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Gareth Morgan - Up England |
And so it was, as the English cricket team crumbled under the sheer firepower of New Zealand’s one day attack and its great white hope at Wimbledon, Andy Murray found Rafael Nadal a match too far, that we rode for John O’Croats where we would leave this island of green and village, lane and hedgerow, for the barren isle of ice and fire that lay far to the north.
The people of England we met along the way were keen to comment on the off-field distractions that had laid their rugby team so low Down Under, as well as pass remarks on the Kiwi cricket team, such a clutch of soft balls it seemed in the test arena, yet an altogether more staunch opponent in the one day game, where it had rubbed salt into England’s already dismal one day record.
We’d not have thought the English were so sports mad as we are back home but we were wrong. When there’s not a war on it seems, sport readily steps into the breach to preoccupy the masses. Even the European Champions Final between Spain and Russia brought the British public to a standstill, transfixing them to their televisions for the 90 minutes it took to demonstrate that in the beautiful game, the artistry of the Latin variant does mainly beat the stoic predictability of Northern Europe. Their style always outclasses the North, though sometimes at the expense of less substance as the final score reflects. Indeed soccer seems to obsess the Europeans as we found during an unscheduled layover in Frankfurt en route where street celebrations by the Germans over their team’s victory over the Turks, prevented our coach delivering us to the hotel for the 4 hours sleep before catching the final leg of our 60 hour nightmare flight from Wellington to London.
On extracting the motorcycles from the barn near the end of the runway at Heathrow where they’d been stored for 7 months since we finished our ride from Capetown to London in 2007, we were relieved to find that all that was needed was to inflate the tyres, drop in new batteries and they were ready to ride. So we set off for the top of Britain, determined to do as many country lanes as time would allow before we had to catch our ferry to Iceland.
Across England, it was the Yorkshire Moors that captured our attention, simply because of the bleak character of the landscape which, when coupled with the inclement weather that can characterise the early weeks of an English summer, makes not just for a good test of the insulation properties of our motorcycling gear, but also provides ample warning of what lies further north when we ride around Iceland, sitting as it does just short of the Arctic Circle. And even the Yorkshire hospitality reflected the uncompromising nature of the Moors – the publican at the Dog and Duck, not that keen to serve up hot drinks to thaw us out, even though these were advertised at the door. Her reluctance to open for our business, apparently having more to do with a heavy night on the turps previously than the fact we’d drip English mist all over her carpets as we supped to survive.
The language of our new GPS’s were taking some getting used to and it wasn’t long into Scotland before we found ourselves going around in ever increasing circles as we tried to get past a road blockage, caused sadly by a motorcycling mishap. We certainly gained a familiarity with the countryside and lanes around Callendar and it was two hours later before we extracted ourselves and were back on to the road to Edinburgh.. One of my favourite cities, we were thankful of our GPS’s again as they guided as faithfully through the one way system to our hotel just off the Royal Mile.
The streets of Edinburgh are narrow as Phil discovered when Roger rode by too close and in the process would have nudged our Nelsonian into the gutter, were it not for his keen sense of self preservation. The removal of his right hand pannier in the contretemps was however the cost. After some on-the-road improvisation Phil’s bike was ready to proceed.
Up through the Highlands of Scotland with their bleak tops and fertile Glens makes for good riding and we were certainly not the only bikes enjoying the twists and turns of the roads north to Inverness and beyond. Norwegians, Germans and all manner of other bikers were here to enjoy the less populous routes of the British Isles. John O’Croats is bleak, in the same way Bluff can be – indeed the lack of trees is testimony to the climes in these parts and we certainly were not sorry to scramble into shelter aboard the ferry that would take us to Seyoisfjordur on the north east of Iceland, where we’d been told, we’d really get a taste of a bleak motorcycling environment.
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