Rob and Anna's travel adventure

Return to England

Anna's entry:

There we were, back to England... Just three months ago we started our cycling adventure in London, not knowing at that time how that would turn out. It turned out to be one of the best summers of my life. I will recommend it to everyone to experience Europe by bicycle. I had no prior training, went from an absolute zero to 3,600 km (2,250 mi), and loved it. Surely, it was raining, surely there were hills, and falls, and traffic - but this is not what I will remember. My heart and mind will forever carry a fond memory of the cycling adventure, this amazing feeling of being alive and having a genuine experience.

Speaking about being alive... We still had a long way to go to get to London from Harwich - the port we landed in after crossing from Hook Van Holland. Let's admit it - England is just not made for biking. Left side driving, intense traffic, narrow streets, busy A roads, B roads, etc. But, we have to make it to London! We arrived in Harwich around 9 p.m., and cautiously cycled towards camping just to find out it was for caravans only. This was the first time for the past three months we were refused a night of camping. We were given, however, very detailed directions to the tent camping. We found it without any issues - and it was actually pleasant. We were the only campers in a big garden with apple trees and wooden picnic tables, and after all, we needed a good night sleep before the left hand riding madness following days to come.


We made friends with a swan while taking a biking break, he seemed to enjoy our company

The next morning we headed out towards Colchester, our plan was to check on the train rules regarding traveling with a bike. We did not mind biking all the way to London, but for safety purposes, we decided to avoid intense London's traffic by getting on a train. Well, Colchester was a very pretty town, but we came to find out that the rail road was having a major work done, so it would be impossible for us to get to London with a bike on a train. We went to an alternative plan to bike on a busy A/B road about 40 miles west towards Bishop's Strotford - from where we could also attempt to take a train into London. We tried to use so called county lanes to avoid busy left hand side traffic, but sometimes we simply did not have a choice, but go with a flow - with a traffic flow that is. I must admit however, that English drivers were excellent - crazy but excellent. Not a single car honked at us, quite the opposite, they tried to give us extra room on a shared with a traffic road, which was very courteous and English-like. I managed to fall down off my bike though, and still have a chain tattoo, but it was nothing. We managed to stay alive, and made it back to London. We were very fortunate - a home stay visit was waiting for us, with a wonderful English lady named Amanda, who treated us in the kindest way. So, we recovered and rested in her home. We needed that - London was probably the most stressful part of our cycling trip. We still had to figure out how to fly our bikes back to the US (you are required to put bikes in special boxes for air transportation). British Airlines were worthless, they had no clue where to get the boxes, so we had to run around London to figure out some options. Luckily, there were several very helpful bike shops in the area we were staying in, so we got two bike boxes from them, and Rob spent the entire day reassembling our bikes into pieces. That was finally done, and so was our trip...


...We arrived back to the US a few days later. It was obvious how different from Europe the US is - the first day biking in Nebraska we got honked at, yield at, and basically were told to get the hell out of the road. Yep - welcome back to America! For the past three months cycling in Europe we received only highly positive encouraging feedback of exploring the world by bike - no honking, no screaming, just lots of thumbs up and cordial hospitality invitations to share our adventure - we were treated like a royalty. We met so many wonderful, kind, friendly, progressive people in England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Denmark... We developed a lot of friendships, and our hearts were touched forever by sincere kindness of strangers. That will never change. And then a thought occurred to me - it is probably good that the US is so much more aggressive these days, this in itself encourages us to explore other parts of the world, outside the US that is. It encourages us to appreciate and respect the countries that are so much more progressive and tolerant of being different, and that in itself gives us courage to exploring the world outside our own home...

posted by Rob and Anna @ 10:00 AM