hello, seattle, i am an albatross, on the docks and moored boats; i sail above your inlets and interstates through the rain and open wind

Okay, so I realized that I never wrote about last Tuesday... but all I did that I remember was go on a rather exhausting cycle ride. So I'll post a couple pictures, but I'm not going to go into too much detail about it...

A horribly ugly cemetary...

And a pretty house and garden:

Aat one point I ended up on a road that T-ed into a main road, and nowhere else to go. Augh. So I turned down it, and got passed by dirty great lorries that scare me to death, but soon I found a place where there was a "public bridleway", whatever that means, but it was a path and it said public, so I turned off to investigate.

And saw this.

So of course I went that way. And biked down the path, which was grass,

and eventually came out on a main road and made it back to Gorefield.

Oh, and I also found a horse, which I threw a carrot.

Now Thursday was a day. I don’t know exactly what put it into his head, but in the morning, Jack suggested that I might like to pack a “rucksack” and have an all-day cycle. I had, since before I came here, been hoping to make a cycle all the way to the Wash, so that seemed like the thing to do. I used the map that they gave me when I first game, along with google maps, to work out my route.

I really wasn’t sure I felt like cycling that far that day – really, what I felt I wanted to do was curl up in the back garden with Pride and Prejudice – but I also knew that I’d be sorry if I never did it, and I felt like it would be good for me. I could just go partway if I decided that I didn’t have the energy.

It took me all morning to finally be ready, of course, and then another half an hour to make a playlist on Quentin (my mp3 player). Quentin is not very cooperative for making playlists, and it’s very easy to lose what you’ve been doing with an accidental push of a button.

At any rate, I eventually had my playlist made and my food packed along with everything else I’d need in my backpack. It was about 1pm when I left.

It was bright and sunny, and having music with my cycling made me happy.

More daffodils were out...

I was slightly hungry and thought I’d stop at Tydd St. Giles, a little down about a third of the way there, to eat.

I was surprised by how easily I seemed to cover the distance, and how quickly I reached town after town. I didn’t stop at Tydd St. Giles after all - I still seemed to have energy to go farther.

I had put sunscreen on before leaving, and the smell of it made me feel like it was summer. And indeed, the sunshine and the music and the brightness of the little towns added to that feeling.

The towns and the countryside were so bright and full of flowers, so pretty everywhere I went.

I had to stop and look at my map occasionally, but didn’t have much trouble figuring out where to go.

I came to a place where the road went along side the River Nene for miles. The world was wide and the water was blue, and the road went straight and far in front of me.

At the end of that was the roundabout. A big roundabout full of lorries. It was not so easy to cross it with my bicycle, but I made it.

After crossing it I was in a town, the biggest town I’d cycled in so far. I was glad I wasn’t in it long. I hate cycling on main roads.

After that was green, green fields, and more trees than I’d seen in a while. And I thought I could smell the ocean in the air.

I was very surprised when I reached one of the last landmarks before my destination. It hadn’t seemed like that far. And I still hadn’t eaten my lunch.

(These houses seemed like they were on the edge of the world...)

I ate an apple, but decided to wait for the rest until I got to the wash. Finally I turned a corner and could see where the river went into the Wash, and the lighthouses.

Unfortunately, you couldn’t get close to the Wash from there, so I went around the road’s corner and continued parallel to the coast.

I saw an older man walking along, so I stopped and asked him if there was a road or path that would take you to where you could see the Wash. He directed me down a path we were just coming to, that would take me out to the sea wall. It’s not a wall of stones, it’s a large earth bank.

Cycling along it, I could look out over the marshes and just see the wash. I had wanted to put my feet in the Wash but it was a long way away over marsh and it seemed like a dangerous place to try to walk – let alone ride – a bicycle, and I wasn’t comfortable walking that far from the bike, even if it were locked.

The path was rough and grassy and I was hungry and riding was getting very hard. I came to a path going back to the main road, and decided that I wouldn’t go any farther down the wall; it was too tiring and it was a long ride back. But I stopped and sat on the grassy bank and ate my lunch and read Pride and Prejudice.

At one point while I was eating, a lady with three small dogs was coming from the other way, and while she was still a little ways off the dogs came up and barked at me. I figured if they were dangerous she’d either have them on a leash or be calling them back, so I just greeted them in a calm voice, and secured my food. Pretty soon she called them and they went back to her.

After I finished eating lunch, I went down the dirt road that led back to the main road.

There was another road leading toward a different part of the bank that looked interesting, so I went there in hopes of finding a better view of the sea. But it was nothing particular – just more sea wall and far away water, so I went back.

The first section of my journey back involved a ridiculous amount of stopping to look at a map, and getting a bit lost. The trouble was, I was going down a road that I thought was the right one, when I came to a sign post where a different road T-ed with the one I was on. So I stopped to look at it. But when I compared it with my map, the directions on the sign post made no sense no matter where I was. But neither the places it said that the road I was on nor the road that went left were going to were where I wanted to go – they were quite in the other direction – so I went back. The places it said that I would be going back to were where I wanted to go.

A bit less than a mile back up the road, there was another sign post. This time it said that the places I wanted to go were the other way – where I had just come from. And no road had branched off between the signs! Between them had been nothing but trees! I have never yet solved this mystery, but I continued on and took a different road through a little town until I finally came to a signpost that actually made sense and made me know where I was on the map. I was rather out of my way, but now I knew exactly where I was and where to go to get home.

I thought this cloud looked like England/Scotland:

I went on through little towns – I was going a different way than the way I had come – and then into a somewhat larger town. More map-looking. The way the roads were labeled was confusing, and besides that I really needed to use the loo. Fortunately a sign said “Toilets à” and when I took that road I found a library. Whether the toilets in the library were actually the toilets referred to by the sign, I don’t know, but the librarians didn’t mind me using them, so I didn’t much care.

After that I figured out where to go without too much trouble because I found where I was on the map. And then I found the little road that I was taking instead of the big road.

Down the little roads toward Todd St. Giles there weren’t any more villages, just fields and fields and lots of space. And then, suddenly, a huge field of daffodils!

There was nothing around it – no buildings or anything – except for the big electrical tower in the middle. It was in the middle of nowhere. It seemed like it had come there all by itself, that nobody had planted it or made it be, it was just there because it was. Like places in the Enchanted Forest. It was just The Field of Daffodils.

Not too far after that I came into woods again, and I ate my chocolate bunny with a creamy malt center. It was really, really good.

I also found a white horse and a cute little brown one. And fed them carrots.

I couldn’t believe it when I was suddenly at Newton, and almost back. I came to the original field of daffodils, and the sun was setting, and every daffodil was glowing. It was pretty much amazing.

And then, suddenly, I was home.

Jack made me an omelet and toast, and we watched – what did we watch? Poirot, probably. And then the Masters.

But the masters is boring, so I went to bed. I cycled 30 miles – I am quite proud of myself.