Shyzerblog

I arrived in Bath around noon, checked into my hostel, grabbed a map from the lobby and headed out to wander through the sights of Bath. It became immediately obvious that there was more to see in Bath than an overnight stay could handle, so upon returning to the hostel I booked an extra night.

My first stop was the Baths, the entrance to which is in the right of this photo (that’s Bath Abbey in the centre). Bath is a city built in layers, with one era of decadence moving in on top of the next, most of them unaware of the others, and the Baths are setup as a monument and museum to all of them. This is my panoramic shot of the King’s Bath, where the water bubbles up at 46 degrees.

I did the sensible thing and went to bed early that night, eventually popping in earplugs to escape the incessant squawking of Bath’s seagull population. In the morning I headed down to the square to catch one of the town’s free walking tours, which was lead by a man who reminded me of Mr. Gussoni, my 5th and 6th grade teacher.

The tour was fantastic, and covered all the major sights in bath – the circus, the royal crescent, the various spas – as well as some of the minor ones – including plaques marking former residences of General Wolfe, and of Horace Walpole, who said “Life is a tragedy for those who feel, but a comedy to those who think,” and is credited with inventing the word ’serendipity’.

Here’s my pano of the circus:

When we arrived back in the square a little over two hours later I popped into the Abbey to take the tower tour, which I still think of as one of the highlights of my trip. The tour took us up and across the Abbey roof, into the clock room and the bell ringing room, then up to the bell tower with a very detailed and fascinating description of English bell ringing and the history of the Bath bells themselves. Yeah, ok, it’s terribly nerdy. But it’s not often you get to be in the room when bells that big are ringing (and once they get going, you don’t really want to be.)

The views from the very top of the bell tower were stunning. The ancient baths:

The modern baths:

And the town (my hostel was just to the left of that church on the right):

I wasn’t going to go to the spa, it seemed overpriced. £22 to wade around in some warm water? No thanks. But along the course of the walking tour the seed had been planted in my mind: for centuries, nay, millenia, people have come to Bath for the waters. Who was I to travel all the way to Aquae Sulis and not take a dip? So I popped back to my hostel for my bathing suit and headed to the brand new Thermae Spa.

Good god, was it worth it. As well as the two heated pools (the rooftop one pictured above and another one on the lower level) the price of admission grants access to a steam room containing four different scented saunas: mint, mint & eucalyptus, lavender, and frankincense. The lavender one was disgusting, but I couldn’ve stayed in the mint & eucalyptus one all day, and I’m generally not a sauna fan.

Bath is not a terrific nightlife city. Its tourist population generally goes the spa, shops, and then goes to sleep. So there wasn’t much to do past 11, when all the bars closed, so I went to bed and rode to Marlborough the next day.

I’d planned a brief stopover at Avebury along the way. Avebury is a large, ancient stone circle, akin to Stonehenge, only not as famous, and thus more accessible – I’d read that Stonehenge is becoming a bit of a gyp lately because you have to pay admission to see the stones, and even then you’re no longer allowed to get anywhere near them. At Avebury you can wander freely through the stones. Plus, it was on the way. So Avebury it was.

Unfortunately, by the time I reached Avebury it was raining, and had been for several hours, so I was cranky. I didn’t even walk the full way around the circle. ‘Cause ya know what? It’s just a bunch of dumb rocks. Whoop-de-fucking-do.

I got a flat tire just outside of Marlborough, and decided that rather than try to fix it in the rain I would just find a room for the night and find a bike shop that could fix it for me in the morning. (Ok, so maybe I did try to fix it, and failed, first).

I set out in the morning for Reading, where I spent the night with a friend’s cousins, who showed me around town and took me to a fantastic pie shop called Sweeney & Todd’s, which was in fact next door to a barber shop.

The next day I rolled into London – finally, the last stop on my trip! The first thing I did when I got to the hostel was laundry. By the time it was finished Leah had arrived – the first familiar face I’d seen since my mother dropped me off at the airport two weeks prior.

We wasted no time in diving into all the culture London had to offer: we immediately went out to see the new Harry Potter movie.

The following morning we went on a walking tour lead by a hyperactive American girl I wanted to strangle for most of our time together. But the tour did a good job of covering a lot of the major points on the London to-do list: Westminster Abbey, Trafalgar Square, Horseguard’s Palace, the changing of the guard, Buckingham Palace, and so forth. I’m going to spare you (read: me) from the uncomfortable experience of posting the horrendously awkward picture of Leah and I posing with a palace guard.

We hit the Natural History Museum, the British Museum, a tiny portion of the enormous Victoria and Albert Museum, and in between managed to subside on the hostel breakfast and an all-you-can-eat vegetarian buffet. In no time the two days were over and Leah was off to Paris. I spent another night at the hostel and then headed north to spend the rest of my visit with friends-of-a-friend, (who’d made probably the best roast chicken I’ve ever had).

The rest of the week is a blur of sightseeing and museums: The National Gallery, The National Portrait Gallery (twice), The Monument, Portobello Road, the Duke of Uke, Tower Bridge, Tate Modern (hated it!), St. Paul’s, Westminster Abbey (both seen for free by sneaking in during services), the Thames at night, La Cage Aux Folles, Les Miserables (hated it!), eating pop rocks  with Aimee, watching a man put himself through a tennis racket, a squash racket, and a toilet seat at Covent Garden, Harrod’s, St. James’s Park; all capped off quite nicely with a shameless farewell make out at Piccadilly station.

When I was told I might be bumped from my flight home I found myself hoping that I would be – not only because the airline would have had to pay me $900 in compensation, but also because I would have loved another night in London. In the end though, it’s always good to come home.

I knew England was hilly, but holy crap, is it hilly.

I set out from Manchester on Thursday morning and the weather was fantastic. By two o’clock I’d gone 45 kilometers, and was just ready to stop for a lunch break when it started to rain. I thought this timing was serendipitous, because it would probably be finished raining by the time I was finished eating. An hour later and the rain had let up a little, but it was still coming down pretty steadily. I couldn’t sit under a tree all day, so I set off, and rode for nearly three hours more in the rain.

There was no sign telling me I had crossed into Wales, but I suddenly noticed unintelligible babling printed on road signs which I realized was Welsh.

My favourite Welsh word so far is the word for “humps”: “Twmpath”. (If it’s pronounced the way I imagine, it rhymes with “lovely lady lwmpath”.)

By evening the rain was starting to drive me crazy, and my phone, which had been guiding me via GPS, died, meaning I couldn’t find the Llangollen campsite I was headed for – and it was too wet to camp anyway. I was frustrated and wandering randomly around a tiny hillside village, going in circles and taking turns on a hunch for about a half an hour before I stumbled upon a fancy little country hotel and asked if they had a room available. They did, and apparently showing up at reception wet and bedraggled shortly before dark gets you a discount.

The first thing I did was take a bath in what had to be the deepest bathtub I’ve ever been in. Then I spread my wet clothes all over the room to dry and soaked in some British television before going to bed. I didn’t sleep well though – I’d convinced myself that the 19th century country home that the hotel was set in was exactly the kind of place that must be haunted, so every little noise woke me from near-sleep and put me on high ghost alert.

I woke in the morning to find that not only was it still raining, but my bike had a flat tire. Ordinarily I might have taken this challenge with a little more relish and captured the event in pictures, but the rain made me generally reticent to pull out my camera. I set to work at repairing the flat and realized I’d forgot to pack a tire iron, so I used the back end of my spoon to pry the tire from the wheel. I successfully located and patched the leak, but my portable tire pump wouldn’t fully inflate the tire. I was forced to walk 10km – to three different service stations – before I finally found a working air pump.

Eventually, maybe around 6 pm, it stopped raining. At this point I was riding down a two lane motorway, headed to Herefordshire. It’s impossible to see more than 100 meters ahead on these roads, because they’re constantly turning one way or another or rolling up or down hill, and they’re bordered on each side by 8 feet of shrubbery. It’s kind of like riding through a hedge maze.

I was determined to get to Hereford before nightfall, but by 10 o’clock I was still a good 25k from the town center. I kept riding into the dark, though, simply because there was nowhere to stop. Not even a field to pitch my tent in, not one that wasn’t full of cows, anyway, and as far as dignified deaths go I’d rather be run off the road by a car in the middle of the night than trampled by a cow in my sleep.

I found an inn in Hereford, but they were full, so the clerk at the desk sent me to another place. He gave me incorrect directions though, and I soon found myself driving down a completely unlit hedge maze road that seemed to lead to nowhere. Eventually it just creeped me out too much – and it seemed illogical that there would be a Travelodge out here – so I turned back for the main road. But at least it gave me a great view of the stars.

I finally found the Travelodge, and though my room was totally cheesy and more expensive than the night before I at least slept soundly knowing no one would bother visiting this place from beyond the grave.

In the morning, day three, it was actually sunny. I rode to Bristol, and by now the scenery was starting to get a little monotonous.

The same rolling hills and hedge maze roads all the way along. Riding for seven hours a day was starting to get to me mentally. Often I’d have two lines of a song repeating over and over in my head (Lady Godiva was a free-eedom ridah…) or I’d entertain myself by making up terrible puns on the place names on signs I passed.

Example: Swineford.

What’s Swineford?

For bacon.

The motonotny was broken in the mid afternoon when I stumbled upon Tintern Abbey.

I arrived in Bristol around 7 and discovered that all the hostels in town (there aren’t many) were booked. So was every other hotel room. So I pitched my tent in a city park, and not a moment too soon. Within minutes of me getting set up it started pouring rain, which continued until late the next morning. The tent held up well to the wet, though, and I actually found the sound of raindrops on the tent quite soothing, so I slept well, and in the morning the clouds parted and I rode a short 20k to Bath.

There are moments when Manchester is like a much less intense version of New York. I could live here. The city is small and beautiful, and I’d been told its nightlife was legendary. Apparently the capacity of the bars and nightclubs in Manchester totals half the population of the city.

That stories of Manchester nightlife had not been exaggerated was obvious to me within hours of arriving in the city. Attractive bars and nightclubs were everywhere, and I witnessed a tramped up girl puking on the sidewalk before the clock struck ten.

Canal Street, the city’s gay village, didn’t disappoint either, even on a weeknight, when the scene is quiet but still impressive. Canal street stretches about four blocks, and one side of the street is nothing but gay bars all the way down (the other side is… a canal.) I’d say that, venue for venue, there are more gay bars in Manchester than Toronto, which is almost frightening when you consider that it has a population one sixth the size of ours. I hopped from one bar to another  and found the people friendly but the bars all the same. One guy I talked to confirmed this; there just wasn’t a lot of variety in Manchester.

This would drive me crazy if I lived here – imagine, my Toronto friends, if you had 40 bars to choose from and they were all Crews/Tango. But as a tourist I was happy enough to hop to the next place when I got bored, so I did, and after a short detour for a late dinner of crispy duck and fried rice, I made a friend and found myself in the middle of an odd sort of lover’s spat. Ask me about it later.

I wandered around for much of my second day in Manchester, and strolled through the Manchester Museum, which I found more interesting for its architecture than for its natural history exhibits that were mostly geared towards children and young students.

Then I wandered down to the Whitworth Gallery. Just as I was walking in a docent stopped me to tell me that, as part of the Manchester International Festival, the galleries had all been stripped of artwork to be used for performance art pieces in the evenings. I was welcome to wander around, but the galleries would have nothing in them except setups for the performances.

This is a perfect example of how not planning things out can work to your advantage. If I had known the museum was empty I never would have walked in. But wandering alone through the huge empty galleries with nothing but own imagination to help me guess how the random objects within them would be used in performance was far more interesting than a building full of paintings and sculpture would have been. A room full of chef’s whites, organized by size? Why? A bear skin rug on top of another bear skin rug? How come?

I made the mistake of going out for dinner with a couple other Canadians from my hostel. They were both nice guys, but I didn’t fly across the Atlantic Ocean to sit in an over priced pizza joint with some kid from Scarborough making inane conversation about the differences between Canadian and British money. The meal would have been a totally uninteresting wash had it not been for the awkward coincidence of one of our waiters being one of the aforementioned spatting lovers. The one who hated me. Ask me about it later.

Manchester really is a small city.

I took a couple of panoramic stitch shots in Edinburgh. I used to like doing this when I was a kid on my old crap film camera and then taping all the prints together. I hadn’t realized how much better and easier a little software and a digital camera makes this; I’ll have to take more of these.

The ride to Glasgow took me about six hours in all, much longer than I had anticipated. Part of the problem with this was the route, which, despite having specified to my mapping software that I would be riding a bicycle, took me along roads that only sometimes had a separate bike path. At several points this would end abruptly along a narrow, high speed motorway with no obvious connection to the next path. At one point I had climb up a grassy hill to find a jogging path through a wooded area that brought me to the next rideable road; in some places I had no choice but walk my bike down the overgrown shoulder for a few kilometers. Thank god for GPS for getting back on track whenever I had to detour, but I’m going to have to be liberal with the manual overrides on the plan for the next route.

Routes aside, the ride was largely uneventful, save for an old man who talked to me when I stopped at a gas station. When I told him I was Canadian he told me he was from wherever the hell we were and had lived there all his life, and then promptly told me what football team he supported. He talked at me for five minutes more, but that’s about all I was able to understand.

Jet lag caught up with me in Glasgow, and I took advantage of having a private room at the University to catch up on some much needed sleep. As everything in Glasgow closed at 5, this meant I was usually didn’t get out in the world until it was too late to spend any meaningful time in museums, so my experience of Glasgow was largely from the outside looking in.

The weather forecast has called for heavy rain for the next three days – the three days I was going to bike to Manchester. So I decided to take the train instead – doing this leg of the trip by train was one of the early possibilities anyway; there’s not much I want to see between Glasgow and Manchester, and it’s a long ride over hilly terrain.

I called to reserve space for my bike on the train, and the CSR told me there was no space left for a bike on that train. Or the next one. Or the next one. Or on any train for the next three days. Somehow I got the feeling she didn’t have a clue what she was talking about, so I hung up and called again, and a different CSR politely put me on hold so he could check with another department, then told me that yes, there was space for a bike on the train. But when I tried to book my ticket my card was declined.

So I hung up and booked my ticket online and the transaction went through. Then I called to reserve the bike space, and a new CSR told me there was no space for a bike on the train, even when I insisted I’d been told two minutes ago that there was. But he hadn’t put me on hold to call some other department so I hung up and called back a fourth time. Finally, success – the CSR called whoever he had to call and made a reservation for my bike.

I’m on the train now, and no one even checked to see I had a reservation.

I headed up to Edinburgh Castle – a short walk from my hostel – first thing this morning. All the tour guide could talk about for the first few minutes was how great the weather was, how lucky we were, and how we should all take advantage of the sunshine and the fantastic view. It was 16 degrees celsius and mostly cloudy.

So far it’s rained two days out of two here in Scotland, though it’s never been more than a drizzle, and usually while the sun was shining through the clouds. If that’s normal, I can live with that. If that’s fantastic weather, um…maybe not.

I pretty much packed all of Edinburgh into today. I spent all morning at the castle and the afternoon wandering somewhat randomly into various museums and galleries – which in the UK are all free, which is saving me a billion dollars. I’ve been in and out of a few cemetaries in the last couple of days, all of which were gorgeous and decrepit and morbid and weird and nothing like anything we’ve got at home.

I briefly stopped in at the cafe where J.K. Rowling wrote much of Harry Potter, overlooking the grandeur of Edinburgh Castle and Greyfriars Kirk. I didn’t stay – the line at the counter was long and I guessed it was probably full of people who, like me, were planning on ordering a £1.25 coffee just so they could say they sat in the cafe where J.K. Rowling wrote much of Harry Potter. But spending a day in this city has made it obvious to me why so much of English literature is magical.

Edinburgh is beautiful, and I’d love to come back for a longer stay (hello, Edinburgh Fringe 2010 application!). I’ve been trying to console my bruised ego a bit by telling myself that Canada is still a young country and Toronto a young city. But Edinburgh, like many European cities, is beautiful because of centires of construction that was both attractive and enduring. Nowadays buildings are lucky to be one of those two things. Do you know what’s going to be left of today’s Toronto in 200 years? The CN Tower and Robarts Library. The tower I can live with for sheer stature, but Robarts? Let’s just say it’s good I’ll already be dead.

I rounded off this evening with a few pints in a quaint/kitschy little pub, where I managed to get some decent writing done. Last night I met a really nice South African bartender who told me this Canadian joke, after correctly identifying my accent:

“How do you get 25 Canadians out of a pool?”

“You ask them to leave!”, I finished for him.

“Yeah, you know it!”, he said. “But I don’t understand why Canadians think that’s so funny.”

Leaving for Glasgow first thing in the morning (10am, but hey, that’s like 5 Toronto time.). A little worried because my legs are still sore from all the walking I did today, but it’s only 74km and I’ve biked more than that in a day before, so it should be a cinch. Right?

I am in Edinburgh.

In order to check my bike at the airport – which was an ordeal in itself because the attendants didn’t seem to know where to send me with my plastic-wrapped bicycle, but that’s ok, because they also didn’t seem to keep track of who was going to charge me the extra $30 bucks for it – I had to remove the handlebars and pedals and lower the seat. No big deal.

Except that I then packed my multi tool in my carry on and it was confiscated, because god knows what kind of terrorist damage a man could do if he was allowed to board an airplane carrying ten different sized allan keys. So I arrived in Edinburgh and spent two hours wandering the streets near the airport dragging my de-peddled, de-handlebared and be-hobbled bike with me in search of a hardware store until I finally came upont two repair guys sleeping in their truck – excuse me: lorry – who lent me an allan key so I could reassemble my bike and ride into the city. I’m proud to say I’ve survived my first roundabout.

Or is it allen key?

Time to go check in to my hostel now.