Europe 2013: Into France

August 22, 2013

Today was my last morning with Ant and Amy, which was a bit of a sad occasion for me -- I really enjoyed my time there, and it was very pleasant to feel like I was somewhere I belonged, with people I knew (even if I didn't know them very well yet). Among friends. It's made the journey away a bit more melancholy than it might have been, but that was extremely well assisted by London traffic, and me completely flubbing my travel planning for the day.

Amy left for work at 9, and that was the last I saw of her (although we talked again tonight when I called to say I'd landed safely, and she reported that I left, of all things, my pillowcase behind). Ant drove her there and returned, so he was the one who finally saw me off, after we'd pulled the bike out of his mother's back yard. She lives, very conveniently, across the street and two doors down.

One thing you have to understand about the Welsh house to get what it means to store a bike in someone's backyard: each house's yard is completely enclosed by a stone wall, 5-6 feet tall. Sometimes a house will have a front and a back yard, sometimes just a back yard. Marge's yard had a gate which was just a bit narrower than the handlebars of the motorcycle. So wheeling it in and out was a bit of an operation, including moving the side mirrors so they didn't stick out to the side at all (they wouldn't have passed through).

I loaded up, we walked over to Marge's house, and I said my farewells (we only interacted once or twice, but she seemed like a nice woman, and Amy and Ant are both obviously quite fond of her). Ant allowed me the use of some household oil to de-stick my gas cap lock, and then I got my suit on, and rode off after a final handshake.

It was odd to be on the road again. My little two-day sojourn with my friends was a completely different experience to any I've ever had, in many ways, and it kind of made me forget that I was motorcycling around. But motorcycling I was, and I soon got back into the swing of it.

I was reminded as I passed a roundabout that I wanted to stop by and see Caerphilly Castle, although I ended up going pretty far out of my way before I remembered it. I'd booked a ticket on the Chunnel train for 5:20 pm, and didn't leave until just after 11 am. It was a tight fit, involving me basically camping on a motorway lane for four-plus hours, and that didn't count stops, gas, lunch, or any traffic that made me go less than full speed. One might even say that "ridiculously ambitious" is more like it.

But the GPS said I'd make it with hours to spare, so I followed up on Ant's suggestion to see Ashbury, where there's a very impressive stone circle, which is normally skipped by everyone in favor of Stonehenge. I got to Ashbury, and realized that I must have picked the wrong one -- this was clearly just a little town in the middle of the English countryside. I was about to be disappoined (since I definitely wouldn't have time to find a different Ashbury) when I randomly spotted a sign for the Uffington White Horse.

The Uffington White Horse is a Bronze Age monument consisting of huge divots carved out of a hillside, and replaced with blocks of chalk (the ground up there is largely made of chalk). It's a very impressionistic horse, and apparently similar to some Iron Age images on coins. It's also featured and described somewhat romantically in the second Tiffany Aching book by Terry Pratchett. I figured if I was close, I should definitely check it out.

I found my way there, through some very narrow, slow roads, and before I walked out to see the horse, I checked my arrival time at the Chunnel entrance: 4:48. My final check-in time was 4:50. If I was later than 4:50, I wasn't getting on the train. As I believe I have already explained, the GPS's arrival estimates range from quite optimistic to magically optimistic. There's no possible way I was going to make my train. I suffered another crisis of conscience like I had had in Glenuig, and once again decided on the side of "When am I going to be here again?"

I hiked quickly out to the Horse, and spent a few minutes taking pictures and very gently touching the chalk surface. Villagers have an annual festival/ritual in which they clean the surface of the chalk, and replace it as necessary, so the Horse remains white for all to see -- this has been going on for thousands of years now. That's what I call a tradition. In any case, I gently touched the eye and part of the spine, my fingertips coming away with tiny streaks of white chalk dust on them. It was a very pleasant, calm interlude in an otherwise hurried and fairly unpleasant day.

I got back to the bike, and the arrival estimate was now 5:30, ten minutes after my train would have left. There are trains every half hour or so, and I would be put on a later train when I arrived, but the website had made it clear that I would be a standby passenger, and the wait could be long. I thought it was worth the risk for the opportunity to visit the Horse in person (although I now wish I'd spent a little more time there).

I headed back out to the motorway. You have to understand that motorway riding means paying constant attention to all the cars around me, and that I end up sitting in one position for hours at a time, and my butt becomes quite painful with the poorly formed seat on this bike. The seat is perfectly normal, but no motorcycle manufacturer actually puts a comfortable distance seat on their bikes, except maybe on some of the BMWs and on the Honda Goldwing. The SV650 seat is designed to look good, and to feel about right when sat upon in the showroom. The result is that when you sit on it for a few hours, it gets to be quite a pain in the butt.

Anyway, all was going as well as can be expected until I dropped off the M4 around the road to Basingstoke to switch to a different motorway, and I hit the traffic. This would end up being the first traffic of more than two hours of on and off traffic until I was well outside London. There was clearly no way I was going to be less than hours late to the train.

I was horribly tempted to try filtering (also called lane splitting, where a bike takes advantage of its narrowness to go faster than the speed of traffic by riding between lanes). I saw a number of bikes filter past me in the heavy traffic, but I decided that even though the drivers didn't seem upset by it, the time to learn a new skill like this was probably not on foreign roads on a still-unfamiliar bike and where I was pretty sure filtering was illegal, if tolerated. It'd be just my luck to filter past a cop, and get a massive ticket for reckless driving or something.

I did finally get to Folkestone, after a number of stops for petrol and the bathroom, plus one final stop to get a horrible premade egg, mayo and cress sandwich for dinner. I rolled up and checked myself in, to find that they were able to load me on the train leaving in 20 minutes, at 6:50. I pretty much rolled straight on to the train, after a moment of stopping to relax, not understanding that my boarding group was at final call. Hurry, hurry, hurry!

Like a Washington State ferry, they load cars on two levels, and I was loaded on last, with three other bikers, on the bottom level. The train is odd looking, with small windows, and a uniform dirty grey color, unbroken by any of the normal train appurtenances. I didn't get a picture of the outside of the train, but I snapped a few of my fellow bikers.

When we arrived in France, it was to the sight of some of the most sculptural clouds in the midst of sunset light that I've ever seen. I had to pull over multiple times to capture them (the land itself is quite flat, and doesn't make for much to photograph). It completely erased all memories of suffering through London traffic or riding for far too long. It was beautiful. I don't know how clouds can be French, but these were.

I found my campground for the night, and managed to snag the proprietress as she was helping other late arrivals. It was after closing time, and my phone refused to dial the contact number I had, so I was starting to despair for having a place to sleep tonight. Fortunately I got in and set up, although as punishment (intentional or not), she placed me next to the late arrivals, who are a crowd of loud and fairly obnoxious Brits, with a hairdryer sounding device, probably for inflating mattresses. In addition, the children's play area is directly behind my pitch, and there are a solid 8-10 kids playing back there, apparently playing a game that involves throwing rocks or pinecones at one of the pieces of plastic playground equipment, creating loud reports with each strike, and shouting. It may be a long night.

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Created by Ian Johnston. Questions? Please mail me at reaper at obairlann dot net.