NOTE: I made a slight addition to the second part of yesterday's post, currently marked in red. I'll change the coloring once I'm done with the trip, but for now, it stays.
On Friday, we tried to take advantage of our off day. We got up at 8:30 and walked around an empty Ambleside for a little bit, then went into a Costa for a couple lattes. At 9, as per a local couple's suggestion, we went to Daisy's Cafe for breakfast just as it opened. While there, the male co-owner/manager/husband pointed out places to go in the Northern Windermere area, including a waterfall, a Roman fort, and a bridge house as we ate a delicious egg breakfast.
We headed back to the hostel and packed everything up as quickly as possible and managed to check out by ten, allowing us to not pay a fee. Jacob went down to the lobby first, and by the time I got there, he was talking to an American man who sounded like he was from the northern midwest. He was bald (or at least shaved), had wrinkly but weathered hands, and talked with an air of authority, or perhaps more likely arrogance. He was one of those guys where you can't exactly tell whether or not he is being sarcastic or sardonic, or is just talking like he normally does.
I figured out quite quickly that he is an experienced cyclist based on his conversation with Jacob. "Do you know about warm showers?" he asks at some point. We shake our heads "no." "OK, come with me to the self-serve dining area. You can leave your shit here, nobody's going to take it," he says, referring to our panniers. "Our passports are in here," I say to Jacob; we take them with us. He sits us down at a table, opens up his small acer netbook, and opens up warmshowers.com. "This is a website that lets you stay with other bikers for free. You can look at where your going, call them, and stay for a night or two. The hosts and bikers get rated, so you can see who you're staying with." "Like couchsurfing?" I ask. "Yeah, like couchsurfing, only with this you stay with other bikers and you're not sleeping on a couch." We leave with all our shit, including our passports, to check out the sites in Ambleside.
The Roman Fort wasn't much to see; it was only raised rectangular ground with stone markings where different parts of the fort were. We couldn't go far, since cattle gates surrounding the fort prevented us from biking through it and had to leave our bikes outside. I did learn that the corners of the fort were curved and had watch towers on them, so that a watchman can easily survey the area and the inside wall of the fort. However, the people who occupied this spot were often killed in action. The waterfall wasn't very impressive, despite being difficult to get to, especially on bikes. Imagine the Euclid Creek, only on a slightly steeper slope. The last place we visited in Ambleside before leaving for Windermere to catch a train was the Bridge House, a cute two-story house that is right on top of the river that runs through Ambleside. We didn't get a chance to go inside, since there was a tour going on, but I took a picture anyway.
Once we got to Birmingham (no puke!) we rode with the aid of a local to our destination... and very quickly got lost. I eventually had to take wifi from a restaurant and message the host.
The area that we were in seemed very sketchy, with trash on the ground and worn-down storefronts. That, in addition to the constant rain that seemed to plague us, made us all-the-more want to get inside. When we finally found the place, our host Manu opened the door, helped us get our bikes in, and took us upstairs.
Manu is about six foot three, is skinny, has a curly black short beard and hair, and has fairly pale skin. He speaks with an accent that was a mix between proper English, Eastern-European, and Middle-Eastern.
As he takes upstairs, he apologizes for the condition of the building: whenever he complains about something, the landlord doesn't bother to fix it for a month. For that reason, Manu is painting one of the rooms himself. We go up two flights of stairs and enter a floor that seems more like a bad college dorm than an apartment building. Manu shows us our room: a relatively large (about hotel-sized) single room with two beds in it, a large tweety poster hanging on one wall, and a more abstract painting hanging on the wall opposite. He shows us how to lock and unlock the door to our room, as it is a little fidgety and hard to operate, and recommends that we try it out a little while the door is open so we don't lock ourselves in. He then hands me a keychain with one typical, modern key (for the street door) and one old-fashion key (for the room door), saying not to go to hard on the old key, as it is prone to breaking. He tells us that the toilets are down the hallway, and to take a shower, we have to push a button to turn on a pump.
We decide to walk around the city center to find dinner, and eventually find a Carribbean place that looks, sounds, and smells quite delicious. The ask for identification at the door, making me glad that I'm eighteen and have my license with me. Jacob later explains upon my asking that they probably assume anybody who comes in is going to drink, and they don't want to have the waiters do it. I could see the bartenders, and they did look both skilled and busy. We decided to stick to water and forgo the alcoholic options. The food was spicy and delicious, and we both left quite happy and full.
On our way back, we decided to get a taxi even though it was a twenty minute walk, just because the neighborhood in which we were staying worried us a little. On our way, the cabbie said that we were staying in the rubbish part of town. "To the left of this road, it's nice and fancy, but expensive, but to the right, it's rubbish. Drugs, prostitution, you know." With that culture shock, we run inside and get up to our room. As I make a couple necessary skype calls, Jacob looks up the area and finds some interesting information, including the fact that, of all the crime in Birmingham, 10% of it takes place in that area, and that about a week ago, somebody was murdered in a nearby park.
That said, Manu was a great host and was very nice and did his best to accomodate us, but that area did have us a little worried. We made it out safely and completely intact, and even had a pleasant large breakfast the following morning a nearby cafe run by a Hungarian woman that Manu recommended (still in the "rubbish" part of town). As we left, I compared it to Glendale, and Jacob said "sure." We agreed that, if anything, it was an experience.
I suppose that today was just a day full of experiences, because it rained. A lot. I'm pretty sure that if you took a parking lot and examined the amount of rain that falls onto it, and then compared the weights of the fallen rain and the asphalt in said lot, you would find that the values were about the same. I.E. it literally rained the equivalent of a lot. According to Manu, the last week was beautiful and gorgeous and sunny, but this week has been horrible. I suppose that I picked the wrong week to follow my ancestors' bike treads (and stop sniffing glue, etc.)
In addition to this insistent precipitation, we rode on what I can easily say is the worst possible road to bike on. Ok, the word "road" is generous. We rode on a towpath.
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| The bridge we took to get onto that accursed towpath |
When you here towpath, you might think of the one along the Cuyahoga River. Whether you imagine how it used to be--overgrown and underfinanced, and covered with weeds--or how I believe it is now--suitable for walking, biking, walking your mule, and overall paved--neither is what we experienced. The best way I can describe this towpath is such: there came several points in time along our 8-mile journey that we were unsure where the towpath ended and the canal started. At first, we attempted to avoid these tiny reservoirs, but our shoes quickly soaked and so we came to give so little of a shit whether or not we hit a puddle, you would not want to divide any number by the amount of shit we gave (you cannot divide by zero). At many points inbetween the lakes on the canal, it was so muddy that I'd have to get off my bike and walk it through, just so my weight doesn't push the bike down even further.
At one point along the way, we approached a bridge (from the underside, of course) and saw a mutt and a pair of legs. Not wanting to run into any trouble and wishing one of us had taken Mr. Breisch's "Homelessness" class, we opt to go up the path and onto the road instead of under the bridge. We then try to rejoin the canal by following it from above, and eventually get to a small church that stands right next the canal. We go through a part of the graveyard and see a man in a blue jacket, jeans, and a hat, carrying a small bag. For some reason or another, we explain why we didn't go under the bridge, and the man says, "Well he won't do anything to you. Just go past him!" He then explains that we can probably rejoin the towpath by going through the graveyard. Two things occur to me as we pass through this graveyard: that man might have been homeless himself; and this church must be really old, because the building didn't look that large, but there were more than a thousand gravestones there.
As we stumbled along, every so often we'd come to a gate. I'm not exactly sure why they decided it would be a good idea to put gates along the path since I can't imagine anybody ever wanting to use it (we passed no more than 15 people along the way, all walkers), but when they were closed, they were quite a nuiscence. There was always a path for walkers (always flooded), but the place for bikes, strollers, and golf carts was often blocked by a locked steel gate. When we came across those locked, cursed gates, Jacob would get on the far side, I on the near, and together we'd lift up the bikes about 4 feet and place them down on the other side, making sure they didn't fall into the canal. And here we thought there were no portages in cycling.
Overall, those eight miles took about 3 hours.
By the time got to Stratford-upon-Avon (SuA), we had missed Henry IV part 1, but were in time for Henry IV part 2. Though the characters and plot were a little confusing, and the accents were especially hard to understand (I'm convinced that even some of the Brits couldn't understand many of the phrases), we enjoyed the play quite a bit. (SPOILER ALERT: Henry IV is succeeded by his son, Henry V.)
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