On North Berwick

Yesterday was a success on the whole. I lost the NCN leaving Berwick-upon-Tweed and found myself on the busy but manageable A1. It soon brought me to Scotland where there was rest area for people to photograph themselves in front of a sign saying “Welcome to Scotland”. There was a coach load of young East Asians doing just that. There were three flagpoles each with the Scottish flag on it. Across the road, the reciprocal rest area also had three flags. However, there it was a Union Jack, a St-George flag and the yellow and red flag of Northumberland.

I left the A1 at Burnmouth where I returned to the NCN and smaller roads. There was a lovely bit on the A1107 with gorgeous views in bright sunshine of the North Sea. The NCN route 76 then took me down a winding, narrow road which made me glad for the disc brakes! At the bottom was a ford and the Pease Bay holiday camp. I could have done without the climb out of Pease Bay.

NCN route 76 then paralleled, more or less the A1 for some distance, with a lot ducking and weaving to avoid a quarry, the A1, the East Coast Mainline and a nuclear power station.  I had a late lunch in Dunbar, then made way to North Berwick where my cousin Donald was waiting. He and his wife Dominique live up to the family tradition of hospitality and then some. In short, I was made welcome. It was a good end to a sunny day.

Today has been grey, cool and windy, with a few drops, and the threat of more. In fact, in Edinburgh, it has been quite wet. Thankfully, I was in North Berwick.

I climbed North Berwick Law, an impressive steep hill of some 600 odd feet just to the South of town. It was a stiff climb and as I looked out over the Firth of Forth, I pitied the poor sods who had built the two abandoned buildings near the summit. One was part of a nunnery. The other was a WWII era observation post. Given the steep slope, I guessed that all materials would have had to be manhandled up.

Coming down into town, I stopped by Law Cycles as Leonardo had having problems with the lower gears. From my description of the issue, David the mechanic diagnosed a bent hanger. This sounded sensible so I went back to my B&B to fetch the bike and my spare hanger, just in case. David fixed the problem while I had lunch. He mentioned that my rear brake pads were worn which caught my attention. I had spare pads, but had never replaced them. Looking at the brakes, I realized that I really didn’t know how one went about it. I therefore asked him to show me how. He was happy to oblige. I think that I would be able to do it myself next time but would take three times as long. So here’s a rave review for Law Cycles! http://www.lawcycles.co.uk

I then took Leonardo over to Tantallon Castle which was quite interesting in the ways of castles at the end of the castle era. It had last been used in 1651, when General Monck shot it into surrender.

Coming back into North Berwick, I spotted a bird dragging its wing along the ground. Thinking it was something like a kildeer faking injury to draw away people away, I stopped to take a look and a photograph. However, a closer look revealed it to be a small raptor with a genuinely injured wing. It was near a bus stop sign with a stop number so I photographed that as well. I wasn’t sure who was one was supposed to call, so I went down to the Scottish Seabird Centre on the grounds that they would know. One of them did, and volunteered to go and get the sparrow-hawk as he identified it from my picture.

So a good day, on the whole, though not for the poor sparrow-hawk.

On a successful Red Sea crossing

Today was a day for touristing. First off was Bamburgh Castle as restored by the 1st Lord Armstrong, weapons merchant, scientist, engineer, businessman, philanthropist and shipbuilder. The site had been a fortress for time immemorial, predating the Angles, as Ida the Flamebearer (possible ancestor of Bernard Cornwell) captured it from the Celtic Britons. It was an interesting mix of eras and Victorian wealth. The purist can grouch, but it was interesting to see how the various buildings and rooms had been re-purposed over the years.

It was after twelve before I was done. Consequently, I had a ham and cheese toastie for lunch and headed of for the the Holy Island. I was under a certain time limitation as access to the Island was via a causeway which would be flooded by the tide by 16:20. So it behoved me to get cranking. NCN 1 took me along country lanes and up a 17% grade and around to the causeway which I crossed with the wind behind me.

I visited the Lindisfarne Priory, learnt about St-Aidan and St-Cuthbert and bought some local mead. Then I headed back. I had thoughts about Red Sea Pedestrians and Egyptians as I cranked against the wind. I knew that I was in plenty of time, but the salt water on the road, blown by the wind was preying on my overactive imagination. I made it, of course.

I paused for a break on permanently dry land. I noticed that there was a half dozen bikes of various sizes on the bank across the road behind a minibus. I asked if I might take a picture and fell into a conversation with one of the women. It was part of outing by locals for kids and family. Most of them were going back by van, but she and a boy were going to bike part of the way. Part of this was on a farm path parallelling the road on the NCN 1. We set off together, but I soon left them behind, then was turned off on another farm lane by the NCN 1.

This got smaller and less kempt. Eventually, it became a single track bike path on top of a dike. I was quite glad I had 37 mm wide tires! In front of a farm gate, I encountered a Scot from Aviemore on a pedal-electric bike with a trailer. He was returning home after a summer going around the Baltic. After the gate there was a tarmacked road with a sign warning people going the other way that the area was a former military firing range so please be wary of any unexploded munitions! The Scot and I paced each other to Berwick-upon-Tweed, through the hazards of flying golf balls and across farmers fields. We helped each other with farm gates and the like. Then we got to Berwick and went our separate ways.

Supper was some tasty Indian food.

On the Coast of Northumbria

The young German lads only returned from their night on the town at something like 4 in the morning. This woke me up. Given their continued absence had been on my mind as a concern, I felt the punishment fit to the crime was simply to get up at my normal hour and not be terribly concerned about disturbing their slumber as I gathered and packed my clobber.

I rode to beside the Tyne where I picked the trace of NCN (National Cycle Network) and hung a left to follow the river to the North Sea. After a bit the NCN route left riverside and proceeded along a car free trail that I began to suspect was an old railway. I was wrong: it was something far more interesting. It was an old wagonway. Wagonways were a step in the evolution of railways. Simply put, relatively ordinary wagons hauled by horses and gravity ran along wooden and later iron rails. I should have suspected this as the grades were higher than typical for a railway.

 (The general Newcastle-on-Tyne area is the birthplace of steam power including railways. I used to think Britain was well placed to have been the local for the development of steam power as it had plenty of the two basic ingredients: coal and iron. I have recently realized that I was wrong. There was a third ingredient in abundant supply: fresh water, a non-trivial thing. Arabia, for example, is unlikely to have been the locale for the development of steam power even if Allah had left clues in the Koran.)

Anyway, the NCN took me past an old Roman fort and its' associated bath. Unfortunately, it was too early to visit the former. The latter had a load of garbage in the parking lot. A dog walker whom I chanced upon was most indignant about the fly-tippers who had left it there.

The NCN routes are frustrating as they can be great and they can be confusing. Also, they tend towards being off-road if at all possible no matter what the added mileage. For the long distance cyclist with high tolerance for traffic this not always needed. Also their signage isn’t as plentiful or clear as it might be. Furthermore, Sustrans (the organization behind the NCN) needs to work on their map design.

However, the NCN got me out of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and onto NCN Route 1. This was at Tynemouth, Newcastle’s sea resort since at least the 1800s. It still is a classic British seaside resort, with the addition of a surfing school and doubtless many other forms of modern entertainment.

I had a light lunch in Blyth. I then skipped a bit of the NCN only to rejoin it at about Lynemouth. Near there I saw a sign for a “Travellers’ caravan site”, (Travellers being a term for the Roma a.k.a. Gypsies.) The route was nicely scenic and there was an assortment of British holidaymakers. Families with children armed with shovels and buckets (the British road sign pictogramme for a beach is a sandcastle), older people out for a brisk walk, cyclists of several breeds, young and old, dog walkers of all ages and many more that I failed to identify.

It had been cloudy for much of the morning and it began to rain. This slowed progress. I stopped for break in Amble, then headed off again in full rain gear. Of course, before I reached the vicinity of Warkworth (no great distance) it stopped.

Around Lesbury, I came upon and stuck to the B1339 as it was a more direct route to Bamburgh than NCN Route 1. I stopped at a garage in Embleton for a snack. The cashier (an older man) assumed I was Dutch after I said I couldn’t tell him how many miles I had ridden since Newcastle as I worked in kilometres. I explained I was Canadian and we had adopted the metric system more than forty years ago. He grumbled about the state of the roads which of course amused me greatly, being from Quebec.

I was getting tired to the point I didn’t want to look at the odometer. It was of great relief to finally see the afternoon sun on Bamburgh Castle as I left Seahouses.

Tomorrow is a short day as I will visit the Castle and the Holy Island of Lindisfarne.

On architecture, comments

The volunteer near the door of Durham Cathedral made a disbelieving comment about how much it cost to keep to maintain the place as part of the appeal to donate. I countered that I could easily see it given the size and age of the building. She grumbled that wasn’t it a pity that they had built it out of sandstone. This was also a bit silly as that was what to hand.

I did make a donation to the upkeep.

Newcastle-Upon-Tyne is a city heavily dominated by large Georgian and Victorian commercial buildings to the extent that was pleasantly surprised that any of the titular castle survives. It was started by Robert Curthose, son of William the Conqueror. The surviving bits are now separated by a railway viaduct, but it was nice to see.

Newcastle is also something of a party town judging from the signs near the inside of pub doors saying please be quiet leaving the pub. It also seems to a place for geeks as there are four stores aimed at geeks within fifty feet of my hostel!

On Durham Cathedral and losing the A167

The train managed to pick up food at York. The announcements about it put me in mind of a interstellar cruise liner stalled by a lack of lemon soaked paper napkins from Douglas Adams' œuvre. I wolfed down a bacon roll before getting off at Durham.

I chose Durham to start with as it features in several novels by Bernard Cornwell. Unfortunately, about the only thing extant was Durham Cathedral, which features in only one novel. Most of the novels in question are set prior to the Cathedral and feature a resolutely pagan character, viz Uhtred of Bamburgh in the era of Alfred the Great and later. He has an antagonistic relationship with the Church. At one point, he is the Lord of Durham. I couldn’t help but wonder at what he would make of the Cathedral where his fortress stood. As well, it is the resting place of St-Cuthbert whose corpse is featured in one of the novels. Cuthbert’s coffin and some of the contents were on exhibit, biz a cross, a comb and a portable altar.

The Cathedral also houses the tomb of the Venerable (or Venomous) Bede, the first English historian. He is figure from my career as a historian and thus significant.

I had lunch of roast beef in the undercroft of the monks dormitory. This felt indulgent, but proved a useful calorific indulgence as it turned out to be “one of those days” from a biking perspective. The heavens opened up for one thing.

It was a short ride to Newcastle but I managed to lose the A167 twice in Chester-Le-Street. Contrary to what might be inferred from Flanders and Swann’s “On the Slow Train”, the place still has a train station.

Still, I managed to get back on track. The Angel of the North statue of a man with what looks like aircraft wings helped to orient myself. I found my way across the Tyne into Newcastle and then to my hostel. I hope to two young German lads sharing my room don’t snore!

My theory about Campaign for Real Ale Pubs having better food has failed as both of the ones I popped into in Newcastle have had no food.

On the train to Durham

My slumber was again disturbed by snores. This time from Americans from Michigan. I hope this doesn’t mark the start of a trend.

I had been warned to be at least ten minutes early for the train in order to stow the bike. However, the departure board didn’t let me know which platform the train was leaving from until 9 minutes before departure! Then it turned out that the bike was to go at the end of the train my seat was at the front. I will have to migrate back nearing Durham.

My plan was to get breakfast on the train. Unfortunately, owing to a mix-up, catering services are not available on this train! Furthermore, all my food is on the bike. Brunch in Durham, I guess.

I had been offered to bid on an upgrade to first class by LNER. I declined to do so. However, the lack of knee room makes me question that wisdom.

At a guess, in the first twenty minutes the train passed through a greater distance of tunnels than the Canadian does in four days!

On the Wallace Collection

My sleep was interrupted around midnight by the snores of an Aussie in the bunk above me. I was unwilling to rouse him as he had just arrived from Canberra via Singapore and had slept two hours in past thirty. Thankfully, the snores stopped after a bit and I returned to my dreams which were both odd and not terribly interesting.

I moseyed over to King’s Cross to get my train tickets and find some breakfast. I then had a hard time finding a bank machine able and willing to give me money.

After returning to the youth hostel, I rode over to the Wallace Collection where I spent most of the day. The items reflected the collectors and the fashions of the times which meant there was a bling element to them. I particularly wondered about the Indian weapons and armour as they were often flashy and gilded. I wondered how many of them were actually intended for use either martial or even ceremonial versus intended to be sold as knickknacks to foreigners. I also wondered how many fakes or partial fakes were in the collection. (A partial fake being an authentic item which received a later embellishment to increase its value.)

One interesting type of object was oriental porcelain objects which had been mounted in bronze by the French under either Louis XIV or XV. There was a lot of bling from Versailles owing to the French Revolutionary sales (they even had an auction poster from 1793) and francophile collectors.

I am probably being too cynical as the last owner willed it to the state and was otherwise extremely generous.

Anyway, time for sleep as I have catch a train at 7:30 which means being at the station at 7:15, etc.