The north-west coast of France (2008)

From Portsmouth there are ferries across the canal to several destinations in France. My plan is to cycle along the coast via Belgium to Holland and visit colleagues of mine at the Medecins Sans Frontieres Headquarters in Amsterdam.



The ferry to Le Havre seems the most obvious to me but after some thinking I book a ticket to St. Malo in Brittany - my friend Catherine had always told me how beautiful it is there...
...and beautiful it is! A wonderful rough coastline welcomes me and (in comparison to where I just came from) marvelous food. I always hated it when my French friends where so overly proud of their bloody „cuisine francaise“. But honestly – they have all reason to be proud. Crusty baguettes de campagne instead of British sponge-bread, creamy soft cheeses (goat!) instead of bulky chunks of artificially coloured cheddar and fresh red juicy Tomatoes instead of the imported Dutch water-enriched-but-no-taste-stuff. Yum yum.
St. Malo is a walled-in harbour town with numerous small fortifications on little islands and rocks in the adjacent bay. Rumors say that it had never been taken from the seaside... easy to imagine when one stands on the high stone walls and gazes onto the ocean.



In Cancales, a tiny little town on the coast there are plenty of signs advertising the "degustation" of oysters fresh from the ocean. I've never had oysters before (why swallow glibbery live animals?) and after having tried boiled rabbit ears and jelly fish in China I might as well get a taste of this stuff. At least then I know if it's worth buying two dozen and a bottle of Champagne next time I park my yacht in Monaco...
Well, interesting texture, salty (what else do you expect from something straight out of the ocean?) and definitely glibberish. It is said that oysters have a sexually stimulating effect - I have to admit that I definitely did experience better ones than this.

From St. Malo I take the route northwards along the coast.The bicycle path is „formidable“ - outstanding; little plates (with a dinosour riding a bicycle) signal the way at every crossing. One hardly ever gets lost. I follow small side roads and there is little traffic – a very recommendable route for a trip with children.

After a couple of days I reach the breath-taking town of Mont St. Michel. Entirely built on a rock in the ocean it is visible from kilometers before. And it grows and grows and grows with every meter that I get closer. Amazed (and tired from the gravel track) I sit and gaze at the old cathedral and the ancient town around it. And after some time of just sitting there I like the place so much that I finally put up my tent and stay over night with a magnificent view on the cathedral that one cannot buy for money in the nearby 4 star hotel :)

From Mont St. Michel I continue north-east wards direction Normandy. Lots of beautiful beaches there with plenty of history. The region is rough and hilly - strategically wothless - who would land here with thousands of soldiers? Smart thinking of the allies in WWII. "Juno", "Sword", "Omaha" were some of the names where artificial harbours were quickly installed by simply sinking dozens of ship hulls filled with cement.
Now, more than 50 years later, some of the cement blocks are still visible. One war memorial museum after another rows up along the coast filled to the brim with Canadians, Americans, British, Japanese and Germans. What makes me real happy here are not the pictures of who took this and defeated that but to see a colourful mix of all ex-warring parties together - Japanese asking Americans to "ple-se ta-ke pic-cha!", Germans asking Canadians "kuut you trenchlate siz hea foa me, sank you!?". In the evening, when the tourists are back in their hotels and caravans, I stroll on the empty beaches and set up camp in the dunes...



Then I continue east to the city of Le Havre where the famous river Seine (Paris) flows into the sea. Right here at the coast, a giantic suspension bridge streches over the river Seine. Cyclists have to share the narrow road with the french high speed autoroute traffic. Holy chainwheel - when big 40 ton trucks pass by then cyclists almost fly overboard (this is where the child-friendly part of the trip ends...)! On my map, Le Havre is listed as UN world heritage but passing through its center I cannot really figure out why. What impressed me much more than the city itself was the huge container port with ships coming and leaving from all over the world. There are dedicated terminals for Transatlantic traffic, for the Far East and for Africa and ships of all sizes and types. The funniest to me are always the vehicle carriers. (They look like swimming wardrobes – watch out when you are at the coast next time!) Those vehicle carriers not only bring you shiny new Toyotas and Suzukis from Japan and Korea, they also bring your trashy old car away. Many a Renault or Mercedes that doesn't pass the service check (TUV) anymore is shipped off to Africa where they run and run and run. In Ivory Coast a car is not called car but simply what it is: „France au-revoir“ - „Good Bye France“!



After Le Havre I desperately need a shower and a day rest. So i decide to stay on a camping site for a night. I unload my bike and make for the reception - 13 EURO (20 USD) for a night in my own tent!!! I curse the guy and the whole French tourism industry - but in the end I am too tired and I stay. The place is packed with tourists, tents and vehicles everywhere. I start enjoying to watch my neighbors and their attempts to set up their stylish but complicated tents with 12 windows and 500 poles... some youth are playing techno music from their car stereo (camping site rule no. 1: there are always some youngsters who think that everybody else loves techno just like themselves) . My German neighbors (I refrain from introducing myself!) get out their high tech chairs with integrated beer-can-holder and cooking equipment sufficient to accomodate a whole garrison (camping site rule no. 2: no matter what car people have, the trunk is always filled to the brim). To the left some people try to calm down their barking dogs (camping site rule no. 3: at lest one party brings a dog who then terrorizes all those who left their dogs at home during holidays in the hope to have some calm).
I sit back and relax and then go downtown to get a take-away pizza and sit on the beach. I meet Jerome, a belgian guy who cycles from Italy back home. We join up, buy a bottle of red wine and he puts his tent next to mine on the camping site 8without paying the 13 EURO which makes us both feel much better about the French tourism industry...).

Jerome and I stay together for a couple of days just before we reach Belgium. We have to fix his bike several times because he has shitty equipment and way too much of it and everything on a shitty rack in the back. I pity him but am also impressed by his patience to get all the stuff from Sicily all the way here. When we split ways I continue for a couple of kilometers and then meet a German couple who cycles with a dog in a trailer. They gave up everything back home and now plan a longer trip by bicycle. They have a bottle of Champagne on their rack (not the usual sight) and I inquire what that is for. "We have our 1000st km in 2 kilometers!" they reply and after a short discussion we decide that drinking the bottle prematurely but right here at kilometer 998 cannot cause much harm. Cheers and good luck to you guys!!!

In the evening I set up camp right at the border to Belgium.

Oxford - London - Portsmouth

All good things come to an end eventually. And so I leave the Heavenly paradise of Chinese friendship and cuisine (!) and hit the road to Oxford. My departure has been (happily) delayed by good company and food for several days... Today, on the day of my departure a light rain drizzles the whole morning: a good excuse to stay another day. But then again, I have already used precisely the same excuse for the last three days...
At noon, after countless cuppa (tea w/w milk) I decide to wait no longer and mount the panniers and set off.
Minutes later - I am not even out of Birmingham - the drizzle turns into a full grown downpour. Surprise... this is still England! But my spirit is light and I don't mind. Being on the road for the first day after a break is always easy. My thoughts wander off to future locations and the air that I breathe always feels lighter and fresher and I smile despite all possible hardship. I love this trip. What's a bit of rain when you will be enjoying the beaches of France in a few days time?!



I manage to find the marked cyclepath (No 5) to Oxford and follow it. I have no doubt that the British organisation "Sustrans", who is in charge of developing and marking the cyclepaths, have only best intentions. They would never want to lead a cyclist into a maze of roadsigns or forest paths. Yet they do just that every couple of kilometers.
First there is a teaser of a little stretch of beautiful, traffic free singletrack (see picture above). Then one of the blue roadmarks is missing or overgrown by the lush vegetation what makes me run straight into a fence, an industrial quarter, a motorway or...



... a mudbath.
Hurray! When I was about 10 years old, my parents took my brother and me to a pottery workshop. While my parents manufactured blue tiles for our kitchen wall, we kids did all kind of things with the wet dirt that we found there (I remember that my masterpiece was a little penguin that still stands on one of my mothers shelves today; catching dust, except with the part of the beak that broke off). Great fun. but the clay they gave us in the pottery workshop wasn't half as sticky as the mudbath that I encountered north of Oxford. While I try to find my way through the mud (in the far distance I can see a little sign with an arrow pointing to the left) my tyres clog up and so do the brakes, the chain, the shifting, the rims, my shoes, lower legs, upper legs, hands - short - everything.
The mud is so slimy and deep that it is very tiresome to push my bike. Its tyres leave deep canyons in the sticky grey mass. In the mud next to my canyoans I can make out marks from other cycle tyres. So there have been people here with bicycles before me. I am determined to continue. Finally, after 15 minutes of sweating and swearing I stand in front of the little roadsign with the arrow. It says: "public footpath".

Thank buddha nobody is around to witness this. I am so enchanted that even after my little hissy fit I still feel like murdering someone barehanded. Surely if it says "Sustrans" on his namecard. I must have lost the bloody path again somewhere. Somewhere? Somewhere BEFORE the mudbath! I look left and right. 8 foot high fences. There is no way getting through. I have to go back. Once more - through the mud.
Today, "Sustrans" surely qualifies for my favorite four letter word. From here I keep strictly to the main road to Oxford. Traffic is my best friend.

For the eye, Oxford is a very preasant city. Everything is very neat (except my appearance - dried mud up my legs and all over my arms. Little brown sprinkles in my face...) Colleges and museums everywhere! Marc, the lovely porter of Trinity College lets me park my bike in the entrance area while I visit the Museum of the History of Science on the opposite side of the road.

He also invites me to have a look at the college. I am impressed my the beauty and serenity of the buildings. More even of the perfection that goes into the space between: the famous English gardening. I have always wanted to know how they manage to trim their greens in that manecure kind of way. The secret is made of stainless steel and called "Buffalo 34". It has so many handles and switches that I wonder if the operator requires a license for it. Well, with or without license, (s)he definitely requires a whole lot of trust from the director of the college - fucking up that green surely inflicts the death sentence! (I witnessed how a tourist briefly stepped on the grass - the chief surgeon of the medical college needed 4 hours and 6 sets of sutures to attach his head back onto the neck...)

Completed in 1683, the Museum of the History of Science claims to be the world's first purpose built museum. It features an impressive collection of scientific instruments that were used for astronomical, chemical and physics experiements: laboratory apparatuses, early microscopes, a giant lobestone (magnet), first compasses, astrolobes (instruments to determine the position of the stars), telescopes, etc.

In the basement of the building there are several ancient "barometers" - instruments to measure the pressure of the air (see first picture of this post). By recording the development of the air pressure, scientists are able to predict the development of the weather. I have to smile when i think that a scale with "Rain", "Much Rain" and "Stormy" would have been fully sufficient for Great Britain. I mean, honsetly, did anyone ever witness "Very Dry" weather here?

On the ground floor I find different models of the universe. Their cages, beams and cogs are entirely made of shiny brass. They display our solar system either with the earth or the sun at its center! Back in the 17th century, the museum and its contents was used to conduct experiments and hold lectures. Strange to imagine that, back then, scientists were confronted with serious health hazards by supporting either the one or the other idea of what moves around what. Thinking about the world and the universe I realize that I still didn't finish the little front plate that decorates my bike since my departure in Tromso. So I look for a toy store and borrough some paint...

After Oxford I make my way to the south of England. My plan is to take a ferry from Portsmouth to France (Le Havre or St.Malo). I don't want to bother cycling into the big traffic chaos of London (I had been there during a cycling trip in 1996) so I stop in Reading for a day and take the commuter train to Paddington Station.

I am never sure what it is that makes me like this giant city. However, fact is: I love being in London. The architecture, the bustling traffic, the hordes of tourists, Chinatown, Hyde Park, the whole circus about the Royals and the change of guards...

This time I came particularily to visit the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. But how to get from Paddington to Greenwich?

When I was a child I often played a board game called "Scotland Yard", some sort of hide and seek between Mr.X and the London cops.

Mr.X uses different forms of transport to escape his followers. But he has to appear in intervals to let Scotland Yard know his position. He also has to unveil what transport he uses when. The cops use all the information to encircle the probable future locations...

I remember that a fast and effective way to shake off your hunters was the use of the boat services on the thames river (it had its cost, though - the charge was one of the "black tickets" - and you only had two of those for the whole game).

A fast and effective way to get from one end of town to the other? Here we go!

They don't actually charge "Black tickets" for it. They give you a 1/3 discount when you produce a valid day travel card. Good enough to enjoy a light breeze during the 40 minute cruise and see Big Ben, Tower Bridge, the London Eye, Tate Modern and so forth from a new angle :)

A visit to the Royal Observatory is a great experience! (If one has sufficient time, I highly recommend to also visit the Maritime Museum next door.) It is possible to enter the old working rooms and living quarters of the Astronomer Royal and his team. The position was established in 1675 by King Charles II and the first Astronomer Royal (John Flamsteed) started to observe the movement of the heavenly objects with state of the art technology.

A major problem at that time period was the determination of Longitude. It was already possible to determine Latitude of any given position by measuring the angle of the sun over the horizon at noon (zenith). So seafarers would be able to know how may degrees north or south their ship sailed in relation to the equator (the calculations could take up to 4 hours time!). Nevertheless, no matter how much efford they would have given into trying: it was impossible for them to determine their Longitude (the position West or East) because they lacked a method of comparing their local time to a given time on land.

Today, a simple GPS gives you within seconds a very precise position ( Latitude, Longitude: e.g. 34 degrees 20' 15" N, 59 degrees 09' 47" E). With this technology, nowadays, amateurs are able to navigate a sailboat around the world. Then, knowing the exact position of a ship had immense economical and military importance. A high price money was put forth for the person who solved the Longitude problem.

The astronomical society (with their Authority being the Astronomer Royal in Greenwich) figured that there was a way of finding Longitude by looking at the star constellations and the movement of the moon. But they lacked reliable long term data about the positions of the stars. So the team of the Astronomer Royal observed and catalogized those constellations over several decades. Basically every single night!!! Thus they lived and worked in the same space, which is the Royal Observatory in Greenwich.

The person who then actually solved the Longitude problem was someone entirely different. It was a simple watchmaker called John Harrison. He used to build Tower clocks that were driven by long pendulums. But pendulums do not work reliable on a ship that moves and rolls with the waves. A pendulum clock would not keep time sufficiently accurate on board a ship to determine the Longitude with the required precision. During his life, Harrision build 5 clocks that were intented to be used aboard ships. They are on display in the Royal Observatory. And they are most impressive objects. The first 3 models don't actually resemble watches but rather look like time-warp-machines. Lots of movable parts. All made of brass. Beams in all directions, coil springs, weights, countless cogs. The first one weighs something like 75 pounds.

Imagine, for the completion of one of the clocks (I think it was the second one) Harrison needed 20 years!!! 20 years. I could ride around the world three times...

However, Harrision was never entirely happy with his designs until he created his famous H4 (Harrision model 4). He used a totally new concept and the size and complexity reduced drastically (see picture). This watch H4 was the solution to the Longitude problem. Now, a navigator at sea could compare the time on board his ship (noon is the moment that the sun is in the zenith) to the time in a distant place (e.g. Greenwich). The time difference would represent teh angle between his position and the position of Greenwich. Therefore Greenwich was made the location of the Prime Meridian and all calculations (also those of today's GPS) are calculated from this Meridian at GMT (Greenwich Mean Time).

How did captains know the exact Greenwich Meantime? Well, they just sailed their ships up the Thames river to Greenwich. On top of the Royal Observatory is a pole with the red Time Ball. Every day at 12:55 the ball goes up and drops at precisely 13:00. They set the watch and off they sail to their foreign lands...

By chance I arrive in Greenwich just a couple of minutes to one. So I actually manage to be there when the famous Time Ball rises and drops. A very nostalgic moment. In times of mass produced Chinese quarz watches it is hard to believe how this little red ball had once such immense importance.
(For those who are interested in this subject or want to make sense of my above mess: there is a fantastic book about the history of the Longitude Problem called "Longitude" that reads like a crime.)

After my visit to London I return to Reading and from there continue my trip to the harbour of Portsmouth. I decide to take a ferry to St.Malo in Brittany, France. Since I need to wait a day for the ferry I buy another day saver pass and return to London. This time it is Tate Modern, where I meet for a coffee with my friend Stine-Mari that I know from Tromso. With modern transportation the world is really just a village...

From Dublin to Birmingham

I didn't take a lot of pictures before, in and after Dublin. During my whole visit it was pouring as if someone had pulled the plug from a heavenly bathtub hovering over eastern Ireland. Not very pleasant. The east coast of Ireland isn't very enjoyable for long distance cycling. There aren't any cyclepaths and the roads as well as the views are rather boring. Trying to cycle into the center of Dublin is a joke. There are simply no roads for cyclists. It is motorways all over the place, each bearing a massive blue sign displaying that neither animals nor cyclists are allowed to enter. I finally have to cycle all the way to the international airport to find a bloody road that takes me into the center.
The nice thing about Dublin is my visit of Simon, an old friend of mine. Our mothers were friends in highschool and so we had spent a lot of time with each other while we were growing up - typically during Christmas and Easter holidays.
I hadn't met Simon for several years and now he's a grown up working in the software industry in Dublin. We have a ball in the pubs of Dublin until closing time. Actually without meeting any Irish... all the customers are tourists and the staff in the pubs normally come from Eastern Europe, Spain and South America.

I also meet with Emma, my colleage from Medecins sans Frontieres who now lives in Zambia. By total coincidence she has an interview in Dublin just that exact day and so we spend the afternoon. Pam (her friend from Belfast, were I had previously stayed) comes down to Dublin for a coffee and some shopping. It is quite the usual procedure: they shop, I gaze. I need nothing. Somewhere I find this announcement (picture below) for a lottery: 3 trips to Hollywood! Every week. "Hell! I won't even need that... I am already on a trip to Hollywood!"



After three days in Dublin I continue my trip down south. The idea is to cycle all the way to the city of Cork in the south west and take a ferry to Wales. When I leave Dublin I encounter the same problem as on my way in: there is no easy way out. It is again motorways all over the place. No animals and no cyclists. Annoyed I stop and wonder how to get out of this mess. Suddenly it starts pouring down like buckets are being empties right above me. I think about putting on my rainwear but it is already too late. Within less than 30 seconds I am drenched.
Now even more annoyed i think: "Screw Cork! And the whole east coast of Ireland with it!" I know there are ferries to Wales from the harbour in the center of Dublin. I am determined to take the next ferry out of there, no matter if the waiting will take a day or a full week. I turn around 180 degrees and make my way into the center.
The harbour is just as big a mess as the Irish roads. I play hide and seek with the ferry terminal but finally arrive at Irish Ferries. The next ship leaves in an hour! But they are already fully booked. My only option is to travel "Club Class", double as expensive but with a designated seat (plus snacks and coffee as much as I desire). I couldn't bother about those extras. I am done with Ireland - so give me Club Class or a Royal Suite, put me in the liferaft or strap me to the mast... just get me aboard that ferry!

On arrival in Wales my mood has lightened. I find a marked cycling track and cycle towards Birmingham. When I try to purchase some supplies in a village shop somewhere in the middle of the Welsh nowhere I face unexpected problems. The girl behind the counter looks bewildered at my money and says: "This is not our money! I won't accept this." I ask her what is wrong. I had withdrawn those bills from an ATM in Northern Ireland. She scrutinizes the bill once again and says: "Your money is Pound Sterling, but here in Wales we use British Pounds!" I laugh and tell her that maybe because of some local patriotism they print different bills in Scotland and Northern Ireland but that in fact the money used all over the United Kingdom is POUND STERLING! And what I just gave her IS a Northern Irish POUND STERLING. Now please let me pay for my milk and bananas.
She remains unimpressed. Different money in other parts of the great empire? No way. She has to call her boss. He doesn't answer the phone and I don't get my milk and bananas until Paul arrives, an older guy who had worked in a different village store all his life. He looks at the bill and says that it should in theory be fine. But the girl doesn't want to believe him unless he takes responsibility to refund her if I paid in counterfeit. He refuses and her trust in his long years of village shop experience go down the drain... She again tries to call her boss. I am about to leave. (Drink your fucking milk yourself. After all it is skimmed milk because you don't even have wholemilk in your darned shop!) Then suddenly she decides to trust Paul and cashes my ten pound note.
As I leave the shop I wonder if there isn't another ferry somewhere close that could relieve me of the whole of Britain.
Then I see a roadsign that announces: "Gyrrwch yn ddiogel." I think to myself: "Alright, if that means "Drive safely" in Welsh, no wonder there are hick-ups with the Northern Irish currency. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if they had problems with their own currency!"
I smile and head deeper into Wales.



I enter the national park of Snowdonia. It is truly beautiful here. A calm road takes me uphill and through a lush valley to the Welsh/English border. One more night until Birmingham where I visit friends that I know from my studies in China. I move my bike over an electric fence and sleep on an empty green.
Well, it is empty until at 6 in the morning I hear a slurping sound and something touches the outside of my tent. I am suddenly very awake and slowly open the zipper of my tent. There stand at least 20 cows. All young bulls. They gaze at me with increased interest and continue to lick my bicycle and tent. Very cute. But then again I wonder where they draw the line between their territory and my territory. I get out of the tent but they remain pretty unimpressed. Afraid that my stuff ends up digested seven times I take action by banging my cooking pots and running after them. It helps.



I start boiling water for my morning coffee and wonder how I will possibly survive a horde of cheetas in Central Africa when I already start sweating over a couple of peaceful grass eaters...



Cao Yang (right), Luo Yi (middle) moved to England six years ago and now have two children Yi Yang (left) and Yang Yi (temporarily with his grand parents in China).
We all know from our time in Wuxi. Luo Yi studied Interior Design and Cao Yang Graphics Design. We spent a lot of time with each other in China. We travelled to Nanjing (an ancient capital of China) and Chengdu and to a very mountain range called "The four girls" close to the Tibetan border. We went out or stayed in and cooked dinner and shared everything. Most of all a good time. (The only thing we didn't share were 30 rabbit heads which were marinated in a spicy sauce. I had previously tried everything. But I couldn't get those down. So Cao Yang and Luo Yi munched away on them during our 40 hour train journey from Chengu back to Wuxi.)
They both worked extremely hard to make a living in Europe. Most of their friends who stayed in China now have fancy careers and nice appartments. But Cao Yang and Luo Yi value the experience of living abroad and seeing things from a different angle. After all, they can always go back to China.



We stroll in the park, do a Chinese BBQ in the garden, repair Yi Yangs bicycle, visit the center of Birmingham and go see a movie with Yi Yang. In the evenings Cao Yang cooks the most fantastic Chinese dishes and we hang out and talk about the past, the present and the future. They (we) all miss China. But there are also lots of positive things about living in England. Yi Yangs bi-lingual education or the fact that you can just go to a park or museum free of charge.




I take the time to look after my bicycle, give it a thorrough check. In a store in the center of Birmingham I finally get some adhesive foil and start to create little flags for all the countries I visited since the beginning of this trip around the planet. Now, everytime I cross a border I add a new flag until hopefully my blue frame will disappear under a colourful international adhesive carpet...