The day will come when I will die. So the only matter of consequence before me is what I will do with my allotted time. I can remain on shore, paralyzed with fear, or I can raise my sails and dip and soar in the breeze.--Richard Bode



Thursday, July 9, 2015

Back to Jolly Old England

It sure seems like it has been a long time since I wrote anything on this blog. I have been doing a lot of traveling, but I have not seen much to write about or to take pictures of.

The last time I wrote, I was in East Central Denmark. While I was there, I did some riding in the wooded lanes along the east coast of the country. I really liked that area. If you have followed my blog much, you know that I prefer woods and mountains over cities. There are plenty of woods in Denmark, but their highest "mountain" is only two or three hundred feet tall.

Maybe Denmark has no mountains, but their small towns and wooded country lanes make up for that. As an example: here is a place in the woods where I stopped to eat lunch.


It was a very nice place, just off a small country lane.


Before I left Aarus, the city in East Denmark where I had been staying, I wanted to go to the huge, world-class museum there.  They were having a special display of the Chinese Terra Cotta army recently discovered in China. I wanted to see it.


These Terra Cotta figures are very exact. Here is a chariot driver and his horses.


Those Chinese Terra Cotta figures are really cool, but what I really wanted to see at the museum was the famous 2,000 year old man found in a peat bog several years ago. I remember reading about him in a science magazine a number of years ago.


His throat had been cut. If you look carefully, you can see that the first half of the throat is cut almost in two.


I left the museum, and started riding south toward Germany. I wanted to go to Hoek Van Holland to catch a ferry from there to the UK. I think I may have already mentioned that I need to leave the mainland of Europe for awhile, because American citizens are only allowed to stay for 3 months.
I will be over that time period when I leave Germany on my flight home. I am told that there are huge fines if you overstay that 90 days.

I got to England yesterday, and wouldn't you know it, there was rain off and on all day. I tried to ride the narrow country lanes. My wife and I rode our bicycles through the United Kingdom years ago, and we mostly stayed on those sorts of road. They are called B roads.



I avoided London, and rode up to York on the eastern side of the country. These are the sorts of roads my wife and I liked when we traveled the UK on a pair of bicycles years ago, But, though they are fine for bicycles, I did not like riding my motorcycle on them. For one thing, it you notice how the grass grows thick right up to the edge of the road, you can imagine how a deer or small child could jump right out of that grass and onto the road.  It is fun being  back where I can read  all the road signs. I had to turn aroujnd and go back to read this one a second time.  "Carp Fishing?"

                           

I am in the town of York now. I got here last night in the rain after 13 hours of riding my motorcycle. I was exhausted and more than ready to stop. Unfortunately, York is such a popular town that all the small hotels were booked. I finally found the Travel Lodge which has hundreds of rooms.

Odysseus has his own little room for the night, but it is outside in the parking lot.


I am going to have fun exploring York, but I am too sleepy to tell you more about it now. So---Goodnight. 

Ron