Dislocated

2010-11-21T20:03:00.010Z

Having kittens about having kittens
Until a couple of days ago I was having kittens about having kittens. Now I'm just having kittens. Two weeks ago I went to the Mayhew Animal Rescue Centre at Kensal Green and fell in love with two 12 week old kitty-siblings. I'd kind of primed myself to do so. It's not difficult.

I met three pairs of kittens, and the two I've adopted were called Hector and Lilly. I mean really? What kind of names are those for kittens? So I've renamed them. To Reconstitution and Deathstar. Haha. Not really. Had you going there for a moment. Or not. After some thought, and waiting for their names to settle (well, 48 hours), I've settled on Mag and Merc, short for Magellan and Mercator. Mag will become Meg. Merc will become Murk. Collectively they are to be known as sausages.

They seemed to have settled in fine. I'm keeping them indoors until end January/February time. At the moment they're playing a gave which I think is called Chase and then bite each other in the neck. It's not one I remember from school, although we did play a version of tag called "Bastard-ball" which involved tagging each other through the mechanism of hurling a cricket ball at each other. Sometimes I wonder why I'm still alive.

V+A
I spent this afternoon in the V+A for two reasons. Firstly, I wanted to do a bit of drawing of people who can stay very, very still given that they've been immortalised in marble 200 years ago. Secondly, I want to go and see an exhibition called Shadow Catchers - Camera-less Photography. It was very interesting, my favourite one being the photograph of the underside of a stream. By photograph I mean this:

Take a very large sheet of photographic paper. In the dead of night put it in the bottom of a stream. Flash-gun it, and then fix the image in the lab. Pretty.

Sofa so good
I've been building a built-in sofa for the barge. I've got the seats finished. The frame is built from re-claimed wood from pallets although the seats are from hardboard (obviously). Photos of progress and of the barge in general:

2010-07-04T20:08:00.001+01:00

Vans that can't swim
Sorry for the lack of follow up. I'm still trying to blog more often and failing. They came back the next day after two tides, and managed to get the engine going again, amazingly. Then they span the wheels a bit and wandered off. Two days later, the PLA (not to be confused with the PLO - that would be very odd and really rather scary, this not being Palastine) came past and lifted the van out of the water using a big crane. I didn't see this alas, so I have no photos.

Sailing with Terri, Rob and Kalani
I'm tied up in Glasson Dock with Terri, Rob and Kalani on Melanthe (my dark flower). When I say tied up, I don't mean I'm physically restrained in any way - that would just be a bit weird - moreso the boat is tied to the pontoon and it is a collective tied up. Glad we got that sorted out.

One of the reasons that Glasson is so cheap (and I use the word cheap comparitively - it's more than buying a packet of crisps) is that there is a short tidal window of about an hour to get out through the lock into the River Lune. This is not really an issue, except the same restriction applies to coming back in, and one has to wait in the bay until two hours before high tide to come back up the river. If it's blowing a hooley, waiting can be a bit uncomfortable.

We did two trips out. One overnight to Peil Island near Barrow in Furness and the other was an afternoon practising tacking and jibing before anchoring at the river mouth to wait for the 2am high tide.

Well, we're leaving tomorrow, but we're going to the Lake District today, to look at the rain. Happiness abounds.

2010-06-20T20:43:00.006+01:00

Vans that can't swim
Had a van next to the boat today. Not the bank side, the river side. It's still there now. Three enterprising young cockney sparra's (eh up missus) decided they were going to rescue some scrap metal from the river bed (there are a few old wrecks down there). The river bed in most places is quite solid so they drove down, along it, filled the back up, tried to reverse around to go back, and got stuck.

They had about a 20 minute window to get it out before the tide came in. They gave Garry a call, who has a Jeep. He couldn't tow them out, and whized back upstream.

Then the tide came in. The pictures say it all.

I have to say, I really, really, love where I live. It's great.

2010-03-19T18:28:00.007Z

Working in a hospital
So, I've been working in a hospital now for about nine months, give or take. My job title is Analyst Programmer, but so far I've managed to get away with a considerable number of endoscopic operations and one appendectomy. It went ok. One of the nurses did the stitching, thank goodness, but the scalpel work was strangely satisfying in the same way that being the first one to use the butter is.

Only joking. Actually I'm embroiled in the 18 week referral to treatment programme, which is only slightly worse than being broiled. In anything. Who would have thought that something that in essence is so simple could become so complicated. I'll stop talking about it before I say something for which I might get sacked.

Brighton Marathon
I blame Rob Lines. He put an invite on facebook in September last year, I think, to join him in the Brighton marathon. I'd been running for some months at that point, but not lots and I'd had problems with my calf muscles for some time anyway, which had atrophied through years of disuse.

Well, I signed up for it in March when I could afford to, my pay rise finally coming through, and so now I have to go and run a marathon next month. What a dumb idea! Good grief!

So, I acquired a pair of free running shoes from freecycle, and ran in them for a some time before I realised that they might be damaging my feet and then used the following month's payrise to buy a new pair that actually fit. My training so far as culminated in running a half-marathon before work on Wednesday that rendered me capable of walking only in the manner of John Cleese in that Monty Python sketch about the Ministry of Silly Walks. As similar as they seem, the Ministry of Silly Walks should not to be confused with the Department of Health. One of them has you doing silly things with your figure and the other has you doing silly things with your figures.

I can just about walk now. The marathon is on the Sunday 18th April, one week after I come back from a week's climbing in Spain. I've taken Monday the 19th April off work, as I cannot imagine actually making it back to London on marathon day and going through the London transport system, on foot.

I'm raising money for Guide Dogs for the Blind. If you'd like to sponsor me, I'd be very grateful, as would, I hope, the Guide Dogs Association. You can do so here. Thank you very much if you choose to.

Making wine
I've started fermenting grape juice. I thought I'd get into wine making, so I've purchased a variety of equipment, and I'm starting my first experiment involving grape juice, wine yeast, sugar, water and an airlock. It glugs every 10 seconds or so, which is reassuring.

2010-01-04T21:27:00.004Z

I have committed genocide
I have committed genocide. I have killed all the worms in my wormery.

My wormery, which is really a bucket with a lid, a false shelf near the bottom and a tap to drain off worm pee, normally lives outside on the decking, although for the last few weeks, due to the cold weather, it has lived in a cold, but not freezingly so, corridor. Having had it for a good six months now, the worms not the corridor, I thought it was time it had some agitation, so, on Sunday, I spread out some polythene and started digging around in the rotting vegetables that were sitting on the top.

In amongst the avo shells and tea bags etc, were millions of dead maggots and fly eggs. These (and the rotting veg) went over the side into the Thames. The fish will love them. Rather that than stick it in a landfill. Apart from a floating avo stone, it all sank without a trace. About halfway down my wormery I got to mostly compost, but no worms? Not even worm corpses! Where are they all?

I need to obtain more worms now. I did get a few inches of decent compost and I've left a good six inches of the stuff for new worms when I get some. In the meantime, my ex-wormery is outside with the top off, and the tap open, to discourage any more fruit flies.

I miss my worms. Come back worms! All is forgiven!

Some worms:

2010-01-03T19:45:00.007Z

Rocket
I was listening to the radio earlier today, well, half-listening. There was a programme about a group of enthusiasts building a replica of the Rocket somewhere in the new forest. Do they make jokes about their work not being rocket science? It made me start thinking, why would the first steam engine be called 'Rocket', before rockets had been built? Did Stevenson name his steam engine after a salad? Why would anyone name a steam engine after a salad? I ask you, why? Why?

By sheer coincidence, yesterday, I went to the steam museum next to the barge. It has lots of steam engines in it. Not the type that sit on wheels and go along rails, although it has one of those, a little one, built in 2009, but big static beasties for pumping water or doing some such other work. In fact, it houses the world's largest steam engine, which has one cylinder, of bore 100 inches and with an eleven foot piston movement. When the cylinder fills with steam, it pushes the piston down. Attached to the piston, above it, is one end of a beam. On the other end is a 100 tonne weight. It raises the weight eleven feet in about a second. The weight then slowly drops as the cylinder empties, pumping water to the top of a water tower. It runs at about 6rpm.

Argy-bargy
I live on a barge now, near Kew. More specifically, I live in the middle third of a Dutch barge. I love it. It's quiet with no road noise. I have ducks and swans and herons and geese and parakeets just outside of my window. In the mornings, the sunlight at this time of the year reflects off the water onto the ceiling of my sitting room. It's very peaceful.

It is still tidal here with a range of about 3 metres, a bit more at spring tides. At neaps the river doesn't really empty out here, but at spring tides it does. Here is a picture at low tide:

Alternative definitions
etymology - the study of canibalism
podiatry - the study of the practice of eating only the smallest of tele-tubbies.

2009-07-07T20:05:00.002+01:00

Ian and Hamish
Had some bad news today. The skipper of the boat I sailed on in the Cape to Bahia in 2006, and his youngest son, Hamish were killed in a motorbike accident a few days in Cape Town. I owe them, and Ian's older son Charles, so much. As a result of sailing with them, I made the decision to buy my own boat.

I have the most amazing memories of that trip: Ian doing hand-stands in the cockpit during a calm, Hamish building and launching a mini-trimaran called Wilson made of tin cans, Charles and I having a conversation about being eaten by a shark while swimming in three miles of water, holding onto but a fender 30m behind the boat.

The last night before hitting Brazil was particularly entertaining - we seemed to be going so fast (only Charles and Alex will understand this now!)

Ian and Hamish, thank you so much for the experiences you gave me. I have always planned at some point to sail my own boat down to South Africa and you were on my list of people to visit. I would have been so proud to have been able to do that.

Charles, if you end up reading this, my thoughts are with you. Maybe I can still sail Melanthe down to you at some point.

Being unemployed, day 95
On a lighter note, today is my last day of unemployment. I didn't quite make the big 100. I'm starting work at West Middlesex University Hospital tomorrow.

Being afloat
I'm now living on a converted Dutch Barge in Kew on the Thames. If anyone wants to pop by, it's moored in the river just off Watermans Park, and is called Libra. Charles, you are most especially welcome, Kew, Huddersfield or Melanthe (Lancaster at the moment).

2009-05-10T16:40:00.003+01:00

Drugs
My mother offers to take us out for a meal at Jumbo's. That's me, Ben, Harriet and the afore-mentioned fem-parent. Jumbo's doesn't sell elephant steak or anything like that, unfortunately, rather it is a Chinese, eat-as-much-as-you-can, buffet thing. So we go. We sit there under the bright lights stuffing ourselves with sweet and sour stuff and finally go home, particularly stuffed.

When we get home, there is a skip lorry with an unloaded skip parked outside the house, and also a police riot van, void of policemen. We park and wander over confused. Being a terraced back-to-back house, mine is not the only one in the vicinity, so we're not entirely sure that it is to do with us.

In the skip are a large number of conical plastic buckets, and those funny pseudo-soil pebbles they use for plants in shopping centres to stop people remembering that nature exists and to buy things. The plastic buckets have attachments near the bottom for piping to connect them together somehow. Perhaps some form of irrigation system. We look for a moment, bemused, then Ben notices a single five-fingered leaf lying amongst them.

"It's a dope factory, dude!"
"Sweet! Why's it in a skip?"
"The police have busted someone, dude! I thought your hallway smelt funny."
"It's not mine, dude, I'm crap with plants!"

A policeman comes out of the passageway next to my house that leads to the back part of the back-to-backs.

"Hullo," I say, "what's all this then?" I realise after I've said it, I sound very slightly as thought I'm taking the mickey. He doesn't seem to notice.
"The guy living behind you was growing marijuana plans in his bedroom. A neighbour reported a funny smell. He had about fourteen plants in there!" he replies, being the helpful bobby that he is.
"How exciting!" my mother ejaculates, rather out of character, "I must go and phone Don and tell him. Oh! Oh!"

And it is a strange feeling. For the rest of the evening, we have a sense of excitement. We wonder what has happened to our neighbour. At one point, a bobby knocks on the door asking if a Mrs Cohen still lives here, but she doesn't. I tell him I sometimes get post for her and he looks disappointed and goes away.

After a while, the skip gets loaded onto a lorry and it departs. As do the police, and the evening returns to normal, like a pebble sinking into mud.

Booze
I start working in a pub. It's a quiet, old man's pub in Huddersfield. My first shift is very quiet. It takes about an hour and a half to learn the ropes and then it's mostly boring. I'd rather it was manic, but long periods pass without anyone buying anything. It's kind of fun when people do; it's like playing shop.

The next day, my second shift is more exciting. There is a fight. I keep well out of the way and the two gentlemen involved take it outside anyway. The landlady Anna, a petit woman, comes down and instructs the whole group to leave and pours their drinks away. Then it's not interesting anymore.

Later, when there is just one man in the pub (and this is a Satuday evening in the town centre - yes, a quiet pub), with slurred speach, he tells me how he is in a bread making competition. He has made sweet loaves with raisins in and is in the final. His wife will phone at 9pm to tell him if he's won a trip to California where the raisins are made. He is hard to understand because his speach is slurred, and wobbles off just before nine to catch the phone call at home. Before he goes, he gives me a loaf. It looks very good.

The last group in are eight men who are buying rounds. Six Copper Dragons (mmm...) and two Carlings (Yuk!). £19.50. They buy about 5 rounds in all and the landlord, Jay, a 6'7 semi-giant, who has to perform human origami to get into the cellar, tells us to stay open until they choose to leave. My comrade is itching to go. I'm not really fussed myself, but my feet ache, having severely bruised (broken?) my little toe last week.

Eventually they leave and I earn £30 for the evening. Joy. I go home and eat toasted raisin bread for supper, drink some milk and go to bed with a copy of the Reader.

2009-04-19T22:05:00.002+01:00

Turtle

2009-04-07T18:55:00.003+01:00

Being unemployed - day 1
Today I once again achieved the blissful state of unemployment. Having spend the last four and a half months working (in IT) for a security company, who are feeling the pinch of the recession, I once again am back, well, not out on the street, but no longer in a contract.

I actually finished on Friday, but went to London on Friday evening and got back yesterday. Went to the Tate modern yesterday morning. It had a giant spider in it, and I watched with great pleasure a small child on wheelies slide down the turbine hall in a giant S shape.

So today, my first day of unemployment. What have I done?
Saw my mother off on the train back towards the Isle of Man. I haven't banished her. She lives there now.
Uploaded Sandland onto the mobipocket website, after some tweaking for sale at only €1.99, here.
Spent the afternoon discussing with Ben the merits of starting our own company. We're thinking of starting a sandwich making company and selling them to local businesses, of which there seem to be plenty around here.

2009-02-04T11:06:00.003Z

Writing about writing
I started doing a final edit of Sandland while I was working for HSBC. I worked on it on an Asus EEE PC at lunchtimes. Other people in the restaurant thought I was a bit nuts. Perhaps I'm am. Perhaps I'm not. Having finished the edit, it sat on the EPC for a few months until I brought it back onto my laptop, and only then did I find out that Open Office isn't as MS Word compatible as it initially seems.

A couple of months ago, I finally got around to working through it on the train in the mornings and evenings, changing the style back to Normal. Then a couple of nights ago I formatted it in paperback form and uploaded it to lulu.com, here. It's not expensive. Imagine my surprise, then, when I order five copies and the delivery turns out to be £44.57! For 5 x 200 page paperbacks! Holy guacamole! That can't be right:

Feel free to order it, but I suggest you wait until I've tried to make the delivery cheaper.

Music in the shower
I take a radio into the bathroom after running this evening. It's not waterproof. I bought it for £5 from Amazon and it's not waterproof. I was listening to classic FM, and the most beautiful piece of music comes on, that I recognise, but cannot name (this seems to happen with people more and more now, as well). It's the fourth movement of Mahler's fifth symphony. I can't hear it well enough and so turn the shower off and listen. Ten minutes later, I'm freezing cold, but I have to hea every note. It's not often you get a piece of music like that.

2009-01-09T19:57:00.002Z

Calling Neeraj
Neeraj (who sat next to me at HSBC), if you're out there, would you mind contacting me. I've got a friend who needs to ask a few questions about Mumbai for her MA. I'd really appreciate it. You should be able to get to me through my profile. Failing that, leave a comment with an email address and I'll email you. Thanks.

2008-12-30T19:28:00.005Z

The Bravery of Being Out of Range
Well, I'm not any more. Be'er Sheva is now within range of the Kassams. Apparently Hamas now have more sherbet to put in their dips. The sirens went last night, and sound for a minute and a half. You're supposed to take cover for about five minutes, which for us is on the sofa in the living room, because it is away from the windows and puts as many walls between us and the outside of the building as possible. Kassams don't go through two walls.

Last night, the sirens went off went when I was in the shower. I didn't hear it, but Adi came and told me and we sat on the sofa watching the news being broadcast (in wormy language). Two rockets landed, one in a field, and one in a kindergarden (no children inside it at the time). As we are at the limit of the range, the missile will have to be launched at a near 45 degree angle to get here, and assuming that we're at roughly the same altitude as the launch area, will land at a 45 degree angle. It will come from the west and have to go through Idan's room first, poor chap.

This morning we were woken at about eight in the morning by the sirens, and went to sit on the sofa again. Five kassam landed this morning, three in open fields, one in a school and one in the city. The home defence, fortunately, had instructed that there would be no school today and all the kids were at home.

They are showing video of the classroom which was hit. There is a hole in the ceiling/wall about four foot wide and chunks of concrete have been blasted across most of the room.

Dead Sea
Yesterday afternoon, I fulfilled a life-long dream and went swimming in the Dead Sea. I've wanted to do this since I was a little boy, and still have many of the qualities I had then, now. And so, it was the most amusing thing and delighted me immensely. I became the man in the geography book.

The Dead Sea is about 400m below sea level and the water is 25% more dense than fresh water. It wasn't that warm, but it was late in the afternoon when we got there and the sun was setting beind the mountains. I changed into my swimming trunks under a towel. There were some Americans splashing around, doing doggy paddle.

I waded in. At the edge, it is mostly grit, but after a few feet it turns to what looks like clear white sand. It is, in fact, salt. The bottom is covered in salt, and lots of it. Loads and loads and loads. I never knew that. I waded out further.

Swirling my hands around in it, I found that it is oily. When I ran my fingers through it, I could see swirls that look similar to the inteference that appears between hot and cold water, or between salt and fresh at river mouths. It is almost as if fine lines of silk trail from your fingers.

Further out, when the water got up to my nipples, I started floating. That was very very cool. You can float in a sitting position, or on your back. I tried to dip underwater, but thrusting up and pretending to be a pole, but the water rejects your when you get neck deep and you pop up again. I managed to keep my head dry throughout.

Rolling on my front, I found out why the Americans were doing doggy paddle. It is because your legs become buoyant, and so your feet stick out of the water. Cool. I have been geography-book-man.

Apparently now, in Gaza, the Hamas are now hiding in hospitals dressed as doctors. I had a brief read of the wikipedia page of the Hamas which contains some of their (rather scarey) anti-Semetic ideology. It's here. Have a look. I also learnt today that Hamas have been firing kassam over the border at Israel since 2000 because they believe that there should be no state of Israel and that they should own it.

2008-12-30T10:40:00.004Z

Dead Sea
This afternoon, I am going to the dead sea. I'm really quite excited about this. I remember at the age of ten or so at the beginning of term, opening a tattered old geography textbook in Mr Rice's class and flicking through it to look at all the pictures. There were pictures of steel works, rubber trees (spaghetti trees ain't got nut'n on them!), lava flows and deep sea fishing boats. Also, there was a picture of a man floating on this back, like this, reading a news-paper in the Dead Sea.

At that age, I wanted to visit a steel works/ climb a rubber tree/ bottle lava/ swim in the dead sea and try to sink. Instead, I had to endure hours and hours of Mr Rice's droning, un-naturally soporific mumblies. I'm sure he'd have done much better as a device to calm severely violent criminals. Coming back to the point, out of all those activities, the one I wanted to do most, is swim in the Dead Sea. And I never have. And this afternoon, I'm going to. Wheee!!!

Apparently, if you open your eyes, (a) it hurts and (b) your eyes collapse in on themselves due to fresh water migrating out due to the excessive osmotic potential. So I'm taking goggles.

2008-12-28T14:28:00.010Z

Individuals
Well, I'm still in Israel, a topical place to be at the moment. So, in light of recent events, I'm going to write about that for a while.

After a few days in Eilat to meet Adi's parents, we're back in Be'er Sheva. While in Eilat, Israel started air-strikes on the West Bank in reaction to continued rocket attacks from Hamas. Hamas make these rockets from the poles of street signs that they steal from Israel, take them home, turn into kassams (rockets) and shoot them back, targeted roughly at a city. They're about as accurate as the buzz-bombs from WW2; they fall where they fall. At the time of writing Be'er Sheva is about 15kms out of range of Hamas rockets.

Modern Israel was born in 1948 at the end of the second world war. I've tried to read the history of it, so I could summarize it in a few paragraphs, but I'm not going to try. I'm not even going to try and take a political stance because I don't understand the situation enough.

I have never been in a war, and I have never before been in a country at war. Everywhere here, there are teenagers dressed in army fatigues, carrying loaded semi-automatic rifles and to me they look like children. The thing I find most disturbing is the unilateral acceptance that this is routine.

I went to the Holocaust museum a few days ago with Gidi (the friend who got drugged on the bus in Brazil, if you remember), who lives in Jerusalem now. Out of all the things I saw and read there, one quote remains with me, which went something like this:

What should be remembered that the holocaust was not the killing of six million Jews, rather the murder of individuals, six million times.

It is one thing to shoot at someone who is about to shoot you, but conflicts have collateral damage, i.e. maimed and murdered civilians. Hamas needs to learn, and Israel needs to remember (as it teaches in the holocaust museum) that each deaths is an individual who wants to:
- learn to swim.
- take their books back to the library.
- own their first car.
- see their girlfriend/boyfriend.
- have their own place to live.
- learn to write.
- clean this damn rifle properly.
- lay the table.
- put security bars up on the one window in the one room their family lives in.
- get their glasses mended.
- take the dog for a walk.
- get a divorce.
- get married.
- have children.
- grow old happily and feed bread to the birds.
- etc.

Jerusalem
I went to Jerusalem, shortly before the air-strikes started and had a mosey about with the afore-mentioned Gidi. The Holocaust museum, was, well, the Holocaust museum. What is it we say back home on the eleventh of November? "Lest we forget." It is that.

We then went to No 13, King George V Avenue, which sounds a bit like an address that a bear called Paddington might live at, but isn't. It is the home of a small frantic cafe with really, really good humous and bread. Yummo! Thanks for that one Gidi, it was really, really good. I've never really thought of humous as a main course, but, yes, it is. Whenever I make humous it comes out all kind of wet and soggy, a kind of aqueous humous. Haw-haw-haw!

And then on to the wailing wall. As a reasonably well thought out agnostic (sorry Dad, I tried so hard), it appealed to me more as a cultural icon rather than a religious one, but I wrote a prayer on the back of a McDonalds receipt of all things, and tucked it carefully in. I wrote, "Dear God, please deliver us from believing in false things. Love, Mark". What else could I have written? The interpretation I have to leave up to him/her/it

God, non-God
One of the things that seems odd about God to me is this. If you ask a person of any (mono-theistic) religion, to describe the essential elements of their God, irrespective of the religion, it goes something like this. My God:
- is the only God, and there can be no other Gods than mine.
- created the universe, and is the universe, and created/controls/is the laws of the universe.
- understands all things, past present and future.
- can read your mind (by inference of the previous point).
- is the source of all things good/light/godly and rejects all things bad/dark/evil.
- will take me into a perfect place (aka heaven) when I die because I have had my foreskin cut off/ faced east to talk to him/ run beads through my fingers when I feel guilty/ whipped myself daily/ shaved part of my head and abstained from having sex/ worn only orange clothes/ murdered people who follow other religions/ etc (delete as applicable).

So surely, from the above definition, the Christian/Jewish/Muslim god (extend as applicable) is the same god, because there can be only one, that encompasses everything. So if they all effectively worship the same god, they are effectively the same religion interpreted in different ways, so why do they keep trying to kill each other? Surely they should be best buddies with each other or at least be reasonably tolerant of each others' practices, and go out to make war with atheists and ridicule agnostics (who obviously are less heathen, by just being not quite so sure).

The real answer, I imagine, is because it isn't about religion, it is about resources and control, which are very much this-world devices, not next-world, and saying your doing something because you think or make out that God told you so makes it all right?

2008-12-22T15:34:00.008Z

London Luton
The British policeman gazes over the roof of the Ferrari as he cradles his short stubby machine gun. He seems to regard the new-comers with indifference, although he probably looks for qualities other than those I notice. I sip my rancid latte and wonder what is going on in his mind.

Departure lounges are good places for adventure to start. I am about to have an adventure, not a very long one, but an adventure none-the-less and how better to start than a policeman, a machine gun, and a gleaming red Ferrari. Even James Bond would fine it hard to beat that.

The armed policeman is joined by a man-fellow and they start to stroll along the shops. They walk casually and in time, like lovers in a water-meadow, quietly exchanging intimate words on the nature of bullet-proof vests and high velocity rounds. I guess that they probably aren't lovers.

There are more than the average number of Jews in the departure lounge. This might seem a strange thing to mention, but it isn't, and all will be revealed shortly. When I say all, I don't mean that I'm going to drop my trousers, more that I will, in time, impart information to justify the relevancy of my statement. Don't be discouraged at this stage.

Two Jewish men in hats amble much like the policemen, again exchanging stubs of sentences. They are followed by a boy wearing one of those little skull-caps which must have a name, who looks really rather lost.

Not ten metres from me, a young woman stands next to a pillar with a small book in her hand. She appears to be singing, although I can only just hear it, as she rocks back and forth slightly. As she sings, she checks her watch and then scans the flight times on the board without missing a beat. Then somehow, she is singing without her mouth being open. And then she isn't singing, but her mouth is working. I realise that the singing is Sinead O'Conner coming quietly from a speaker somewhere in the ceiling and in fact I cannot hear the woman who is praying.

Rather paranoidally, I look around for small bears. There are none to be seen. I don't remember any television cartoons about a bear called London Luton. Perhaps this time they will leave me alone.

I spend the previous night in an easyHotel (see easyhotel.com for more details and terms and conditions). It is a minimal hotel and the room contains two things: a bed, and an integrated all in one bathrooom. One wall of the room is painted bright day-glow orange, the others are a sponged peachy colour. Fortunately, you can't see any of them with the lights off, but I am woken at five in the morning by a nearby shop alarm that goes off for about twenty minutes before it too, falls back to sleep.

We land at Tel Aviv airport. At one point during the flight, about a dozen orthodox Jewish men queue for the toilet on the plane all at once. Later I ask Adi and she reckons that it is to wash their hands before eating.

Adi lives in Israel. I met her in Brazil and travelled with her to Colombia. Earlier this year she, and James - another friend, came over and stayed with me in London for a month, for their sins. She greets me at the airport and gives me a great big hug, which is very welcome, and I am very glad to see her, not only because all the signs are written in a font that looks like badly lined up worms.

We take a train to Be'er Sheva. Israel is not very big and we travel perhaps a quarter of the way across the country on the train in under two hours. The trains and comfortable and double-deckered and are of the same construction as the French trains.

The next day, Adi goes to study and I sleep in. I had a long weekend, which involved several episodes of friends (not the TV series, actual friends. Yes, I do have them), and a pottery class, all accompanied by a big wheely bag. I crawl out of bed at midday local time and decide to go for a walk.

I have no map and all the signs, still, look like worms, so I decide to walk in one direction until I get to the edge of Be'er Sheva. It can't be that big. I walk south west, judging by the sun, which, after the harrowing blustery cold rain of Huddersfield, has a comfortably high declination of about fifty degrees above the horizon. It isn't raining. It is probably in the mid-twenties. I am happy.

While I walk, I make a number of observations, of which some are:
- it is winter here, but there are flowers in bloom. Nice.
- there were considerably more Orthodox Jews on the plane than I see all day walking.
- pigeons and seagulls live here.
- Israelis keep and feed their cats in road-side skips.

So I walk south west, which is made easier by the fact that the road I am on runs south west. After about an hour, I get to a ring road which borders the town. On the inside are houses. On the outside is desert. It is comfortingly well defined. I take a few photos and stumble aboout in the desert for half an hour. I try to get to a tree that I can see on a distant hill, about half an hour distant, but a valley with bull-rushes lies in the way. I see no Moses.

So I turn round and walk back, and realising that I have eaten and drunk nothing since leaving. At the shop next to the appartment, I buy six donuts and then go back and make a nice cup of tea.

2008-12-07T23:39:00.003Z

Christmas
This weekend, I am visited by an old university friend, Natasha, and her two children, Katie (8) and Emily (4). I've met the children before, and on arrival they once again take to me like seagulls to an old blind man eating a bag of chips on Brighton pier.

Despite the fact that all four of us are a seasonally under the weather in different but only slightly ways, we take them to Eureka in Halifax, which is an educational centre for children up to the age of about twelve. It being Christmas soon, there is a grotto (one of those grotty American traditions that for some reason we Britains feel we must make ourselves endure). We get given a token for each of the children on entry. How exciting! I've never been to a grotto before!

We queue with the other parents (although technically not a parent, I take pleasure in pretending to be one) and as our turn comes, a young female Elf with a great big Yorkshire accent takes our tokens and leads us through into the grotto.

The grotto is a bit like one of those mirror mazes at fairs, except that there is only one way to go, and each of the mirrors has been replaced with a cotton-wool curtain. Every few sections of cotton-wool curtain, there is a little scene - a plastic deer, or a plastic crib. There were some other plastic things too, but my memory fails me as per the norm.

We arrive at the North Pole. Well, I assume it is, as there is a young man in a red suit, a fake beard and a considerable amount of padding hidden under his clothes. He also wears lens-less circular rimmed glasses. For some reason the glasses remind me of a deposed African leader, were they on another face, but I can't think who. Another Elf takes over and walks us over to Papa Crimble. He Ho-hos at us in a fake deep voice, but I have to admit, he's not doing badly. Behind the beard and the glasses, he is probably in his late twenties.

My little brother applied for the job of Santa at the local shopping centre this year. They turned him down. They said he was too young. He's about the same age as this lad. A few days ago, he (Ben, not Santa) and I were walking through the shopping centre and came across the grotto with children and adults queueing up. It was five pounds a pop. I offered to pay the fiver just so that Ben could go in and give Crimble a piece of his mind, but alas, he turned me down. He might have got in the Huddersfield Examiner if he'd gone for it.

Anyway, Pop-mas sits the two children on stalls in front of him. These days they aren't allowed to sit on his lap. He asks them their names and they tell him, and then he asks them what they want for Christmas. Katie says she's not sure, so he asks Emily and then asks her who we are. Rather un-usefully from a determining relationships point of view, she tells him that we are Natasha and Mark. For all he knows, we could be two people that they grabbed from the street. However, his is not to make judgements on the moral value of the family unit and he gives them a gift each.

There is a moment, as we stand there with the Elf, that the four of us (the adults) are all complicit in this big fake. We're all faking it for the sake of the children. I wonder if Katie has worked it out yet, but I'm not going to be the one to tell her. Emily is still wonderfully full of marvel at everything in the world, and it wouldn't have occurred to her yet (that Father Christmas isn't real! Shocker!). For some reason, I am hyper-aware of this falseness in front of us, that we four adults are performing this strange ritual to continue a lie to the children in front of us. Is that in the spirit of Christmas? To lie to your children? I answer my own question by thinking about how I feel, now that I know it isn't real, and I am grateful that my parents lied to me.

We make our way out to the sound of receding ho-ho-hos and I wonder how much he gets paid an hour. Katie and Emily have a small furry toy each that plays a tinny, digital tune when you shake it.

The next day, Sunday, I go to B&Q and buy a 24 Volt Bosch power drill with a second battery and a Bosch Electric Screwdriver with extended bit set as a present to myself. Then I spend the afternoon playing with them. All in the spirit of Christmas.

2008-08-30T13:02:00.004+01:00

Spain, 2033.79 miles
2033.79 miles
1 new tyre
Zero punctures (!?!)
46 days
5 rest days
Approx 138 pasties, and about 92 coffees and lemonades

Well, I've finished. "Horaah! I can stop reading this blog now!" I hear you say. I actually finished on Thursday as it got dark. I'm back in London now, as I haven't had easy access to a computer since then.

Thursday
The first half of the day is forests and cycle paths, but after Biarritz, the ground turns hilly and the mountains of the Pyrenees come down to the Atlantic, making the distance harder. I plan to be in Spain by mid-afternoon, but it ends up being late evening. I don't stop all day for coffee and lemonade.

It is hot here. Not just sunny, but hot. The sun hangs around at about 75° overhead for what seems like most of the day and the air is hot as well. I'm not eating very much either, which happens to me in the heat. A couple of patries in the morning and a few sandwiches in the evening. The rest is liquids and lots of them.

The geology here is like a Wallnut whip. Layers of rock have been mixed and swirled like chocolate in a fondue and then left to set.

At St Jean-de-Luz, I have my last lighthouse according to the Michelin man. It is really a port-side marker, but I photograph it anyway, its red and whiteness brilliant in the sun. I have run out of water and have to wait in a queue for a beach tap to fill the bottles. I am thirsty and the children take forever to clean their feet. The water comes out of the tap warm.

Getting to Spain is a bit of a non-event. Strangely enough, I knew it would be in advance. It takes me a while to find Spain (yes, I know it's quite big). I find the railway station at Hendaye first and then it turns out that Spain is just round the corner. It is dark when I get there. The border is at a bridge over a river called La Bidasoa. The river is effectively the border for some way inland. I would love to be able to get a stamp in my passport, but Europe doesn't work like that anymore.

The Spanish blue EU sign with the little yellow stars on it that says ESPAGNA has been sprayed over. It now says NAZI. There appears to be no welcome to France signs coming back the other way. I am a little disappointed to say the least. I take a few long exposure photos (it's dark) of the river and of another bridge and of the San Sebastien airport sign, glowing neon blue like Las Vegas.

I go over to Spain and find a bar. It has cigarette butts all over the floor, unlike France, and my coffee and lemonade cost me half as much, also unlike France. The bar is also a pension, and I take a room for the night, but before sleeping I lie awake for a while. What do I do now? Part of me just wants to go home. I'd planned to go and find one friend, who is on the other coast, and another who might fly out to join me for a few days of hiking. I feel as though I've lost my goal, just by achieving it. How does that happen?

Friday
On Friday I cross the country from the South-West to the South-East, Tendaye to Beziers. It takes 5 hours on two trains. Because I have Claudette with me, I have to take regional trains - she's not allowed on the TGV or the Thalys or such the like.

At Tendaye station, I load Claudette onto the first train. It is a two carriage affair, but there is ample luggage space. The carriages are longer and wider than UK trains, and a large section, about 5 metres of carriage, is allocated for luggage and bicycles. There is 20 minutes before the train goes, so I nip off to a boulangerie and come back with breakfast.

When I get back, Pooh is sitting opposite my place. He is looking out of the window and eating some sort of dried meat voraciously, gnawing it at and twisting it around while holding it with his molars. He makes me a little nervous now-a-days.

"Piglet around?" I ask, "Rabbit?" I'm just trying to mkae conversation. He ignores me for a while, sucking and chewing on the jerky.

"In a sense," he says, a sick smile spreading across his furry face, "... in a sense..." He slurps and makes me feel a little ill as I realise he is refering to the jerky. At least he is dry. He smells in the rain. I look out of the window at a man with a wheelie bag. Sick old bear. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Pooh turn around in his seat to climb down backwards like a child would. He's quite small really, you know. If he was nine foot tall, people would all run away.

"Hope it's not too hot, what with all the people..." is his parting comment. I see him waddle down the platform, growling and scratching. No one else seems to notice him. I wonder what he meant; the train is almost empty.

I settle down with the "The Welsh Girl". Not an actual girl, you realise, but a book I am reading, about a girl. Who is Welsh. It's a little more complicated than that, but I won't go into that here. You can read it yourself. Available in all good bookshops.

Two stops down the line, the train is full to overflowing. People are sitting on luggage in the aisles. It gets hot. I'm so glad I have a seat. I doze fitfully, and two hours later, we all get off, gasping. Claudette has slept through it all.

The train to Beziers is amazing, and half full. It even has a child's play area in one of the carriages, and again, a section for bikes with racks for eight. The seats in second class and wider and more comfortable than UK first class and the Welsh Girl and I snuggle down for a few hours (in the book, she's called Esther). I put the GPS next to the window for a while. We make 85mph.

In Beziers, I fiddle around and buy a map and go off and find a campsite. It is about an hour's cycle away. It is hot over this side as well. The map I have bought is much larger scale that the Michelin ones and I haven't got the nack of the distances yet. I little white road comes up, but I am not sure if it is the one I want or not. Pooh is nowhere around to ask, but there are two women sitting on garden furniture at the turn off, a little odd in itself. What is more odd is that they are dressed as prostitutes, pretty much, in the middle of nowhere, although I am not certain whether they are or not.

I decide I'll ask them. About the road, not the prostitute issue. They seem surprised at my question, and the answer is yes, it is the road I'm looking for. The prostitute issue I'm none the wiser about.

At the campsite I am doubly disappointed. My one friend who was here left two weeks earlier. I phone my other friend, and she can't come out because of dates and work leave issues.

I decide not to let it get me down. Easier said than done. I was really looking forward to seeing at least one friendly face. I put up the tent and shower. It being the end of the French camping season there is some entertainment at 2130, so I potter over an hour before, write diary and wait.

It starts nearer ten. Two Egyptian women come out onto the stage. Well, they're actually French, but I'm guessing they're supposed to be Egyptian because of the Sphinx painted on the wall behind them and they're wearing Egyptian style dressing-gown type things, so what really happens is this: Two pseudo-Egyptian French women appear on stage, one with a basket and one with a pseudo-baby and they both effortlessly (as in they appear to be making not much effort to make it look real) mime to a pre-recorded duet in French, which I don't get the gist of due to my French vocabulary being orientated around buying croissants and asking for directions etc. Whatever they're singing about, it is sad.

After they're done, two Kings and a Queen appear. Not real ones, you understand; they're acting as well. As Ian McKellen earnestly imparted to Ricky Gervais once, revealing a trade secret: "I'm not really a wizard you know, I'm just pretending to be one. And that's called acting! I can't really do magic."

The two psuedo-Kings want to marry the pseudo-Queen and she has to chose. She can't make her mind up. Again, the subtleties are lost on me due to linguistic limitations, but she fancies them both. Personally, I don't think that Kings should wear so much make-up.

In the third skit (and apparently, this is all part of the same story), one man comes out and actually sings! For real! But I've totally lost it at that point and go to bed. Besides, there is one of the ultra-violet fly killing things near where I'm sitting and half-dead insects keep dropping on me.

I wake in the night for bladder voiding purposes. I cannot get back to sleep. I'm worrying about what happens job wise when I get home. i.e. I don't have one. This has happened several times in the last few weeks. I was going to spend a few days just lying on the beach, but I decide that what I need to do, is just go home. Then I go to sleep.

Saturday
I am feeling positive because I have a new goal. I'm going home. I pack up. A kind man, whose name escapes me (he used to be an engineer on very large tankers, and is from County Down), gives me €10 for the RNLI, which I'll forward onto them when I get back. He also gives me a small bottle of beer and half a bottle of refrigerated water, which is great. The beer I will keep until I get home. Thank-you, nameless Co Down man, I very much appreciated it. The beer is chilling in my fridge.

I get to the station. I know it won't be cheap, but I ask for a ticket for me and Claudette to go to Dieppe, and the man says it is not possible. After a bit of questioning, I find out that apparently the only way up France on the train is via TGV from Montpellier to Paris, and Claudette can't do TGVs. Oh dear. I wander off and consider my options. I decide that what I really need to do is go to MuckDonalds.

In MuckDonalds, I do a bit of research on their wifi, and ignore the fact that I haven't actually bought anything. I have various options. I shall digress totally at this point into the realms of the English language. I want to talk about the use of the words choice and option. They are so often confused. Even on the news, the newsreader will be interviewing someone and the conversation will go like this:

Interviewer: As far as I can see, Mr Brown, you have two choices, you can ask the Bank of England to put interest rates up, or you can ask them to put them down. What are you going to do?
Brown: Err... don't you mean options?

A choice is a decision. An option is a path of action you can take. Thus Mr Brown, in his finite wisdom, does not have two choices, he has one choice to make and two (possibly three in this case) options. There, now I've said it. Really annoys me that.

So, I un-digress and have one choice to make, and a number of options (remember that - I'll be testing you on it later). I can:
- take the train to Montpellier, cycle to Paris and take the train to Dieppe.
- see if I can get a Eurolines coach that will take a bicycle.
- fly back, with Claudette as extra luggage. I'll probably be way over the limit.
- hire a car and drive home with her in the back.

I discount flying straight off. It goes against my better judgement. I try and find out about coaches and bicycles, but the information on the net seems very confused. Cycling from Montpellier to Paris involves cycling about 2/3rds of the way across France. The information about coaches on the net is indistinct and I realise what led me to this situation is lack of information anyway. So I choose the option where I am in control of most of the variables and there are less unknowns, which is the car option (note the usage of the words choose and option in this sentence).

Avis are all out, as are Europcar. Hertz however, have a wee Daewoo Matiz I can borrow one way, a horrible vehicle, but at least it won't use much fuel. I rent it for 24 hours in Beziers, one way to Dieppe. I did a route plan on Goggle maps in MuckDs. It is 600 miles (about 1000 kms). At 60mph, that would be 10 hours. I know that is highly optimistic, but 24 hours should do it.

I dismantle Claudette and buy a cheap folding map of France. Claudette, in the boot, looks very broken. I have had to remove her handlebars as well as her wheels to get her in. It looks as though I've snapped her neck. I get in and start driving. The gear-stick is on my right, not my left, but after a few minutes, I stop noticing and get on with avoiding cars. It is 1530.

At 0100 on Sunday, I am somewhere near Bourges, and getting sleepy, despite 4 cans of cheap lemonade and three coffees. I stop and sleep not very well for a while. Then I get going again. I come off the autoroute at Vierzon. I might as well avoid the peage. Not long after, I realise that I'm too sleepy to drive safely again and pull over. I try sleeping in the passenger seat so the wheel isn't in the way.

Sunday
When I wake up, Pooh is driving. The Doors are playing at full volume on the radio. He's jammed the bike pump between the seat and the accelerator to hold it down and is standing up so he can see. It is un-safe. Even I can see that. He's only driving with one hand. A bottle is in the other.

"What the hell are you doing, you crazy bear?" He takes a swig from the bottle, which says Mead on the side.

"I'm making time!" he shouts, reminding me strangely of a scene from the film Withnail and I. The pedal is to the floor, but he hasn't worked out how to change gear and we're in first still, so we're only doing about 15mph thank goodness, and we're going round the car park trying to find the exit. Silly bear. I remove the bike pump and car bunnyhops to a halt.

"Get back into my imagination where you belong," I tell him, and he does. I know he only means well. I start driving again. At about 0400 we pass Chartres and then I have another snooze at Evreux. I stick to the driver's seat this time in case Pooh starts any antics, but I see no sign of him.

I get to Dieppe at about 1000 on Sunday. I feel not just a little spaced out. Claudette comes together nicely and I drop off the tin can. It is beneath my dignity to give a Daewoo a personality or a name. It is a tin can.

On the ferry, I write in my diary but mostly sleep, playing catch up. I'm not as young as I used to be. That really is the most stupidly cliché'd sentence ever. "I'm not as young as I used to be." It is so obviously a tautology, and will remain so until someone comes up with some sort of age stabilisation or regression technology. Not in my lifetime. I've never had anyone come come back with, "Well, I was 45 last birthday, but amazingly, I've lost a decade this last year!"

I finally get into Victoria as it is starting to get dark. On the train, a hoodie tries to muck around with Claudette. He's obviously under the influence of something and even his two mates find him embarrassing. I've spent six weeks cycling round France and everyone I've met had treated me with kindness and respect and I've shown the same back, and within a couple of hours of being back in the country this sort of things happens.

I'm pretty angry and go over and ask him to leave my bike alone. I'm not shouting and am being diplomatic but forceful, but I guess that my anger shows in my face, because just for one sentence his entire persona drops away and he looks scared and he knows I've seen it. He'd been putting on some sort of black American gangster thing, calling everyone niggas but just for one sentence he becomes a normal person again. Then he regresses again.

These kids all want 'respect', but what they don't realise is that if people are to respect them, they have to behave as though they respect themselves, and respect is only something you can give, not something you can demand. Fortunately, he left Claudette alone after that, although he was mucking around a bit with some other luggage. I can't fight everyone's wars.

It rains furiously cycling home. I get soaked. I almost can't remember the way and nearly get lost. As I cycle home, I wonder if it it is really all over? It isn't over until the fat lady sings, as they say, but as I turn into Wrigglesworth Street, I pass a woman with dyed red frizzy hair and an umbrella. She is humming to herself in the dark and seems sufficiently stout, so I suppose, yes, I'm done now.

I've just cycled the Belgian and French coasts from Holland to Spain to raise money for the RNLI. If you've enjoyed reading my blog, and haven't already done so, please consider donating to them here. I've had a great trip which I've really enjoyed and if you've been following me, I hope you have too. Many thanks for reading.

2008-08-25T14:31:00.009+01:00

Day 43, Biscarrosse, 1897.94 miles
Well, it looks like it's going to be a wee bit over 2000. I could probably finish it off in a couple of days if I tried really hard, but I'm really enjoying the cycling down here, so I'm going to take it gently, stop in cafes, drink coffee and orange juice, write diary and sightsee a little bit.

About two hours after my last blog, I cycle uphill over a bridge. Not a serious uphill, but the gentle incline of a I'm a little French bridge uphill. The tendon in my leg has only been hurting very slightly for a while, but I am still wearing the brace - a belt and braces sort of approach (haha!). Suddenly, there is a sharp painful twang in another muscle on that leg and I yelp. It is the smaller of the two main muscles of the upper thigh, that runs up from inside the knee (I believe, after a little research, it is called the vastus medialis). The pain is sharp and nasty, and is occurs when I press down on the pedal, so I freewheel to a stop and lean Claudette against the bridge railings.

It feels fine to walk on. I peel down the brace and give it a good massage for five minutes and get back on Claudette, starting very gently. Within a dozen rotations it does it again, a shooting pain, and I yelp again. Not just yelp, but I won't impart my copious verblogy here in detail.

I pull over again and re-massage the muscle. I wonder if I had too much coffee and not enough orange juice in last MuckDonalds. It is an unhappy leg. Good news, this is not. I peel the brace back up and consult Mr Michelin. He tells me that Les Sables d'Olonne is slightly closer than St Gilles now, and also downwind. It also looks flat all the way. At this point, I am giving myself chances of actually getting to Les Sables on Claudette and whether I can find a physio there.

I start cycling again very, very slowly, doing all the work with my right (good) leg, the left just functioning as dead weight. This seems to work a little better and I cruise along at a sedate 5mph for a while.

At the D122, I put a little more pressure on it. The acute pain has been replaced by a duller bruise-like feeling, and I get up to about 8mph. I decide, for the moment, to shelve the physio idea.

Down in Les Sables, I get two lighthouses. For some reason, I forget to photograph the third. The first is way out on a reef, the Phare des Barges. The second looks like a tall Art Deco effort, and has that same unattractive attractiveness that Art Deco has.

I do not understand why Art Deco looks good, because it is, on the face of it, a recipe for ugliness. Straight lines and curves, I suppose, without that angularity of the 50s and 60s onwards. For some reason, Art Deco buildings seems to look like parts of old ocean liners. This lighthouse looks ok. It is called Le Phare de a'Armandeche.

The last lighthouse, the one I forget to photograph, is actually a great big port side marker on the end of a jetty.

That was nearly a week ago. Strangely, after about two days, my leg was giving me no pain what-so-ever in anyway. I have stopped using the brace. It has never felt better. About time. Up till now I've had pain in that leg of some sort almost since the start.

The last few days it almost feels as though I have ceased to exist. Not in any bad way. I have been cycling along cycle tracks through forest, and I have started to realise that I haven't been in touch with anyone for about a week now. I haven't really felt a sense of isolation, more that I could just continue like this indefinitely. I quite like the solitude, the not really existing in any social sense, just existing and doing the things I need to do: cycle, eat, drink, camp. No responsibility.

I've stopped using campsites. There are so many beaches here that I stop about twice a day to go swimming. Almost all of them have fresh water showers that I can rinse off underneath afterwards and foot-wash taps that I can fill the water bottles from. My only cost is food, which is about €10-15 a day.

I've also noticed that my sense of smell is better. I'm not entirely sure why. I real Perfume a few weeks back on a rest day (great book), and it might just be that I am noticing my sense of smell more than I used to because of that. I'm mostly out in the countryside. I can differentiate between the smell of the pine and the moss, and very much smell the tarmac. There is also another smell, which is the smell of dusty heat. You don't really smell it in England - it doesn't get hot enough - I first smelt it in Kenya. It is a bit like the smell of a slow burning wood-fire, but without anything burning. I think it might be the smell of rotten wood which has then dried out. A couple of days back, I was cycling along, over a hilly bit (as in telly-tubbies hilly, nothing serious), and I could smell hotdogs. Just a dribble of a smell, but I kept catching it now and then. About a mile later, I come across on of those Aire de camping-cars (picnic areas to us), and there is a family eating hotdogs. I love the fact I can smell the sea all the time.

["Quick! Run! Family-eating hotdogs!"]

Also, the surf here is great. I was never one for surfing on a surf-board. It always seems lots of hard work for about 10 seconds wobbly glory and then you fall off. Boogie boarding is better, but I've started body surfing. Once you suss out where and how the waves are breaking (depends on the beach and swell), you can get a wave almost every time. I still haven't learned how to steer though. I just end up being mushed in a great washing machine of sand and foam. Great for exfoliating the skin!

I came across my most favourite lighthouse a few days ago. I can't exactly say why I thought it was so great. It's a bit like trying to define why your best friend is so best. However, I'll try to describe the experience.

I arrive at le Phare de St-Georges-de-Didonne. It is square, stone, and looks of Victorian era, although obviously that term doesn't exactly apply on non-empire soil, and it is just the right height, of course, about 35m. If I pay €1.60 to a bored-looking, long-haired youth talking on a mobile, I can go up it, so, I pay €1.60 to a bored-looking, long-haired youth talking on a mobile, and enter there-in.

I like it. I like it very much. I walk rapidly up it. I can do this now I'm fitter. My heart rate increases, but I'm not out of breath. On the way up, each window has old varnished woodwork panelling, and the brass handrail is worn wonderfully smooth. If I were to live in a lighthouse, it would be this one, except that there is not the living space. There would barely be room for a cot in the lightroom, and that is the only room.

There is a balcony at the top, with stone balustrades, and I walk all the way round, taking note of the plaques, non-Victorian-era, added in each corner indicating visible landmarks.

Strictly speaking, it isn't actually a lighthouse, but a leading light. The lightroom has only one window to the NW, with a fixed Fresnel lens pointing through it. I take a photo through the lens, after an annoying four year old, who knows I am waiting to do so, finally gets bored of me not reacting to her being in the way. I really, really like this lighthouse. I go back down, admiring the steps, polished and curved by so many footfalls. This is the best lighthouse I will see this trip, I already know it. It's all downhill from here.

And it is. I know I'm near the end, and I don't really want to finish. Since my leg stopped being a pain, and the hills turned into sand-dunes, and the headwind into hedonism, I am really very much enjoying myself, so I'm slowing down slightly to enjoy the environment, the cycling, the sea, the swimming, and the slugs on the cyclepath in the morning that I have to dodge.

I'm cycling the coast of France (and Belgium - mustn't forget them), to raise money for the RNLI (the UK lifeboats for those from other shores). If you're enjoying my blog and you haven't already done so, please consider donating here. Many thanks.

2008-08-19T08:59:00.010+01:00

St-Gilles-Croix-la_vie, 1550.43 miles
I find a toad on the cycle path this morning coming back into town (I dossed just south of here last night). This excites me, as I thought I could recompense for allowing the evil child for killing the other toad a few weeks back. I bring Claudette to a halt a few yards later and mount her on her stand, which is easy on the flat. On anything else, I need to lean her against a wall.

I look back. Excellent! The toad is still there. I get out my camera and walk over taking care not to scare it, and squat down and photograph it. It isn't camera-shy, and ignores me, looking straight ahead.

I reach forward, and remembering the tree frogs with poisonous skins in the amazon, give it a prod with the back of a fingernail. It is dead.

There would have been a time a few years ago when even this would have excited me, and I would have upturned it to determine the cause of death, but I don't. I don't even move it. It doesn't even really sadden me. Things live. Things die. A seagull will eat it and then, in a way, it will become part of something live again. That is the way of the world.

A couple of days ago, I leave a campsite near Crubelz and head south. I get to Carnac. It is a picturesque ville and it has a salon de the, which means I can get to drink coffee and lemonade without the imposition of MTV, the betting channel, or Lottovision. I order a coffee, orange juice and two croissant aux armandes.

In France, they have a different kind of horse racing, which seems to be showing in all the cafe-bars that I go into at the moment. Small-time betting seems to be big here. Scratch cards, the weird computer generated lotto game which has a new game every two minutes and this weird horse-racing. The jockeys don't sit on the horses, but directly over the axle of a two wheeled cart that is pulled behind the horse, effectively sitting directly behind its... erm... bum. The horse doesn't seem to trot, canter or gallop, but rather run, having at least one foot in contact with the ground, at least as far as I can determine. In cafe-bars all around the country, people give each other pieces of paper, related to which horse and rider goes the fastest, called Euros.

Coming back to the salon de the, I am rummaging around in my handlebar bag and realise that my passport is still behind the desk at the office of the campsite I have just left. Ooops. I have just cycled about 12 miles from there. I finish my breakfast and start cycling back. I can't even be bothered to write my diary. I am very very miffed with myself, the campsite, the salon de the and the whole world.

I get back to the campsite. The office is closed for lunch until 1530, so I go and find the caravan that the campsite owner lives in. She is very apologetic, and I am as nice as pie, saying that it is la vie. Which it is. As Joe Bennett would say, "Mustn't grumble..." I get back on Claudette and head off.

I cycle for the rest of the day, still angry inside at the lost time and wasted distance. I cycle through Auray, trying not to get lost, then through Vannes. I have to take little white roads that run parallel to the motorway. There is a headwind today, and it is very unpleasant. At about 2pm, it rains for about an hour.

I follow the N165 on little white roads to Muzillac and then have to detour down south to get to Arzal. All the hamlets for the last few hundred miles all start with the letters Ker. None of them appear on my maps and they are shown on the signposts in a different font to normal place names. I wonder if it is a regional dialect. I know that part of France has a second language that is some sort of Celtic. Perhaps it is to do with that.

At Arzal, I stop and hide in a phone box because it starts raining very heavily. It is cold. I think about phoning home, but I feel really miserable and I don't really want to give the folks the feeling that life is awful, because it isn't.

It is cold in the phone box. The rain eases off a bit, so I leave. My hands and feet are cold. I head down a valley and over a Barrage. People in raincoats are fishing from it, but not many. It is getting late now and I haven't seen a campsite for a while. It might be another night of dossing. Oh dear. I have a campsite map, and there are some marked out near Quimiac and Piriac, but I know the offices will be closed now. My own fault really, but I just wanted to keep going.

I stop in Asserac. I have suddenly gone really shaky and I can't think. I prop Claudette against a roadworks sign and grope around in the food bag. The tube of condensed milk comes to hand, and I suck on it greedily, like an unrelenting newly-born calf on the sore swollen udders of its poor mother. 43% sugars go down my throat. Whaaaa!!! Probably several times my RDA.

I also eat some cheese, bread and a piece of sausage. I'm all for a balanced diet. I am tired now and cycling on through Mesquer. I cannot cycle at speed. I am just turning the pedals now. It is getting dark. It is still raining. I cannot find a good doss site. I pass a couple of campsites and everything is closed up.

In Quimiac, I crack and follow a sign that says hotel. There is only one hotel that I can see, and it looks quite posh. I check the tarifs: €54. It sort of breaks the rules of my trip, but I made them up in the first place. I decide to go for it, remove the brace from my leg, put on my fleece and try to look respectable, not bedraggled, and remember that attitude is everything. I walk in, tell the desk clerk that I'd like a room for the night, what awful weather it is, oh and I've just cycled through the rain all day to get here.

Ten minutes later, Claudette is in a garage and I am in a room that has two single beds, an ensuite bathroom, a heater, a TV. I take off all my clothes and stand under the shower until my hands and feet are warm and then wash. The bottom of my right foot hurts. I have had problems with it for a few weeks. It has a layer of hard skin on the heel that I've had since sailing to Brazil on Argonaut (hot teak decks and bare feet) and that has dried out so much from wearing sandles that it has a crack in it down through all the layers of skin. When I walk on it, that crack is pushed open. It hurts to walk. Don't worry, I won't post photos.

The warm water slowly softens the skin and it hurts less and less. The shower is wonderful. I don't have to keep pressing the on button or put coins into it. I shower for about half an hour.

There is a full length mirror in the room. I have lost weight around my waist. I knew this anyway from my clothes, but it shows.

I lie down on the bed. It is amazingly soft. So, so soft. Deliciously so. I lie there for five minutes feeling the softness and realise that were I to cycle with this at the end of each day it would be a doddle. No tent to pack up. Making and breaking camp takes about two hours a day. I can dry clothes next to the heater. Breakfast is included, so I don't have to worry about that tomorrow morning. I don't have to get dressed and walk 100 yards in the dark to be able to void my bladder. It is bliss.

Despite it being late, I don't know what to do with myself, so I dry my clothes bit by bit next to the heater over the back of a chair, and try and dry my towel out. For a moment, I wonder if I can dry the tent out, but that's going a bit far and more to the point, there is no way to hang it from the ceiling.

I have a Daily Telegraph with me which I bought for €3.40. It is a few days old and I haven't managed to read anything other than the front page which has an article about Prince Charles and GM crops on it. I open it up and spread it on the bed. There are Olympics happening apparently! In China! Lordy-lord! The British summer, is being typically British, and things cost more. I turn on the TV. CSI somthing is on in dubbed French. I can understand bits, but I have to work at it. I log the milage in my diary. I've done 91 miles today. No wonder I was groaning for the last couple of hours.

My last clothes dry out, and I decide to go to sleep! I am so looking forward to breakfast.

I'm cycling from Holland to Spain along the Belgian and French coasts to raise money for the RNLI, the UK lifeboat services (le charite des sauveterus en mer en Angleterre). If you're enjoiny my blog, and haven't already done so, please consider donating to them, which you can do here. If you have already done so, many, many thanks. I hope you enjoy reading.

2008-08-14T15:20:00.010+01:00

Happy 100th birthday, blog, 1306.22 miles, Lorient
This is my hundredth post since I started in 2004. My, what a lot of verbage I'm capable of coming up with. I hope someone is backing this up, cos I'm not!

I'm in MuckDonalds on the outskirts of Lorient. I've just managed to get out of that awfully windy Finistere, thank goodness. I turned the corner at Penmarch yesterday and headed East with the wind behind me and chowed over to Loctudy at a very encouraging 20-25mph. However, having now left Finistere, there is far less wind, so not much of a tail wind today, but still much nicer.

Quick note to Neeraj. Thanks very much for your messages. It's very encouraging, but I don't have your email address. It's really nice to get messages though. I feel a bit out on a limb sometimes. Anyway, here we go, bloghead on.

I stop at a windfarm. I remember someone saying that they were loud, but they're not. You can hear them if you're within a hundred metres. I stand directly under a turbine and look upwards. This is Finistere, remember, so it is moving really quite fast. It is dizzying. There is a road that passes within about 20 metres of the base and a car passes at about 40mph. It drowns out the noise of the turbine completely.

Later, I am pushing Claudette up a hill. Sometimes, it is easier to do this in the wind and a bit safer. I wiggle around a bit in low gear if I cycle, especially in a cross-wind. Traffic doesn't seem to realise this. It is a steep hill and the road leads up to the shoulder, so I get off and then notice Pooh in front of me leading the way. He is skipping every third step.

"Another hill," he says.
"Yup," I say, resignedly, but we aren't far from the shoulder now. He makes up a song about it.
"What a beautiful day - we're nearly halfway. Tum-te-tum - I wonder when we'll be done?"
"What do you mean? We're nearly at the top, you silly bear..." I say.
"Que sera sera..." he mutters, and shuts up.

Sure enough, a minute later as we reach the shoulder, the road takes a dog-leg bend and runs up the shoulder to the summit.

"Darned bear," I hear myself saying, wondering how he knew that. He's not really there anyway. He's also starting to annoy me.

"Pooh, you smell," I tell him. And he does, although I've been sufficiently polite not to mention it until now. He is, after all, a bear, and has a musty rotten ambience about him. I wonder what he eats? Honey, when he can get it I know, but carion mostly. I saw him getting very excited by a road-kill the other day. He disappeared soon afterwards.

"Pooh? When did you last brush your teeth?" But he's not there. I am at the top, so I get on and go.

I decide to do one nominal island, Ile d'Ouessant, from Le Conquet. I have to get up early to do so and the boat leaves at 0800, so I camp in a picnic area behind some bushes. The nearest campsite is about an hour's cycle away. I have to unload Claudette to put her on the ferry and for some reason this annoys me, but I'm grouchy again this morning. The boat is similar to a deep sea fishing vessel rigged out to take passengers, say 100 or so. I doze off during the trip. An hour later, we pull in at a port on the E side of Ouessant.

One of the ferrymen helps me with the panniers and the bike up the port steps and I thank him. I reconstruct her (she is grateful), and cycle off up the hill, proudly passing the bicycle hire place (look at me! I've brought my own!), but stopping briefly to pick up a tourist map of the island from the ferry booking hall (but I don't know where I'm going!).

At the top of the hill, the road splits in three, North, West or South. North and West have people on them, so I turn South towards my first lighthouse, le Phare du Men Korn. They are uninspiring photos: flat. The way I feel.

I continue on Claudette through the hamlet of Kerber. I lie her near a tiny chapel on a tussock and walk down towards a headland to photograph le Phare de Kereon. It is still overcast and I feel sleepy. I lie down out of the wind and doze using the map wallet as a pillow. I feel the sun come out and then go back in again. When I wake up it is overcast again, but I feel more human.

On that headland is a patch of burnt gorse and heather. It has an unmistakable smell that I had forgotten about from long ago. I once walked through a bush-fire in Zimbabwe (they have gaps in them). Also nearby is an enclosure we a couple of dozen beehives in. For a moment, I wonder if I am walking over the set of the Wicker Man, which freaks me out slightly, and I check all around for a rugby team of misandric women in strange bee-loving robes, but today I am relieved to find that there are none.

Presumably the enclosure is to keep Joe Public out, not the bees in, because they hurry in and out as busy as, well, bees. There are warning signs indicating that the public should stay away, so I ignore them to go and stand next to the fence and watch them enter and leave their hives. I want to see if I can see them do that wiggle dance thing. But I can't. Pooh is trying to climb over the fence, but he can't. He is getting stung.

"Isn't it funny - ow! - how a bear likes - ow! honey!"

I leave him to it. The bees leave me alone. I leave them alone. Back at Claudette, I cycle into Lampaul and find a cafe. I fall asleep after a coffee and an orange juice.

Later, I go down to a headland. I have photographed five lighthouses, although one might turn out to be a be a very big E cardinal mark, and then I pass back through Lampaul heading for my last lighthouse.

As I pass the church, I hear what sounds like live classical music coming through an open door. I'm not certain after the monks at Bayeux who I was sure were real somewhere, but turned out to be recorded. Anyway, three female musicians are set up just below the choir, a pianist (grand), cellist and a violinist. It is glorious. It is Schubert. I sit entranced, as do a few others, until I get to the point where I was going to have to miss out my last lighthouse or miss the boat. There is something magical about watching and listening to performers who are 100% engrossed in what they are doing. And these three are only practicing.

It reminded me of a movie I once saw, about air traffic controllers. It was a poor movie, but it had a scene that attempts to show that what is shown on the screen for an ATC is merely a representation to that which goes on in his (in this case) head. There is an extra dimension in live performance. As an audience, we see the performer read the music, the hands move and hear the end product, but the translation and emotion that goes through the performer that is visible in their face and posture has always fascinated me. There is a process going on in a performer, the sensation of which the rest of us can only share residually.

I fall asleep on the boat back to the mainland as well, until my GPS decides to alert me to a nearby lighthouse. I get eight in all that day!

I'm getting a bit bored of posting loads of lighthouses, so not going to post very many. Probably next time. Gavin (brother - hi Gavs) was wondering why I was posting them all. So, other photos are below. I'll set up a webpage when I get back with all the lighthouses on.

If you're following my blog and enjoying it, I'm cycling to Spain along the coast of France to raise money for the RNLI (les bateaux de sauvetages en Angleterre). If you're enjoying it, and haven't already done so, please consider donating here. Many thanks.

2008-08-08T15:37:00.013+01:00

Day 25, 1015.82 miles, in a MuckDonalds in Lannion
Yesterday:
I wake up grumpy. It's not unusual, but I feel more grumpy than normal. I've been awake on and off for a while, and have been through a pleasant sequence of wake-sleep-wake-sleep dreams, none of which I can recall. But now I'm grumpy. I have woken up in Camping Bellevue on a little peninsuala that contains Hillon. And it has a nice view. I pack up, buy the last croissant in the camping office, and leave.

The morning passes with St Brieuc. I stop for a coffee and to buy a new packet of ink cartridges. St Brieuc is large and I finally find my way out with the aid of a French cyclist, who wishes me Bon Chance. It is nicely overcast with a gentle wind from nowhere. Good cycling weather so far, although the clouds are low and look laiden.

Just after Pordic, the heavens open, so quickly that there is no time to do anything. It is an absolute downpour and I am soaked through within about a minute. The road is awash with water and I am being soaked further by the cars, which doesn't really matter. Some give me the dignity of slowing down, but most, as always happens in bad weather (why, I know not), drive faster and closer than normal. It is as though the weather is yet a further level of distancing. I can barely see through my sunnies, which do however, stop the rain going in my eyes.

Once the rain stops, ten minutes later, I pull over into a layby. I take off my tee-shirt - the RNLI one - wring it out and put it back on. It is wet and floppy and cold. A truck driver has stopped to stretch out his calf muscles. I get back on Claudette; I will only get cold here.

For a while the sun comes out for short periods and I start steaming! Then it becomes overcast again. Not the overcast of individual clouds, just one heavy low anonymous cloud with no distinguishable bits - you know what I mean. Then it starts raining again, spitting gently at first. Rather than get caught out wet, I stop just down a side lane where there is a selection of yew trees.

I sit on a soft cushion of dry needles. It is quiet, except for the odd car passing. It is still raining, but I am dry, if a little cold. I go to the bike and get my cycling top out, which is dry, and swap into it for the RNLI one. I also take out the €4 poncho I bought in Plancoet and put that on. It is thinner than a bin-liner, but it seems to be stopping any breeze, and I can hug my legs under it so that it covers me all.

After a while, for the first time this trip, story-book characters come to visit me. In the states, it was half-way up Washington state, quite late on, and included a menagerie of Harry Potter, Frodo Baggins and Biggles. This time, I suddenly find that Winnie the Pooh is sitting next to me. He, also, is hugging his knees.

"It's raining," he says, and growls slightly under his breath.
"I know," I say.
"Oh well..." he says, and looks out at the dead sky, it being void of features.
"At least we're dry in here," I say, trying to cheer him up.
"Tum-tee-tum," he hums to himself.

Rabbit is hopping up and down next to Claudette, as though he is playing hop-skotch. "Got to go! Got to go!" he sings in time with his skipping. I hadn't noticed him before.

"Not in this weather," I say.
"Got a job to do. Look at the time," he says, pointing at my bike computer.
"Rain. I hate rain." Eyeore is sitting the other side of me. He doesn't bother looking at me.
"Yes," I say, "but what good will hating it do? It's going to rain whether you hate it or not."
"What a gloomy place..." he says.

Rabbit wins, and as I get up to cycle, the animals disappear in a puff of nothing. Fortunate, really, as tigger was about to cause a serious road traffic accident. I am skeptical about the bin-liner poncho. It will rip very easily. I get on the bike and go.

As soon as I get up past about 6mph, the poncho slides up to chest level and blows out backwards like a penant from a masthead. I feel like a dysfunctional kite and imagine, look pretty stupid. Within about 5 minutes, I have given up on it, stuff it under a bunjee on the back and cycle getting wet again. The cycle top doesn't feel as wet as the cotton tee-shirt. I am fed up, tired, cold and this certainly isn't fun at the moment.

It is still raining as I pull into Plouezec. I ask in a cafe/bar if they are still serving food. They are not. A drunk man tells me three times that I can get a croque-monsieur up the road from Jean-Luc before I can escape. I feel very impatient with him from having to fight against the weather. I haven't really got energy for social niceties. I manage to remain civil and leave and just keep going north-west. Let Jean-Luc eat cake.

At Paimpol, the rain has stopped, and I have started to dry out. No blue sky though. I ask at tourist information about Ile de Brehat, which being an island, is actually beyond my remit. However, to take a bike there, you have to take the 0930 ferry over and have to return on the 1600, despite the fact that there are ferries at least once an hour. And it costs €27. Apparently, this is to discourage cyclists. I'm not locking up Claudette on the mainland with paniers and hoping for the best, and I'm not going to take a whole day out, so I give it a miss. Shame.

I leave Paimpol and find Lezardrieux and then cycle North to find the lighthouse Le Bodic. I cannot find it. I feel ragged. I am cold and shakey, so I balance Claudette against a wall in a ditch of nettles and eat some stuff. I cycle back to Lezardreaux and manage to photograph a couple of lighthouses on the river, hoping that one of them is Le Bodic.

Also, there, is the regional office of phares et balises (lighthouses and buoyage) here. In the grounds are two good examples of Fresnel lenses. One of them is fitted with a red sector. I take photos, now with a sense of duty, rather than glee.

I am tired now, and leave Lezardrieux. I plan to cycle to Perres-Guirec and camp, about 15-20 miles away. As I leave, a headwind kicks in. There is a long climb out of Lezardrieux and the same again out of Treguier. I am up on high ground, and it is exposed. I am so tired that I start shouting obsceneties at the wind, words that are fortunately blown nowhere else but into the wheat. The road is flat, but I cannot get over 9mph. I feel as though I am propelled by anger, frustration, but mostly by the fact I need to put up my tent and eat something. I decide to take the first campsite I find and there is one at Kermaria-Sulard, about five miles short of Perros-Guirec.

Today:
Today, I decide when I get up, will be a shorter day. It hasn't rained so far, and I've cycled about 15 miles, up to Ploumanach and then down to Lannion. It is nearly 6pm, but I've been a tourist today, and taken great pleasure in it. It hasn't rained, and my stuff is mostly dry as I've been using a bunjee cord on the back of the bike as a clothes line.

I've not found the last few days easy going. I knew Finistere would be tough, and this is about what I expected, but the is always a difference between deciding that you will do something and actually doing it. It is certainly considerably harder that the ride in the states. The headwind is stronger, it is colder and damper, I am two years older (if that makes a difference), and my knee aches from the damp. Raising my seat seems to have helped somewhat though. My dream of managing a one hundred mile day, as I did last time, has currently been shelved.

I have two or three more days of this, and then I will be at Brest, and moving South, and although that will then be right next to the Atlantic, the conditions should get progressively easier, and I should be out of the headwinds. Like a square-rigger, I sail better down-wind.

I'd like to say a special thank you here to Bart and Hirda (hope I've spelt that right), the Dutch couple that showed me so much hospitality during my recent rest day. Thank you so much for the breakfasts, and the sardine meal, the photo of which is here. I very much appreciated it. Please keep in touch if you can.

Also, to Patrick, with whom I passed an excellent morning and played pingpong. I will be in touch, but it probably won't be until I finish this. Your card is buried safely deep within a panier. Keep singing and writing.

Lighthouses, lifeboats:

Misc

If you're enjoying reading my blog, and haven't yet done so, please consider dontating to the RNLI, for which I'm doing this sponsored cycle. You can do so, by clicking here. Many thanks to everyone who already has.

2008-08-05T15:07:00.009+01:00

Day 23
Miles from Holland: 879 miles
Max speed: 39.2 mph (downhill from the lighthouse into Carteret. Only slowed down for a speedhump or would have made 40).

Well, I've stopped out again for a day due to my knee which isn't serious, but I put in two hard 70 mile days into headwinds and rain and I need to give it a rest for a day, so I am. The brace helps a lot. I am finding the wet and the wind really hard going and I've got Finistere just coming up. I've spent the morning looking at maps, circling lighthouses and estimating days and if all goes well, Finistere will take me a minimum of about 12 days. I doubt it will be that easy. Here are some random diary entries. They are in no particular order and about no particular thing (photos at the bottom if you like them most).

Breaking camp in the rain
I don't really know when I've come to be awake. I become aware of the noise of rain on the tent and the light. Every now and then, an extra wind blows and water drops onto the tent in bagsful, without the bags. I turn on to my side, bunching up the fleece under my head, and trying to ignore my bladder, and it works for a while because I fall asleep again.

I wake again realising that I need to get up. Like an emerging mole I put my head out of the tent. The rain on the tent is mostly dripping from the tree, but it is spitting gently. Cold, wet spit. I change into cycle shorts and tee shirt and sort stuff out along each side of the tent for each of the two paniers, so that I can pack the paniers in the tent door. I go and shave and shower.

I come back and pack. It is horrible in the wet. Half of the pitch is damp sand. I hate packing the tent wet - it is bad form and grim. Most of the inner stays dry. Good.

Brief encounter in Granville tourist information and Chaz and Dave
I freewheel down into Granville. It seems quite large as Mr Michelin indicates. I follow signs for Tourist Information and pull over in front of it and bizarrely head some Chaz and Dave style tune on the accordian playing from a speaker mounted on a lamp-post right next to the office. How odd, I think and lean the bike against a circular water feature and go in.

A beautiful girl sites at the desk and she smiles at me, so I go forward to address her. Suddenly, and old woman appears from nowhere, like the shop keeper in Mr Ben, but with less jerky motions. Mostly.

"Oui?" she says. I acquire a map about campsites from her and leave, wistfully glancing at beautiful girl, as I'm sure many a man would. She smiles back politely.

I spend some time outside looking at the map, weighing up options and remember that I need to find the lighthouse as well and go back inside. Old lady is talking to old man (a new character, previously not introduced). Beautiful girl stands and comes over and I ask her about lighthouses. She excitedly explains where it is with another map - it is quite easy to find (some aren't). She is standing next to me and smells nice, of some perfume or soap. I imagine that I smell horrible and sweaty and hopes that she doesn't mind.

Then we have finished speaking and I am back outside with Claudette, the true love of my life at the moment. Chaz and Dave have been replaced by Agadoo on the speaker. I wonder if old lady or beautiful girl chose the music.

I cycle off down the street and realise that there is a speaker every third lemp-post. As I get down into Granville proper, there are no more speakers, but some marching tune, which vaguely reminds me of the Monty Python theme tune is playing.

On the accordian.

Tidal boring
Well, that was a first for me. My firt tidal bore. I am in Pontaubault which has a river called the Selune, which feeds the estuary of the Baie de Mont St Michelle. The river itself is not wide, perhaps 20 metres. At one moment the water is moving sluggishly downstream, then a wave appears round the corner, about a foot high moving upstream. It curles and splashes over the bank. Then is has passed, the river is at least a foot higher, and the river is flowing considerably more rapidly upstream.

I wonder what characteristics of a river cause it to have a tidal bore. More to the point, why don't all rivers? I would imagine that there is an interface surface that stretches from the surface to the river/sea-bed, between the river water and the sea, and that surface moves up or downstream depending on the state of the tide and the level of the river. Perhaps they all do, but for most of them, it stays out beyond the rover mouth?

Free camping, a very nice man, not from the AA, and Lambrettas
I arrive at the campsite, pretty exhausted. The owner at the desk is English and we start chatting. I explain that I am cycling to Spain for charity, and he suggests that I stay for free. I am bowled over and check that I have heard ok. Then he offers me a caravan. It is not a big caravan, but to me it is a palace. I can barely believe it! I must have looked really tired!

To have the facility to spread my belongings out and not have to worry about rain or dirt is such a luxury. I cannot do this in the tent with me in it. A lot of my stuff stays outside for the night in the panniers, which are water proof. When I lie down on the mattress at night, I realise that I have got used to the thermorest. It feels unbelievably soft! I try and stay awake for as long as possible so that I can feel the softness, but I fall asleep quickly.

The next morning, David (his name) makes me Fresh coffee and we sit and chat for an hour about random things. We get onto Lambrettas. He bought one in the year of my birth and removed most of the mirrors to make it go faster. He used to super-tune them up and face them on open days at race tracks, quite often overtaking motorbikes. Anyway, for his kindness, and yes David, I really appreciated that, I said I'd give him a mention here, if it helps.

David Barnett, Camping de la Selune (here), many thanks.

If you're enjoying my blogging of this ride and haven't done so yet, please consider donating to the RNLI. You can do so here. Many thanks for those who have already.

2008-07-29T18:59:00.008+01:00

Day 16, 625 miles
This will be a fairly short entry, I'm afraid, and in a slightly different vein to the others. I'm in Cherbourg, my last chance to jump on a ferry home, but I'm not going to. Today was really hard going; I felt exhausted all day and there has been a horrible headwind which I haven't had much of for a few days. Looking at the shape of the land (I'm on the end of a North-pointing peninsula) and the general direction of weather systems, I suppose that's not surprising.

I had my mobile pinched a few days ago, while it was charging, which is really quite frustrating, although I guess I don't have to worry about charging it anymore. I was keeping in touch with about four people, who I've emailed individually. If you're expecting a text from me and you haven't got one, please read your emails.

Also, could the following people forward me a phone number or email:
- Lee Smith, HSBC (sorry mate, never wrote it down)
- Natasha Round
- Kate Fitzpatrick (email and/or mobile)
- Billy Moorings, the guy in Ireland who is looking after Melanthe, if you are reading this.

Many thanks.

Stupidly, I've left the cable for the card reader in the tent, about five miles away, so there are no photos for this entry. Hopefully sorted for next time. I'm feeling bizarrely uninspired, probably due to the fact that I'm sitting in a MacDonalds to get wifi access, so I'm going to copy most of Sunday from my diary (which I'm currently trying out in the present tense as well). Don't worry, they won't be about picking my nose, or toe-nail clipping or stuff like that. I'll remove the expletives about the phone as well, but other than that, it's word for word.

2008-07-27 Sun 2040FST, Cafe, Caretan
Get up this morning and someone had stolen my phone. Asked at the campsite office. No. But he directed me to the site that the couple that keep the toilets clean, live at. I'd stupidly left it from 3am to 7am there, charging. A woman came out, and she seemed fine until she realised what I was asking about in my broken French. At this point she started trembling and looked nervous, and her body language seemed all wrong. She seemed to calm down when her husband came out. Anyway, I didn't get it back and it may have been nothing to do with her. The guy in the office let me use the phone, so I briefly phoned mum and she cancelled the contract for me. More fool me.

I leave the campsite with the realisation that my last day to day link with anyone is gone which is somehow strangely liberating, but also in a way, disappointing. I leave the beach front by the quickest, most appropriate road, the D205. The farmers are still at it, chowing up and down, and I want to get a head on shot of a combine in either the early morning, or evening light. I stop to try and take one, but by the time I get the camera out, he has got to the end of a row and stopped to talk to a mate.

I am passed in Ryes by a French guy on a mountain bike, but no luggage, and I manage to pacemake with him for a couple of miles at about 20mph. It is getting hot and so am I. I tail off after a while. Then I am passed by half a dozen cyclists of race bikes, all pretending they are in the Tour de France. What is the collective name for cyclists? A chain?

I hit the D12 and head into Bayeux. Bayeux rings a bell and for a while I cannot put my finger on it. Bayeux supermaket? Bayeux pudding? Battle of Bayeux? Bayeux Tapas Bar? And then it hits: Bayeux Tapestry. It is about the only thing I remember from school history lessons apart from the time I substituted the word prostitute for protestant in an essay and then played all innocent as Mr Rice tried to explain what a prostitute is. Hmmm... 1066 and all that.

I finally get to Bayeux and seek out an open shop (it being Sunday) selling phone cards, and then a phone and give ma a call. She can barely hear me, but apparently the phone has been cancelled ok. The Orange woman was very sympathetic. I don't know if any calls were made or not. It is quite touristy here.

I visit the cathedral in Bayeux. It is a beautiful place and I take some photos of coloured light on the floor coming through the stained glass windows. I enter the crypt, which is quite dark and my eyes adjust. Four older English women, who are together, sequentially bump their noses on a piece of glass put in place to prevent you from bumping your head on the bars of a barred window. They all laugh and point out all the nose prints on the glass to each other.

It is too dark down here for easy photos and I have to rest against a pillar. My camera wants to spend half a second photographing some steps, so I let it. A recording of Gregorian chanting is playing from somewhere quietly. I like it here, but I leave the cool of the church, back into the hot sun, find the bike where I left it (good), and go in search of the tapestry.

There are many signs for it, and fortunately, they all point the same way. It is, rather predictably, in the Bayeux Tapestry Museum. I pay my €7.70 and enter therein.

A very camp attendant looks me up and down slightly more than is comfortable and then hands me a telephone, which he says will play itself and I do not have to press any buttons. I momentarily wonder if I can use it instead of my stolen one, but then it starts eminating some sort of madrigal-style music, lutes and such the like and I press in to my ear trying to resist the temptation to jiggle in time to it.

The tapestry room is shaped in a very tall U with the tapestry itself wound out along the inner wall. It is dark in here and the awe is thick in the air. The monologue starts and tells me that the scenes are numbered above the tapestry and that I have to keep in time with the scene numbers on the recording, which is a great way to ensure people through-put. The tapestry, in short, is long, and tells the following story:

"Edward, King of England, is getting old and has no kids. Ahhhh... He wants William, King of Normandie, to take over when he dies. Oh! Edward sends Harold, his cousin to ask William to do this. Ok. Harold crosses the channel, lands in the wrong place, gets captured and ransomed by someone whose name escapes me, and then gets released to William anyway without a ramson being paid. Harold helps William out in a battle, good chap, and then swears on some really precious saints' relics that Willian will acquire the English throne on Edward's death. Silly boy.

"Harold returns, but Edward has just popped his clogs. Ahhhh...pop! So he declares himself king, reneguing on his oath. Oops! William is miffed (argh!), gathers himself an army (grrr...), sails over the channel (whoosh!), flights Harold (kapow!), who is done for by the artillery (long distance archers) and William is declared King. Brucey-bonus!"

There, I've tried to make it exciting for you, which is more than I got in my day. Except after the prostitute/protestant mix up.

I leave Bayeux and cycle west. I chow away the miles in the heat of the day feeling great, for some reason. Occassionally I seem to cycle through a cloud of tiny weevil like flies. Evil weevils. I stop above a railway line and take photos of the rails and powerlines disappearing into the distance in the heat.

Suddenly, I have no energy left and go all wobbly, so I stop under a tree, eat all of my remaining yoghurts (six) which I bought that morning and hid in the cool of my panier, two pieces of salami, and drink some water. That's much better. I stop wobbling and cycle off, teeshirtless, cooling. Nice.

I make for the N174 which heads up to a place called Caretan, and have to navigate a ten foot pile of gravel from a half built bypass to get to it. Finally, I am there, and find out where the campsite is from the map next to tourist information, but get distracted by a water feature outside the police station, which is a few inches deep, has a bottom of pebbles and is just right for sitting next to.

The water is just the right luke warm temperature, and I sit, feet and hands submerged and feel myself relax. It is great. Some scooter boys buzz past, but I don't care. All the stress runs out of me and eventually, I let my feet dry off, put my sandals back on and aim for the campsite, leaving only slowly drying footprints.

2008-07-25T12:34:00.011+01:00

Yesterday, day 11
Before I leave Camping Club de Soleil de la Porte Oceane, I have a few goodbyes to say. I've spent a rest day there (the knee still is playing up, but not badly so), and I've made a few friends.

Neil and Fiona are leaving that day to drive to Boulogne to take the ferry home the next day. They are taking my old handlebars with them and a tenner to post them to my mum when they get there. I did try plonking them on the counter dans la Poste, but they post office woman laughed at me and told me they didn't have a box big enough. I spent the previous day with them. They're cool.

I drop by Michelle and his famille. They have a challet at the campsite. His daughter translated one of my cycling cards for them. He's given me lots of advice regarding weather and maps etc.

Finally I stop in at the caravan of Ron and Anne, who are retired. Years ago Ron used to cycle for Britain, I think, and I'm guessing would have liked to have been in my shoes. He gave me an awful lot of help last night with maps and finding campsites for my journey. The conversation ranged from sketching to the war to, well, lighthouses. Also, very nice people.

I get back on the road. There is definitely a pressure to make milage every day and a day off from it was very welcome. The pressure mostly comes from within and I decide that, knee allowing, I'll make some distance today, Le Havre minimum.

I follow the coast road, the D11 to Etretat. Etretat is a beautiful tourist town with a restarant/hotel that looks like it has come out of an Asterix comic. It is top-heavy in the same way the old square-riggers were/are. I marvel at its structural ability to exist.

It is a hot day, and I work my way up the hill out of Etretat, back onto the coast road, not the D940. There is not much traffic and the vehicles give me space today, for which I'm thankful for. About five miles down the road is a turning through a hamlet called Le Poterie. I see no evidence of a kiln or similar, but I turn off down it, as the map indicates that Cap d'Antifer has a disused lighthouse. I find it. It isn't disused, it is very much used and is the Centre des phares and baslises pour la region [basises = buoyage]. I take a photo, log it, and turn around, back to the main road.

I am hungry and am running out of water. For some reason, I forgot to fill the Camelback last night, so I have only the two bottles (= 1.75 litres), which are disappearing fast. Not only is the sun hot, the air is hot too and for once there is not wind. The breeze is nice while I'm moving. When I don't move, there is no breeze.

I stop in Octeville for breakfast, feeling wobbly now, about 20 miles from where I started, buy two pain aux armandes, eat them, and fall asleep in the shade of a tree for nearly an hour. When I wake, I feel much rested and thirsty, but they only have that horrible fizzy water in the shop, so I have to drink that. Yukky!

Twice I stop in bus shelters. The sun is not far from overhead and they provide a good shelter. I eat a couple of bananas and adjust my gears.

Taking me neatly from milage to silage, I note that the farmers are out in force harvesting fields ripe with crops, hoovering them clean really quite efficiently. Satisfyingly, most of them are using John Deere combine-harvesters. Different crops require different processing. Once machine moves at considerable speed, throwing stalks along conveyor belts, then lying them carefully back on the ground to dry out in long neat rows. Another moves slower, sucking up hay and excreting great toilet-rolls of bales at semi-regular intervals across an near endless field of gold.

I stop to photograph one, but am too late. It is coming straight at me along the field. I am directly downwind and find myself covered in a fall of chaff. The machine tacks neatly at the end of the field, and hacks back up the otherway.

A light aircraft flies low overhead, adjusting its trim and over the next rise I come across a windsock with airfield attached. A rescue helicopter sits, ready and wasp-like on the shimmering tarmac. A man in overalls is fiddling with something on the side of it, and I hear the sound of a servo straining.

Le Havre has a nice two mile run-down into it and I follow the signs for the beach and the tourist information, which coincide. There is a lighthouse here somewhere. It's on my map. I get to the beach. It is packed in the heat and is full of kids showing off and the beach-front road has scooters zipping around. Some things about France never change. I talk to a leathery icecream booth owner and she tells me that the only way to the lighthouse is to cycle back up the hill to the top and that you can't see if any other way.

I ignore her advice and try and go round the bottom of the headland, finding that I can't and feel rather foolish, so I then heed her advice. It is a hard uphill cycle for about half an hour. I stop once to stand in shade and drink water. It revives me considerably. I arrive at the top immitating a saline drip. It is half past four in the afternoon. I am noticing now that my CV system recovers very quickly, and almost as soon as I get off the bike, I am no longer out of breath.

I find the lighthouse quite easily. It is concrete, octagonal, and has a radar above the light. An old West cardinal mark is sited on a roundabout nearby, warning traffic with wheels now, rather than anything waterbourne. I take out my map, diary and GPS to log the phare. A painter is sitting on the wall about fifty yards away watching me. I can tell she's a painter of some sort because she's wearing blue overalls with white paint down the legs. It looks as though she's painted herself more than whatever she's supposed to have painted. I feel strangely self-conscious and am aware that I am doing something slightly out of the ordinary.

I pack up, have a quick shifty at the map and freewheel delightfully back down the hairpins to the beach and then the tourist information office. I ask for details of campsites south of here, but the region ends at the Seine which runs in just south of Le Havre, and they have no details of that, alas. I look at the map again, and have a horrible feeling that I cannot cross the Seine by the bridge marked at Le Havre, as it shows a motorway going across it. It is ten miles away. The next one is about another ten. I start cycling.

After about an hour of cycling on the hard shoulder of a dual carriageway equivalent, I have to leave the road as it turns into a motorway. I pull off at Harfleur, buy some provisions and consult the map again. It is about half past six now, but still hot. The detour adds about 25 miles to my route to actually achieve about 4 miles of distance, all because a bunch of engineers and councillors couldn't think to engineer a cycle path into a massive, motorway-bearing, suspension bridge. I take off along the D982.

There is not much to say about the D982. It is straight, is bounded on one side by the motorway, and on the other by some bushes and then a big chalk cliff face. Other than that, it is featureless. I have a feeling at this point that I will not find a campsite tonight, so keep my eyes open for somewhere to doss.

A doss site needs the following qualities. It needs to be hidden from the road, in case the police come and move you on (to where exactly?) at 3am. It needs to have flat ground to site a tent on it. It needs to be somewhere where you are not bothering someone else (i.e. not in a farmer's field). This is actually quite hard to find. Therefore:

An hour later, I arrive at the Pont de Tancarville, the second bridge across the river. Again, no cycle track and a very steep dual carriage way up to it with vehicles coming past at high speed, but at least I can get across.

We are 300 feet above the Seine. Many years ago, in a kayaking club faraway, I used to be known for bridge-jumping. i.e. jumping from bridges of various heights into rivers. I wonder what it would be like to jump off this one, and discount it as a silly idea: It would be inseine! Haw-haw-haw! It's a good view though.

Coming down the otherside of the bridge, I see that there is an inland lighthouse to visit. There was a point to coming this way after all! It is called Pointe de la Roque and I can just see it in the distance. I double back on myself on the other side of the river to go West again on the D6015 and after a number of miles come across it on a cliff. It is disused, and used to be a leading light for the Seine. For the first 20 miles, the Seine runs in almost a straight line from the sea. The lighthouse lies in such a position that it would shine along the length of the Seine. There is/was probably a lower light somewhere closer to the sea, which, when these lights are kept in line, one above the other, act as a guide along a line of safety in from the sea. I guess that it was demised when the Pont de Normandie was built (the motorway bridge), as this would obscure it along considerable portions of that line.

The sun is starting to set, like a blancmange in the fridge, but faster, and I need somewhere to sleep, fast. A track leads into some woods underneath the base of the cliff the lighthouse sits on. I follow it slowly on the bike, and it runs along the base of the cliff. After about a mile, I find a flat green area next to the track, which looks mostly disused. Apart from a million mosquitos, it looks ideal. I bang the tent up, throw everything in it, lock the bike to a tree just in case, and get in before any of the mosis can follow me.

Once in, three things occur:
- I find I've lost my food bag. This doubles as a pillow when the food is removed and it is stuffed with clothes. It has a fleece covering. But I have some other food.
- I eat half a baguette, a whole brie and ten slices of sausisson
- I curl up and go so sleep, using a pile of clothes as a pillow.

At some point during the night, something is moving around under the tent. I can hear it. It turns out the next morning it is a frog. I am achey and inflexible from the night's sleep. Sometimes I noticing my age now. It is annoying.

I find the food bag a few hundred yards back down the track the next morning. Eureka! It is safe and I recover it. Even the dew has burnt off it. The only issue is that a tomato has popped revoltingly inside a plastic bag. I am happily rejoined with my food bag!

I am cycling the North and West coasts of France to raise money for the R.N.L.I. If you're enjoying reading this blog, and you haven't already done so, please consider donating to them. You can do so here. Many thanks.

2008-07-20T12:27:00.020+01:00

Day 7, Dieppe, 282.21 miles
New max speed: 36.0mph, downhill coming into Dieppe
I apologise for the spelling of mussles as muscles in the last entry, but I won't change it. It is history, as are the mussels.

I shall continue in the same vein.

Day 5, Friday
I leave the internet cafe and do a double take. I am back in New Cross. I hear London voices! I cross the street to where Claudette (bike) is locked up. Nothing seems amiss with it and I have all the valuables with me anyway, except for her.

There are some London teenagers being loud and annoying at some tables across the street outside a pub.

"Nah, I'm waitin' for me change!"
"Yo nicked me biscuit!"

If this is English, Lordy-lord help them with their French. For some reason, I feel embarrassed about them. I leave and reread the map to find one of the two bike shops marked.

At the first one, an old guy comes to talk to me. I explain to him that I actually don't want drop handle bars on Claudette, but straight ones like a hybrid. The reason for this is that I can't put a handlebar bag on the drop ones because of where the brake-levers are. They're great other than that, but at the moment, to take a photo, I have to park the bike.

He looks shocked and tells me in no uncertain terms that it is impossible to do such a thing to a bike like mine. I know he is talking cobblers; it is entrely possible. Would require a new set of gear changes and brake-levers, but entirely doable. I think he thinks it would be an awful thing to do. Claudette is beautiful in her current form. But my need is different to his asthetic desire. I don't persevere; he's already made up his mind.

I go to the second bike shop. There is a queue. I nip past to it to the one mechanic in the back. He says he is chock-a-block until Mecredi (next Weds). I'm not hanging around that long. The bike-parking will have to continue.

I leave to find the lighthouse. It is, rather predictable on Avenue des Phares in the centre of town, and hence is easy to find. It is a brick built affair, in a large green area - a small park - and is octagonal in structure with each wall curving slightly inwards for added strength. There is an open, third-full bottle of cheap Champagne sitting on one of its steps. To one side, a way off, there are some teenagers wasting life on a bench. They sit, feet on the seat, bums on the top of the back, hunched over and sullen, like leaden clouds.

On the other side, three younger children are kicking a football around and look far more happy. I get the camera out and walk a way back so I can the whole lighthouse in; it is quite tall.

As I walk back to the bike, the football children come up to me. They are two girls, about fourteen and twelve, and a younger boy, perhaps ten. The oldest starts to address me in broken French, but I can't figure out what she is saying. She then switches to accented English and asks for a tissue indicating her sister's? elbow. It is bleeding. Her sister doesn't appear to be in pain.

I get some toilet roll from the bike and tell them to use as much as then want. They mop up the blood and the cut has stopped bleeding anyway. The oldest continues the conversation. For someone that age, she has very good second-language English and all three of them seem like really, sound, nice kids. She asks if I'm on a journey, so I explain that I'm visiting all the lighthouses between here and Spain. She asks if I would like her to take a photo of me in front of it, and I agree, and then thank her afterwards. Then the conversation is over and they're gone. I pack up the bike, but before I leave I run over to where they're playing football and give them one of my cycling to Spain cards, telling them that the photo they've just taken will appear here in a few days. Here it is:

- Thank you kids, whoever you were and where ever you are from. You were really nice and helpful. If it's your parents reading this, then you're doing a great job and your children and growing up into well-adjusted people, who don't complain when they've cut their elbows; they just sort it out. Well done.

I leave Le Tourguet. It is windy. I stop part way, buy a Bounty and Marathon, and eat them. Then I'm in Berck.

Berck also has a lighthouse. It is white with red stripes. I wonder if there is a committee that decides how lighthouses are painted. Obviously during the day they also act as landmarks, so perhaps they should all be dayglow orange. It is in some dunes in the corner of the town. It is very windy and unpleasant. I take a photo, feeling the heat seeping slowly out of me. There are two campsites, and I try the first one, which tried to change me €25 as apparently, I am 2 people and a car. I decline. The one next door is €12.

Day 6, Saturday
I get up a bit earlier than normal and am packed and leaving by the time the other campers start visiting the toilet block. It is the weekend. I think of all the HSBCers not being at work. Aren't weekends great!

As I leave Berck, I see a Champion supermarket with a boulangerie attached. I choose not to go to it, as I'd rather use a local bakery. They tend to be better and I'm always a backer of local produce. I cycle off into the wind, expecting to see one as I have a number of villages to pass through. I cycle through Groffliers, Le Madelon, Quend and fifteen miles later, at Rue, having seen no boulangerie, I come across another Champion.

The name Champion as a supermarket name amuses me. I always think of "Champion the wonder horse". Remember him? He was like "Flipper the dolphin" and "Skippy the bush kangeroo". Anyway, at this point, I am so hungry I could eat a horse, and this being France, I can, although I chose not to this time. Instead I buy four pastries and eat them in the car park. A passing man says 'Bon appetit'.

I get back on the bike, and zone out. Welcome to the Hotel California accompanies me in my head for the rest of the day. Cars and scooters pass in a haze of cars and scooters.

I believe that day dreaming is an essential skill for life. I think it should be taught in schools. To be able to make unlikely links between things and make the time and space to be able to think around issues, unpressured, is very important. For some reason people look down on day dreaming. I make sure I do it every day. It is part of creativity and invention. It is undervalued.

Suddenly I am in Brighton-sur-Mer where le Phare de Cayeux lives. I photograph it, GPS it and find a dodgy cafe that smells like a deep fat fryer on fire. I don't eat, but have a coffee and lemonade. The name of the cafe is Cafe Snack Bar. Always a bad sign. There is a father and daughter sitting outside. The girl is about 10 and has platted hair down to her backside. To balance things out, the father has even less hair than I do. He smokes. She doesn't. Mostly he is in another world, thinking about something; he has lines on his face that make him look as though he's had to do too much thinking, but when he does talk with his daughter, he face breaks into the most beautiful smile.

I leave and start the cycle to Ault. I can feel a slight pulling in a tendon just below my right kneecap. Not good, but it doesn't hurt very much at all. Something to watch for.

It is still overcast and very windy, always ahead. Always. Always! I stop at not a Champion supermarket. It is not big and I am ravenous. I go in and buy a ham sandwich, half a litre of custard and four cheap large slabs of chocolate. I sit outside and eat the sandwich, drink the custard and eat one of the slabs of chocolate. The sky looks like it is starting to clear and there is the odd patch of blue. There are few customers and I am sitting near the trolley park on a low wide windowsill. As I eat the ham sandwich, a middle aged couple come to get a trolley. The man admires the bike and the woman looks at my legs. The man wishes me 'Bon appetit'. I thank him with a sense of deja vu.

I continue into the wind and end up in Le Treport. By the time I get there, the sky is clear and is it wonderfully sunny, but the headwind is still there. It is starting to become a background thing, I suppose like getting used to wearing glasses. It is now normal.

I briefly visit the touriste information in Le Tourquet and then make for the end of the pier where there is a phare (what a surprise!). I take some photos and get talking to a French couple, who visit lighthouses. The wife collects little models of them. Apparently she has over two hundred. Grief! Reminds me of my late grandmother and Goss (not Pete Goss). They take a photo of me next to the lighthouse. Here it is:

I give them one of my cards. They give me a little map they have that indicates all the lighthouses in France. I later check it with a couple of my Michelin maps and happily find that the two agree.

I leave Le Tourquet. Is it just my imagination, or is the wind lessening. No, surely not. Nope, I'm cycling behind a hedge. Oh well. There is a long continuous hill out of Le Tourquet, about two miles, quite steep. I manage the whole thing without stopping, and without feeling as though it is too much like hard work. My left knee still hurts slightly. Hmmm...

I arrive at Criel-Plage. No phare ici, but a campsite. It is €5.40 with free showers and it is a three star campsite. Jolly good! I set the tent up for the night.

As I go to the shower block, there is a bunch of children shouting about something near the bins. I go over to look and there is a large toad huddled in some rubbish in a corner. The children call it a "grappa". One of them goes down and starts poking it with his foot, quite agressively. I wonder if I should rescue it and put it out of harms way. I tell him to stop and he does. I am a bit limited by my language. He has a stick in his hand, and says something about baseball. I tell him to leave it alone and to respect animals, not hurt them. He desists at this point.

As I come out of the showers having washed some clothes with shampoo as well, three of the younger children come up to me and tell me that he has killed it in the bushes with the stick and then literally, used it as a baseball. I kick myself. I tell the children that I am sorry and it was a bad thing to do, but it is dead and I cannot do anything now. I should have told him to go away, and taken it away while he couldn't see it. There is a small lake down the hill. He was obviously doing it because he wanted the other childrens' attention, probably to feel more confident because he feels insecure. Why is he lacking attention and feeling insecure?

As I get back to the tent, the moon is rising, nearly full and like a jaundiced distended pregnant belly, above the otherside of the valley. The wind has dropped to nothing and the sky is virtually clear. I put the zoom lens on and take some photos.

My camera tries to average the exposure over the viewing area which is mostly black, so moon photos on automatic tend to come out massively over exposed. The best thing is to decrease the exposure time. The following photo was taken at F5.6, 1/320th of a second, whereas the camera wanted 1/5th. I've cropped it. I really need a 500mm lens. I used a 300mm. I like taking moon photos. Pity it doesn't rotate relative to the earth.

There is also a planet out. I'm not sure which it is. No rings. Green. Anyone know? Any how do you tell?

I really need to charge my phone, but there are kids hanging around the shower block (the only place I can charge it), so I set it for 3am, so I can plug it in in the middle of the night, leave it and get up first thing and rescue it before the others.

Before sleep I plan a rest day in a few days time and phone ahead to book a campsite for two nights in a row. I'll have a couple of easy days before that. I am a little worried about the tendon in my knee. It'll also give me a chance to blog.

I am cycling the North and West coasts of France to raise money for the R.N.L.I. If you are enjoying my blog and haven't already done so, please consider sponsoring me. you can do so here. If you leave an email address, I'll respond after the ride finishes to thank you personally. Many thanks.

2008-07-18T13:06:00.006+01:00

Day 5, 189 miles, Le Tourquet-Paris-Plage
I've decided for the moment to revert to the present tense.

Except for the last paragraph.

Day 4
I leave Calais glad to be clear of the campsite. The last time I stayed there was about twelve years previously when I hitched back from the German-Czech border, dumped by Eurolines at 3am, not realising that my Post Office, one year EU passport, did not entitle me to enter the Czech Republic.

I pass through Sangatte. Sangatte is a small village. There is no sign of the chunnel and the refuge camp. I guess I pass over the tunnel.

I stop just after Sangatte at the beach. There are ferries ploughing back and forth. I take a photograph of three in a row, like ducks, but faster (this isn't it). There is a notice board which has the entire year's tide times on it. The next high tide is at 1242.

The weather isn't nice to me. There has been a head wind since the Dutch border, but today it is especially blustery. As I continue, the countryside reminds me of Northumberland, as does the weather. It starts to spot with rain, and I look for my featherlight rainproof jacket, which scrunches up into a packet the size of a fist. It is normally velcroed to my seat post but it is gone. I realise with annoyance that the two teenagers who were hanging round my bike as I came out of a stationers in Calais weren't looking in the window. I thought it strange when I realised that they were looking at books for young children. I mentally kick myself and put on a long sleeved sweat top and a fleece waistcoat.

I receive a text from my mum, reminding me that it is Ben's birthday, my little brother. I hadn't forgotten, but I hadn't got round to doing anything about it. I stop at a church, start to text him, and then just phone him. He's twenty five. It's good to talk to him. We always get on well and he lifts my spirits more than the evil Calais feral children dropped them.

I can see the white cliffs of England from the bike. Camping at Calais, I had got talking to a Dutch, two Belgians and a German the previous evening. The German guy had gone for a day trip to London. Apparently Seafrance had them on offer for €23 return include busing to Victoria as long as you came back the same day. It occurred to me that I could go home for the day and come back again. The comfort zone of my house called strongly to me for a moment, but the point of this is to do it in one go. Looking out over the Channel, I realise that the Great Roundabouts of Dover aren't so far away and somehow this is reasuring. I wonder where I'm going to stay that night. I'm aiming for Boulogne.

Cap Blanc-Nez comes and goes as does a statue to H Latham (an early aviator whose bronzed scarf is blowing the wrong way) near the summit. I promise myself at the bottom before I start that I won't push the bike, and I will keep pushing until I get to the summit. I make it about two thirds of the way before I break my promise. It is almost as hard to push the bike as ride it.

The down on the other side is zed-bends all the way into a little village called Escalles, where I stop in a cafe and write diary and drink lemonade for an hour. It is warm and cosy. I get sleepy, and it is a effort to leave.

Cap Griz-Nez is grizzly, weather-wise as is the climb to it. There are footpaths laid out over the summit near the lighthouse. I am wearing cycle shorts, two tee-shirts, a thin sweat shirt and a fleece waistcoat still. Somehow I am coldproof from exercise. People get out of their cars in heavy coats and hoods and stare at my bare legs and sandalled feet, shaking their heads as though infected with BSE. I walk about looking at things, eat a tomato, some slices of sausisson, half a Brie and some slices of bread, in that order. And then I drink some water, take a photo and leave.

Back on the main road at the turning to Cap Griz-Nez, there is a Jesus on a cross, looking out into the wind over fields of corn. It looks strange, out of place. I stop and take a photo. Wimereaux comes and goes and as a freewheel down into Boulogne, it rains hard and blows hard, always a head wind. The weather, in a word, mings. I am feeling miserable and my extremities are cold as is my nose.

It is early evening. I find the Tourist Information office on the seafront, who tell me that there is no camping in Boulogne, but there is some nearby. I don't like to go back on myself, so I pick the first to the South. There is a strange wooden building nearby in which a rock band must be doing a sound test, as they keep playing half a song and then half of another song. They aren't bad and I find myself humming along as I come back out into the sky-spittle.

Boulogne passes in a haze as I am cold, but I do note that it smells rather strongly of fish. Eventually I find Camping le Portel, which promisingly is on a road called Rue Le Phare. Le Phare is French for lighthouse. Indeed, the camping stretches up a hill which has a light house on top. Rah! My heart leaps. Not very far, otherwise I could do myself a mischief, and only the inside of my body notices.

The camping is expensive at €12.80, the most expensive so far. I am starting to realise that there is a correlation between the cost of the camping and how poor the facilities are. The toilet block is about 200 yards back down from the hill (the camping is on the summit nicely near the phare) and looks like a WWII bunker. Inside, it feels like one and the lights don't work, but it has hot water and I take a long long shower with a tee-shirt and a couple of pairs of cycling shorts to give them a good clean as well. They'll dry on the back of the bike if there is no rain.

There is no internet in Le Portel and nowhere to charge anything (phone, laptop). I cycle along the seafront. There is one restaurant. I haven't eaten anything hot since leaving the UK and I decide that I feel like a night out. I go in and order Moules et Frites with blue cheese. There are few other customers.

I've barely the energy to scrape the poor muscles out of their shells but the chesse sauce is yummy. I decide that I will eat every muscle in the pot. If they have the kindness to be boiled to death for me, I'll not waste them. I finish it stuffed. On leaving, it is dark, and I explain to the waiter (in French no less) what I'm doing. He seems well impressed and his parting words are something to the effect: I hope you manage to finish. So do I.

Back at the top of the hill, next to the tent, in the dark, I have the presence of mind to photograph the lighthouse while it is doing that for which it is designed, guiding ships in the dark and the foul weather. I sleep as though I'm drugged although I remember it raining during the night.

Day 5
This morning the wind has eased off and although there are lower clouds, fluffy ones, it is not raining, although the sky looks the way it does when a warm front is passing through. I curse the French feral-children, decamp and go. I have more energy this morning and the countryside whizzes by.

From Le Portel, I follow the road inland, as there is not another lighthouse until Le Tourquet-Paris-Place [where I am typing this]. I stop in a village called Condette and buy a couple of Pain au Chocolat and a Pain au Creme for breakfast. They are yummo, especially the Pain au Creme. I definitely have more strength this morning. Perhaps it was last night's muscles and frites.

From Condette I cycle through woodland. There is a nice smooth cycle path for much of the way, separate from the road, which means I can cycle without the helmet, always nice. I'm cycling uphill in gears 2.6/2.7 or 3.3/3.4. Without a headwind, it is great. I'm happily churning along at 16-17mph, instead of the 8-9 the previous day.

As I come down into Etaples, I stop at the Etaples War Grave Cemetary. This is the second one I've visited this trip. Even before entering, there is a lump in my throat. This always happens to me and I always visit them when I come across them, because I feel that we should. What is the expression? "Lest we forget."

There are 12,000 people buried here, men and women, rank upon rank of similar white gravestones immaculately kept. There is a couple there, bikers, and I pass them, but I cannot meet their eyes, because I am scared that they will see mine watering. I cry easily at war cemetaries. Perhaps I have read too much Sebastian Faulkes. The couple leave shortly after and for a while I am alone in a sea of gravestones.

It is a big, big cemetary. I happen to pass a gravestone which marks my birthday (7th April) but in 1917. I notice that all the gravestones are pretty much date of death order, which makes sense as they would have been buried in the order that they died. There are 9 buried on my birthdate in 1917 alone. I don't multiply up the maths. I guess it would come to 12,000.

There are some purple flowers with lots of bees on them. Their ancestors probably pollonated poppies on battlefields. I take a couple of photos and keep walking. There are other people there now, one a family with two young children. The parents are sombre, but the children are laughing, lightening the charged atmosphere which is mostly in my head anyway.

Some of the gravestones have additional messages on them: "Alive forever in our memories" or "Perfect in peace" or "The Lord moves in mysterious ways" (he certainly does!) or "To my only son from mother". Some quotations, some very personal. I realise they they all say more about the people who miss the dead person that the dead person themselves until I come across one. Simply it says "Cherrio!" with quotation marks. I leave with a smile on my face.

I freewheel into Etaples and turn off towards Le Tourquet. The tourist office gives me a map and marks the bike shop and internet cafe on it. I leave, find the bike shop and internet cafe, lock the bike up, enter the cafe, order a coffee and a lemonade (in different receptacles), plug in and switch on.

2008-07-16T14:32:00.004+01:00

Day 3, 101.4 miles, 51°0.'227N, 002°06.541E Le Phare de Fort-Petit-Philippe
Am at my fifth lighthouse and I've just been up it. It's been hard progress actually getting to internet cafes. I gave up in Dunkeraue this morning. It didn't open until 2pm. Rather than wait around like a lemon, I figured I'd hack on and got to the next one in Fort-Petit-Phillipe, which you can go up!

The mileage isn't passing so quickly at the moment, but I guess I'm comparing it to the end of the states ride zhen I'd been riding for a couple of months. I've been against the wind since I left the Belgian border and have made 40 miles per day for the last two days. I need to pick up a bit really, but that will come with time.

Seem to have got over the shock of change of environment, although having walked out of the previous internet cafe, I chased a plastic bag and pulled a muscle in my right calf which happens sometimes when I haven't warmed up. I can cycle fine, but walking was an issue for 24 hours.

The swollen feet are deswelling slowly as well. I've been smothering them in moisturiser and factor 30. They've stopped being quite so red as well, which is great. It's nice feeling the fitness levels build back up though. I'm peddling harder today without feeling it quite as much.

The lighthouse here isn't particularly high, perhaps 30 metres. Climbing up the staircase, there are little windows set through the stone wall, which is thick. The glass of the window itself is at the level of the interior wall, and so that leaves a deep recess fro, the outside of the building to the glass. In every one of these window are nesting pigeons, who have grown acustomed to being able to see humans on the inside. The windowsill itself has a deep layer of guano under the nest. Some of the nests have eggs, some baby pigeons. Although the parents ignored me (had that as a child sometimes - can't say I blame them!) a larger baby pigeon tried to attack me through the glass.

Hope yawl enjoying work/retirement/summer hols. Incidentally, HSBC choir, I still have I bought me a cat going round my head!

2008-07-14T15:15:00.004+01:00

Ferry trips
I writing this on a Belgian keyboard, so bare with me. If I type as I would normally, it stqrts to look a bit like zis. This is going to be quite brief as well due to the extortionate internet rate. Sorry

I got the ferry over to Dunkerque on Sat morning after a 6am start and train ride. Dunkerque port is big and not so easy to navigate on a bike with all those English drivers desperate to get onto the autoroutes, but I'm still alive. I cycled as far as I could on Sat and got into De Panne in Beligium about 5kms in, then yesterday cycled across the coast of Belgium with a tailwind and stopped at the last town before the Dutch border, which is Knokke-Heist and camped there.

This morning, got to the border, took photo (left), turned round, came back again. All good so far. Had a headwind all day which cuts me down from 15mph to about 9mph. Also, can't shrink my photos on this evily disabled computer. I'm only allozed one instance of explorer and there are no other apps. Hmmmm...

Currently in Wenduine, west of Zeebrugge. Next few days might be quite slow because of wind. Apparently it is due to rain in a couple of days. The whole of the Belgian coast appears to be holiday towns intersperced with long stretches of sand-dunes. It is like cycling through a warm and sedate Blackpool.

Already seen some light-houses. Very excited by them. Anyway, that's my Monday. How's yours going?

2008-07-09T19:03:00.017+01:00

Melanthe
Got back from Dublin, Ireland last night, alas, not in my own boat. The plan had been to fix her up and sail her back, but we ran out of time. I arrived there last Sunday evening after a day on a train and a ferry, and picked up a wee rent-a-car from the airport.

Melanthe has been out of the water for the few weeks, drying out in a the boatyard at Malahide. When I got to the boatyard, she looked in great shape, although the rigging seemed somewhat lose front and back. I figured that they'd loosened it for clearence in the boat hoist. Boat hoists are massive things that lift boats out of the water. Melanthe is 6 tonnes and 32 feet stern to bow. A 60 foot boat can weigh 30 tonnes. It is remarkable to see them being shifted about. They look like whales.

One cannot stay on a boat in a boat yard, so I was back staying in the B&B Christian Brothers Monastry at Marino once again. It felt like a flash back to living and working in Dublin. They do, however, do a decent breakfast.

I spent eight hours on Monday wet sanding the bottom of Melanthe. They'd pressure washed her below the waterline when she had come out, but there was still the remains of the previous antifoul to get rid of. It is impossible to dry-sand antifoul. It's bad enough wet, and I looked afterwards as though I'd been searching for my house key in a trough of sewage. Having got through about ten sheets of 80 grit, I felt as though my arms were coming off. Fortunately though, they weren't.

Paul was due to fly in on Tuesday at 1705, from Malaga, where he teaches now. One of my jobs due to be done was to replace the transom mounted depth gauge with a thru-hull fitting one and also a log. A depth transducer bounces signals off the sea-bed to work out how deep you are. A log has a little paddlewheel that is forced round by water passing the hull. Both are mounted near the front of the boat and readings are shown on digital instruments in the cockpit. Hence this task involved drilling holes through the bottom of the boat, a job which can only be done when she is out of the water for obvious reasons.

Having never drilled through the bottom of a boat before, I figured I'd wait for Paul and started mounting the instruments in the cockpit. The good news (although I'm not 100% certain of this yet) is that I can reuse the display from the transom mounted depth gauge as a repeat readout over the chart table.

Paul's flight was delayed, but he got there in one piece. It is always good to see him, especially when boats are involved. He has an immense amount of experience and knowledge. He's in Scotland now, hiking. Ah, the summer of a teacher. Still, I mustn't grumble.

We set to and drilled holes in the bottom of the boat. Not just random holes, you understand. Specifically, two holes, 51mm in diameter, quite close to each other, but far enough away such that one wouldn't cause turbulance to the other. We reused one from the old depth gauge, which was really out of the ark. The previous cockpit instrument had a rotating disk with flashing lights on. It didn't work.

By the end of Thursday, we'd successfully fitted the instruments and run the wires though the ducting. This is not as easy as it sounds. If I ever end up in boat design, I will specifically design them so that it is a doddle to run cables through the boat. On Thursday evening, we were lucky enough for the rain to stop long enough for her hull to dry out so I could re-antifoul her. This is also a horrible job, but quicker than the sanding. Once done, she looked good.

We'd also chased around the Dublin countryside looking for the only propellor man on the east coast of Ireland. Eventually, we found him in a workshop in a cowshed near a little town called Lush. We had been trying to attach a sacrificial anode to the rear end of the propellor and needed a wee bit of help.

Finally, on Friday, she was lifted and planted fair and square in the water. Imagine my horror when, well actually you don't have to, I'll tell you. When checking the new transducers we'd installed, it seemed that there were drips of water next to them. Hence, I was horrified (there, see!). Paul recommended tasting it (something I do know and should have thought of), and it was fresh, not salt. We dried the area, and nothing came through. Phew!

It was at about the time she was put into the water that we took a closer look at the rigging. Up till now, I had assumed that the yardies had simply loosened the back stay as the fore and back stays were very loose (see nearby photo), but in fact the forestay had parted company at the mast and the only thing that was keeping it in place was the jib halyard and the jib sock halyard and possibly the foremost shrouds.

This was bad news, but it gave an opportunity for learning. Melanthe, being a Dutch boat, has the unusual quality of it being possible to drop the mast without the need of a crane. Dara, an Irish friend came over, and between us we managed to fold the mast back onto a wooden A-frame that the old boy (my name for the previous owner - had her for 20 years, was in the Dutch navy, lots of things on the boat he's obviously thought through very well) had in the cockpit locker.

And so we removed the forestay.

It was very useful to be able to have the top of the mast near the ground. It is so much easier to work on the mast when you're not dangling in a bosun's chair or a climbing harness. I had the opportunity to remove the UFO shaped TV aerial from the top that has annoyed me since I bought her and gives an ideal seagull landing pad from which they can bomb the boat. We managed to get a Norseman fitting for the mast and a new stay from Prorig in Howth and took them back to the boat to fit.

It was about half an hour after Prorig closed on Saturday that Paul noticed that we'd been given the wrong size Norseman fitting. After trying to contact Prorig in vain, we just had to sit it out until Monday morning, so I suggested that we went on holiday on Sunday and be tourists, to which he readily agreed!

I now apologise in advance to any Irish readers, as I have left my Irish maps on the boat and so may well spell things incorrectly, but anyway, we pottered down to Glendalough (who was Glenda) and looked at the Monastic City that is there. The Wicklow mountains are beautiful and the ancient buildings are quite something else.

By Monday afternoon, we had the mast back up, but it had become self evident over the weekend that (a) there was no weather window to leave and (b) we both had other fish to fry so Tuesday evening, we flew away. Melanthe is swinging happily on a buoy in the Malahide estuary as I type.

Paul, a million thanks for your help. You are a walking yacht-bible.

Other fish to Fry
On Saturday, I get the train to Dover and then the ferry to Dunkerque. From there I have to either train or cycle - haven't worked that bit out yet - to the border between Belgium and the Netherlands. I printed up some cards including the phrase Cycling the French Coast from Holland to Spain forgetting 90kms of Belgium is in the way. Duh? So rather than just start in France, I thought I'd better do Belgium as well. I'll be starting back from the border on Monday.

I have a feeling that this trip will be harder than the Pacific Coast in the states. The weather will be more unreliable, and I have a feeling that headwinds may be stronger. At least I get to cycle on the same side as the sea.

Many thanks to everyone who has sponsored me so far! I haven't even started yet. For everyone who does sponsor me, I will contact afterwards to say thank you, but obviously that won't be until end of August, start of September. I have even found out who the first anonymous donation was. Many thanks, L. I still think about the little house on the prarie and "one lump or two".

Definitions
stay - wire going from the top or high up the mast to the deck, holding the mast in place.
forestay - wire that runs from the top of the mast to the front of the boat. It stops the mast falling over backwards. On my boat, the foresail furls round this when it is put away.
backstay - wire that runs from the top of the mast to the rear of the boat. It stops the mast falling over forewards.
shroud - wires that run from the mast to the sides of the boat to stop the mast being pulled over sideways.
jib - the foresail.
halyard - a line that runs from the top of the mast to a sail, to hoist it.
log - device that measures the speed of a boat.
sacrifical anode - a piece of metal attached to the bottom of a boat that is more reactive with seawater than any of the other metals exposed. Hence it is sacrificed to stop the others corroding.

2008-06-25T11:11:00.006+01:00

Deraileur
I've been trying to figure out my deraileur. I have always assumed that the origins of the work deraileur come from de-railing the chain onto another cog on the cassette, so I looked it up and, quite satisfyingly, it does.

There are three screws on my deraileur. I don't know what any of them do. It would be good to know this before I go, I suppose, as sure as fish are fish that I'll have to adjust it before Spain. If you know what any of these screws do, please let me know. Failing that, I'll use the internet.

Brother
My Canadian brother and sister-in-law, Gavin and Wendy, were here yesterday afternoon and this morning. I last saw them on the 17 August 2006. They left this morning in a Saab rentacar. I wonder when I'll next see them. 2010? 2011? Scarey! They live in Edmonton which is here, which is very far away and flat, mostly.

I took them to Greenwich, and we saw Harrison's clocks. They only live one and a half degrees of latitude north of me, but a hundred and thirteen of longitude west. That's most of the way round. I wish they could have stayed longer.

2008-06-23T23:04:00.002+01:00

Men and the Art of Bicycle Maintenance
I've been hacking around on the bike nicely. She goes considerably faster than the previous model. I'd called her Claudette, as she is a Claude Butler. For some reason the idea of riding around France with my legs astride a Claude didn't seem appropriate, but a Claudette I can cope with. Can Claudette though?

Have started kitting her out, which is just as well as I'm off to Yorkshire 7am on Sat and then to Ireland 9am on Sun to sort out mon bateau. She (the bike) has got two nice bright shiney panniers, a handlebar extension (I won't explain - I'll post pics), speedo, stand and extra water carriers. I haven't done a test pack yet. I was going to leave that until the day before I leave for France, probably about 11/12 July.

Sponsorship
Someone sponsored me! For my cycling yet to go! I don't know who. I haven't started yet! I presume I know them and it's not a random money donator. That would be a bit weird. Thanks, whoever you are.

Forgot my trousers
You know those dreams you have as a kid (well I used to get them anyway), where you go to school, sit through a lesson, start running around the playground with your friends, and just as you hiding behind the Wendy house, you realise that you've left your trousers at home? Remember them?

And what happens next. Oh yes. You'd either wake up, or you'd spend the rest of the day with no trousers on, but you were accutely embarrassed and could never understand why no one ever really noticed. Was that what happened in yours?

Apparently they're anxiety dreams. You get them when you're anxious. They're not quite as bad as the ones where you dream that you're in bed asleep and then you wake up really needing a pee and so you go to the bathroom and pee only to discover that the waking up bit didn't happen.

No, no, I don't get those anymore either. Anyway, I digress. To my misfotune, I got to work the other day and realised that I didn't have any trousers. Fortunately, I'd cycled in and was wearing shorts, so I just went out and bought some.

The irony is that I'd almost got away with two years of office work having only owned two pairs of office trousers. Six working days before I leave, I have to go and buy another pair. Also, they were so slippy, I get slipping of my £400 super-chair which gives my backache. Perhaps it's not the chair. Perhaps it's the sitting.

Definitions
catenary - home for teenage cats.

2008-06-02T22:35:00.003+01:00

Good God!
Good God! It's ten months since I've posted. I notice that I have five draft posts that I never completed, all of which are about bringing Melanthe from the Netherlands to Ireland (where she still currently lies). I shall endevour to actually publish this time.

The R.N.L.I.
A thick envelope arrived from the RNLI this morning. Well, it could have arrived at any time today. I got back home at 10pm and it was on the welcome mat. I guess it arrived this morning. It wasn't still warm.

The letter, which I now hold in my cold sweaty palm (it was raining and I was cycling home in the dark with no lights, which is a bit dim. Haha!), it actually two identical contracts, one for me, one for them, stating in legal terms that my fund-raising activities to come (a) won't dammage their image, (b) they won't be liable for costs if I damage myself and (c) they won't be liable for any costs of my little jolly. All seems fair enough really.

So, what am I planning. Well, more cycling really. I want to cycle from the Netherlands to Spain along the North and West coasts of France, dropping in at all the lighthouses, of which there are loads, it seems (see here). I'm planning to photograph them and also possibly stop by all the lifeboat stations, although I don't suppose that I'll be able to hold a decent conversation. I'm practicing with Rosetta Stone.

I can't wait. I'm still at HSBC at the moment. I have one more month of hopefully not quite so high pressure work. The last couple of months have been really evil and I could do with a break. Perhaps if I can stay away from a desk for more than a day, my back and head-aches will stop. That would be nice.

Anyway, having spent almost two years being boring, I'm going to do something interesting again.

Writing about writing
Yes, this old chestnut. Sandland spent a year and a half on my laptop with little activity. Somehow Dublin entirely drained my creative side. Perhaps it was the weather, or the beer. Probably the beer. Anyway, I copied it onto a wee little computer called (no joke) an EEE PC, finished doing the editing and promptly found I couldn't get it back off again. I fiddled about with it for about three months and finally got it off last weekend, so now I've got to do a little formatting and pop it up on lulu, at which point you can all go an buy a copy if you so desire.

Ok, that's it. Sorry it's short and no photos, but I've just spent twelve house fighting with Crystal reports and I don't want to sit in front of a computer any longer. Night-night.

2007-07-23T06:46:00.001+01:00

I am Optimus Prime

As I walked in this morning I passed one of the builders on the site, at the entrance to the new building, which I thoroughly avoided and used the old one. As he passed me he said to his mate, "I am Optimus Prime!", which I believe is something to do with the new Transformers film.

"Optimus Prime?" What kind of a name is that? It's two adjectives. Optimus prime what? It's like me saying, "I am optimally prime...". If I said, "I am an optimally prime englishman," it would make grammatical and semantic sense, but it would also be a lie. About the optimally prime bit.

Anyway, I was ruminating on the irrelevancy of the above while I used the canteen coffee machine this morning, and then I realised that the world works in circles. Like the song, "The world is a circle without a beginning and nobody knows where the circle ends," I found that it was, for as the coffee brewed and oozed the cappucinno into the pathetic little cup of squallidness, the noises it made reminded me of a transformer. The sort from the cartoons. Noises that cannot be put into words or writing. Noises that can only be replicated after several sordid hours in the pub. Noises of metal moving and coffee being ground. It put me in mind of a transformer.

This also brought back two incidents from my innevitable childhood. A grey time for those looking on, but like an inside-out Faberge egg, far more rewarding when you were on the inside. The two incidents were both in my A level physics lessons, taught by Mr Bootland (one wonders how that surname started?), a nice man, who would quietly stomach my questions of "is it dark inside the sun?" or "does gravity travel at the speed of light, or is it instantaneous?".

In the first incident Mr Bootland asked the class, "What happens when a kettle boils?", and I blurted out, "It turns itself off." The second incident was at some other time, when he asked, "Who can tell me what transformers are?", to which I answered, "Robots in disguise." I believe he may have muttered something like, "Cocky little shit!" under his breath or similar. While standing at the coffee machine, I realised that not only did it sound like a transformer, but it also contained one, and in addition to this was a kettle. As the song says, circles, or at the very least, erratic elliptics.

It is a pity that the coffee it finally squirted out, like the final pulses of a suicide case, was not optimally prime.

2007-07-02T21:59:00.000+01:00

Where I am
I am sitting upstairs in my boat, listening to the sound of halyards clanking against masts. To some people, this is bloody annoying, but I love the noise. It's a bit windy (about a force 4), and the boat is rocking gently. I can hear the wind whistling through the rigging.

I am on a lake called Westeinseplassen, about 10 kms south west of Schipol airport in Holland. I still don't get the 10 metres underwater thing. How come people aren't running around pulling their hair out (for those that have it), fearing rising sea levels, but they're not. Unless my grasp of the Dutch language is so poor that I don't notice it. It's pretty poor actually. It's limited to one word: bedanked.

I've been there since mid-afternoon on Saturday and am flying back to the Land of Rain tomorrow evening. I've had a great time. I've spent the last three days doing manual labour, fixing things on the boat. It's been great: the steering, which I'm fixing by commttee, fire extinguishers, water popes, sea-cocks, lights, navigation and internal, logs, depth gauges, and, of course, playing. I've also made new friends, and met up with some old ones.

My current plan is to spend one more extended weekend here, probably in two weeks time, and then two weeks after that, take a week of and sail her back to Dublin. Madness, pure madness! It's great. I am on one manic high. I'm getting used to the boat, and can see how to sail her single handed without it being too scarey. Two things that are essential: (1) lighten the steering; it's very heavy and is hard work, and (2) reefing, difficult alone.

The scariest thing so far, was tying up to a pontoon single handed in a cross wind. Fortunately, it was blowing me onto the pontoon, not off it.

That's all folks. Piccies next time.

2007-06-12T20:17:00.000+01:00

Dutch women who float and have wind issues

I have a dutch woman in my life. She is called Melanthe, is thirty two feet long and made of fibre-glass. She is in Holland which is a country unique in many facets. It contains the international war crimes court and is in most parts about ten metres below sea-level. That's just a little disturbing for me. The ten metre bit, not the war crimes bit. Anyway I'm missing the point in exactly the way I normally do.

Melanthe is a Contest 32. She was built in 1978 and if you go to www.kemperswatersport.nl and look for boat ref 221771, you should find her. Alternatively, you can look at these photos, you lazy land-lubber.

I put in an offer on her a couple of months ago, had her surveyed, went for a little sea-trial (on a lake!?!) and finally paid for her yesterday. Rah! I would have written about her earlier, but it would have been somewhat embarrassing to have waxed lyrical and then not bought her for one reason or another.

So she is still in the Netherlands and I have to go and get her, but before I can do that I need to kit her out for sea-going purposes. This does have some expense associated with it, for instance I need to buy a life-raft and a variety of other kit, most of which is particularly un-cheap.

This is stage one in my twenty-year plan, which I made up at some point over the last two years. I'm not going to tell you what the rest is in case I don't manage to do it. Or spontaneously change my mind. Which I probably will. I met a dude once with a one hundred year plan. He was fifty at the time. I have written about this already I believe, but I still think of him. He was pretty cool.

Part of my twenty-year plan involves living on a boat. I've wanted to live on a boat for the last five years. Don't ask me why. When I started sailing, I'd chuck up as often as not and still think it was brilliant when I got off onto the pontoon. Don't know why. Still chuck up sometimes, but it's mostly alcohol related now.

It's about 800 nautical miles from Holland to Dublin via the English channel at a very rough estimate. I am a little fearful, truth be told, but I have a feeling that is the best way to be. Jacko, my teacher/skipper from long ago once asked me how I felt when I left harbour. I told him that I felt a bit scared. He told me that if I didn't feel like that, I shouldn't be going. I didn't tell him that it was fear of throwing up, not fear of the sea. But I have that too. Isn't sailing great!

Minor parts of this section bear a passing resemblence to a letter I recently wrote to a friend (Dawn). I am plaguarising myself. I guess that's ok. I say I guess, because the letter was a real one using a pen and paper, which I didn't take a copy of and I can't remember everything I said or how it was phrased. Anyway, sorry Dawn if you ever read this, but it seemed like a good way to explain it all. Things have moved on since I wrote anyway.

Double-decker trains

I went on a double-decker train on sunday night from Brussels to Charleroi-du-sud. I was excited about it as I've never been on one before. It was nearly empty, it being quite late at night and I sat on the upper deck reading a book (North Lights if you want to know) and texting a friend, entirely coincidentally the friend who lent me the book. She asked me what I could see out of the window, but I could only see myself as it was dark. Shame, as the South African's say, but it was a good view anyway.

Chorus

I have joined a choir. I should actually be singing in it at this moment, but I'm not because I appear to have come down with evil flu-like symptoms over the last day. I have made the assumption that they don't want me there blasting great swathes of snotty-snot through a grotty tissue onto the back of the necks of the altos with a trumpeting blast like a giant burping Canada goose.

The choir belongs to the Dublin branch of the Goethe Institute. In my head, I refer to it as the Goat Instutute. They're pretty good, although from the two practises I've been to, they need to look at the conductor more. He's called John Dexter. He has the same surname as the forename of a dog I looked after in Cape Town who was a beagle and was deaf, blind and couldn't tell the difference between day and night. He would navigate by his nose, wander around and bark at random times during the day or night. He died not long after I was there.

John Dexter, however, is fully alive and knows Michael Hoeg and Michael Smith of Llandaff Cathedral Choir, who I used to sing under. It's a small world sometimes. Mostly thanks to Ryanair. It's a lot bigger when you sail. God, I hope I can remember all that stuff I learnt at OSA.

Where the sun shines from and AIB

Some time ago, not long after I started at AIB, I took to making sundials to pass the time at work. I had noticed that in the afternoon, the sun fell radiantly on the wide window sill that housed the air conditioning next to my desk. When I say fell, I don't mean that a million degree ball of fusing hydrogen fifty-thousand times the size of the earth actually fell onto the window sill. Just the light from it. Glad we cleared that one up in case you weren't sure!

I constructed a few sundials from plastic cups and push-pins, inverting the cup and sticking the push-pin upwards through the bottom of the cup to cast a shadow. Having pressed a circle of paper over the push-pin and blue-tacked the whole sorry device to the window sill, I could plot on the paper a live which represented where the end of the push-pins shadow fell at different times of the day.

After a couple of weeks that I realised that I was on the west side of the building and that I really shouldn't be seeing the sun until late afternoon. It turned out my sundial was working from the reflection of the sun in another shiny building.

I have subsequently been moved to the North side. I must therefore make moon-dials.

Definitions

testemony - noun. the noise you make shortly after having been kicked in the nuts.

2007-04-28T09:50:00.000+01:00

Below mean sea level
The Netherlands is a strange place, full of the Dutch obviously, and wind-turbines, sail-boats and what-nots and its undulating flatness. Moreso a large proportion of it is ten metres below sea level and therefore the whole scenario is quite disturbing for anyone who is not a fish. One keeps looking up at buildings, mentally marking off the point at which the surface of the sea would be about ten metres up and thinking, "That's were the sea would be!" One can imagine all the fish swimming in and out of the cars and bicycle-spokes and windmills and tulips as they slowly drowned in the salty mire of the onslaught. I wonder if there is a fear of being below sea level, not at sea, but on land, a kind of terra-sub-aqua-phobia type thing. Do people have problems with the dead sea too?

One in the eye from Egypt
I went to Egypt recently with a friend, not to do very much, but we got a day's diving and a day's snorkling in. The toilets there have an extra control. It is a little knob down to the right that squirts water in your eye. It's supposed to squirt it at your bung-hole, but the first time I tried it I wasn't sitting on the loo and only just moved my head in time. Gave me quite a shock. Almost wet myself with laughter (hahaha!). I subsequently used it a number of times. I won't go into details, but it works very well and you don't need to use very much toilet paper.

I lost my all-over tan in Egypt. Shame. I worked hard for that.

We saw some Egyptian mummys in Egypt. Here is a picture of one.

Good Friday agreement
A few weeks ago I was ruminating, in Dublin airport, on Good Friday. Not only was I ruminating on Good Friday, but I was also ruminating upon the subject of Good Friday. In fact at the time I was also eating and although I didn't regurgitate my half-digested food to chew it a second time before swallowing it again, we shall call it all rumination.

Back to the subject. A few days earlier there was a photo of Ian Paisley and Bertie O'Hearn shaking hands on the front of a paper that someone else was reading (that's how I read the broadsheets), which for Bertie O'Hearn must be like shaking hands with a silver-back with a guilt complex and for Mr Paisley must feel like shaking hands with a mafia squirrel. It should hav been called the Good Friday Dsiagreement.

Paisley must have been a popular surname for about three days in the sixties at some point, I guess.

More importantly, as history hath told, it was the day before my 36th birthday. I am now 36 having successfully passed 50% of my way through my alloted three-score years and ten without getting married or having children. I wanted to try and remember what it felt like to be 35 though, lest I forget.

However, that's a bit like asking, "what does it feel like to be?" and the answer is "indescribably normal." When I was at school there was a teacher called Mr Gibson. He had a bag which said Habberdashers on the side, of which he seemed to be very proud and he used to coach us for rowing. He got very excited when we capsized an eight about 100 yards above Marlow weir once. He also used to teach philosophy which I didn't partake in, but perhaps I should have, and he used to teach this miniscule A-level class of six at the desks at the back of the computer lab which, during free periods, I would frequent and play about it, coding my little pubescent heart out.

I was sitting there quietly typing, one misty morning during one of his lessons and I remember him asking the class, "What is it like to be a bat?" After a pregnant moment of glazed incomprehensible silence, he answered his own question with the highly perceptive answer of "We don't know, because we aren't bats, but it must be like something!" At which point, I stopped being able to hide my snorting laughter.

But he was right. We cannot know what it is like to be a bat because we are humans and we could only answer in terms of humans who think they know what it is like to be a bat. Only a bat can tell you, because it is a bat, but being a bat, it can't, for the same reason. For a bat to be a bat, it feels normal. For a human to be a bat would feel remarkable and so a human's description of being a bat would be very different to a bat's were it able to describe it.

Anyway, the point that I'm making is that it is all relative and so in my terminally illogical way I tried to describe what it felt like to be 35 in absolutes.

Oh, you want to know what they are! Sorry, not going to list them here; some of them are quite personal.

Definitions
anode - an ode
cathode - an ode by Cathy
electrode - an ode by Jean Michelle Jarre
barcode - an ode by dogs
barcode - secret messaging by lawyers
nematode - an ode by a worm
abode - something that isn't an ode
hippocampus - a place of learning for .... ? Fill in the blanks? Well done!

2007-03-03T18:50:00.000Z

Solar Eclipse
Tonight there is a Solar Eclipse. An solar eclipse happens to you every day. It's called night.

Lunar Eclipse
1853. But not of the moon. That happens about once every couple of years. It always happens on a full moon, obviously, so I'm going to be popping in and out every hour to take photos and hopefully the sky will stay clear. As the aged poem goes:

Sky with clouds:
No moon
Sky with no clouds:
Moon. Maybe.

I just made that up. Can you tell?

2055. Well, I've just stood outside behind a tripod for 20 mins waiting for the moon to disappear, only to realise that it doesn't start to disappear right now, it just gets dimmer. It starts to disappear at 2130. Right! Time for a cup of tea. Here a picture of the full moon to keep you happy in the meantime:

2154. Someone has started to eat the moon. Quick! Call the fire brigade:

Oh. Someone did. There were some would-be asbos into the corner of the playing field I've hijacked for taking photos away from streetlights and they'd started a fire. Bit of entertainment for the night:

0015. Words cannot desribe:

2007-02-18T18:09:00.000Z

Seven magpies

I saw seven magpies this week, twice on two consequtive days. On Wednesday they were all sitting in a tree on Griffith Avenue cawing at me as I walked to the Dart station. On Thursday they were wandering around on a piece of grass looking for worms and grubs. Well, I assume they were. For all I know they could have been drilling for natural gas or tilling the land to plant trees of jam, but I figure it was probably grubs and worms. They all looked the same.

Do you reckon magpies can tell each other apart? Do they think to them selves, "Oh! Oh! Bit of black, that feather's white, but of black there, wait, wait, I've got it, it's Bob!"? Or do they say to themselves, "Another magpie. Check."

And do they use the rhyme as well. If there are five of them wandering upon the heath and a sxith one joins them, do they all go, "Ooop! It's not silver, chaps, it's going to be gold today! Whooooo!"

So seven, eh? Seven. Hmmm.... What was seven for again?

A secret never to be told

How many people need to be told before a secret ceases to be one. If one person knows a secret and no one else does, is that, like, a whole secret? Is it then divided by the number of people who know, so that if four people know it, it is only 0.25 of a secret? Do secrets come with a notice attached that says, "Non transferable"? Does it ever get to a point where there are sufficient number of secret "sharers" to make the secret into a factoid of neglegable secrecy?

And is a negligee called a negligee because the amount the material obscures the body is negligable?

I have a secret, in fact it must be two, given the quantitude of magpies I have recently experienced. But I'm not telling you. Then it wouldn't be a secret. If I see any more magpies this week, I'm going to have to start making secrets up! I'd rather see six. Six is more financially beneficial.

The Blog of my friend Gidi

I have a friend called Gidi who has a blog he shares with friends. Well, he shares the writing of it with friends. The reading of it, he shares with the whole world. Gidi has appeared earlier here as the dude that got drugged on the bus in Brazil. He's okay now. Gidi has a link to my blog on his website. I thought it only appropriate to reciprocate. His blog is here. It's in Hebrew, so you may not understand it mind.

Hi Gidi! Good to speak today. See ya later.

2007-02-13T21:37:00.000Z

Writing about writing

Wheeee! My book has arrived. Twice! Or rather, two copies of it have. It makes for a very strange experience holding your own book in your hand. It really is weird. I started reading it at work for a few minutes and noticed an error on page 6. I wondered what to do, but I got my pen and added the missing work (felt if you want to know). It felt (haha!) sacreligious as though I was breaking a rule, but it was my book. What I mean is not so much that it was the copy that I owned, moreso that I own the content! So if I cross a word out and replace it, the corrected version is right and the uncorrected one is wrong, unless I change my mind, of course.

Irish

This is a brief guide to translating Irish expressions:

Irish: yerwha?

English: I beg your pardon, sir, I didn't quite catch that.

Irish: That's grand.

English: Jolly good. What ho!

Irish: That's grand (sarcasm).

English: Well, blow me, that's really annoying.

Irish: That's a grand.

English: That's one thousand Euros, please.

2007-02-11T17:19:00.000Z

Bog Bodies
Well, I've been a tourist again and yesterday went to the museum of Dublin, opposite the Dial and Senate, their version of the Houses of Parliament. There is an Irish word for Senate, which I can't remember, because it has too many vowels and consonants.

In the museum of Dublin, or Dublin museum, are many items, a lot of them of religious origin. Things made from gold, quite a few of them. A 15m canoe made from an oak tree, 6000 years old! I would chose a newer tree than that, for goodness sake! That's slightly longer than the boat I sailed over the Atlantic on! There are lots of effogies of he who hung on a cross on a hill called Golgotha in the middle East (and also pronounced that one should not worship effogies, if I remember correctly). There are many axes and rusty swords. I went to see none of these. I went to see dead people.

I see dead people.

Specifically, I went to see bog bodies. These are bodies that have been pulled out of bogs, mostly by bog harvesting machines. I kid you not. The peat you buy down B&Q has been pulled out of the moors of Ireland or somewhere similar by a large bog trawling machine, and as likely as not has pulled out a body or two as well in its time.

As an intersting aside, there are not many things you can type into the google images search and for it to only come up with a few images. One of them is peat harvesting machine. Another is mark roworth, which brings up seven images: two of me, four of photos I've taken, and one of a volley ball team!?!

Dublin Museum contains four bog bodies, all male, and all from about 400 to 200 BC. None of them are really entirely complete, but the one that struck me most was Oldcraghan man. He is a leathery torso without a head which makes him look a bit like a leather pullover with hands, whose nipples have been removed to prevent him being a King. [In ye olde days yer had to have nipples to be a King in Ireland, because one of the rituals for captured enemies was to make them suck the King's nipples, an obvious act of submission (think taking succour and being a baby). Betcha didn't know that!] His skin was tanned to a deep brown by the bog that even a Southern European nudist would envy.

Rulebook of Kings. Rule No 1. Don't lose you head.

The thing I noticed the most was his hands. Hands have always fascintated me as they are the most familiar thing you have; you see them so much that you don't see them, in the same way that you don't see your nose and you don't notice blinking. Can you imagine what it would be like to wake up and find yourself with a different pair of hands? Well, can you? Spooky, that's what it would be and you'd probably be right down to your G.P. that morning without bothering to phone into work! It would be a loss of identity to some extent.

I looked closely at his hands through the darkened glass of his humidity controlled display case. They were well preserved and half closed. They looked so normal, and you could see the folds and lines that form on everyones' hands, on his as well. He had good fingernails. To him his hands would have been as familiar and as normal as ours are to us. And as individual. It brought it home to me that he was a real, normal person, only one that had the misfortune to be beheaded and shoved into a bog and then dug up 2,300 years later, dried out and put on display in a museum in a city the scale of which he would not have even imagined.

Rugby supporters
I was going swimming earlier today on O'Connell Street. Let me rephrase that. Earlier today, I was walking along O'Connell Street on the way to the swimming pool, and was passed by about 20 men dressed in the Irish rugby strip and wearing large papier mache rugby balls on their heads, with little round windows to look through. I wish I'd had my camera with me, but it doesn't swim so well. Then suddenly the street was awash with a veritable swathe of supports. For one eany-weany moment, I was tempted to shout "Engerland" as loud as I could and then peg it. Given that they were, however, playing France, and I have no real association with the afore-mentioned country of that name other than having been out with a French girl many years previously, I chose not to take the second option (shouting "Up the Frogs") either, but remained silent and mostly bemused and entertained. I don't know who won, but as I got off the bus on the way home, I could hear a roar from the stadium that went on and on and on, like a moorland full of warriors about to do battle, I guess it might have been the Irish.

[Later: it was the French. Tant pis!]

Irish Words
The Irish word for Prime Minister is Taoiseach, a two syllable word that contains five vowels, and if you swapped the second a for a u, it would contain all the vowels in the English universe. That's unfair! How am I supposed to know how to pronouce that? Apparently, it is pronouced t-shark.

Queueing for the bus
As I queued for the highly over-subscribed and mostly late number 123 bus to Marino this afternoon, I was behind a little boy, aged about six or seven, and his mum. Eventually they gave up and got a taxi, an option I considered but turned down as it would have involved one of the cash machines at the other end of the street, which had its own queue and the bus would have surely passed during the time I was standing at it.

This little boy was highly annoying to his mother. I found him rather funny, but his mum was obviously knackered and he was full of beans. He had a little stuffed toy, about and inch and a half high that she must have bought for him that looked like a cross between Noddy and a leprechaun and was probably neither and he diseminated a continuous verbal stream of consciousness, which went something along the lines of:

"Do you think he would die if he went up in a plane, mum, mum? Do you think he would die? What if he went on a bus mum? Would he die them. What if he went into space, mum? Would he die, because it's a vacuum and he couldn't breathe there, could he mum, mum, mum? He'd die, wouldn't he. Look at that mum, there's three monkeys on that advert. There, there, mum on the side of that bus. Do you think he'd die on the moon mum, mum? Do you think he'd die there?"

All the time, the boy was walking this little man-thing over his mum in the most annoying way. I was very tempted to tap him on the shoulder and suggest that perhaps the little toy would also die if I hurled it as far as I could into the traffic, or ground it into the pavement under my heel, or stuffed it down his throat, and could I offer him some valium.

But, alas, I didn't. It might have made the papers!

No photos today. I haven't taken any. Sorry.

Writing about writing
A couple of things to mention. The first is that the two imprints of my book were dispatched by lulu.com on Friday, so they should arrive sometime early this week. How exciting! To hold a copy of my own book! I'll photograph them and post it up here.

The second is that I've put a few short stories I've written on my website. Two are horror stories [called The Calligrapher and The Ice-house],and the other two are... I can't actually remember what they are. You'll just have to go and look.

2007-02-03T12:07:00.000Z

I be at work
I be at work this morning, as I have been for the last 10 (ten) days on the trot. Shhh, don't tell my boss what I'm doing. Hopefully I get tomorrow off during which I shall mostly sleep and go for a swim.

I'm selling my love on ebay
Valentine's day is coming up and I have noone to send a Valentine's card to. Apart from Charlotte Gainsburg or Eva Green, but they probably get about a billion each anyway. Rather than narcisistically send one to myself, I thought I'd find someone to send one to. Given that it is the thought that counts, and not the actual action of the card (if a machine sent you a Valentine's card, would you value it?) I've decided to sell my love on Valentine's Day on ebay, with a starting price of ten quid.

Obviously a card will come with that and it will be hand-made and pretty and lovely, smelling of roses and all things goodly, but whoever wins the auction get my love-memes for the day. If you want to put in a bid, please click here. If you're a boy, prefereably don't bid, but the love will be purely platonic either way.

Already I have one bid, from an mt1978 for ten quid. I imagine the ingredients for the card will be more than that, but no matter, I'm doing it for fun and love more than anything.

Writing about writing
Before you get too excited, I haven't got Sandland published. I have, however, got it printed and bound. I submitted it to lulu.com and ordered two copies of it and a cost of £11.71 each (eeek!) plus delivery. They are hard-backs though, so it's not so much. I feel rather cheated to be paying for copies of my own book. I will, however, read it avidly when I get it as thought I've never read it before. I'm especially looking forward to the first and last chapters which are mostly about a seagull. I haven't made it public yet, so you can't buy it. If I do, I'll let you know.

I spent a while trying to work out what should go on the covers. Sandland is a very, very losely based on Sanlam in South Africa with a lot taken out and a lot put in, but somehow I wanted to reflect their logo, as I've used it as a greetings gesture in the book. Their logo looks like this:

...and beautiful it is too. The two hands are pointing to the sky and are holding a coin, representative of the way Sanlam holds onto your money (many inferences there, methinks). It also looks like the top half of a Luger if you are looking down the barrel.

Anyway, I have a gesture of greeting in the book, a substitute for hand-shaking shall we say, or for the way the Japanese bow to each other, where each person will touch their wrists together in the same way in front of their chests, hands cupped, fingers pointing to the sky. I wanted this on the cover with the coin replaced by an image of the earth, small and bright and hopeful.

I got the tripod out and spent the evening taking photos of my own hands using the timer and the remote, but unfortunately I don't have a small, bright planet in my room at Marino. I did dwell for a short while on using a golf or ping-pong ball and levitate it somehow between my palms, but decided that it would be childish and out of the question (because, unlike Harry Potter, I can't levitate things, except yachts in water), but hey, that's the point of thinking these things anyway, isn't it?

So I did without. I could have spent several hours trying to paste one in from the internet, but I think I need the hand of an expert. Paintshop pro is not my medium of choice; my work involves manipulating characters, mostly. This is what it looks like:

2007-01-09T10:21:00.000Z

Harry Potter and the Book of Kells
I went to see the Book of Kells a few weekends ago. I had no preconception of what a Kell was, or how you'd fit them into a book. A whole bunch of books came out of Ireland in the 7th, 8th and 9th centuries and the Book of Kells was one of them. Turns out, Kells is a town in County Meath, and the Book of Kells is in Dublin.

Entry to the Book of Kells (when I say entry, I don't actually mean that you get into the book itself, just into the building that surrounds it), and exit is via a shop, as is the paradox of many tourist attractions - the merchandising outweighs the attraction itself. Still, I parted with my €8 and pottered through the exhibitions of other biblical texts and such the like and a video of character illumination to the main place itself.

Now, from all the indications in the pamphlets etc, the Book of Kells is purported to be the most illuminated book in Ireland. I disagree. The room it was in was very dark and I could hardly see a thing. So much for illumination. They need a quick trip down to B&Q perchance to purchase a dozen halogen bulbs and some heavy duty wiring and then it would be highly illuminated. It did, however, have some nice piccies in it, where someone had done the capital letters really big and coloured them in. Just like you used to do at school shortly before you got told off by Mr (EVIL CHEMISTRY TEACHER) Butterworth. C-, my arse.

Anyway, sorry, yes, it did have some pretty cool illuminations in it

My Auntie Phyl has died
My Auntie Phyl has died. She died on the 12th of Jan late at night. She'd gone into hospital with a chest infection a few weeks ago and was fully expected to convalesce and re-emerge. She was 89 years old. She was known for her spontanaity and even in death she managed to surprise us.

Fear of football
I went for a walk on Sunday morning, a wandering around Teignmouth. I borrowed mum's rent-a-car, a Toyota Yaris with a weird semi-automatic gear box. I parked in what centre Teignmouth has and ambled towards the sea to take some photos.

Imagine my delight when I saw a footie game going on on the green next to the promenade. There were about two dozen small children (aged about 8-10 years) running around a football pitch, half dressed in green like the little Irish leprechauns that they aren't, and the other half in red, possibly devils.

Out of the kids on the pitch, one was a girl. Even my untrained eye could tell that she was a striker, and although she wasn't entirely running rings around the boys, she was as good as the rest of them. The parents were shouting at them as if the lives of their offsprings depended on it, things like:

"Come on, Johnnie!"
"Mark them, mark them..."
"Go on, Helen!"

Unless there was a seriously misnamed little boy on the pitch, I can only assume that the sole girl was Helen.

Rather like looking up into the night sky and seeing a comet that astronomers have overlooked bearing down on your through the atmosphere, the ball suddenly bounced in my direction and I was struck with fear. I've never played football. The nearest thing I've played rules-wise is ultimate frisbee, I suppose, or rugby at school, which was jolly good fun because you got to slam people into the ground. Like a rabbit in your headlights shortly before it impacts with your bumper, I froze.

I was saved by a little lad who nipped round and kicked the ball down the field. Thank Linneker for that, I thought, and realised I was craddling my camera like a baby. Best to get priorities right, eh?

Definitions
confluence - where chimneys meet.
cross training - when Gordon the red engine gets mad.

2006-12-27T10:18:00.000Z

Mark's Christmas Message
This is my Christmas message. In the immortalised words of Danny, who lives in Bow Bell: "Be Good". Better than the Queen, eh?

My other Christmas message is family related. I have come back to Pork-shire to see my family for Christmas, for their sins, and each time I return here I am struck by how much I love them, poor souls.

The silence of the Lambs
I came back from Dublin by ferry. Not because of the fog issue, but because I thought it would be fun. I rented a car from Holyhead and drove back across the top of North Wales (driving inside it would be very difficult as the rent-a-car does not having a large boring device on the front of it), and stopped off, half way, at a place I lived in for part of my childhood, a little village called Henllan.

We didn't exactly live in Henllan, but a little way off from it in the middle of a load of fields. I remember having a geography exam at School in Llandaff in Cardiff once and finding it was based on a map of the place I lived in. Anyway, that aside, I diverted to Henllan and took loads of photos and parked up and looked around. I wandered up to the rectory, from whom we used to rent a field that I spent most of my childhood running around in like a maniac and rang the doorbell.

Bing-bong!

To my surprise, and probably more to his, the rector, Phillip Williams answered the door. It was the same rector who had been there when I had left there as a child. He asked me in and I chatted to him for a while telling him of my parents and my brother. What I really wanted was permission to wander around in the rectory field so I could look at the house, Pen-y-graig, that I had spent the most memorable part of my childhood running around in.

Going back to where you lived as a child is a unique experience. I imagine I'm quite lucky in that it hasn't really changed since I was last there. Most people's childhood memories have been torn down and replaced with flats or such the like. I remember going there a few years back with Louise and (I think) Mike, and Louise's comment was, as we stood at the gate to the bottom field, "It's so quiet here."

And she was quite right. As I stood in the rectory field, smelling the ground and listening, I was filled with a peace that nowhere else really brings me. The sound of rooks and sheep in the distance, and maybe the odd tractor and that is it. I love that place and am grateful for the privaledge of being able to live there for the time that I did.

Horns of Doom
A few days ago (six, in fact) was the winter solstice in the northern hemisphere of this big round blob we call the earth. It is interesting to think (well, for me anyway) that on planets where the axis of rotation of the planet is perpendicular to the plane of orbit (go on, work it out), there are no solstices (solstiae?) and the druids must get very bored not knowing which direction to build their neolithic tombs in.

Intrigingly, AIB (Allied Irish Bank) also celebrates the winter solstice. They may not know they do, but I think it is a high-level conspiracy, like the illuminati symbol on American banknotes. Over the last few weeks, AIB have moved their horns of doom about 30 metres in a southerly direction. They are apparently called the wings of freedom, but I have noted that, having watch them being moved, they are not connected to a giant underground steel seagull. Anyway, how can wings of freedom be made of steel and require a crane to lift them? I was expecting them to use a bunch of picts and logs and ropes and erect them by hand, but a crane and cement it was.

In their new position, on the 21st December at midday, the sun shines directly between them into the foyer of the main foyer at bankcentre, up the corridor and into the retina of the all-seeing eye of the CEO, in his white robes, who is thoroughly enlightened by the sun and makes pronouncements on the subsequent spending and investment strategy of AIB for the year. This lasts for exactly 17 minutes, after which he goes home for the rest of the year with his very large pay packet and watches the Antiques Roadshow.

I took photos of the event this year, which are shown below. Not long after, a security guard came up to me and told me to stop. He was rather intimidating, and a bit like a deputy head, which only confirms the illusion that working at AIB is like going back to school.

I have naed them the Horns of Doom. They are purported to be Wings of Freedom, but I have a colleague, Gillian, who says they are Legs of Frivolity. Well, I added the Frivolity bit. Like a pearl to an oyster, perception is subjective.

First words
I was talking to Ben a couple of days ago about first words, the words which, as a child, you learn to say first. My first word was switch, and I would crawl about the house at nine months switching sockets on and off until one day I turned off the vacuum while mum was hovering. She hollered at me, to use an American expression. I didn’t say a word for another nine months.

Ben’s first word was Hello, which he learnt at six months, very early, possibly from watching Teletubbies. Perhaps his gregariousness follows from that.

Gavin’s first word was Mum and then Dad, and then he’d learnt about fourteen colours by the time he had hit the age of one.

Neither of my parents know the first words they learnt to say. I find that to be strange, although I don’t know why. I feel that everyone should know. Anyone else have any good first words?

A sentence in every paragraph
I am getting very tired of the BBC news website.

They seem to be addopting a habit that many news websites are adopting, which is to put a paragraph break after every fullstop.

As if Joe Public is not capable of reading an entire paragraph without stopping for a break.

Really, what is a fullstop for then, I ask myself?

It actually makes it harder to read.

Don't you think?

I do.

And sometimes.

They actually break sentences up into smaller sentences.

Just to stop you from having to think.

Perhaps it's not the length of your paragraph that counts.

Come on BBC, teach us to be intelligent like you used to; don't force us to be stupido.

Flashing in the middle of the night
I've been out in the middle of the night, flashing. Up on the moors when there's noone about, I and my trusty camera go. I've been exploring the dubious world of low light photography. It's quite hard to set up stumbling around in the dark on a cloudy night with no moon, like a chicken with no head.

I made a discovery about my camera which is that I can use the flash with a long exposure time, 30 seconds, with the apeture wide open. This is pretty cool. On the two exposures below, the red background in provided by very low level light, mostly infrared. Obviously the lit up area in the foreground is provided by the flash.

This one I took one where I jumped in front of the camera with a torch for a couple of seconds.

Anyway, Merry Christmas. Be good.

2006-11-29T22:09:00.000Z

Delivering pennies
I was walking to work this morning - just the last bit mind, from the bus-stop to the hamster rotating doors; Most of it is sitting upon a bus or two - and as I turned into AIB - again (just to disambiguate) I used the word turned in the sense that I changed direction, not that I metamorphosed into a financial institution - I passed a truck.

Inside the entrance to the Bank Centre (its real name), is a branch of AIB, which makes sense really, "'cos bankers need to bank too" (say that with your tongue stick into your lower lip). Parked outside the branch was the truck.

It wasn't a particularly secure looking truck. It was the kind of truck that is the largest one you can rent without needing to pass some articulated lorry-driving test, and it said Securicor on the side. Three men were unloading it through a side door onto a rather stout and sturdy red trolley. They were unloading bags of coins.

As I passed, I could not but note the content of the truck. I was full of little plastic bags of coins. Shelves upon shelves of them in different denominations. This being Ireland, I looked up to see if there was a rainbow ending near me, and that the wee men weren't leprichorns. Alas not, and fortunately not leppers either, although how the two are related I don't know. I don't think I've seen quite so many coins in one place in my life.

Hamster doors
There are people at work who are afraid of the hamster doors. On each building there are rotating doors, which take one person at a time. You have to flash your card next to a sensor and stand in the door. It then senses your presence (like Darth Vader at Christmas) from pressure pads under your feet (under the floor, not inside your shoes). They also rotate when people come out, but the egressers do not have to flash their card.

However, if you try and enter without flashing your card while someone is exiting, the hamster doors bang to a halt after they've rotated only 45 degrees and beep wildly at you. I think they should go ninety degrees so that they re-seal and then fill up with water, as though in a James Bond movie.

There are people who are scared of them. Serious! They won't go into them if someone is coming out and vice versa. It is really funny to see them waiting, signal to them through the glass to go first, and as soon as they've gone, jump in there! I don't do this, really I don't!

Trees and orgasms
The leaves on the trees are fast losing their colour, or rather gaining colour. I wonder, do the leaves feel a state of achievement as they fall, in a death flutter, to the ground? A moment of orgasmic leaf-bliss?

How does the tree feeel? (Indeed, does it feel?) For without leaves, the tree, he cannot breathe and must hold his breath until spring has sprung, his lungs lying on the ground all around him, mulching. He is saying, "it is so cold, I'd rather hold my breath for six months than breathe." And we complain about having to turn the central heating up.

Exhibitionists
I went to an art exhibition last weekend. I just dropped in for an hour, you know, as one does. It occurred to me that art is a strange discipline, thus:

I'm going to take this canvas, and paint an image on it. It may be beautiful. It may be striking. It may just be odd. And I'm going to hang it on a wall, surrounded by thousands of others, and lots of people will walk past it, but some of them will stop and look. I mean really look, not just see, and then one, let us call him the "sperm" will actually buy it and take it home.

And the sperm will hang it on a wall with far fewer paintings around it and he will walk past it a dozen times a day and occassionally he will stop and most of the time he will think, "That's mine - I bought that!" for he is after all, the sperm that made it, but every now and then he will stop and re-see its beauty or strikingness or oddity and that, I suppose, is what art is all about.

Newgrange
I went to see Newgrange last weekend. Newgrange is a neolithic passage burial tomb, and I was going to describe in lurid detail what it is like to go inside it.

But I can't be arsed. Oh, all right then. No really, I can't. You'll have to go there yourself(ves).

I did learn some new words though, which are:

neolithic - new stone age. Should have been able to work that out for myself.
orthostat - a stone set vertically into the ground like a tooth.
kerb stone - a slab set on it's side, which acts as a boundary to a site or structure.

Writing SQL
I have learnt something in the last two months. It is this:

"Writing SQL could not in any way be construed to be a creative process. It is but brick-laying."

I have, however, written a poem about SQL, which could be considered to be creative, on a good day with a fair wind, so I quote it here. It is called (uncreatively) SQL.

SQL
SELECT *
VARCHAR
blah-blah-blah

2006-11-05T19:29:00.000Z

The Curse of the Nokia
Well, work is thoroughly exciting at the moment. You have to understand that the last statement is ironic. I sit in an open plan office. Behind me there is a partition. Behind that is a man with a Nokia phone. How do I know it is a Nokia phone? Because it has the Nokia ringtone.

The Nokia ringtone has evolved over the years, but it essence, it goes like this: de-de-de-de, de-de-de-de, de-de-de-de-der. Drives you insane, doesn't it? Okay, perhaps it loses something in translation to literature. It started off as a mono ringtone, and now comes as a polyphonic one, and they've added a slight slowing at the end. It starts off alegro to get your attention, but dulls to andante ma non troppo on the de-de-der bit. Crazy, eh?

I've had an aversion to it ever since Marlborough Stirling where the boss, Ashley, had left his phone set to it. He would leave his phone on his desk and leave the office. I never knew where he went, probably for a ciggy in the bogs. Who knows. He was a very busy man. However, wherever he went, and he was often absent for hours at a time, he would leave his phone on his desk, with the ring volume on high. When you're concentrating on modifying a component called PBProc, which Ashley himself expressed as being a little like open-heart surgery - I wouldn't know myself, I'm not qualified, I can only assume he is - having the Nokia ringtome blaring off every five or ten minutes is not condusive to optimal concentration.

The guy behind me has the same habit. It is very annoying. Fortunately, at the moment, I am not performing open heart surgery at work. It is more like a bit of botox work.

Magnetic Cutlery
There is a canteen at work. It is a large hall like area with seating for perhaps 500+. You enter it through the serving area, where you take a tary and join one of four queues, for hot food or cold with a wide selection. It is nice, facilitative, genial. On entering the hall proper with you tray of food, you have to go to the cutlery station where you can take cutlery, water and a paper napkin. Okay, so far? Good.

We'd been eating there for a few weeks. This is Rory and I, the contractor who started with me, when I chose to have fish. Yummy! Use up those fish stocks! Anyway, I had fish, and found that my cutlery was magnetic. The next day, I also had fish, and it was magnatic again. It didn't stick to the fish or anything. The second day was a Friday.

The following Monday, there was no fish option and I had, I dunno, some pie thing or similar, and my cutlery wasn't magnetic. There was a pattern emerging here, and it most definitely wasn't paisley.

I'm doing experiments at work, with the fish and other foods. I'll keep you informed.

Writing about writing
I went on a writing course this weekend, entitled, "How to write a book and get it published." It was two days of workshops and I enjoyed it immensely. I have not been writing so well since I got to Dublin, and this weekend has helped me to pin in down to a few causes: trying to write when tired; writing into a vacuum - i.e. having no one to discuss my work with. The workshop was run by Alf McCreary. I'd never heard of him and turned up on Saturday naive, but it would appear he is quite a famous journalist in the Ireland circle and has published about 35 non-fiction books.

Writing is not easy. It requires sitting down somewhere quiet and making yourself write, regularly. Thus it is also a lonely activity having only the inside of your head and a blank computer screen for company.

On Saturday night, we were asked to write a piece for the Sunday. I wrote a piece called People die off, a phrase I'd picked up on, on the Saturday. If anyone wants to read it, it's here.

Some of the people in the group meet regularly in a more information session once every 4-6 weeks, and I am going to join this, assuming that I'm still in Dublin. It is highly motivating.

2006-10-20T21:59:00.000+01:00

Garry Barlow in Easons
I saw Garry Barlow in Easons the other day. Easons is the Irish version of WH Smiths/Borders. He was signing copies of his book which is called Garry Barlow - an autobiography. Well at least it does what it says on the tin. I thought that autobiographies were generally written by famous people who contribute to the world in some way, which leaves me to wonder why he has written it. I know very little about Garry Barlow, but that he gets runner up prize to Robbie Williams, poor chap.

He was surrounded by a crowd of people and there was a queue through the shop and out of the door, down the pavement to the end of the block. Teenage girls were making the same squealing noises that nine month old babies make when they've just learnt how to make that sound.

He also has the cheeks of a hampster.

Dart
There is a train system here called the Dart. It does not look like a dart. I have avoided using it for the last few days because it is just far too crowded where I get on it, really too too crowded. Shoe-horn jobbie.

Dart is a bit of a mis-nomer. If you played darts in a pub with it you would note that (a) it makes a big hole in the far wall, (b) it not aerodynamic and the drivers like to tap-dance on the brakes and (c) it arrives at the darts board about 15 minutes after you expect it too upon which is disgorges a million sardines.

The buses aren't much better, but at least they're called buses so you expect them to be a bit hit and miss.

Incidentally, to get to the centre of town, I have to get the 123. It stops right ouside the college, so it's as easy as ABC. Hahaha!

I see dead people
Last weekend I went hunting for megalithic tombs. And found some. It was very gratifying. Below are some pictures from my trip, but only little ones because flickr is playing up.

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2006-10-13T20:35:00.000+01:00

Dublin
I'm in Dublin on a contract at the Allied Irish Bank, so I'm staying in the cheapest hotels I can find and generally having fun. This weekend I'm planning to go off and look at things outside of Dublin. An old friend of mine used to have a thing about stone circles and Ireland is supposed to have quite a few of them, so I'm going to go off and have a look for some to photograph in the setting sun. I've rented a brum-brum for the weekend. Also, going to see if I can find a yacht to jump on at the weekends, and a writers group.

It's kind of weird being back at work again. I'm enjoying the coding, but being cooped up for eight hours a day doesn't feel right. Humans are not designed for it. At least not this one.

What my parents were doing during the 1996 World Cup final
No, not that, all ye with dirty minds. Actually they might well have been.

The 1966 World Cup Final, as everyone knows, was won by England, 4-2 against West Germany. The trophy for the world cup is the Jules Rimet trophy, which stolen shortly before it. It was found, bizarrely, in some newspaper under a bush in London, by a dog called Pickles. Even more bizarrely, Pickles strangeled himself to death a year later with his own leash. Dumb animal. Got himself in a pickle.

That is but an aside, however, as on the day that England was booting a footy through the net four times, my parents were getting married. Good for them, I say! As far as I know, we don't have many major football supporters in either side of the family. Just as well.

Working; not working
I once saw a program on TV. It was one of the episodes of the contemporary Dance on 4 and was called Exit; No Exit. I don't remember much about it. I have a vague recollection that some of the dancers weren't wearing very much, which at the age of 14 was quite exciting. The other thing I remember is the title of the programme which was, as I have said, Exit; No Exit.

Anyway, that is of little relevance, except that I have how finished my second week at work, working; not working. The first week was cooleo, I had stuff to do. I had to write a SQL statement to (get this): extract all the approved applications for mortgages for AIB (Allied Irish Bank) since the last time the report was run that are first time buyers who are eligable for a cash bonus. There's actually quite a few more constraints than that, but that is the nub of it. Oh yes, it all had to be done in SQL, and it had to generate a file with a line for each record of fixed length (1100 characters), a header record and a trailing record. I also learnt how to use the DTS facility of SQL Server.

However, this week, I have been given nothing to do. I have checked that this is correct several times with my analyst and she said that there was something in the pipeline. [Note that in this case the analyst isn't my shrink, but the business analyst who is purportedly going to feed my specs to code up].

I don't mind. I've been knocking up some general purpose components in VB that I use at home. I'm not allowed to take data in and out of the building, so I've just recoded them at work and added a few more ideas. I have to do this at each place I work at. It's a bit frustrating, but I refine the concept each time.

Perhaps next week, I'll have something to produce.

Dinosaurs
While we were in Canada, we went to the dinosaur in the Badlands. I'm very much into museums. I wander round in wonder, taking on board stuff, but forgetting most of it within a few days. This was also true in this case, and I was stunned by the blibbly-blobbly-saur and the biffle-boffle-adons. Anyway, to cut a medium-sized tail short, there was a wall of purple bubbles. No, I'm not on drugs. Only my own naturally produced ones anyway. There was a wall in quite a dark area, with bubbles running upwards through purple water. Ben and I took photos of each other, but because it was so dark, the exposure time was about a second, so we jumped about at the same time. I've been playing more with long exposure times since then.

Spike
Dublin has a spike in the middle of it, about 100 metres high. It is called the spire, but it is churchless and it just really a great bit spike. I am unsure what it is for. Here is a photo of it:

You wouldn't want to fall on that on a dark night.

2006-09-16T16:13:00.000+01:00

Canada
Being in Canada is like being on the moon. Okay, that is a bit of a sweeping statement, as is "I hate cleaning the house with a brush", but that's a sweeping statement of a different kind. Being more specific, I am talking about temperature. The moon's surface soars from about +200C in the sunlight to about -150C on the dark side where Pink Floyd live. Canada doesn't quite have that extreme, ranging from about +40C to -50C, but without a space suit on, you feel it more here.

Obviously I am far more attracted to Canada than the moon gravitationally speaking, although the moon does have a certain pull for me, but there are other differences. Canada is not made of cheese, for instance, and the moon isn't popuated by people with flip-top heads. Canada is.

Cheese
Talking about cheese, we went shopping yesterday and I bought some gorgonzolla. I love blue cheese, I could eat it all day. The more rancid and smelly the better. I also bought a great big pizza to cut into three (Gav's and Wendy were eating with me), and I liberally applied some extra pate and gorgonzolla to my third offering some to the others.

They turned me down, saying that they didn't want to eat something that smelt of feet! I was most distressed and decided I would show them how tasty the cheese was by offering some to Splat, the cat, who loves cheese. Splat wouldn't eat it either. Some people have no taste.

Things to do with Ben #1. Go to Banff
Ben has been here for two weeks with my ma. We had a good time and went to Banff for 5 days, where there was no snow, but lots of things to do. The bar in the hostel had a kareoke night there on the night we arrived, so we went and did three skits: We will rock you, When I'm 64 and Livin' on a prayer. Drank quite a bit too much that night. We did go down to the town, but the next morning, we couldn't remember exactly where we'd been.

The next morning people were saying hello to us that I didn't even recognise.

During the three whole days we were in Banff, we spent approx 16 hours in hot springs. Banff exists due to the hot springs. They were discovered in 190 and folks have been coming here ever since. Oh course the snow helps, but that's a later phenomenon.

Things to do with Ben #2. Waterparks
We went up to Edmonton, about 300kms North of here for a few days to see the house my older brother and wife are buying. While there, Ben and I spent two days in a waterpark. It was cool. They had about 20 slides and some stuff that had me whooping in fear each time I went on it.

Things to do with Ben #3. Go to Vulcan
There is a town near here called Vulcan. We went there, so as to partake in some Vulcanic activity. Gavin seemed to remember that they had models of Spock and Kirk everywhere, but those seemed to have gone. There was a monument of the Enterprise and some signposts with aliens on, but unfortunately most of the paraphenalia had been beamed up.

Going home
Tomorrow I'm flying home. Part of me doesn't really want to. Not a big part, just the bit inside my skull, but on the other hand it will be good to see some greenery and be able to go into a cafe and ask for a white coffee instead of an extra-large double-cream mocha-woppa-spleano-cheano. Sometimes I think they give their beverages silly names just to they can laugh at your saying them. I am hoping it will snow before I leave. Looking at the weather forecast it may just do that. Cold weather? Snow joke here.

2006-08-27T23:02:00.000+01:00

Mayonnaise
Had an interesting thing happen to me yesterday. I'm staying at Gav and Wendy's and have been here for a couple of weeks. Last night, they had a two friends round, Jim and Marie who are also expats. Gavin BBQed (that's braiied to you, Morne, JJ, Tersia) on a gas powered BBQ, the Canadian air obviously being to cold to sustain a wood-powered one.

We'd got a load of sauces out of the fridge before hand: BBQ sauce, relish, mayonnaise, ketchup, etc and half an hour later we were helping ourselves. I hung back a little (fortunately), waiting for the others to fill their plates.

Choosing to put mayonnaise in with my burger in a bun, I picked up the third-full, squeezy, mayonnaise bottle, which had sat in the fridge upside down for the last day or two to get the stuff to sit over the nozzle, and hence was top-heavy.

Little did I know that a bizarre combination of physics and timing would be my rich, creamy downfall. The bottle had been sitting cognizantly outside the fridge long enough for the air in it to warm to room temperature, yet short enough a time for the mayonnaise, having a far higher specific heat capacity, to still be cold.

Now bear in mid the effect of Boyle's law in this situation. Boyle's law states that:

P.V = k

where P is the pressure
and V is the volume
and k is a constant

If you reduce the volume, i.e. squash a balloon, the pressure increase will rise by the same proportion, thus keeping k, well, constant.

Combining this with Charles' law, which states that:

V/T = k

T being the temperature and Guy Lussac's law which states:

P/T = k

we get the combined gas law, which states that:

P1.V1/T1 = P2.V2/T2

This means that for a given number of molecules of gas, the pressure times the volume it is contained in and then devided by the temperature (in Kelvin) before a change to the gas, must by the same as the pressure time the volume divided by the temperature afterwards.

Now, in my case the temperature of the gas had increased. So let us see what happens to the pressure afterwards. By rearranging the combined gas law equation, we get:

P2 = P1.V1.T2/(T1.V2)

so the only thing that has changed on the right hand side is T2, which has increased, so P2 must increase by the same ratio. Hence the pressure of the air inside the mayonnaise bottle had increased. Oh dear. The mayonaise itself is not a gas and as such is not compressible. (A gas is like a whole load of indian rubber balls bouncing round a room. A liquid on the other side is more like snooker balls in a ball pit, all sitting on each other. Note that both are fluids, as both flow)

The mayonnaise, still retaining its coolness, was more viscous than normal. Viscosity is a complicated thing. See here for the scarey maths which I used to udnerstand but don't any more, but it basicaly means that the mayonnaise flowed a lot slower than it would when warm, so it was happily sitting at the top of the bottle even though the bottle was upright.

Imagine my delight at finding (having opening the bottle and applying the required amount of mayonnaise to the top of my burger) that the air pressure in the bottle was still notably higher than that of the room and was thus pushing the mayonnaise out of the end of the bottle at a considerable rate, like a drinking fountain. Even when I brought the bottle upright once more! For a few moments, I stared at it squirting over the edge onto my hand and dripping onto the plate, before I had the presence of mind to close the lid.

I had to clean the window-sill.

Calgary
Calgary is flat. It is between the Rockies (on the West) and the Badlands (on the right, North being up). The Rockies are, well, rocky and the Badlands I haven't been through yet. One would imagine that there is something not good about them.

Near Calgary there is a town called Okotoks, which I have been to a couple of times. Near Okotoks, there is a big rock, called Okotoks eratic. It is a terminal morain, and dropped off the end of a glacier. Not recently though.

I was very proud. I guessed this before reading the sign. It's about the only thing I remember from geography O level: eskers, drumlins and terminal morains.

About 200 miles North of Calgary is a town called Edmonton, which is where G+W are moving to at the end of October. Edmonton is going through a bit of an oil boom recently, oil having been discovered in the sand there sometime ago, but it is only recently with the rising oil prices that is has been worth extracting the stuff from the sand. Gotta keep feeding those SUVs!

Pork for England
A couple of weekends back, G+W+I went to a place called Bar-U, which is the only cattle ranch left that farms in the traditional cowboy fashion. It was very interesting, we saw some cowboys and girls and some horses, and a plastic sheep head mounted on a bale!?! Two, in fact.

It was Veteran's day and they were having a little ceremony to commemerate those who had fought in the wars. Pretty much any war. It was a sobering event, and impressive, for even though there was a collection of only about 40 people, a biplane did a perfectly timed flypast.

Towards the end of the ceremony, one of the old cowboys was talking about how the ranch supported England during WWII. Apparently, the UK was short on bacon, so Canada started a policy named Pork for England. I know I shouldn't have, and I should have felt gratitude, but I spent the next five minutes surpressing the giggles. I did quite well. No one noticed. G gave me a raised eyebrow when he heard it. It was all his fault - he started me off!

Arrived
It's a bit of an anti-climax having arrived here, no offense intended, G+W. I took the greyhound (the big dog) across from Vancouver to Calgary, but it took two days for my bike to ship here. I had these great visions of riding to Gav's house on my bike, but it ended up that I got driven there and went back in to town the next day to pick up my bike from the big dog office. Oh well.

Family
Most of my family are arriving from England this week. Slightly different than having my familiar arrive from England. That would be like, an owl or a cat shipped in a crate. My mum and ickle brother are landing on Thursday with minimalist-style hand-luggage I suspect. I assume they are not planning to be shipped in crates. Nor sit on my shoulder hooting. Hmmmm...

Should be good to see them. Ben and I are going to Banff the next day. G is taking us up there with a couple of bikes in the back of his pickup. I'm going to train Ben up for a few days around Banff and then make him ride back to Calgary. It's only 80 miles! Hahahaha! But it's all downhill.

Bare buns
While I was in Vancouver, the Bare Buns Run event happened. Cool! It is an annual 5km run on the local nude beach (Wreck beach). Still trying to achieve my ambition for getting an all over suntan, I attended and ran, my aim being to run it all and not walk any of it, which I managed! I came 20th out of 54 and came 4th in my age group, which was a shame, because if I'd come 3rd I'd have got a medal. Oh well. Still haven't managed it with the suntan. I did get someone to take a photo of me, but you can't see it, 'cos it's got my wobbly bits in it. Hahaha!

2006-08-03T05:05:00.000+01:00

Day 55. Vancouver, Canada
They gave me a six month visa, so I'm probably going to stick around for a bit. Six months! Yay! Bro, you're stuck with me for 6 months! (don't worry, I'm joking)

I enjoyed the journey from Port Angeles. Ferry to Victoria, Vancouver Island. Victoria is very pretty, but the drivers are nuts, in fact that can be said of Vancouver as well- they don't give an inch. Then a swift 20 miles cycle up the coast to Swartz Bay and another ferry across to Tsawwassen, followed by another 20 mile jaunt into Vancouver downtown. All flat. Not a hill in sight.

I left the US without really much sadness at all. I've met some really cool people there and there are some beautiful places, but as a society I am mostly unimpressed. Sorry, states.

Immigration was funny. I declared half a potato and an onion, but said I was going to eat them. The kind lady let me through without further attention. I didn't tell them about the live round of ammunition somewhere in my handlebar bag that I found in Camp Pendleton and the bowie knife that I found on the shoulder a few days back. I'm not planning to use them anyway.

Hot Springs
I went to some sulphur hot springs in the Olympic national park shortly before I left Washington. They were pretty cool and I sat around in 18 inches of hot water with a family from Texas who had, rather ironically, had come to escape the heat of Texas. We had an interesting conversation about geological fault lines and whether mosquitoes are attracted by sulphur or repelled by it.

I took the bus back to the road up to the hot springs and then cycled in 10 miles followed by a 2 mile hike which is beautiful. A lovely trail. The cycle out was great - all downhill for 10 miles and then back to Port Angeles.

Bearly believable
Wandering around Vancouver today, is appears there are bears littered everywhere on every street corner. They all have the same pose, upright with their right paw extended in a gesture that could almost indicate that they were sticking two fingers up at the world. They were scattered around Victoria. I saw a guy nicking one. Bare-faced robbery! They are all painted differently, but only a few of them are painted with clothes. The rest are bare. Hahaha!

The last two are dolphins, I know. Here are some old buildings reflected in new ones:

The Precious
I phoned the great elven Benita of Mudgeridge today to ask her how she wanted the package from her father, the wize wizard Dezmorando of Appleshire, to be delivered. She said she'd meet me in a Chapters tomorrow (bookshop). Good choice! Glad she didn't say MacDonalds or Burger King.

"I've got quite attached to the precious. Having carried it through the Nuts of Brazil, past the Cocaine fields of Colombia, around the Obesety of Miami, over the ups and downs of the Coast of Californicopia, over the Bridge of Golden Gateness, through the Wild Woods of Redness, in and out of the Folded Paper that is Origami, through the Deforest of Washington and finally over the border of Candy to the Volcanos of Marmalade."
"Err... Don't you mean jam?" said Sam, interjecting voraciously.
"Sorry, Volcanos of Jam, I'd forgotten." Frodo rambled on regardless, "Anyway... dah-de-dah... of Jam and there I must deliver the precious to the great, but previously unknown Benita of Mudgeridge."
"Why?"
"What do you mean, why?"
"Why must you deliver it? Doesn't it make you go all invisible when you put it in your panier?"
"No, you foolish, that's Harry's cloak of invisibility."
"Hmmmm... a cloaking device. Interesting," Spock interjected, "Listen to this one. What do elves and vulcans have in common?"
"They both have pointy ears?" said Sam.
"Yes. How did you get it?"
"Vulcans really don't understand humour do they?" said Sam.

Thank goodness they'd stopped going North now. The headwinds had pettered out anyway which Sam was pretty pleased about. He'd been pushing Frodo's bike up hills at warp speed one for far too long now and was getting very tired of it. Smaegol was nowhere to be seen. Once they had got to the Couver of Vanness, Smaegol had disappeared consecutively into about every dive within sight on Granville Street that could be seen. Sometimes they could heard him on the breeze from the hostel window, or was that Def Leppard?

"So, Master Frodo, sir?"
"Yes Sam?"
"What are we going to do once we've left Benita of Mudgeliam with the precious?"
"I don't know Sam. I think I might go back to my stamp collection and you can resume collecting turnips for all I care."
"Did someone say turnips?" said Balderick.
"Get out of this sketch, Balderick. Master Frodo, I thought, you know, we might go on another quest. Maybe one with less wind and hills. Maybe in a car or on a bus."
"Where to, Sam-'purportedly'-wise?"
"I don't know, anywhere."
"Stuff that, I've had enough of this one, but tell you what, here's a photo of the precious for old times' sake. Guard it with you life, Sam, for you may never see the precious again."

2006-07-30T19:19:00.002+01:00

Day 52. Port Angeles, Washington. 2033 miles.
It's day 52 on the Big Brother bike and things have been hotting up. The left patella is complaining that it is always taking all the strain. The left ankle is now holding up well with no problems. The head wants to leave the bike, but the body won't let it. The arms are gesticulating wildly! Which will give in first? Only you can tell...

I'm in Port Angeles which be here. It's a medium sized coastal town with a population of about 19,000 so saieth the Welcome to Port Angeles sign.

Alas, I am nearly at my journey's end but it is well timed as I have, of late, come to grow a little weary of this two wheeled journey; it's all getting a bit cyclical. Don't get me wrong, I'm still enjoying it, but there is little stimulus and I appear to have exhausted the interior of my head now, if not the interior of my entire body.

110 mile day
Day 49 I left Ocean State Park Campsite at 7am and had planned a long day. I chowed away at the mileage through Copalis Crossing, Humptulips, Neilton to Amanda Parks. I stopped at Amanda Parks for a brief lunch and just kept going through Queets, Kalaloch and eventually to Forks, a total of 110 miles! Cool! I'd broken the 100 mile barrier in a day! I've been wondering from quite early on if I could manage that. I checked into a cheap motel at about 8pm, pretty tired and went to sleep.

Miles 70 to 80 were the hardest. I don't know why. My knees ached and I just didn't want to be pedalling. I just seemed to be going slower than my norm for the terrain.

Hot Springs
The springs on my front forks are getting really hot. Hahaha! No, I'm joking! I'm talking about thermal springs.

Yesterday, I left Forks aiming for a campsite in the Elwha valley, which is about 13 miles outside of Port Angeles. Starting in the morning I could still feel the fatigue from the previous day and it lasted all day, so I just chilled out and took my time.

There are three campsites in the Elwha valley where the thermal springs are located, but when I arrived there at 6pm they were all full (the campsites, not the springs). It is a massive let-down for a cyclist to turn up somewhere, pretty exhausted to find that they have to keep going. For about the previous 15 miles, I'd been thinking of little else other than going to sleep.

There were two options, cycle to another campsite, about 15 miles away and uphill or ride to Port Angeles and find a place to stay. I opted for the later and found a hospitable hostel for $15/night with some really cool people staying in it. Last night, I sat in a soft chair and chatted with a couple, Oliver and Dominique, English and S African and an aged logger dude, and enjoyed it immensely. Really, really good to (a) be indoors, (b) sit on something soft again, (c) have a bed to sleep in and (d) have a really good conversation.

Today, I'm chilling out. Tomorrow I'm going to use the local bus system (which takes bikes) to go back to the Elwha Valley and cycle up to the hot springs at the top. Should be fun. I'm gonna go to the cinema this evening to see The Devil wears Prada.

Nomenclature
Who thinks up these names? Really, I mean, Humptulips? e.g.:

"Where are you going?"
"I'm going to Humptulips!"
"Pervert!"

or

"We've got this place, John, we've got to think up a name for it."
"Oh yeah, what do they do there?"
"Mostly loggers, John, mostly loggers."
"Well, what about Loggertown?"
"Nah, we've had that, John, there's already four Loggertowns in the County."
"Okay, how about Axeville?"
"Sorry, John, same problem."
"Err, okay, let me just smoke some more weed..." [loud inhaling sound comes from John]
"Okay, I've got it this time, what about... what about... Humptulips!"
"John! You're a genius. How do you come up with these things. Humptulips it is!"

Apparently Humptulips' claim to fame is that it is mentioned in "Another Roadside Attraction" (Tom Robbins) as a base of operations for an order of assassin monks. There wasn't much there when I cycled through; the only life I saw was a doggy that barked at me.

Humptulips exists due to logging and I cannot find any history of it's name on the net.

Writing #1
Apparently both of my articles got published. I got a brief email from Sailing SA in response to my query, which went like this:

Hi

Good to hear from you. Yes, it was used in the April issue.

Regards
Richard Crockett

Cool! Now I need to work out if I can get paid for them.

Writing #2
I'm putting the first chapter and a bit of Sandland on my website in the vague hope that someone might want to publish it. If you want to read it, it's here.

2006-07-27T00:00:00.000+01:00

Day 48. Public Library, Aberdeen, Grays Harbour Co, Washington. 1829 miles.
Cycling round a bay pretty much. A lot of the scenery reminds me of Northumberland. Flat, blustery, a bit cold, lots of mud-flats. There's also that gorgeous mud-flat smell which I cannot describe, but if you know it, you'll know what I mean.

Logging trucks
I'm off the 101 at the moment. The 101 in a major feed route that runs from Mexico to Canada, built in the 80s. I see logging trucks passing me every day and I will go along sections where the loaded ones are going north and the empty ones are going south, and conversly, stretches where the loaded ones are going south and the empty ones north. However, quite often I get stretches where there are loaded ones going in both directions! Loaded with the same kind of wood as far as I can tell. Huh?

Cups and ditches
A little while back, I noticed that a lot of the discarded paper coffee cups in the ditch next to me all seemed to be facing the same way. They all seemed to have their open ends pointing North (in the direction of the traffic flow that would have discarded them). I did some counts, three lots of them, counting only cups that did not appear to have been broken and only cups that were at least 45deg away from pointing across the ditch. I went through the process three times counting cups pointing in each direction until at least one of the figures got to 20. I got:

20 north: 5 south
20 north: 7 south
20 north: 4 south

which proved that there is a selection mechanism going on. I figure it is because the bottom of the cup is more heavy that the top (having a base to contend with) and therefore the top is happier to tumble than the bottom. Also, because of this (the bottom half effectively having a higher density), it will drag on the ground more. I dunno?

99 mile day
Two days ago I mucked up. I started from Lincoln City aiming for a campsite about 60 miles away. I got to the turn off to it which would have meant doubling back on myself and noticed that there was a campsite another 7 miles up the road, so I went for that instead.

I got to it. It was called Oswald West, after some old time state governer. It was a weird campsite. No cars or RVs and you had to carry everything in with you. Hence, also, no hiker-biker area and it was all fully booked. At this point I was pretty tired, but I figured I'd just keep going to the next town and book into a motel. Going back to the previous campsite meant going up a steep hill and down the other side, which I'd only have to repeat the next day.

The next town was small and had no motel. The one after that was a seaside resort called Cannon Beach and it had lots of motels, but every single one was full. I asked at two of them and they both said the entire town was packed. It was about 9pm at this point. I was cold, hungry and dismal for want of another word.

I was really low on energy so I bought a bottle of Gatorade and a buritto and ate and drank. It was dark and cold and I had my wooly hat on under my helmet. I couldn't really cycle up hill anymore as my legs weren't really working, so I pushed the bike up a three mile hill and free-wheeled down in the dark. I had lights on but they don't illuminate the shoulder far ahead so I couldn't go that fast. Eventually, I found a motel in a place called Seaside. It was nice. I hadn't slept in a bed for a while.

I did wonder earlier in the trip of the possibility of doing a 100 mile day. That day I did 99. I wouldn't want to do 100. Having said that, yesterday I did 86 and it felt okay.

Stopping at graveyards
I stopped at a graveyard recently. I've done it a couple of other times on the trip. It is nice to get away from the road-noise. I like graveyards. It sounds a bit odd. Not in a vampirical way, but in a peaceful way. I like reading gravestones. I look at a gravestone and as in the words of the little boy out of Sixth Sense, "I see dead people."

I stopped at a really nice on that had been relocated. Due to sea erosion, it would have been washed into the sea, which incidentally is the way I'd like my body to be disposed of - buried at sea, please, if possible. If not buried in cloth, not a coffin. Anyway, it was only a small graveyard with not many graves in. It seemed that the area had had a scandinavian influence around 1900 from the names.

Someone was still leaving flowers for someone who died in 1932.

Crossing bridges
Crossing from Oregon to Washington was stressful. There is a three mile bridge. The bike lane was put in as an after-thought. Traffic ploughs across it at 55mph inches away. It was blustery and my sweaty hands gripped the handlebars with an enthusiasm I hadn't before encountered on this trip. I didn't die. Good.

Heading north
Still going north. Sorry about the hobbit thing last time. It kept me amused for a day.

I'm going to be skirting away from the coast for a while. There's an injun reservation occupying the coast and no roads go through it. Unfortunately, there appear to be no campsites for 150 miles, so I'm just going to have to improvise.

All the photos are at the end this time. I'm short on time and it's easier.

2006-07-21T18:43:00.000+01:00

Day 42. Starbucks, Newport, Oregon.
People sometimes ask me whether I get bored while cycling, given that I'm on my own.

"North, always north. Why oh why is it always North?" thought Samwise as he pedalled, "always north into the wind. What is wrong with this darned Baggins? What not East or West, or, Lordy-Lord forbid, in a generally Southern direction?"
"What was that Sam?" said Bilbo. Sam hadn't realised that he'd been mumbling.
"I... err... I was just wondering why we always have to go North, given that there is this perpetual headwind?"
"North, Sam?" replied Bilbo, cycling shifting down a few gears due to a windy blast, "Well, we're on a mission, aren't we. The Wizard Wal*mart ordered us to take this precious from Des Mudge to his daughter in Vancouver."
"Wizard what!?"
"Wal*mart!"
"How do you pronounce that?"
"It doesn't matter, foolish hobbit, this is literature, albeit of a dubiously purile nature. The reader can work that out for themselves."
"And what is in the precious?"
"I don't know. Chocolate biscuits, I reckon. He was always a bit partial to the choccy stuff, was Des. Yes chocolate, methinks. What ever it is, it's probably melted or got squashed by now. It's in the side pocket on my back panier."
"So we're going North to give some chocolate to Des Mudge's daughter?"
"Yes, little wee-man, of course, North, North, past the Silicone peaks of California, through the twisting woods of Oregano, round the tsunami'd plains of Washington, (look, there's another roadkill) across the border of nothingness into Canada, where we will finally get to the Volcanoes of Jam and can give the precious to the daughter of the great Des of Mudgeness, from whom all good things come, well apples anyway. BUT... we must beware the dark riders!"
"Why?"
"The dark riders are evil and they want to take the previous from us."
"No they're not. The last one waved at me from his Harley as he went past. I spoke to two in a rest stop only yesterday."
"Alright, they're just mildly disturbing. Although, why grown men should want to grow moustaches, wear black leather, develope voices like grisly bears and ride round the countrside in groups of one or more on over-powered motorcycles that look like the chopper I had in the 70s beats me! What's that slithering?"
"That's Smaegol you twerp," Sam said, bored now of Frodo's drivelling, "I've got him on a lead attached to my panier."
"Matt Daemon!" moaned the gollum, as though labotomised.
"Did someone say Slitherin?" said Harry as he stepped out from behind the tree, "I shall have to poke them with my magic wand."
"Harry Potter! What are you doing here? This is Lord of the Rings! Of a sort."
"I'm looking for Hermione. She's giving me the run-around again. I was trying to practice the magic-wandie thing on her. When will she realise that we're meant for each other? By the end of the last book I suppose. It's always like that in books. All the good stuff happens after the end."
"Well, we haven't seen her I'm afraid."
"Thundering Typhoons! What was that?" said Biggles.
"That was a logging truck, and yes, it was a bit close for comfort," said Sam, "Look this is getting a bit surreal, what are you doing here, Biggles? This is all just get rather silly now."
"But, by jingo, it was driven by a negroid!"
"Matt Daemon!"
"Shut up, Smaegol. Biggles! You can't say things like that now. For some reason that was socially acceptable in 1932 when you were created, but things have moved on. Like Austin Powers, you must learn to, well, brush your teeth, as it were."
"Whoooooaaa, what's that?"
"That, my Samwise, is the puff of smoke we're about to disappear into."

So, anyway, no I don't get bored. I do remember of running out of things to think about once. That was in January 2004 when I was helming round Cape Agulhas in the middle of the night. I was tired and there was nothing to look at except the compass and Finton dozing in the corner of the cockpit and I ran out of things to think about.

Imbibing
I made dinner the other night at a campsite and shared it with another biker, going south, like most of the sane ones do. In returned he provided two demi bottles of red wine, one each. We ate, we drank and got merry.

The following day, yesterday, to be more pacific, I felt really exhausted all day. I was amazed at the effect that the alcohol had on me. I wanted to go to sleep all the time. I eventually konked out mid afternoon on a piece of grass next to a tourist attraction for half an hour or so. Felt a bit better after that.

Writing
I'm getting published. No, not Sandland. Yet. One of the articles I wrote in February about the Cape to Bahia is getting published in the Cruising Notes section of Practical Boat Owner, which is slightly different to Practical Bota Owner. I know not if there is any payment for this. No doubt I will find out eventually.

No photos today. I've got to get going before the wind kicks in too hard.

2006-07-16T03:47:00.000+01:00

Day 37. Harris State Campsite, Oregon.
Hey! I'm in Oregon. At last. Noone told me that California was infinitely long. Cool. As the crow flies I've got about another 500 miles to Vancouver. However, as the msn maps routeplanning advises, I've got 637 miles. However, that doesn't stick to the coast, so I reckon I've got about 800-900 in reality. I've got just over a month left on the evil visa thing, so I need to get a move on.

And that's the problem. I've spent the last three days sitting around in Florence Keller campsite (no showers no hot water). Why, you may ask? Well, I've got tendonitis in my left ankle, which is easing off, but I did 25 miles on the flat today, and I'm not sure if I've made it worse or not. Tomorrow is a 50+ mile day to the next campsite with one major hill on it. Do I go? Don't I go? Who knows? Only tomorrow can tell.

Child beating
The day after I saw the child-beater, I went to a bike shop to buy a spare tube. I mentioned it to the bike shop owner (who had just narrowly escaped having his leg amputated as he had been given some antibiotics for a leg wound that interfered with his diabeties). He said that he was adopted a child and his step-father, who was indian, would routinely take him out of the car on long journeys and beat him with a belt so that the other drivers could see that he was disciplining his children!

I was amazed with the vehemence with which he spoke about this man. He was shaking when he spoke and it had obviously affected him deeply. He said he had pumped iron and when he was in his forties he went back to "settle the score". In his words, "the beast who has 250 pounds was now a frail old man. I wanted to beat the 250 pound man, not the old man. I let him know in no uncertain terms how I felt about him though." I thought that was telling.

Pop can stove
I made a pop-can stove a couple of days ago while I was sitting around doing nothing. I found the design on the net. Actually, it is a beer-can stove. It was easy to make with few tools, and some flue-pipe tape. It runs on alcohol, and I've tried to make a stand for it, but to no avail so far, so I can't actually heat anything on it yet. I tried it out and it works fine. I got foot long flames coming out of the top of it! I have some plans that are to do with 3 tent pegs, a big beer can and a little beer can to make a stand. Perhaps tomorrow.

Seals
One of the more entertaining aspects of Crescent City (and let's face it there aren't many unless you're a relative of an inmate of Pelican Bay State Prison) is the sea-mammal sanctuary. There they look after, mostly, abandoned baby seals. They are behind two sets of chicken wire, so you can't really go and pat them on the head, and the keepers try not to let them get used to people, but they're sweet and bath in the sun and play in the water

Stranded boat
I came across a stranded boat today. Initially I thought it might be a hangover from the 1964 tsunami that turned up here from Alaska. But no, it had been moved there in 1970 something. The upper deck was a shop, but the hold had been converted into a museum of weird things related to the sea, stuff like a whale feotus, a whale eye, various snakes and frogs in formaldahyde and some inflated blowfish. Why, other that for Victorian curiosities sake, I know not.

2006-07-12T00:50:00.000+01:00

Day 33. Coffee Corner Cafe and Deli, Crescent City, Del Norte Co, California
Had a nasty experience today, so I'm going to write about that while it's still fresh in my head.

There's a long steep hill south of Crescent City, called Crescent City Hill, logically. I'd been cycling/pushing the bike for about an hour up it and was just short of the summit. At the time I was pushing. Crescent City hill is covered in redwoods and at the time there was low cloud, so it was misty. I'd been pushing the bike up a long straight near the top of which was a layby on the far side of the road. In the layby was a silver camper van, quite a large one.

As I came close to level at it, I could hear a man shouting and a child screaming its head off. I can't remember what he was shouting, but there was this thwacking noise. The guy and the child were on the far side of the van, but I could see both their legs under the van. I realised pretty quick that the guy was beating the kid with something.

I tend to react badly to children being hurt. I remember catching my little brother's leg (again, sorry, Ben) between the forks and the spokes of my bike while giving him a bunk when he was about 5 or 6. Shakes me up thinking about that even now. He's fine now, as you probably know. His leg is the last thing we worry about!

I stood on the otherside of the road for a few moments, thinking, do I get involved in this, and then I thought, am I a coward or what, so I shouted "Hey! Stop that!" as loud as I could and trotted across the road as fast as I could pushing the bike. As I got across the road the guy bundled the child back into the van. I didn't really get a good look at the child, but from the screams he was a boy and from the size he was about 10-12. As I came round the van, there was a black guy standing there holding a belt, about my height, but heavier build, early 30s. He looked pissed off, but embarrased. There was a white woman in her 40s with fake blonde hair sitting in the passenger seat who just raised the palms to me and shouted, "Back off! Back off!" through the windscreen.

I thought at the time she was warning me that I might get my lights punched out, but in retrospect I have a feeling she was scared I was going to start a fight. Contrary to common belief, I am not generally one to start a fight. I also thought at this time that this was America where people have the right to wander around with handguns and he might have a one. I said nothing, to be honest not knowing what to do and just looked at the guy. He disappeared behind the van. At this point I thought I'd better get out of there, so I walked round the back of the van and off up the hill to the road.

I stood waiting for the traffic to clear and the van waited too and I realised that I should get the licence plate number. I memorised it, which was 583 BVL. The van was pulling away at this time, and I couldn't recognise the make - a Dodge or Chevy or some American thing. I crossed the road and it pulled away, and as soon as it had gone round the corner I got out a piece of paper and wrote down everything I could remember.

I cycled as fast (mostly downhill) as I could and as soon as I got to Crescent City I went to a police station and reported it. The Deputy Shreiff was very nice. Someone-or-other Harrison. They confirmed that the licence plate was a Chevy van licenced in Oregon and that it was silver.

So now I'm sitting in an internet cafe feeling shaken up and a bit shocked. As I came down the hill I was so scared that a silver van was going to come up behind me and nudge me off the road - it would have been so easy to do.

Evil child beating dude in Oregon registered 583 BVL: you need help! Anger management classes, I would imagine.

On a lighter note...
On a lighter note, I had a really nice night last night. I was staying at Elk Creek campground (near where I saw some Elk, strangely enough). I'd stopped about 15 miles before it at a beach, I don't remember which one, but the sea was rough and choppy and cold looking and there was a surfer going in, in a full body wetsuit with a hood. Now that's dedicated. Rather him than me.

While I was there, there were some cyclists on the beach, 4 of them, mostly asleep. I only noticed them as I went to leave, so I left them alone. I turned up at the campsite a while later, two of them cycled over (on fast, light, racer bikes, lucky gits) and invited me to dinner, to which I accepted.

Fortunately, that morning, I'd done laundry at the KOA campsite, which was just as well, because prior to that they were getting pretty grim. I've never been one for turning clothes inside out to wear, because that's like saying, I stink, but if I was, I would have been. I haven't been invited to dinner for many moons, so I dressed up as best as I could, which basically involved wearing jeans and the least worn looking tee-shirt on top (I really need to get a couple of new tee-shirts), and went over.

There were 20 of them! They were all undergrads or postgrads from the University of Austin and were cycling from Texas to Alaska to raise money for cancer. Their website is www.texas4000.org if you fancy donating. They fed me; as far as I remember, the first evening hot meal I've had since I've started. I'm normally on bread and avocados and (by tarnation) it was good. Pasta and peanut sauce with just the right amount of chilli. I stood around and chatted for a long time, inspected the crossed fish-heads on the front of their support van and listened to stories of rigormortized roadkill rabbits being used as toy machine guns. I told them where I'd been and how I'd got there - I think they thought I was a bit mad or something.

I'm going by the photos on your website here, some of which are strange so I may get the wrong people, but Robert Landauer, Andrew Lintz, Hap Pfeil, Jay Yu, Athan Creecy, Jennifer King and the rest of you, many thanks for your hospitality and your entertaining conversation. I should have stayed for beers.

Weird dude, weird bicycle
I saw the weirdest bicycle a couple of days ago. I mean really weird. I was very impressed and stopped to talk to the rider, who appeared to be Bob Marley on drugs (if Bob Marley wasn't on drugs in the first place. Perhaps different drugs. I saw pictures of what crystal meth can do to you in the police station just now. Not nice). He was a lovely guy, but he ws going on about his bike having fly-wheels and that it would get up to 70mph at 150 horsepower. But the bike was incredible - see the pictures. I looked in the back. No fly-wheels, no engine, but a nice cosy sleeping space. Also, apparently, it used to have a kitchen and a toilet. Hmmmm...

Slugs
They have "super-size" slugs here. And they're a different colour. Apparently they are called banana slugs and they are well named for their colour and dimensions. If one were to take a banana and cross it with a slug (Lordy forbid what the actual act of banana-slug-love-making would look like, don't try and picture it. No, I said don't!), a banana slug is pretty much what one would get.

Unlike humans, the rain has brought them out. Oh, today was the first day I've been rained on. And I nearly ran over a slug. But it might have been a banana. Here is a photo of one that was sliming along the side of a sign (I've rotated the picture clockwide 90deg to look gravitationally normal).

I read a fiction horror book once about giant man eating slugs that evolved in a city's drainage system. People were eaten by them. I try not to think about that at bedtime.

2006-07-09T23:54:00.000+01:00

Day 31. Starbucks, Eureka, Humboult County. 1144 miles.
So I'm in Starbucks in Eureka. In the typical energy efficient way that Americans live their life, this one has the air conditioning running and a gas fire going in the middle of the room. Figures, eh?

Was a bit worried about where this place was. It didn't seem to be where it was supposed to be on the map, but, Eureka: I found it. Sorry.

Hills and spills
Two days ago I had a really good day. Actually, it started off really quite badly as people tried to kill me twice, and I ended up having to pull off the road into the grass due to their inherent ineptitude. But I laughed later, because I was rolling down a gentle hill at about 20mph, came round a corner, looked sideways at something for a second or two, and found myself cycling along the wide grass verge. I don't need anyone else to kill me; I can do it perfectly well myself. It was a lesson learnt for later in the day.

Ahem, later in the day I had to cycle uphill for about 10 miles up Leggett Hill. It goes and goes and goes, up to 2000 feet in altitude, but I managed to cycle it and not push any significant part of it. Cycling down the other side was brilliant. It took about 15 minutes and I overtook an RV. I remembered to keep my eyes on the road as if I disappeared off the side, no one would ever find me. Ze bears would probably get me first.

One day ago, or, "yesterday" as is common parlence (why do we use the word yesterday? Not-today would be more appropriate. Anyone know the origins of yesterday?), was a delightful romp along the Avenue of Giants, a road that winds through a valley full of coastal redwoods.

It was nice and toasy inland and now I've come back out to the coast it is cold and cloudy. Brrr. And I've mislaid my wooly hat. I think it blew out from under the bunjee on the back of the bike on the way down Leggett Hill, so I'm going to have to wear pants on my head in bed tonight.

Funniest thing I've seen so far
The funniest thing I've seen so far was in Santa Cruz. It was the day I managed to "lock myself out of my bike" and so I wasn't in the most jovial expression. This was after that, and I was trying to find a bookshop with an Atlas of California. It was a sunny day and as I walked along I could hear squeaking. Just repeated fast manic squeaking. I worked out what it was. There was a guy sitting cross-legged on a blanket on the sidewalk (a.k.a. pavement) naked from the waist up, bouncing and madly squeaking a little baby toy, I forget what.

I tried not to make eye contact, thinking, "My God, you see some down and outs, but what on earth happened to him." There were some bums (a.k.a. tramps) sitting on a bench nearby and one of them called over his shoulder, "Cut out the squeaking, will yer," and a very eloquent voice responded, "But sir, I love my squeaking."

The squeaking continued and I was forced to look. The guy was not cooked at all and had a little sign in front of him saying, "Smile, dammit!"

How I chortled. I think he was more sane that the rest of us.

Drive-thru
In serveral places along the Avenue of the Giants were signs for Drive-thru trees. This, I thought, had to be interesting. The idea of a great Redwood tree that has grown in such a way that you can drive a car through it amazed me. Unfortunately, the truth is not quite up to that. It's a very wide redwood that someone had cut a car-sized hole in the middle of. A bit harsh, methinks, for a tree that can take up to 2000 years to get to that size. The nice man at the entry gate let me in for free. It was $5/car, but I don't think he knew what to charge me. As I cycled through, I was expecting a little hatch and a McDonalds' employee to take my order.

Wind erosion
There is evidence of wind erosion on some of the larger plants I've seen. Quite remarkable it is. See photo.

Sandland
I sent Sandland to two publishers a while ago, Macmillan New Writers (electronically) and Orion, first three chapters. Macmillan came back to me a few weeks ago with this:

Dear Mr Roworth,

I regret we are unable to accept the work you sent us for publication.

Macmillan receive many thousands of manuscripts every year so unfortunately it is not possible to respond personally to every author.

Because we receive so many mss and are able to publish only a small percentage, rejection does not automatically imply anything about the quality of the work we are unable to use.

There are many reasons why a book may not suit our lists. We may have other, similar material in production, we may be oversubscribed with good submissions during this season, we may have decided not to publish books on certain themes, etc.

Unless you have asked us to return a typescript manuscript to you, we will now permanently delete any electronic files we have relating to your book.

Thank you for contacting us, and good luck with your writing.

Michael Barnard

Publisher, Macmillan New Writing

Orion also came back within a few days of Macmillan, via parents, stating that they'd already arranged their next two years worth of books. Oh well. When I get to Gav and Wendy's, I'll try to sit down and do a serious set of submissions. Writing is pretty much dead in the water at the moment, although I am thinking up some plot for poor old Hugh in the next book. He might slowly turn evil. Maybe he will, maybe he won't? Who knows? Somewhere there's got to be a Ceasarian section.

Roadkill of the day
Dead hummingbird.

Discovery
I have made a discovery. If I don't drink caffeine for a few days, I don't wake up at 4am needing to pee and then fail to sleep for the next two hours trying not to get up for it.

South Park
I saw this a couple of days back. Since then, I have been singing the South Park theme in my head, and also the words to Mr Hankie the Christmas Poo. The lyrics to the South Park theme are:

I'm goin' down to South Park gonna have myself a time,
(Kyle + Stan) Friendly faces everwhere humble folks without temptation,
I'm goin' down to South Park gonna leave my woes behind.

There is more, but it is rude. I couldn't find the lyrics to Mr Hankie, which is the only song I've ever heard which uses the word vicariously. Mr Hankie is below:

Mr Hankie, the Christmas poo.
We love him, and he loves you.
Therefore, vicariously, we love you.
Even if you're a Jew.

And there I will leave you. Next stop, 2 days, Crescent City, 88 miles, just south of the border between California and Oregon. I wonder if there is any oregano in Oregon. There certainly is in Humboult County where it's legal to grow the stuff...