All good things come to an end.

Last time I posted I was in middle England just about to start a round of visits to friends in Yorkshire; well that came and went and from there I moved on to North Wales to visit more friends - and then it was but a brief trip down to my final finishing spot at my fathers house in Swansea in South Wales.  Whilst I was looking forward to seeing him, finishing the trip was something I wanted to put off so instead of going directly there I managed to add in one or two extra days of sightseeing in Wales, which is the country I grew up in.  Now memories of Wales in my youth feature recollections of quaint towns and beautiful scenerery, unfortunately too often viewed through a veil of rain.  Well travelling in December brought both elements of those memories back!

[caption id="attachment_766" align="aligncenter" width="480" caption="Chester - and a brief burst of sunshine!  (And all is not as it seems, whilst Chester has some genuine Tudor timber framed buildings, most, including these, are Victorian pastiches - however it makes for a charming city centre) "][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_767" align="aligncenter" width="480" caption="The beachfront promenadeat Rhyl (North Wales).  Damp is the word that comes to mind - once a thriving tourist town. December perhaps wasn't the best time to appreciate its charms."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_768" align="aligncenter" width="480" caption="Snowdonia National Park - beautiful but again damp (however since snow was scheduled for the next night I considered this a reasonable weather option)"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_770" align="aligncenter" width="480" caption="Brecon Beacons an area of glorious hills and mountains in mid-wales (and even better the suns out)"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_771" align="aligncenter" width="480" caption="Swansea Bay and The Mumbles Pier- the scene of most of my childhood. (Swansea has the second highest tidal rise and fall in the world - between 9 and 12 metres; this is low water, at high water all the foreground becomes sea.)"][/caption]

 

[caption id="attachment_775" align="aligncenter" width="360" caption="Christmas dinner - with all the trimmings."][/caption]

Suddenly the trip is all over and its kind of depressing. Its great to see family and friends for Christmas but I've had such independence and such a fantastic time over the last five months and experienced so much friendship from people that it is a flat feeling now that its finished.

The question  always asked at the end of a trip like this is "what have you learnt?" and perhaps more insight-fully (as was done by one of my friends) "what have you learnt about yourself".  Neither are an easy  answer.  To the first I'd say more than anything it has taught me (or more truthfully reminded me of) just how good people are and how friendly and interesting the world is.  It is so easy to get caught up in your day to day to existence to forget this and to believe the world is a frightening place that has to be somehow controlled and corralled.  The reality is so different; the world is out there is waiting to welcome you with open arms and to give far so much more than it takes.  The second question is even harder to answer and I need more time to reflect on it than I have yet given it - but I do know it has reminded me how much I usually set my own limitations when in reality if I just get going there are very few things that can't be achieved.

[caption id="attachment_774" align="aligncenter" width="480" caption="The bike - now cleaned, soaked in WD-40, wrapped and parked in my dad's garden. Ready for the next trip? (Alaska to Argentina sounds interesting)"][/caption]

Scotland and snow

Its December, I'm in Scotland I suppose I should have expected snow.  Unfortunately there seems to have been an excess of it just as I arrived - one week earlier and I would have seen none (conversely I was later to discover one week later I might have never made it all the way north or alternatively have got stuck up there for some time).

In my last post I was just coming to grips with snow when I saw it for the first time in Edinburgh - well it won the first round.  First thing I did after leaving my friends house was find a filling station and fill the bikes tank - second thing was to move off and promptly fall over.  Turned out the car park at the filling station was like an ice rink; it hadn't been gritted and the first vehicles moving over the snow had melted it and then it had simply re-frozen as ice.  Needless to say this didn't do my confidence much good - especially knowing I was currently near sea-level and had the Cairngorms , which rise to over 1200m (4000 feet), to cross that day.

[caption id="attachment_757" align="aligncenter" width="480" caption="Typical scenery that day.  This was down in the lowlands - I didn't take any on the Cairngorms because I was too busy trying to  simultaneously keep upright, stay on the road and not get run over by the trucks who seemed to be experiencing little difficulty in the snow."][/caption]

 

Anyway after an entertaining days riding I made it over the mountains and back down the otherside to Inverness and thankfully stopped for the night.

[caption id="attachment_758" align="aligncenter" width="480" caption="and the next morning awoke to this."][/caption]

 

More snow fell overnight - but the forecast was the next couple of days should be snow free before then turning very nasty for a week.  So I had to decide whether to turn round now and skip John O'Groats (which probably would have been the sensible option) or do the quick dash now and hope for the best.  Being an optimist (or stupid, or more likely a combination of both) I decided on the latter and set off again.  It was now about 200 km to John O'Groats and part of me thought with luck I could get there and back in the day.

It wasn't to be - initially progress was fast, the roads close to Inverness were well gritted and had seen a fair amount of traffic - but as I moved north it got worse with the road clear 90% of the time but then when you least expected fresh snow was drifting across the road.  This was not fun (well maybe not too bad - I actually found riding on snow OK - its the ice that brings you undone and causes those muscle clenching moments).  The fun really ended though when up on one of the high headlands only about 60 kilometres from John O'Groats I stopped to survey a drift and let some traffic through and stalled the bike and it decided it didn't want to restart.  Oh b....

In the end I pushed the bike into someones drive and attempted in amongst the snow flurries to find out what was wrong.  No spark was easy enough to diagnose - the cause was less obvious and by the end of the afternoon little progress had been made.  Throughout this my host Gladys, who was a sprightly 86 year old living 5 miles from the nearest village fed me cups of coffee and sandwiches and didn't seem at all perturbed by my presence.

[caption id="attachment_759" align="aligncenter" width="480" caption="Gladys - sorry about the out of focus picture."][/caption]

 

With me not being able to fix things Gladys set her network in action; she phoned the local Bed and Breakfast to get me accommodation for the night and arranged for the school bus to pick me up and take me there.  She also spoke to her daughter who coincidentally was involved with bikes who said "So that's where he is - someone told me they had seen someone mad enough to be riding north today, we wondered if he had got through"  proving once again what a small world it is.

Later that night whilst having tea at the local pub I met Robbie a local mechanic who offered to fetch the bike on a trailer to his shed - so the next day that what happened.

[caption id="attachment_760" align="aligncenter" width="480" caption="Robbies shed"][/caption]

 

Anyway in the peace of Robbies shed I was able to work out the problem was simply salt and water-logged electrics and so after a bit of cleaning up the bike was soon up and running again.

[caption id="attachment_761" align="aligncenter" width="480" caption="Robbie doesn't like bikes - he prefers trikes.  This one was built by him , is powered by a 2 litre diesel engine .  He generously let me have a go riding it and it was much easier to steer and manoeuvre than its size suggests.  Great fun but he failed to convert me."][/caption]

 

What the breakdown verified is what I've always believed, it doesn't matter where you are in the world 99% of the people are more than kind hearted and will go out of their way to help you.  Thank you Gladys, Robbie and everyone else I met in the village of Dunbeath.

Anyway with the bike running it was off to John O'Groats

[caption id="attachment_762" align="aligncenter" width="480" caption="John O'Groats. Don't let the sunshine and lack of snow fool you it was cold there.  I have not put on weight during the trip - I'm simply wearing virtually my entire wardrobe."][/caption]

From John O'Groats it was a rapid dash back to Inverness because the weather was due to change that night and if I didn't get out of far north Scotland then it looked like I might have to stay a week.  I rode into Inverness in the tail end of "the worst hurricane in 10 years' (well that's what the news said) as it whipped through the highlands - this certainly added an extra something to the last 20 miles into town - especially over the suspension bridge over the River Ness,  in fact this was some of the scariest riding of the trip.

From Inverness it was back over the Cairngorms - more snow but I was getting less worried by it now and onto the Scottish / English border region where I stopped in a small town of Galashiels.  I was wellout of the snow by here and the overnight forecast was purely frost.

Unfortunately when I opened my curtains in the morning it was snowing steadily and this is what I saw:

[caption id="attachment_763" align="aligncenter" width="480" caption="Frost - disguised as 6 inches of snow"][/caption]

All in all it took another 3 hours of very slow riding to get safely clear of the snow and get on the clear road south into England.

 

From here I've only got a few more days riding via a few friends and relatives until I make it to my fathers house in Swansea, Wales, which is my final destination - but I'll make those days a separate post.

 

Nearly there

Last time I posted I was in Spain - well now I'm in the UK so I'm nearly at my final destination Swansea in Wales.  To add a bit of a challenge to the final week or so I've decided to go from Lands End to John O'groats - the two opposite tips of the British mainland - as a way to end the trip with a small flourish.  This may be a bit more of a challenge than I intended as the weather in Scotland is beginning to get very wintery - we will see.

This is how Spain looked as I left:

[caption id="attachment_740" align="aligncenter" width="480" caption="Santander port -15 degrees and sunny."][/caption]

 

[caption id="attachment_741" align="aligncenter" width="480" caption="Portsmouth UK - not 15 degrees and not sunny!  Was the UK in December a good decision?"][/caption]

 

From Portsmouth I took another quick, but quite rough, ferry ride over to the nearby Isle of Wight, which happens to be where I was born, and also was where I mis-spent lots of my early twenties doing far too much sailing and not enough university work.

 

[caption id="attachment_742" align="aligncenter" width="480" caption="The house my parents had built and i grew up in - it appeared a lot larger than this when I was 5 years old."][/caption]

From the Isle of Wight it wqas back to the mainland and west to Lands End.

[caption id="attachment_743" align="aligncenter" width="480" caption="On the way I stayed Bed and breakfast in various pubs (its tough but someone has to do it!). This one is in Lymington (another place where I sailed when supposedly studying) and dates from 1257."][/caption]

 

[caption id="attachment_744" align="aligncenter" width="480" caption="and to prove I did finally leave the pubs and make it to Lands End"][/caption]

 

Around about Lands End the weather started to get more "wintry" - all layers and waterproofing now required each day.

[caption id="attachment_745" align="aligncenter" width="480" caption="Scenery was still stunning though. this is just after my GPS decided to give me a challenge by sending me down a 6 foot wide track covered in farm muck and ending in a 1 in 3 hill. I was still recovering when I took this."][/caption]

 

[caption id="attachment_746" align="aligncenter" width="480" caption="I tried toi stay off the main roads for most of the route north and so by accident rather than any plan went passed a few good tourist sites. This is Tintern Abbey - which was "dissolved" by Henry the Eigth when he decided to get rid of the catholics and create the Church of England."][/caption]

As I got further north and approached the scottish borders I started to run into sleet - nasty stuff on a bike because its really hard to keep the visor clear enough to see where you are going!

[caption id="attachment_748" align="aligncenter" width="480" caption="And after sleet came snow."][/caption]

First stop in Scotland was the "Falkirk Wheel".  This is a bit of canal engineering built in 2005 (ish) to replace 11 traditional locks.

[caption id="attachment_749" align="aligncenter" width="480" caption="In its top position loading a boat from the upper section of the canal (and the boats are about 18m long by 2m wide)"][/caption]

 

[caption id="attachment_750" align="aligncenter" width="480" caption="And about 4-5 minutes later with the transfer nearly completed. A very impressive, and elegant, piece of engineering."][/caption]

Falkirk is near Edinburgh which in turn is in the lower middle part of Scotland.  I stayed there for the night with some old university friends.

[caption id="attachment_751" align="aligncenter" width="480" caption="Bill (another naval architect) and his wife Diane, both who were good friends of mine throughout university."][/caption]

 

When I woke up in the morning this is what I saw out the window:

[caption id="attachment_752" align="aligncenter" width="480" caption="Oh dear - its only 400km further north to John O'groats, storms are forecast, this is the lowlands and I need to pass over the highlands to get there."][/caption]

 

There was a bit of serious talking to myself before i set off this morning to convince myself it will be OK once I get on the gritted roads, and that I can always turn around if it gets to bad.  But is it a good idea to continue on to John O'Groats and can I make it?  For the first time in the trip I'm not sure what is the correct answer so I'm going to give it a go anyway.  Wait for the next post to see if i make it!