With my motorcycle fixed and most of my gear back with the wonderful Barry I have set out on one last adventure through the UK. I am riding up the east coast through Cambridge and York to Edinburgh and across to the Scottish west coast. After this I will head back through Liverpool, the place from which my great grandfather made his trek to Australia, and then back to London to sell the bike.
I had a particularly odd experience in Cambridge. After riding from Eastbourne, stopping to watch the England Germany game in a pub, I arrived at the picturesque main street of Cambridge around 5:30pm. Usually I would have passed many signs directing me to campsites, the UK being unexpectedly fond of them for a nation that prides itself on its three sunny days per year.
Cambridge is not the camping kind of town. Mr Jenkins is not paying your thousand pounds per week for little Jenkins to go camping.
The tourist information centre was good and shut. Helpful. I poked my head into a church whose choir was singing evensong and asked the verger if he knew of a local campsite. 'I'm afraid I've never needed one around here being a local,' he replied cheerily. Quite. Outside the church there was a younger guy selling punting tours (more of that later) and he was adamant that I should take one. 'Actually I'm looking for a camping ground' I said hopefully. 'Oh I can't help you there,' he answered 'but you could take a punting tour while you think about it'. 'Can I sleep in the punt?' I asked. 'No, not really.'
Just at the point that I was starting to doubt my chances of finding accommodation a little voice from the neighbouring bench outside the church piped up. 'I have a big house, you can stay with me if you like.' I couldn't believe it. It was a girl in her early twenties and she was quite serious. She did say that her room mates had made her promise not to bring any more strangers back to stay at the house so we had to become friends really quickly. That we did over ice cream and I found myself making my way back to a veritable mansion where I stayed free for the next three nights.
Over the next three days Sonia, her boyfriend Thomas and I went punting along the Cam river, saw the King's College Choir sing and altogether had a wonderful time. Unfortunately the two of them had some serious relationship issues (perhaps exacerbated by my presence) and so I spent quite a bit of time listening to each of them. By the time I left they were thanking me for being there at their time of need... a very odd experience.
After Cambridge I headed north, staying for one night in a little town that was home to an RAF base during the war before carrying on to York.
The Grand old Duke of York seemed to do a great deal of marching up and down hills. These days the current duke, Prince Andrew, doesn't do much of anything. This is a city built in layers and I love it. I would launch into another history lesson but I'm sure we all tire of those. Needless to say here we have tribal, Roman, Norman, Anglo Saxon, Tudor, Georgian Victorian and 1960's buildings sitting on top, beside, within and amongst each other. Glorious. My local tour guide started his two hour walk promising to keep the tour under three hours. He barely made it. Oddly, the parents of one of my best friends from high school were on the tour.
After York it was a four hour drive in rain and gale force winds towards Edinburgh... welcome to Scotland. In Edinburgh I spent a wonderful evening sipping whiskey and listening to a group of folk singers jamming in a local pub. After Edinburgh and its ghoulish history of plagues, hangings and guillotining (a Scottish invention), I needed a break in the country... which is where I am now.
Check this out for the introduction to an episode of the X-Files. I am currently sitting in the dining room of a de-consecrated church that has been renovated into a bunkhouse for walkers of a long, Scottish hiking trail. The only road to the site is a twenty kilometre dead end just wide enough for a car to drive along, bordered by towering pine trees on one side and expansive lochs and mountains on the other. There are only a few guests here and we are served by the only two staff, one an extremely fat and cheerful guy, the other a skinny and quiet chef. Outside the drizzle is forming puddles on the ground and there is not another sole for miles around. The windows of the dining room are still the old stained-glass numbers from the church, complete with their dedications to long lost relatives. This place is a little creepy, but the food is excellent.
It is drizzling outside but inside it is warm and the Dutch are winning their way into the world cup final. Today I took a walk along the West Highland Way – a long distance walking track that spans the length of Scotland. The scenery takes one back to early memories of fighting the invading British and finding forbidden love in tiny villages... or maybe it just made me think of Braveheart.
Scotland as a whole exudes a certain melancholy. Perhaps this is due to the long years of feeling dominated by their more powerful neighbours to the south, perhaps it the expanses of highland wilderness or perhaps it is due simply to the drizzle. This said, there is one thing that takes away from the melancholy and that is the 'airy coo. An 'airy coo is a cow that is... hairy. These things are incredible. They are like hippy red headed cows with huge manes of hair falling to the ground and over their eyes. They make me giggle.
In under two weeks I will have sold the bike, packed up my belongings again and be in Kenya, on my way to work in Tanzania. I have had an odd adventure. This is certainly not the trip I planned, nor is it one I would have voluntarily embarked upon, but it is the trip I have had. So much of what I had planned is left undone, but so much that I could never have planned for has been experienced. It is hard not to be disappointed by the way things have panned out, but I have learned a great deal about my own ability to deal with uncertainty and difficulty. I'm sure this will come in handy in Africa.
Until next time,
God Bless and look after each other because I still want you all to be there when I get back.
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