urban bicycle journeys

I had cycled the U.K. before, two months in England and the Continent back in 1976 with Vince. We carried camping gear on the backs of our bikes and had a much bigger agenda than just noodling around London. I do remember the excitement of cycling in the left lane through all those London roundabouts. At age twenty-one I was less worried about getting run over. I still have the photo album.

Forty-eight years later I was here again, this time with a different friend, Lyman. I still remember those long escalators accessing the “tube,” seeming to lead to the center of the earth. We were coming in from Heathrow Airport with suitcases containing our Bike Friday folding bicycles.

We chose a spot on the sidewalk outside an Underground station to put our bicycles together, in a now trendy London neighborhood called Shoreditch.

Being London, an eccentric woman purporting to be from Wales started talking to Lyman. I was away for a few minutes, taking the empty bicycle suitcases to a hotel that had agreed to hold them for a week. She fired all sorts of questions to Lyman about his folding bicycle. She asked if she could take a photo and Lyman asked if she wanted him in the picture.

“Of course not!” she angrily spurted out. She took photos of just his bicycle. I had returned just returned. She seemed to have no problem with her own picture being taken.

I hate to plan; my undiagnosed A.D.D.edness makes it hard to concentrate. This idea of coming to England for a week was born from a random find on the internet; a very low cost seat two weeks hence on the seven hour nonstop American Airlines flight from Raleigh/Durham to London. I had planned to go alone but mentioned it to Lyman in Austin TX thinking he would say no. He managed to find a deal as well.

Where to go in England? I grew up in the Norfolk, Virginia area but we chose an entirely different Norfolk; Norfolk County England, a region about a hundred miles to the northeast of London. Travel writers and bicycle bloggers say it is a good area to bicycle tour.

Trains to the Norfolk region leave from Liverpool Street Station in the Shoreditch neighborhood.

The English appear to enjoy vast amounts of low cost sugary calories. My friends and relatives from Winston-Salem NC would appreciate this Krispy Kreme stand under that glorious circa 1874 trainshed.

I had bought two tickets online, each with a reserved bicycle space. Just under two hours later at about three in the afternoon we got off the train at a town called Diss; thirty miles south of the larger Norfolk regional center of Norwich.

Over the next 5-6 days we would cycle from Diss to Norwich to Lincoln.

We were ready to start riding! There were difficulties. We had the challenge of staying on the correct (left) side of the road. That wrong-side-of-the-roadedness seemed to make everything backward. From the Diss train station we cycled on country roads in the general direction of Norwich.

We had had ambitious ideas about cycling all the way to Norwich but after an hour in the left lane those plans fizzled. Not far from Diss we found a pub and hotel called The Old Ram at Tivetshall and it checked many boxes. It was just a mile or two further! Neither of us had actually slept much on the airplane the night before. Trying to stay on the correct side of the road in our jet-lagged fog felt dangerous. We should stop.

The Old Ram at Tivetshall is inviting; unusual in not being in a village but out by itself on the open flat highway. The staff was welcoming as we asked for two rooms. We repaired to their pub for a typically warm flat English ale.

English pub food was better than I had envisioned. Perhaps refreshingly they do seem to cut out pretension. I got vegetable soup as a first course. It seemed authentic, pureed from actual vegetables.

Lyman ordered lasagna. England is perhaps the only country in the world that might serve lasagna with “chips” i.e., french fries. I enjoyed beef and mushroom stroganoff with rice.

The next morning I looked out my bedroom window.

A cultural mainstay is the Full English Breakfast; Heinz baked beans, roasted tomato, bacon AND sausage, eggs any style, cooked mushroom, maybe some kind of fried potato. Toast toasted only on one side. My fantasy is that this entire meal was conceived about a hundred fifty years ago just to shock morning-prudish French visitors. Here at the Old Ram I took their helpfully offered “Half English,” defined here as a smaller portion of each item. Maybe just to gross Lyman out, for £1.25 additional I ordered the weird hockey-puck shaped “black pudding.” It tasted fine, rather bland even.

We cycled out into the English rural countryside, trying to remember to “stay to the left.” Back country roads were lined with hedgerows, just like in the movies.

We passed through villages.

About one or two in the afternoon we rolled into Norwich, pronounced NORE-itch. population 145,000. I found an independent small coffee house and we sat out front under a tree. I had an oat milk latte and pastry; Lyman ordered what Americans would call a milkshake.

It was still early in the day but we really wanted to spend the night in Norwich. To do more cycling we added a big afternoon loop through Norwich and its northern exurbs. Heavy traffic was sometimes a problem, made more difficult with the mirror-image need to ride on the “wrong” side of the road. Even more difficult was remembering to look the “other” way at intersections.

I was impressed that in this smaller city there were double decker buses full of regular looking people heading downtown, not bringing their cars. Maybe it’s a Thatcher legacy that there are competing multiple bus companies.

Norwich has a huge castle and also a lovely medieval cathedral, completed about the year 1100.

We cycled back to downtown.

This sunny day with highs in the seventies was likely rare here (note that the person on the left above is still wearing his/her winter coat!) We were lucky to find outdoor seats at an inner city pub.

Over beers we researched for a place to stay. The best deal was a two bedroom Airbnb in a circa 1870 bank that had been repurposed into apartments, across the street from something called Last Pub Standing. I was texted complicated codes that required multiple tries to successfully get in the building and again into our spot.

Britain’s best food is ethnic. Last Pub Standing specialized in “Caribbean;” delicious heavily spiced dishes from Barbados. Sitting outdoors on the street Lyman noticed two young women at an adjoining table. He said he thought they looked like Working Girls. I commented they looked normal to me.

After dinner we strolled around. Maybe it was the neighborhood or maybe it was Norwich, but at ten at night it was the most drunken and sleazy scene we saw anywhere in England. Lyman swears the same two women we had seen at the pub restaurant were now having a smoke in front of a strip club. These coats appeared to cover up their strip “outfits.”

Walking down the sidewalk I saw a woman openly peeing in an alleyway, her big hiney staring me in the face. One club offered “American Style Table Dancing.”

It was weird. We walked around a little more before going back to our Airbnb.

The next morning rain was predicted, especially in the morning. We walked in the rain over to the Norwich Cathedral and luckily hooked up with a tour. Fascinating.

About the time the cathedral tour ended the Airbnb was texting me, threatening to do whatever if we did not move out by 11;00 AM. It was still raining. We moved our act down the street to an independent small coffee house with a nice overhang to keep the bicycles out of the rain. I asked for an oat milk latte, one pack sugar. Lyman got something similar.

We waited and waited for the rain to stop, finally pushing off westward about two in the afternoon. The rain had stopped, but of course, once we began cycling it started again. Most difficult was constantly pulling the phone out in the rain to look at the map. We were trying to stay off main roads by meandering through a web of tiny country lanes.

We were proud that we cycled more than twenty miles in brutal conditions from Norwich when we rolled up to Romany Rye, a chain hotel/pub/restaurant in the downtown of Dereham (population 18,000.). We could change into dry clothes and have our hotel, cocktail hour, and dinner all in one place. I took this photo the next morning when the weather was, uh, nicer.

It was a large working class scene downstairs as we ordered beers at the bar and took them to a small circular table nearby. There were many families with small children.

About the time we were thinking of what to order for dinner a commotion rose up just a few feet away. A very loud and clear male voice dominated the entire establishment.

“The manager’s a dick! He’s a dick!”

The guy said this three or four times over the course of a five minute discussion. The manager, in a low professional voice, repeatedly asked the guy to leave, saying if he did not they would call the police.

“I’m not leaving! You’re a dick! Call the police then!”

Two policewomen showed up. I detected they were playing good cop/bad cop. The other patrons seemed to be enjoying the show. Five minutes later two male officers also arrived. There was a long huddled discussion. I had not realized the loud drunk was not alone. A woman smiled approvingly at her obnoxious companion as the two gave up and walked out. He apparently was not being arrested. Everyone in the pub went back to their beers.

The huge menu was low priced, populist, and catholic; Italian pizza and pasta, Mexican tacos, Indian curries, American hamburgers including a “Tennessee burger” whatever that is.

We both decided to go British; Lyman with fish and chips, me with ham, eggs, and chips. In what seemed a push for more drinking, each already low priced entree comes with an alcoholic beverage for only £1.25 additional. You order everything at the bar and they give you a number.

It was all good, so good that we ordered dessert; brownie with ice cream.

As we walked upstairs to our room I poked my head out the front door to look at the rainy street outside.

I woke up early the next morning to bright blue skies and took a walk by myself around town. Just like in America, on this Sunday morning there were groups of road cyclists out for their weekly jaunt.

At 8:00 AM on a Sunday there were only two businesses open, a Starbucks and an English chain called Greggs.

I sat in Greggs sipping coffee, watching out their window.

I eventually walked back to our hotel / pub to have breakfast with Lyman.

I ordered one of their multiple variations of the Full English Breakfast.

It was a sunny summer day to be cycling west through the English countryside.

On a Sunday at about 1:00 PM and not in a town we stumbled upon some kind of rural festival; just this concert, really. This video is fifteen seconds long.

The largest town we would pass through this day was King’s Lynn.

It was complicated finding a bridge over the River Great Ouse by bicycle but we eventually rode further west through flat floodplain.

I passed Mid-Century Modernism affixed to old school England.

It had been a long day and we found online a nice sounding hotel up ahead in the very small town of Long Sutton. Arriving on the outskirts of town we were warmly received into an otherwise empty pub, The Ship. Soon after, other drinkers started arriving. It was August with temperatures in the sixties but note the woman on the left, like I had seen many times, was wearing a winter coat!

On this Sunday night most of the restaurants in town were closed. The pub did not serve food but the friendly owner encouraged us to order Indian with a local Uber Eats competitor. Delivery was a snap and the pub even provided actual plates and silverware. It was all delicious.

We lingered over dinner watching some guys play darts.

It was dark when we cycled the mile or so into the center of town and our hotel.

The two identical sounding rooms I had selected online were really low cost, much less than other rooms in the same hotel. The pub/hotel complex was dark, empty, and quiet when we arrived and we let ourselves in with codes we had been texted. While the rooms were modern and clean, they had no windows! You wouldn’t need air conditioning but you would need some kind of ventilation! We both propped open our door all night.

The next morning in the downstairs pub for the included breakfast I chose smoked salmon and eggs.

We needed a plan. We had two days left to cycle and we budgeted them to cycle to the cathedral town of Lincoln. We could then take a direct train from Lincoln back to London for our flights home,

That morning we cycled out of our current town of Long Sutton. There were empty storefronts.

We cycled west through the countryside on small farm roads, passing out of Norfolk County into Lincolnshire. I saw a fascinating modernist water tower.

At about eleven in the morning we entered the gritty town of Boston, population 45,000. We could not find a coffee shop. In a row of old storefronts I bought ice cream bars in an uncomfortably dark narrow aisled convenience store packed with groceries serving multiple ethnicities. We hung on the street.

We then cycled further through the city.

We cycled into central Boston and the cathedral-looking St. Botolph’s Church.

I learned that many of the 1620 Pilgrims to Massachusetts came from this region. They named their New World city after their home, Boston. Newer well maintained memorials apparently paid by Massachusetts money were scattered around the grounds of the church. We walked inside.

Back on the road there was a lovely paved trail heading northwest along the River Witham.

After the path ended we cycled on country roads.

My legal residence is Chapel Hill NC USA. We cycled through Chapel Hill, Lincolnshire, UK. It was not much more than a pub and a few houses.

We cycled onward to the town of Coningsby where we had planned to spend the night. We had looked forward to a WWII aviation museum but it was closed due to a government holiday. Lyman likes Spitfires.

We cycled back to Coningsby and settled in the yard of a pub. From an American perspective the English torture their own language. French fries are “chips” while potato chips are “crisps.” We had beer and crisps.

We plotted hotel strategy on the phones. There was a pub/restaurant/hotel called The Leagate Inn about two miles away, seemingly in the “country.” The English would describe it as “somewhat posh.” We correctly guessed that we could haggle a lower price by just showing up and cutting out the Internet middleman. We cycled there and booked two rooms with the bartender.

The rooms were very nice and not insanely expensive. For dinner I finally ordered a likely nicer than normal version of that British thing: fish and chips, accompanied by my usual even in the USA New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc.

The next morning the weather continued to be delightful. We had one more day out. We would take the train to London that afternoon and fly home the day after.

English country pubs are sometimes so attractive I just want to stop and stare.

It is only twenty-two miles from Coningsby to Lincoln. There was time for me to stop at a random picnic table and play music. I had been in Baltimore MD USA just two weeks earlier but I did not have the opportunity to record this song.

Almost the entire journey that day was on a bike trail along the River Witham.

Lincoln is home of one of the most famous medieval cathedrals in England. Imagine walking to Lincoln a thousand years ago, seeing this cathedral off in the distance on a hill. God lives there.

We cycled into Lincoln and up the steep hill to their cathedral.

Lincoln has two universities. I have seen the trend in America that college towns are thriving. Lincoln’s downtown seemed significantly more lively and prosperous than previous similar sized English cities (Norwich and Boston) we had visited.

There is a medieval center around the cathedral. This street is called Steep Hill.

We had a nice pizza lunch downtown then pushed our bicycles into the train station.

The U.K. has multiple private rail companies. Our tickets this time were with LNER, leaving for London at 3:00 PM for a two hour ride. For no extra charge online you can reserve bicycle spaces in a phone booth sized area at the end of the car.

We were deposited at London King’s Cross station. Our bicycle suitcases were at a hotel three miles away across a dense city. We wheeled our bicycles out onto the street.

The half hour bicycle ride across London was not as scary as I had anticipated. It was gentle, really; not a ferocious battle with automobile traffic. There were not that many cars!

I fact-checked after coming home the next day. Cars driving through this area and all of central London are subject to a toll, a £15.00 (about US$20.00) Congestion Charge. To me, a cyclist, this system really works. It raises money to pay for transit systems. Several major cities in the world are doing this. The New York State governor this summer flinched and cancelled implementing such a system for Manhattan, even after spending five hundred millions dollars to set it all up. It is certainly tricky politically.

Lyman and I located our London hotel. In our rooms we put our bicycles into the suitcases. Later on we got a beer at a very English pub, then some pizza at a joint down the street, all in this Shoreditch neighborhood. People were out on the streets in the warmth of the summer. Bars and restaurants were inviting. I did not hear any American accents. It was all chill.

We both flew home the next morning.