Odyssey 2000 Cyclists Marvel At Diversity In Restrooms, Telephones Many In Group Rent Autos For Quick Tours Of The British Isles
A recent topic of discussion among the Odyssey 2000 cyclists centered around the huge variation in washrooms they have encountered. The group of about 200 cyclists has logged nearly 9,700 miles in 22 countries during their yearlong round-the-world bicycle tour.
Four Spokane cyclists are on the tour that started Jan. 1.
A close second to the diversity of potties is the variation in telephones.
In Ireland alone, one rider reports, they have come across coin phones, phone card phones, credit card phones and pay-when-answered phones. At times, none of the options will work for the intrepid travelers, including the cell phones some of them carry.
But who cares when the typical daily itinerary calls for 80-90 miles of pedaling? This leaves a little time for a teensy bit of sight-seeing to archeological sites. One rider reported friendly encounters with locals in Ireland who harvested peat for their home furnaces much like North Idahoans truck out on public land to saw a cord of firewood.
The Odyssey 2000 group has become quite resourceful and independent. On the last 80-mile day in Wales to catch the ferry to Dublin, fewer than 100 of the 200 cyclists were pedaling.
Kay Putnam of Spokane is sharing a vehicle with other riders so they can pedal 40 miles a day instead of 80 and see more of the countryside.
She has enjoyed the British Isles and the rural area hedgerows, which she describes as “tall shrubs, ferns, small trees and sometimes flowers that divide the fields.
“When you’re on a bike,” she says, “they are all you can see. There is no way to know what is on the other side until you come to the top of a hill and can look down.”
In Ireland, she and other riders took a walking tour in Dublin with a history professor from Trinity College. “He thought the country should be united and the British should withdraw,” she says. “Then when we were in Belfast we took another tour, this time guided by a pro-British Protestant. His view of the struggle and current situation was totally different. They have a long way to go to settle their problems.”
Renting a vehicle isn’t necessarily a panacea to the daily grind. Two couples sharing a vehicle in the British Isles suffered a break-in and theft of their personal gear, setting off a chain reaction of delays and insurance hassles.
Meanwhile, Dave and Pam Zack of Spokane have been coping in their own inimitable way, as Dave reports in this recent e-mail correspondence.
July 5, Uist Island, Scotland
It’s been a bit longer than usual between letters only because we are in the remotest parts of the British Isles and Internet cafes are nonexistent.
Who ever would have thought that we could find Internet access in a shack in Mtuzini, South Africa, but not in the south of England, all of Wales, or the highlands and western islands of Scotland?
The British Isles are just what I hoped they would be. Green, mostly decent weather, rolling terrain that gets progressively hillier into Wales and of course, the Scottish Highlands.
Our four days in London came and went in a heartbeat. We were housed in a college dorm in East London in what one of the travel brochures describes as a “challenged” area. It was certainly no worse than our hotel in Harlem or the hostel in D.C., so we tend to look at the bright side of things and are quick to point out that the campus was walled and had security, our meals were served in a college cafeteria complete with food cops to make sure you weren’t getting away with two desserts or anything, and private rooms with beds.
We were only two blocks away from the subway station, which made for quick getaways to more desirable areas of the city.
This was our third visit to London and by far the most unusual. Firstly, it was hot. I’ve never been hot in London before and I don’t think a lot of the locals have, either. They don’t quite know how to handle it until the evening of our second night when the English soccer team did something completely unBritish and defeated Germany to advance into untrodden ground for English athletics-that of victors heading into World Cup playoffs.
The heat-crazed English promptly got off their pub stools to riot in the streets. Not a full strength riot like we have at home, after all these are Englishmen, but still enough civil disorder, injuries, and bad behavior that it made the headlines the following morning.
Justice was served in the next round of the World Cup playoffs as England was dispatched by one of the remaining 40 or 50 contenders (this sport is worse than NBA basketball for the number of playoff teams involved).
Just in the nick of time, the weather cooled, the clouds form, and the rain sort of leaked intermittently. It reminded me of Seattle sunshine and I guess we should get used to it because we see it a lot.
It’s not bad to ride in because you never do get really wet; it’s cool but you can always add layers to keep warm, and its great for the ladies complexions. They all look positively radiant.
Riding through rural England was harder than imagined. We were on very narrow roads with hedgerows on either side. I felt sorry for the occasional car coming up behind us. They’d follow us for a mile or so until we could find a space to let them by. For traffic coming toward us, it was an immediate stop to make yourself a part of the hedgerow.
Bath, Winchester, and the Salsbury Plains with a visit to Stonehenge made up the English portion of the tour and they are all super. Especially Stonehenge.
We were there the day after the summer solstice and the neo-Druids had visited the eve and solstice dawn to make sure the sun still rises through the entrance stone as it did 4,000 years ago.
The following evening we rode into Wales and Cardiffs. The only way you would ever know this is by the road signs. The names of towns have maybe 30 or 40 letters with few if any vowels.
Vanna White would be a big hit here because everyone needs to buy a vowel.
We headed north through Wales and the country gets steeper and sheeper. The farther north we went, the rockier the soil, the fewer the trees and sheep reign supreme.
There are so many sheep in Wales that it looks like a huge hailstorm passed over and left large white spots everywhere in this otherwise perfectly green landscape. Imagine riding along the Columbia River around the Biggs Junction area except those huge hills surrounding you are emerald green and full of sheep. That’s Wales.
The tour is headed for Ireland and Northern Ireland before coming back to Scotland and Pam and I have made a decision. We really don’t want to ride through Northern Ireland and the portion of Ireland that the tour takes is not the best choice for cycle touring either and besides all that, we need a vacation from our vacation so we jump ship and head off on our own.
We are really quite proud of ourselves. Just the two of us (no lines) and two little bags carrying everything we’ll need for two weeks on the backs of our Global 2000 magical touring machines. Even though we have our tour’s signature lemon yellow touring helmets with us, we are the only two lemonheads we’ll see for the next two weeks.
We take a train to Edinburgh but it’s raining there so we head for the Highlands and the Western Islands and there we find heaven.
This is ravaged country much like Wales but with trees. They rival Wales in total sheep count but far outstrip them with old castles, kilts, pipes, scotch whiskey distilleries, and vacant oceanfront.
The western islands are noted for their fierce weather but here we are riding leisurely from one to another in glorious sunshine in the land of the MacDonalds, MacLeans, MacLeods, MacAndlesses, MacIntyres, Campbells (don’t say that name too loudly in front of the MacLeans, they’re still feuding) and all the other Mac’s that built America.
It’s wonderful and sad to realize that Scotland’s bad fortune during the expulsion of the highlanders from their land and later the potato famine (same as Ireland’s) was another one of those strange quirks that helped our country become what it is.
We are having a ball soaking up the sunshine, the local culture, and the great food. We have six more days of this before we have to rejoin the group in Aberdeen for our jump to Scandinavia.