/travel/cycling/Glasgow to Dunnet Head
At long last, a blog entry. The problem with vacation is that you have so much to catch up on when you get back.
So, our cycling trip was a delightful success. We had mostly tailwinds, it rained frequently but only once in a way that interfered with our day, and we made it to our goal. We too a train from Tarbet (on Loch Lomond) to Fort William on on the second day, thanks to the rain. I saw more rainbows in the last 3 or 4 days than the rest of my life combined, I think. The total distance was just over 500km. My odometer was miscalibrated, so we don't know the exact distance. Photos are posted and captioned.
Here's one quick story:
We were cycling along Loch Ness, finally the roads were quiet and we were making good time -- south of there the roads had been busy and narrow enough that we often had to pull off to let traffic pass. We passed a bagpiper at a campground, but decided to keep going since we were making good time. About a kilometer later, we decided it was actually the last campground we knew about for quite a distance, and it was certainly the lats one on Loch Ness, so we decided to go back. We got the last tent spot on the beach, I think, and it was rather slanted.
Let me tell you about midges. Mosquitoes don't really bother me; I grew used to them at summer camp. I thought, given all the places I've been in Canada that claim to have the worst mosquitoes in the world, that midges would be no problem. Hot damn they're annoying. Much smaller, and clingier. They're like those clouds of bugs you somemtimes see on summer evenings in Canadian cities, except they settle down on you and start feasting. They're much more invasive than bigger bugs, too. They left little flat red spots on me, and small bumps on Clare. Mostly they drive you mad, though. And hard to get out of your tent.
Once we were done braving the midges and setting up, and after a quick wade into a cold cold Loch (they're very deep, being formed in the cleavage of two mountains), we went up to the little campground pub. It was fairly full, so we settled down at a table between two families. One was playing dominoes, the other just chatting. I liked the atmosphere of a pub with families in it; I think that, ironically, it helps to keep the parents in line. Of course, it's rather bad for the kids of that breaks down. Anyway, a fellow in full dress stepped up with bagpipes. The bartended introduced him as a German, who had been in Edinburgh (?) to take part in a fundraiser, whose goal was to set the record for the most musicians in a single gathering. How this raises funds, I don't know. In any case, he told some stories, spoke some poems, and played some songs. For certain pieces, the Scots in the room joined in. He ended with Amazing Grace and Auld Langs Syne.
We chatted with the family beside us, up from southern Scotland, I think. When they talked amongst themselves, they were rather hard to follow, but they changed their dialect to talk to us. Usually, anyway -- I asked them what "Inver" meant, as in "Inverness", "Inverlochy," etc. They didn't know, but ended up finding out that it means "Mouth Of", which is really obvious in retrospect, given Inverness' location. Anyway, one said to the other with a thick accent something about adding something to his "ken", meaning knowledge. I've never heard that word used exceptin Scrabble and Boggle, and even then usually only by my mother.
We finished up a glass of beer and headed out to bed, with warm good nights and good wishes from the folks beside us.
I think that was my overall surprise -- the warmness of most places. We had a short stretch where people didn't seem to want tourists, but most of the time they were friendly. Lots of towns just had a tiny shop with less stuff than the Spar across the street from me, and maybe one or two pubs and a small Inn. One of our favourite places was when we hit the north coast, a little town with a pub full of fairly young people who just sat around and chatted between tables. The lack of music was nice, I think. At one point they cracked out a dictionary, to look up Tomarillo. And they were talking about how HP Sauce (very popular around here) stood for "Houses of Parliament". They included us without asking us our story -- no doubt they'd heard it before -- which was somehow more inclusive.
Unfortunately, we slept badly that night, between a cold wind, a slopy tent, and some midges.
That's all for now.
New Albums from the Gallery
/travel/cycling/Gone Cycling in Scotland
Back next Monday. Glasgow to John Grote's, with any luck.
/travel/cycling/Long Lost Photos
When Steve and I went cycling in BC, he took some photos. On the last day,
we sat down at a nice restaurant, all dirty and scruffy, and scrawled some
notes on a napkin. I guarded the napkin, he guarded the photos.
I lost the napkin.
He lost the digital copies of the photos.
Today, he emailed me to say that he'd found them. They're now posted for your viewing pleasure.
/travel/cycling/Fuel Efficiency of a Bicycle
A back-of-the-internet calculation: ((18 miles per hour) / (1 224 (kilocalories per hour))) * 29.01 (megajoules per liter) = 385.975974 miles per gallon.
/travel/cycling/Joint Trouble In Amsterdam
This blog entry was lost by my ISP and they did not recover it. A fairly complete copy existed on blog aggregators, but it may have lost formatting or links.
So, this evening Steve and I pulled into Amsterdam. I was cycling only with my left leg for the last 25km. Earlier this afternoon, after deciding (wrongly!) to push my knees a little bit farther than I had in the past, there was a very sudden shooting pain. Apparently this was accompanied by a sound that Steve thought was a branch breaking, but I don't remember that. So my right knee is okay for walking, but if I step too hard it hurts. And it's not at all okay for cycling. We've got a hostel in Amsterdam tonight, but this may end up being the end of the road for me. Probably not; hopefully tomorrow everything's okay, and I can just take it easy a bit, but right now my hopes are a bit low, though my spirits are fine. Steve and I have been doing well, though. His ankles are getting better slowly and a bit erratically. From Luebeck we did 80km or so to Hamburg. The first place we tried was full up, but they made a suggestion for us. This turned out to be in/on Reeperbahn, which is Hamburg's "Red Light District". Suffice to say it was an interesting walk to and from the hotel. Cheap, though, and plenty clean and stuff. From there, we caught a train to Muenster and caught up with Tessa, another friend from my time in Oulu. It was nice, but fairly brief. The next day we hit Holland, and then we had today. My trip-meter rolled over at 1000km, but I'm somewhere around 1150km right now. Not too shabby if it does end here, but lots more I'd like to see. Steve and I are taking notes about every day (especially after I lost our notes after the Rockies last year -- in my defense, they were on a napkin, and thus easily confused for garbage) so I'll probably write several more little stories when I have internet access and the notes beside me. We also watched the final of the Eurocup '04 football match - Greece 1, Portugal 0. Pretty surprising. So yeah. Stuff is okay , but a bit up in the air right now. Gotta go find some grub...this internet cafe is hugely hot.
/travel/cycling/Sweden and Copenhagen
This blog entry was lost by my ISP and they did not recover it. A fairly complete copy existed on blog aggregators, but it may have lost formatting or links.
Gotta be quick...paying internet access by the minutes. Currently in Copenhagen. Did about 300km in Sweden, leaving from Vıÿrnamo where i got dropped off, cycling down to Malmıÿ, and then catching a train across the giant bridge to Copenhagen. Along the way, I got four ticks, and thus sampled the Swedish medical system. It was effective and fairly quick, and cost me about 30CAD to see a nurse. that should be covered under insurance, but I'll have to take care of it later. I also lost my map, on which I was keeping a journal. I dedcided to backtrack to the gas station where I thought I had left it. After 8km of backtracking, iI stopped to stanck on a can of beans. About halfway through, a car honked at me. About 3 minutes later, it started to hail. Big hail, about 6 or 7mm in diameter. Lunder and thightening, too. it was the first time i've been hailed on while cycling. The weather has been pretty shitty all around, though my last day of cycling in Sweden was truly gorgeous, with nice views and a tailwind most of the time, and quaint little backroads that let me see the countryside proeprly. The night before that I stopped in a little campground and stayed in a room there -- most of the campgrounds have a couple hostel-style rooms where you can stay. It was quite pleasant, and the Swedes were very helpful and friendly. I went to a local pub for some pizza for dinner, and ended up chatting with the bartender there for a while; she was a very friendly swedish girl, and we watched the first half of the Denmark vs. Sweden Eurocup match. Heading out tomorrow, south towards Germany. Steve got here fine. Saw a castle today, pretty good. Copenhagen is expensive. Bumıÿed into a guy from PEI today. Strange, but friendly fellow. Gotta jet. Sorry for the lack of proofreading.
/travel/cycling/Ferries and Dikes in Holland; Rain rain rain in Belgium
This blog entry was lost by my ISP and they did not recover it. A fairly complete copy existed on blog aggregators, but it may have lost formatting or links.
Its been a while. Internet access is surprisingly hard to come by around here. Im in Brussels on a very strange keyboard layout (AZERTY) so youll have to excuse my mistakes. Im slowly getting used to it, but it doesnt help that the keycaps are inaccurate too. First and foremost, my knees are doing just fine. Weve been doing much easier days in general...Our longest since Amsterdam was 105km, but the rest have been less than 80km, I think. Taking it gently, and theres been pretty minimal pain. Weve been cycling for eight straight days, and we havent had a room since Amsterdam. After Amsterdam, we wandered through the lowlands of Holland, through Gouda (yes, the cheese), and eventually into Belgium to Hoegaarden (yes, the beer). We cycled along canals, passed windmills, over and on dikes, and eventually reached Belgium, where it immediately started to rain. Its been raining every few hours since then. When we got to Hoegaarden, it was about 21:30. We had no place to stay, and the hostel we had expected to find in the previous larger town no longer existed. We asked at the first pub we saw open, and it turned out that there was a big festival in the town that weekend, just for us! The local youth group showed us a place where we could camp, on space owned by the local church. We set up tent, then went back to join the festivities. It was a really fun night, and the Belgians that we met were very friendly and helpful; one even tried to set us up with a place to stay in Brussels, but that connection ultimately failed. The food has been excellent, but Atkins would be saddened by our carb-rich diet; bakeries have become our standard fare to avoid eating out so much. Weve also had Frites (essentially french fries, but with a bit more TLC than the McDonalds variety) several times, though the last time we bought them I had the presence of mind to ask what kind of oil they were fried in. "Grease" came the reply with a touch of pride...No more frites for me. Theyre terribly unhealthy anyway. Brussels is both beautiful and pricey; it reminds me a bit of Stockholm for that. The cycling has been mostly enjoyable, though the lack of a warm room and decent shower was getting annoying -- in Hoegaarden we scrubbed down with cold tap water in a rundown washroom they said we could use. Fun fun fun. Not sure where from here...Time will tell. We booked the hostel (two-bed room, so its essentially a hotel) for tonight as well, and both Steve and I have much internetting to catch up on. The Hoegaarden Brewery tour had some Irishy music at the end...it ,ade ,e ho,esick for Great Big Sea. Oh yeah...If anyone knows of a place for me to live September to January in Ottawa, preferably in the West of Gloucester or Downtown, please let me know... Miss home, miss yall, but having a good time to be sure. Hopefully Ill be able to update a bit more often from here on out.
/travel/cycling/Luebeck is only an accident away!
This blog entry was lost by my ISP and they did not recover it. A fairly complete copy existed on blog aggregators, but it may have lost formatting or links.
(Lest you're short on time and concerned by the title, there were no injuries, and we got there fine.) So I'm in Lıÿbeck. Yesterday, Steve and I were cycling through the evening on some very beautiful German roads. They were essentially single lane roads, but there were very few cars. We were cruising along quite quickly when I passed a roadsign that I thought indicated that we were headed for a town that we had already been through. Since the road was quite wide, I slammed on my brakes. I heard Steve yell "Woah!" from behind me, as he had chosen that moment to read the sign and didn't notice my rapid deceleration. I was also sort of turned to see what he was yelling about. So he hit my tire. Bit of a bump, but no injuries. Except...the bike. My back tire was unrideable. It wasn't bent much, but too much, especially with the extra weight of the gear. Neither Steve nor I knew how to true a tire, but he knew a bit and we worked it out, and after half an hour of fiddling, it seemed rideable. I rode on, but it bent more. If we took off the back brakes, the bike would still go, so I ran with it for about 5km. Towards the end of this, we flagged down one man to ask for a cell phone ("haben Sie ein handi?"), but he didn't. Then we hit a house with some people in the backyard, and asked to use their phone to call Johanna, our erstwhile destination for the evening. I called her, told her we weren't going to make it. Then he asked what was wrong, and once it was explained ("alle ist klıÿr" (?)) and sort of took over and loosened my break so it wasn't rubbing anymore. We piled all the weight on Steve's bike (..which was bad since Steve's ankles have been bothering him a bit...) and I rode with my weight as forward as it could be. Once we got to the next real town (Ahrenbıÿk), we tried and failed to find an open bikeshop -- unlikely at 20:45 in a small town -- and then decided to ride onwards to Lıÿbeck. In the end, we got here safe and sound. Spent a nice day around Lıÿbeck today, seeing their Holstentour (sp?) which is the old and very massive and impressive town gate, and going up a church tower. Tonight we're making a big lasagna meal with Johanna and her two roommates and Andrea (another girl I know from Finland) and her boyfriend. In other news, crossing the Danish-German border was no problem...there was essentially nothing there. Euros are great; I'm very glad to be done with the various Kroners and back to a currency that I know fairly intuitively. The weather and wind have been much better in Germany. One of our campgrounds was right by a military base, and we were woken up at 08:00 to a helicopter taking off. Lots of pizza, falafels, and veggie burgers. Lots of checking the maps and signs for me, and following his gut for Steve -- sometimes with conflicting results. We're getting along well, though, and the accident was a good test of how we dealt with more-than-arguing-about-directions stress. I have 800km under my belt since Peter dropped me off in Sweden, of which about 330km are since Copenhagen. Soon we're probably heading to Mıÿnster with a probable pause in Hamburg (which all the Germans say that we simply must see) and then probably up to Groningen and then along the coast for a while. I heard the news about the election results on a German radio station; obviously I didn't understand it all, but it I got the basics. Personally, I think the results could have been a lot worse. Anyway, having a blast, learning lots more German, getting some excellent, beautiful cycling done...but now it's time to make some lasagne. Happy Canada Day! (And you thought I forgot! Pah!)
/travel/cycling/Joint Trouble In Amsterdam
So, this evening Steve and I pulled into Amsterdam. I was cycling only with my left leg for the last 25km. Earlier this afternoon, after deciding (wrongly!) to push my knees a little bit farther than I had in the past, there was a very sudden shooting pain. Apparently this was accompanied by a sound that Steve thought was a branch breaking, but I don't remember that.
So my right knee is okay for walking, but if I step too hard it hurts. And it's not at all okay for cycling. We've got a hostel in Amsterdam tonight, but this may end up being the end of the road for me. Probably not; hopefully tomorrow everything's okay, and I can just take it easy a bit, but right now my hopes are a bit low, though my spirits are fine.
Steve and I have been doing well, though. His ankles are getting better slowly and a bit erratically. From Luebeck we did 80km or so to Hamburg. The first place we tried was full up, but they made a suggestion for us. This turned out to be in/on Reeperbahn, which is Hamburg's "Red Light District". Suffice to say it was an interesting walk to and from the hotel. Cheap, though, and plenty clean and stuff.
From there, we caught a train to Muenster and caught up with Tessa, another friend from my time in Oulu. It was nice, but fairly brief. The next day we hit Holland, and then we had today. My trip-meter rolled over at 1000km, but I'm somewhere around 1150km right now. Not too shabby if it does end here, but lots more I'd like to see.
Steve and I are taking notes about every day (especially after I lost our notes after the Rockies last year -- in my defense, they were on a napkin, and thus easily confused for garbage) so I'll probably write several more little stories when I have internet access and the notes beside me.
We also watched the final of the Eurocup '04 football match - Greece 1, Portugal 0. Pretty surprising.
So yeah. Stuff is okay , but a bit up in the air right now. Gotta go find some grub...this internet cafe is hugely hot.
/travel/cycling/Lübeck is only an accident away!
(Lest you're short on time and concerned by the title, there were no injuries, and we got there fine.)
So I'm in Lübeck. Yesterday, Steve and I were cycling through the evening on some very beautiful German roads. They were essentially single lane roads, but there were very few cars. We were cruising along quite quickly when I passed a roadsign that I thought indicated that we were headed for a town that we had already been through. Since the road was quite wide, I slammed on my brakes. I heard Steve yell "Woah!" from behind me, as he had chosen that moment to read the sign and didn't notice my rapid deceleration. I was also sort of turned to see what he was yelling about. So he hit my tire. Bit of a bump, but no injuries.
Except...the bike.
My back tire was unrideable. It wasn't bent much, but too much, especially with the extra weight of the gear. Neither Steve nor I knew how to true a tire, but he knew a bit and we worked it out, and after half an hour of fiddling, it seemed rideable. I rode on, but it bent more. If we took off the back brakes, the bike would still go, so I ran with it for about 5km. Towards the end of this, we flagged down one man to ask for a cell phone ("haben Sie ein handi?"), but he didn't. Then we hit a house with some people in the backyard, and asked to use their phone to call Johanna, our erstwhile destination for the evening. I called her, told her we weren't going to make it. Then he asked what was wrong, and once it was explained ("alle ist klär" (?)) and sort of took over and loosened my break so it wasn't rubbing anymore.
We piled all the weight on Steve's bike (..which was bad since Steve's ankles have been bothering him a bit...) and I rode with my weight as forward as it could be. Once we got to the next real town (Ahrenbök), we tried and failed to find an open bikeshop -- unlikely at 20:45 in a small town -- and then decided to ride onwards to Lübeck.
In the end, we got here safe and sound. Spent a nice day around Lübeck today, seeing their Holstentour (sp?) which is the old and very massive and impressive town gate, and going up a church tower. Tonight we're making a big lasagna meal with Johanna and her two roommates and Andrea (another girl I know from Finland) and her boyfriend.
In other news, crossing the Danish-German border was no problem...there was essentially nothing there. Euros are great; I'm very glad to be done with the various Kroners and back to a currency that I know fairly intuitively.
The weather and wind have been much better in Germany. One of our campgrounds was right by a military base, and we were woken up at 08:00 to a helicopter taking off. Lots of pizza, falafels, and veggie burgers. Lots of checking the maps and signs for me, and following his gut for Steve -- sometimes with conflicting results. We're getting along well, though, and the accident was a good test of how we dealt with more-than-arguing-about-directions stress.
I have 800km under my belt since Peter dropped me off in Sweden, of which about 330km are since Copenhagen. Soon we're probably heading to Münster with a probable pause in Hamburg (which all the Germans say that we simply must see) and then probably up to Groningen and then along the coast for a while.
I heard the news about the election results on a German radio station; obviously I didn't understand it all, but it I got the basics. Personally, I think the results could have been a lot worse.
Anyway, having a blast, learning lots more German, getting some excellent, beautiful cycling done...but now it's time to make some lasagne.
Happy Canada Day! (And you thought I forgot! Pah!)
