched to a smart phone too soon; should've waited another couple of years for the technology to move on.  Instead, I will have a completely serviceable laptop in my topbox, purchased second hand from a nice young gentleman who works just around the corner in Wallisdown.  The phone will serve as an adequate camera for blog updates, and interfaces easily with the laptop.
Everything will be backed up on paper, of course; address books, note books, pens and pencils, paper maps in various scales.  If the phone or just its camera function die, I'll just get a cheap replacement at the next town I pass; it's not like I'll be on the Road of Bones in Siberia, after all.

Ready?
Like I said, I'll only be doing this when I am quite sure that I will not be a danger to myself or others.  Now chemotherapy has ended, the nausea is no longer a problem.  Hoorah!  The radiotherapy is the thing, though.  That finishes on 9 September and I can expect the damaging effects to taper off over the next ten days before I start recovering.  What I will be watching for are:
Fatigue: radiation really sucks it out of you.  At the moment (two weeks before end of treatment) I find I am fit for 4-6 hours at a stretch then need a real, eyes-closed sleep for at least two hours.  I need to be OK for at least 8 hours, with just a couple of short breathers and a longer sit-down-and-eat-something break.
Throat:  it's like a bunch of gooseberries at the moment - complete with thorns.  It limits me to soft foods, which would be inconvenient on a trip like this, but is also distracting from the business of riding.  I want to be able to eat a more or less normal diet; let's say a full English breakfast as a test!
Taste buds:  radiation fries them.  There is a small area in my mouth where I can more or less taste things, but elsewhere, things either taste of nothing, or of axle grease.  Anything with sugar in leaves a particularly gag-worthy aftertaste, which would rule out nice energy-burst sweeties as well as just about every other prepared food you can think of - including the baked beans in that test-case full English!  (It's astonishing how much sugar we put in everything!  Conspiracy theory time: if you want to know who those shady individuals are who hoover up all the wealth and control everything from behind the scenes, don't look for City fat cats, don't hunt out the oil barons; got to a sugar beet field and follow the money trail.)
Saliva glands: also fried.  My mouth is either completely dry or coated with thick, slimy, foul-tasting saliva.  Sips of water every few minutes are essential.  I've got myself a bladder with a tube and a bite-valve such as earnest hikers use. I can fit this in a tank bag and possibly rig the tube somehow inside my helmet so I can suck as I go.  This is another potential distraction, though, so I'm really looking for recovery to the point where I only need a sip every hour or so, for which I could briefly pull over.

Test run.
I'll try a couple of days away before I set off.  My planned date for depature is just after a two-day conference I plan to attend, so that might serve the purpose.  I any case, I plan a 'Canadian Start' close to Dungeness.  (The term refers to the old French Canadian trappers' routine of making the first stop on a long hunting trip after only a few miles to make sure everything was present and correct before they were too far away to go home and sort it out.)