The Epic Ride Part II: England

We’d always known England was going to be a bigger trial than Scotland. For nine months we’d avoided crossing the border, memories of the drive to and from Oxford when we first arrived still fresh in our minds. Even looking at the map was stressful; from Scotland’s acres of green with simple, clean lines going from A to B to C, none of which were very big, you were looking at a mass of lines going from A to C to B and back to A again, some thick and yellow, others thin and red, still others thinner and green. The thick and yellow was what we wanted to avoid; Toby’s shoulder was playing up and the idea of constant throttle for hours on end as we hurtled down the motorway was not tempting. On the other hand, get behind the wrong truck or pensioner on a secondary road and you’d be looking at hours and hours of flat English scenery with no end in sight.

In the end, we did stick mostly to the motorway. As soon as we crossed the border, the traffic seemed to quadruple; it was like every driver in England was out to slow us down. The secondary roads were far too slow, and given we were driving through Yorkshire, it wasn’t the most interesting scenery. We drove to York first but it didn’t take, so we decided to head further afield in hunt of a campsite. This seemed an easy enough proposition, but unfortunately we got all the way to Doncaster without seeing a single camping sign. Okay then, we decided. We’ll stay in Doncaster, find a B & B or hotel since it’s getting late. We got from one end of Doncaster to the other – in peak traffic – without seeing a single place to stay. Finally we came across a Premier Inn nestled into one of those awful retail parks, so we decided that would do. There was a Pizza Hut next door and an evening spent gorging ourselves on pizza and enjoying a nice soft bed was starting to look good. But there was no room at the Inn. The girl gave us some other ideas and we went up the road a bit to one of those Formula 1 hotels, which normally look a bit dodgy, but this one went beyond dodgy. It was all flat grey concrete with tiny windows. One of the windows had a half naked man hanging out of it, smoking. The carpark was full of white commercial vans. It looked like the kind of place where people got killed. We tried one more hotel but it was full too, so we got back on the motorway and headed towards Sheffield, where we magically found another Premier Inn. This time I went in alone, after removing my helmet and big jacket; we had started getting a bit paranoid that receptionists just didn’t like the look of us. Apparently there was a concert on nearby so the room rate was ridiculously high, but I was so grateful to be given a room we didn’t really care. For dinner we went next door to TGI Friday’s and had gigantic plates of fatty American food. Our waitress was planning a round the world trip including Australia so had lots of questions for us about poisonous snakes and fruit picking, topics on which we are clearly experts.

Considering the amount of ground we’d covered the day before, and our difficulty in finding campsites in England, we decided we didn’t want to dilly-dally anymore so rang Margaret to ask if we could arrive in Oxford a day early. Luckily she didn't, so we had a quick ride down the motorway and arrived just after lunch the next day

Traffic island where we ate our lunch on the way to Oxford.

We spent a few nights in Oxford, recuperating from our busy week and doing laundry and stocking up on supplies and things we decided would be handy (like a windshield for the gas tank). The biggest drama we had in Oxford was related to Margaret’s cats, which are lovely creatures but we are quite allergic to them. Both of us started feeling wheezy and asthmatic, and this is when we realised that somewhere on our travels, we had lost our Ventolin. In Australia, this wouldn’t be a big deal as you would go straight down to the local chemist and buy some more. Unfortunately it turned out this doesn’t happen in the UK; the lady in Boots told me there was no way to get it without a doctor’s prescription. Great. We made some calls to Margaret’s doctor’s office where the receptionists didn’t even know what Ventolin was, and were rather confused about the fact that I was an Australian who was registered in Edinburgh but staying in Oxford and not going back to Scotland. Eventually the receptionists spoke to an actual doctor who obviously said yes of course I’ll do a prescription, so after a couple of hours I just walked down to the office and picked it up without ever having to speak to a doctor. A rather strange set of events that made me appreciate the Australian health system all the more. On the Saturday, Toby had a nerd date with a mate in Edinburgh and holed himself and his laptop up in Margaret’s spare room so I took myself into town to do as many free museums as I could, since I’d never seen any of Oxford’s. It was a great way to spend the day; I particularly enjoyed the Pitt Rivers Museum which is still in the same design as when it was first built; the idea being it is not only an anthropological museum, but a museum museum so you can see what they used to be like. The answer is dark, and crowded. So dark they give you little torches to look into the cabinets. Afterwards Toby met me in town so we could go and see a silly romantic comedy followed by dinner at one of those new-fangled gourmet burger places. It was a great day.

We had planned to ride down to Brighton the day before our ferry to France, to walk along the pier and have fish and chips and so on. Unfortunately when we woke up it was pouring with rain, and there was no sign of it stopping. So we didn’t bother rushing to pack up the bike, but eventually it was clear we were just going to have to ride in the rain. And this was not the usual English drizzle, but actual rain. So on went all the waterproofs and we said goodbye to Margaret around midday. It rained the whole way to London, and then the whole way around the M25, all through lunch at the Marks & Spencer road stop, and all the way down the highway where we saw the sign for Brighton and decided it just wasn’t the right weather for an afternoon at the seaside. So we turned to Newhaven instead, where the ferry terminal is and where we’d booked a night at the Premier Inn given our early start the next day.

I think I expected Newhaven to be a bit more interesting, and picturesque, just like the English seaside towns you see on TV. But it was a pretty uninspiring place. Luckily it was still raining so we had a good excuse to not walk too far and instead just holed up in our room watching telly and eating the dinner we’d bought from the giant Sainsbury’s next door. The next morning we were up before 5 to get to the ferry on time, even though as usual I made sure we got there too early. We weren’t the only motorbike there; there was a couple of other blokes on a blokey week away so there was a bit of standing around grunting at each other’s bikes before we got ushered into the belly of the ship. The bikes got to go first, so we rode all the way through to the other end and then the bike was strapped down so it wouldn’t go anywhere.

Inside the ferry.

I had been looking forward to travelling to another country without having to deal with an airport or flying, but in the end our ferry trip was pretty uncomfortable anyway. Apart from being tired due to the early start, and the general queasiness that comes from being on the ocean, half the boat was filled with diesel fumes which added to the discomfort. There is only so much that a can of Sprite and fresh air can do to make that kind of trip a good one. Added to that, they didn't sell newspapers on board so my plan to pass the time reading something I didn't need to pack in my luggage was shot. Note to travellers on the Dieppe ferry: buy your paper from the kiosk in the carpark. Luckily it was only a few hours long and before it was lunchtime, we were looking over the railing at the white cliffs of the Normandy coast.

Arriving in France.