Norwich to Scotch Corner

I set off from Norwich at about half past eight after a (collosal) dinner, bed and breakfast thanks to my big sister Gwyn, her very generous donation to my fund in my pocket.  There was a clear sky, though that soon turned back to overcast with spots of rain throughout the day.
Heading West out of Norfolk, I called in briefly at Castle Acre to have a quick word with dad.  (Having bigged up granddad yesterday, I thought I'd better.)  Shades placated, I went on to Kings Lynn for a cup of tea with ma and my kid sister, Joan, who was still flushed from running a 10k charity marathon yesterday.

The Norfolk Harvester, Grange Estate, Kings Lynn

When the Grange farm between Kings Lynn and Castle Rising was first developed for housing, it was, I imagine, a place people were proud to move to; part of the brave new world people fought wars and paid taxes for, with first class housing for everybody, some private and some, not quite as well appointed but still good, rented by public bodies.  To give a heart to this new community, the developers included a pub, which for a while, was indeed the centre of local life.  But a few decades on and a couple of doses of the Blue Meanies, attitudes have changed.  People value the private sphere rather than the public.  There is, as one notable politician said, no such thing as society, and therefore presumably, no such thing as community, either.  Symbolic of this, the Norfolk Harvester went gradually downhill, from communal gathering place to a place to get drunk when there's nothing on telly.  It had glimmer of a hope of a reprieve when plans were mooted to turn it into a community pub, but these came to naught and the aim is now to demolish it and build yet more flats on the site. 

If the Grange were Albert Square, this would be the Queen Vic.

All this is, as I say, my imagination - apart from the bit about demolition and building flats on the site.  If it touches reality at any point that is pure chance.  But one possibly factual gem I did unearth came from a local historian, via Joan: for a long time, the site was a hole in the ground, at the bottom of which was a rusting tractor.  That must have been of enormous utility to small boys in the area, but the local developer saw a better use for the location and built the pub.  I wonder if the tractor is still down there.

Clenchwarton

No fancy handle for this little Fenland community.  Not like your Wigenhall St Peter or Tilney All Saints just up the road. Not like your Terrington St John or Walpole Cross Keys a little bit further along.  


No, Clenchwarton eschews these Norman pretensions and clings on to its Saxon heritage. The snorting and tittering of the chattering classes laughing at the fact that the name sounds like something vaguely rude to those educated in public schools; it takes all that squarely on the chin.


"Clenchwarton (n. archaic): One who assists an exorcist by squeezing whichever part of the possessed the exorcist deems useful."
Douglas Adams & John Lloyd, The Meaning of Liff. Pan Books, 1983.
The people of Clenchwarton, all two thousand or so of them, sigh wearily and carry on.

Clearly, precision is all in this little village; distances are measured to the nearest yard.

But there's not a lot else to comment on in Clenchwarton, so I carried on, too.

'You can see Boston Stump from here'

Boston is certainly not particularly run-down and with it's magnificent 'stump' (the tower of St Botolph's), it is far from unloved.  However, I stopped to take this picture from the roadside as a sort of placeholder for any of dozens of less favoured places for miles around.

You may have come across this phenomenon: people living in what they imagine to be unnoteworthy places will indicate some nearby high ground and tell visitors that "on a clear day, you can see X from there," 'X' being any better known tall feature, such as the Malvern Hills or Sallisbury Cathedral, around twenty to thirty miles distant.  It's like saying "OK, there's no big deal here, but we are close to greatness."  Such statements are regretable as there is always something interesting about anywhere, but they are also curious in that the claims are usually made without any reference to first hand observation, or very often to the fact that the intervening terrain makes it impossible.  Boston being in pancake-flat fen country, the places that claim to be able to see the stump on a clear day tend to spread out for fifty to sixty miles.  My home village of Castle Acre, miles away across the Wash, is one - and at that distance, one begins to wonder whether the curvature of the Earth poses a problem.  (That'll be a little maths puzzle for a rainy day; given the distance between Boston and Castle Acre, and the height of St Botolph's, what elevation would be required to see it from Castle Acre?)


I did come across one place where I really could really see the stump in the distance.  Leaving Boston, I soon came to the end of the Fens where the ground rose sharply at what would once have been the coastline above the salt marshes.  A minor road going up and over the hill was signposted 'Mavis Enderby.'  That sounds more like one's eccentric aunt rather than a village so I had to check it out.

Yes, it really is a village, not a mad aunt at all.  (Though there might still be mad aunt Mavis's out there.)

At the highest point on the road, I stopped for a coffee from the flask and some of ma's digestives and took in a magnificent panorama of the Fens below.  It looks like nothing on my phone camera, of course, and you almost certainly won't be able to make out the stump on the skyline between the two distant trees.

The stump is out there ... somewhere

Barton upon Humber

Have you ever noticed how some towns tend to build up on one side of a waterway while the other side remains empty, or at best depleted?  There's Gloucester, for example; fascinating, bustling little city on the East bank of the Severn, while the West bank sports only some dual carriageways to whisk people off to somewhere more interesting, passing by a farm shop and a dodgy canalside hotel.  Or Kings Lynn; it lines one side of the Great Ouse in all its Hanseatic glory, buzzing with local commerce, while West Lynn looks like any old dull, windswept Fenland village hunched on the other bank.  And even when cities do spread across their local river, there seems to be a distinct feel to each half; one upbeat and the other down.  How many (North) Londoners, for example, have you heard express a certain caution about going 'Sarf of the rivah"?


So it was that I wanted to have a look at Barton upon Humber; to test the theory.  It nestles under the Humber Bridge, the mighty engineering work that was intended to (and to some extent did) bring commerce and prosperity to the towns on the north bank of the Humber, Hull and its smaller neighbours.
Per theory, I found a very pleasant, but quite ordinary provincial Lincolnshire town.  It makes a little of its situation on the banks of a major waterway in the form of a splendid new nature observatory, but there's no thriving dock or ferry port.  

A few derelict hulks sit on the mud of the now silted up staithe.

For me, civil engineering fan that I am, a viewing point under the Humber Bridge was sufficient to make the visit worthwhile.  (I wondered for a moment if this is where they filmed the funeral scene in Four Weddings, but no, I don't think so; this bridge is too big.)

In more troubled times, this bench and signal beacon is where the lookout was posted to watch for fierce northerners invading across the Humber at low tide, intent on raiding the potato crops of the Lincolnshire fens for the chip foundries of Hull.

The road down to the waterside took me past St Chad's Way.  This small housing development is on the site of the former St Chad's church.  A vicar of that church named his son after the patron saint.  And he grew up to become Chad Varah, founder and leading light of the Samaritans.

Out of respect for the work of the Sams, I will refrain from any cheap jibe about growing up in Barton giving one an insight into suicidal despair.

Wetwang

I wanted to call at Wetwang, not because of its odd name.  (Richard Witeley was once made Honorary Mayor for finding the name amusing and thereby putting the place on the map, and Adams & Lloyd have a distinctly discourteous definition for the place name in their Meaning of Liff.)  I called in because it has featured in several articles I've read in motorcycling magazines. For some reason, any journo writing about a nice ride out seems to gravitate towards this little village dangling from the A166 lilke a soggy sock on a clothes line.

Is it because they all flock to see the "historic Sykes church" here?  

Unlikley.  There being nobody about to ask, I went inside and found a leaflet explaining what a Sykes church is.  Nothing to do with Eric; Sir Tatton Sykes, fifth baronet of Sledmere, continuing the work of his dad, the fourth baronet, spent some of the wealth he accumulated from his 36,000 acre estate in restoring and rebuilding churches in the Yorkshire Wolds.  People who are into that sort of thing can follow a 'Sykes Church Trail' and visit several of them.

Is it to read the convoluted nineteenth century epitaphs on the tombstones in the churchyard?

Almost certainly not, even if they do contain some winceworthy sentiments and distinctly dodgy rhymes.  This one had 'born' rhyming with 'gone.'   (And for heavens sake, Seaman, will you stop wandering around graveyards!)


It might just have something to do with its location; Lincolnshire Wolds to the South, Yorkshire Wolds to the North, coast to the East, Vale of York to the West.  Excellent for a motorcycling bumble in all directions.  However, coming across husband and wife team, Brian and Michelle, out on their Aprillia, we worked out that it is in fact the to-die-for fish and chips available pretty much all day next door to the village pub.  (I had a sausage and chips as a matter of scientific verification.)

Michelle turns away to hide a smile, but Brian laughs openly at my Southerner's astonishment at the prices; "What? A bag of chips for less than a tenner?"  

By now, the day was pretty much done so I needed to let the Pan loose in its natural habitat, the motorways and dual carriageways North to Scotch Corner.  It pained me to pass the Dales by; I was a Collie there in a previous incarnation and always feel drawn to them.  I could see them rising up to the left as I rode along, and I passed over the rivers that I am more familiar with as gurgling streams there; Wharf, Ure and Swale.  But they'll still be there another time, and for now, a night's rest was in order.  I'm staying at the Travelodge, as recommended by daughter, Caroline.  (Good recommendation, too; everything you need, at a fraction of the cost of the standard corporate hotel, and without pretending to be something special.)

Dymchurch to Norwich

I set off around nine, well stabilised with a full English breakfast.  There was light rain, and the sound of spasmodic automatic automatic gunfire from the rifle ranges at Hythe.  Nine o'clock on a Sunday morning... it must be enthusiastic territorials.


First stop, coffee at the Maidstone services.  Not that I particularly thirsted for a cup of Costa's best - not at their prices, anyway - but I needed somewhere dry to write a couple of postcards for relations who are not on-line.


Then a short hop up the M25 and under the Thames...

West Thurrock

Well, I certainly can't claim that this place is 'out of the way.'  There's a shopping centre here the size of a small town and hordes descend upon it daily.  For those who decry consumerism as the 'new religion,' it is a particular irony that the complex is designed around a central dome like some kind of cathedral or mosque.  


It's also a busy industrial area, serviced by endless convoys of articulated lorries.  If you've ever driven round the M25 wondering where all the trucks are coming from and going to, West Thurrock is probably the answer to one of the two questions.  This being Sunday, they were not so much in evidence, but I noticed that they had left a light diesel glaze over the roads.  The motorcyclist passes through West Thurrock with the greatest caution, especially on a wet day like this.


I came not to shop but to find the graveyard that features in the film Four Weddings and a Funeral.  With my eye for a civil engineering work, the bridge in the background got more of my attention than the dialogue in that scene.  I hear some people thought it was filmed in Scotland, somewhere near the Forth Road Bridge, but I suspected it was the Queen Elizabeth crossing over the Thames, and a quick visit to www.wheredidtheyfilmthat.co.uk indicated that I was right.  

St Clements by Proctor and Gamble

But there's a bit of a mystery, here.  I found St Clements, OK.  It's a cute little church, the usual pot pourri of repair, remodelling and extension over the centuries, now dwarfed by surrounding industrial buildings.  It used to be a bit run down and vandalised - for all it's Grade 1 listing - but Proctor and Gamble, the factory next door, took it under its corporate wing and turned it into a wildlife sanctuary.  Parking on the pavement for a couple of minutes while I had a quick look around (P&G have only left about two square feet for visitors' parking and have marked all the approach roads with double yellows), it soon became apparent that while the church may have been the one in the film, the graveyard wasn't; the bridge is just not visible from here.


A squint at a map revealed a cemetery not far away that might fit the bill, so I went there.  

Is this where confirmed bachelors come to be buried?  

That's the bridge through the railings.  It's the right sort of angle, but it's a bit far off compared to the scene in Four Weddings, isn't it?  Perhaps the film makers faked a graveyard closer to the bridge for a more pleasing cinematographical effect.  Whatever, I decided I'd spent enough creeping around graveyards and made tracks. 

California

I'm making a bit of a detour around the bulge of East Anglia here, taking in a couple of places I haven't been to in a while.  (And didn't get time to swing past on my Left-to-Right tour last year.)


First stop is the village of California, a few miles north of Great Yarmouth.


Now, remember my penchant for the unloved and unglamorous, right?  Well, this is my sort of place.
It is wall to wall holiday camps; acres of chalets and caravans clustered around 'club houses' plying all day breakfasts and fish suppers, slot machines and kiddies rides, karaoke and semi-pro 'entertainers.'


I came this way years ago while on holiday at the grandparents' bungalow in the neighbouring village of Scratby.  One thing I remember from back then seems to have vanished now; several of the camps let out side-by-side bicycles with which holiday makers could work off the breakfasts and suppers and terrify drivers on the narrow lanes.  I wonder if they've failed some Euro 'elf and safety measure.


The name of the place, so my grandmother told me years ago, comes from when a cache of sixteenth century gold coins were found on beach after a storm in 18-something or other.  It triggered a bit of a gold rush, and so the name.  One of the few cases of the New World giving a place name to the Old World.

Established holiday makers get to stay in brick-built chalets like these.

Raw recruits have to make do with these static caravans

They are required to spend their days in 'entertainment' facilities like this one.

On good days, they are allowed down to the beach to share some of the North Sea's howling winds with the Scroby Sands turbines.

And to prevent anybody escaping before their week is up, the authorities have left these second world war gun emplacements in place.

Scratby

A few miles on from California is the little village of Scratby, clinging on to the sandstone cliffs that stretch around this bit of the Norfolk coast.


Not so much holiday camps as bungalows here.  There used to be a local shop that sold buckets and spades and every third bungalow was once a B&B in the season.  But it seems a quieter, more settled community now.


However, for me, there only ever was one bungalow of note; 53 California Avenue.
That's Neena and GangGang’s house, scene of many a happy childhood holiday.  Some may have gone to places with slot machines and side-by-side bicycles, some may even have gone places that you needed an aeroplane to get to, but in Scratby I had unlimited access to cliffs and dunes and a beach sculpted into some different fantastical shape by the North Sea winds every day.  Better still, the place was dotted with WWII relics; pillboxes and tank traps on the beach, the skeleton of an ammo dump with the rusted remains of AA gun in the fields.


But best of all was time with granddad: my hero, my gentlemanly mentor: he taught me about not stuffing the pockets of my best trousers, how to polish shoes and tie ties, what hats to wear and when; he talked to me about music (he had a magnificent collection of 78s).  I went to evensong in the local church once where he was a bastion of the choir; we exchanged an indecorous wink as he processed down the aisle.  He even took me for my first pint - in full view - in the local pub.  He had a wonderful workshop with proper tools that he showed me how to use properly.  None of this is to disrespect my father who also had strengths, but of a different nature.  I miss them both. But in playing life's occasional googlies, in matters of dress and deportment, and especially in dealings with my grandchildren - extra-especially little Charlie - it is GangGang that I model myself on.


Coming back from Memory Lane to the present, I pulled up just in time to catch the present owner and ask him if I could take a photo.

Neena and GangGang's house, with current owner.

I wasn't the first person with an attachment to the house that he'd heard from.  On moving in, there was a letter from somebody who had lived there as a boy. As far as we could work out between us, he would have lived there when the house was newly built.


After a pleasant chat, I popped around the corner to the road closest to the cliff top, but was disappointed to find the shop had long gone, converted to residential use. The grandiloquently named roads, The Esplanade and The Promenade, are still pot-holed dirt tracks, though.

Martham

Moving on through neighbouring villages, I came to Martham just in time to catch the last hour or so of their weekend-long festival.  Apart from a fun fair and craft stalls on the village green, there was a scarecrow competition.

I saw the characters from the Wizard of Oz, ...

a flowerpot man from the garden centre, ...

Old Father Time himself, ...

and what was probably meant to be a swimmer being chased by an aligator.

I don't think this poor little fellow was in the competition.  He had just been saved from the pond and was waiting to be reclaimed.

There was also a scarecrow customer at the burger bar.  The aroma of unhealthy food assailed me as I took its picture and I felt compelled to go and buy one.  

Lisa, Burgermeister!

Lisa with the burgers told me that her father had designed the novel kiosk.  He had had a more serious encounter with the Crab than me and had passed away ten years ago, as a result of which Lisa was very interested in my venture and took one of my cards.  
If you're reading: Hi Lisa.  Thanks for the great burger.

Trunch

Suitably fortified I moved on to the not far distant North Norfolk village of Trunch.  The name may be familiar to folk music followers - at least those who followed it in the 1980s.  It is the home of The Kipper Family, Sid and his father, Henry.  


For those whose taste in music does not extend to the finger-in-ear, tankard-nursing, nasal droning that is traditional folk, The Kippers were a comedy double act formed by two figures in the local folk scene, Chris Sugden and Dick Nudds.  They did a brilliant job of parodying folk music, its performers and followers.     


They performed locally and around the broader folk circuit in the 80s, but I hear Sid is still going strong.  There's a website www.sidkipper.co.uk that appears to be penned by the boy himself; at least the style seems similar to his patter.


It so happens that I had a spell with my finger in my ear and, although I can't claim to be on even nodding terms with either Kipper, I can proudly report that I was once part of their floor show at a Sidmouth Folk Festival, 1984 or 5 or thereabouts.  We performed a spoof country dance in the stilted style of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, while Sid and Henry explained to the audience how the figures told the story of the squire's daughter eloping, a not uncommon theme in folk songs.


I had a quick look around.  

The village has a magnificent church, ...

... and a manor house.

It has a front...

... and a (less well-kept) back.

But I detected no signs of the village celebrating its famous sons.  Perhaps that has to wait until the pubs open and are in full swing, the spiritual home of the folk movement.

St Nich's at Swafield

Setting off on the B-road run into Norwich, I noticed a whopping great thatch-roofed church, stood all on its own on a slight rise in the country, with nothing but one farmhouse for company.  I stopped to take a closer look and found that it was the dedicated to St Nicholas and was the parish church of Swafield.  

St Nich; the only christian saint with balls - three golden ones.

The village that St Nich's belongs to has inched away from the church over the years.  You can just about see the first houses of the village about a mile away over the fields beyond the graveyard hedge here.

I really must stop haunting church yards on this trip...

Poole to Dymchurch (via Dungeness, of course)

Hayling Island

A slight detour here on the way to the start point for my long ride: St Mary's church in the village of Hayling on Hayling Island.  It's a pretty little church, snuggled up against a humungous yew tree.

Humungous trunk, with litter bin.

I wanted to pop my head in because I caught a news item last year about the Landing Craft Association - http://www.lstlandingcraftassoc.org/ - laying up their colours there.  There's not many of them left now, and they wanted to wind up the organisation while there was still a few of them that could walk and carry the colours to their resting place.


Some people said that I was 'brave,' going through my treatment last year.  I know they mean well, but really there is nothing brave about sitting back and getting some medical treatment - especially given the alternative.  But driving a cockle-shell of a landing craft up to a beach in the teeth of machine gun fire and heavy shelling, now that's brave.  


So I called in to take a picture of the colours and bow my head for a moment in recognition of some real heroes.

The colours of the Landing Craft Association, obligingly held out for me by a parishioner of St Mary's.

When I arrived, there was a bit of a sing-song going on.  Not wanting - indeed not being able - to join in, I had a quick walk around the village until they finished.  Hayling is not your usual South coast bungalopolis, stuffed full of grave-dodgers.  It is a thriving little place, but there is definitely more than the average percentage of older residents.  They are all catered for by St Mary's and three other churches and churchalikes within walking distance, but it is to St Mary's that they all come in the end, one way of another.

If you spell it with any less than three 'd's when I pop my clogs, I'm coming back to haunt you.  It's 'grandfather,' not 'granfather,' right?  So it's also 'granddad,' not 'grandad.'

Wilmington (and Sussex in general)

Now, the plan is to call at places that don't usually get visited, but Wilmington gets its fair share of tourists, especially of the rambling persuasion, coming to take a look at the famous 'Long Man' carved on a hillside overlooking the village.  But I've got a bit of a thing for these signs of our ancient past, so I couldn't resist calling in.  I wanted to see how the Long Man stacks up against the Cerne Abbas Giant down my way.  

On the whole, I thought he lacked a certain something by comparison.  He was somehow ... less ... erect, perhaps.  Maybe that's why he needs to lean on those two sticks.

The landscape the Long Man is carved into is part of the rolling chalk land of Sussex.  It's all very pretty, though I can't help feeling when travelling through that it's all a bit too well-healed for plebs like me to feel comfortable in.  I was therefore delighted to come across this delightfully, uncharacteristically delapidated loo in Wilmington.

Hastings was also a pleasant relief from the general Sussex primness.  It's gloriously tacky, complete with defaced public monuments and shabby amusement arcades.  Must come here again!


Up a hill out of Hastings and there was the Romney Marsh spread out below; all very obviously a silted-up estuary from this perspective.  But what a fascinating area it turned out to be.  I was expecting something pretty flat and desolate, but in fact it is full of interesting stuff to stop and goggle at.  It would merit a longer trip.

Lydd

This is the first town inland from Dungeness Point, but I stopped there first.  Researching the place before I set off, I learned that it is a ‘limb’ (which I think means a sort of 'associate member') of the ‘cinque ports.’  I'd always wondered what the 'cinque ports' were.  I'd heard the phrase and thought, "must look that up some time; sounds interesting" but never got around to it.  It's pronounced 'sink' so I wondered if it was something to do with the fact that they are on marshy ground!  Then I figured that it's actually 'cinque' so perhaps its a bit Norman; more historical than geological.  But it'd still never been important enough whenever I'd been near any suitable source of information.  Well, now I know.  I'm not sure it's worth it though, so I won't recap what I read on Wikipedia.  Sometimes it's nice to have a few 'must find out about that someday' thoughts rattling around one's head and I wouldn't want to spoil that for anybody else.


Anyway, the town museum is housed in the old fire station and I just got there in time for a quick look.  It was overseen by a couple of volunteer local history buffs who were very helpful and informative.  Flatteringly, they were as fascinated by me and my current undertaking as I was by them and their museum.  

They let me take a picture of the old fire engine and told me fascinating snippets of local history and historical finds.  They also showed my the remnants of a first world war man-lifting kite that the Royal Artillery had experimented with in the area.  (Later I saw some of the spiritual descendants of those kites - surf kites - on the sea front; around 80 of them spread out along the bay.)

My research - not to mention road signs - told me that there was an airport somewhere nearby, but the fen-like landscape doesn't lend itself to spotting distant objects at ground level.  I did notice a fairly diminutive passenger aircraft clearly on its final approach. 'Lyddair' was proudly emblazoned along the sides.

Dungeness

Having checked out Lydd, I doubled back the few miles across the levels to take a proper look at Dungeness.  My pre-trip research found a note from one commentator to the effect that there was ‘nothing to see here.’  A more learned website told me that it was a ‘cuspate foreland,’ a growing shingle peninsula - which is very obvious when you see where the lighthouses are in relation to the water nowadays.

The concrete structure in the foreground with the helter skelter arrangement at its 

base is the modern lighthouse, about three hundred meters from the sea.  The older lighthouse is in the background, just in front of the nuclear power station.


I observed to the guys in the Lydd museum that if we just sit back and let nature do its thing for a few years more we won't need ferries or tunnels to get to France; we will just be able to drive across the shingle.  Unlike Chesil Beach down my way, there's no pesky island in the way; the next stop is Europe.  Sadly, they told me, it wouldn't work.  The shingle is mobile; one moment it's on one side of the Point, the next it's on the other.  Worse, they tell me that plans are afoot to drag all the shingle into a big bank on one side of the Point to protect the power station from a possible tsunami getting funneled up the English Channel.


As some readers will know, I’m from Norfolk originally, and we go large on 'flatness' there.  So I was expecting to find the Point all majestic desolation; somewhere poets could come to sit listening to the waves on the gravel and the wind cutting across the levels.  What I found, though, was a thriving, vital sort of place.  It starts off with a long, long road from New Romney with neat, regularly-spaced bungalow, all clearly showing signs of regularly wiped uPVC fascias and thrice annual coats of paint on the woodwork.  Then as you get closer and closer to the Point, the spacing gets more irregular and the maintenance less rigorous.  By the time I pulled up under the lighthouse, it was distinctly shanty town standard.  

Some were more ramshackle than others.

I imagine these ramshackle huts - the ones that still have roofs, at least - occupied by hermits and bohemian artists.  A Cannery Row for the English middle classes, if you will.  I have no evidence for the hermits - well, I wouldn't, would I; they're hermits - but I did see two 'studios' advertising photographs and featuring artistic arrangements of jetsam by their front doors.

Stating the obvious?

Pan at Dungeness, raring to go.

Dymchurch

By now, time was getting on, so I made my way to Dymchurch and Dr Syn's Bed and Breakfast and Restaurant.  

I'd spotted the name on the web and thought it sounded like the right sort of place for a sinner like me.  Further research revealed that Dr Syn is a figure from a story - and he was indeed a sinner.  It's a heck of a convoluted story, but the local connection is that for a large part of the yarn, Dr Syn is the local vicar in this area by day, but by night, he dons a luminous scarecrow disguise and goes a smuggling. 

It would have been interesting if the landlady had turned out to be Mrs Syn, but in fact her name was Playford.  She was, however, a wicked temptress.  She led me astray and got me to agree to a full English breakfast in the morning.  
She said  "would you like a full English?"  
Resistance was futile.
What's a chap to do, eh?

Two takes on coastal defence?   Gazillions have been spent on this new sea wall at Dymchurch.  Peering over the top on the right is one of two Martello towers in the town.

Now: early night in preparaton for tomorrow's ordeal by bacon before setting off Northwards.

Here we go

Right, the panniers are packed, the tank is full, the trip meter is set to zero, and I've had as many last cups of tea as I can handle.  It's cool and overcast with the odd spot of rain, but I care not: I'm well insulated and waterproof.
Mrs S is recovering from her recent illness and has a dutiful daughter on hand to tend to her needs.
There is also a dutiful granddaughter standing by to make sure Titcam keeps working while I'm away.  If you have an idle moment, take a glance at to see how they're doing:
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jseaman/Titcam.htm   
They should be hatching soon.

Getting ready (… again)

The days are getting warmer, and more to the point, longer. It’s time to prepare for my Big Ride.

“Didn’t you already do that?” I hear you ask. “I remember chipping a few quid into your charity bucket.”

Well, yes. By the time I was fit enough to ride last year, the nights had drawn in so much that I wouldn’t have been able to cover the distance and still have daylight to take a picture or two of the interesting places I went through. So I did a bit of a ‘placeholder’ trip – “left-to-right” across the country, rather than “bottom-right-to-top-left.” (Follow the links on the right for the blog entries for November 2011; a jolly good read, I like to think.) 

And yes, all my friends and family were extraordinarily generous, filling my charity bucket to well over half way towards the £1000 target for Cancer Research UK.

But now it’s time for the Big Ride proper. And no, I don’t expect everybody to dip their hands into their pockets once more – well, of course, if you feel so inclined, yes, please do – but my thought is that this time around, how about passing on a link to the blog to everybody you know? If they are suitably entertained by my bulletins from the byways, maybe they’ll chip in the price of a postage stamp, as though they’d received an unstamped postcard from me.

I’m aiming to set off on Saturday 5th May and get back by the following Saturday, having visited – and made pithy observations on - a score or so places that people might not normally visit.

More Anorak stuff

This will only be of interest to people with a thing about communications and clever technology to help with it.  I've done a demo version of this blog using the 'Prezi' presentation tool.

It's available online at:  http://prezi.com/uewikp0nvde8/trip/

(You might need to wait a few seconds for it to load up.  You might also like to click the 'More' option and select 'full screen' mode.)

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.