Landscapes we moved through:
West Yorkshire canal, running behind things, a parallel canal life
Urban Leeds – feeling weird on a bike/in bike gear
Somewhere after Leeds the canal becomes an inland waterway
Holland
Familiar landmarks on an unfamiliar horizon, Emley Mast, Bridgewater House, Ilkley Moor
Post-mining – grassy knolls
Post-mining – silver birch and bird water
A little Cotswold village on its own hill
Another Lincolnshire
Plastic fields
Power stations marching towards the coast: Ferrybridge, Eggborough, Drax
Pitstop in Leeds: Shane swaps racing saddle for a wide red sprung saddle made for vicars and bikes with baskets.
Taking the wrong track and being trapped by a confluence of waterways, until a cyclist appears from nowhere and we see the (No Cycling) path and take it.
Things you get following water: power stations, herons, sewage farms (or as they are now called Sludge Conditioning Plants), therapy walkers, little modern lock gate towers like Holland, some very ugly boats (who would paint a boat black?), abandoned boats, bramble covered tractors, the back gate of industry, joggers, a much more varied bunch of cyclists than you ever see on the road.
Is there a word for seaman/womanship when it happens inland?
Luck with the weather, except wind on the last eight miles when we left the paths for the road.
A hotel full of single men, not salesmen, industry, pints, meals with chips, Geordies, Scousers trying to make conversation about Abu Dhabi, Qatar, but happier stare/eating as Dortmund hold their lead against Madrid alongside the two stare/eating cyclists, pints, meals with chips, red wine. (When I look out into the car park in the morning all their cars and vans have gone.)
