Geneva, Switzerland

Hi Again:

The weather turned off warm and sunny and I am loving it. I have been staying at a very nice Bed and Breakfast near Ghent (or Gent) Belgium. It is out in the country in a tiny town, and I enjoyed riding the back roads from it to Ghent. Look! A windmill. Not many of those things left.

The roads in the countryside of Belgium are exactly the sort I like to ride, with small villages and tree lined paths.

Ghent is pretty famous, and so of course I had to go there for a Saturday afternoon walk-about. Unfortunately, all these towns are starting to look the same to me -- musicians playing on the squares for tips, lots of stores selling junk for tourists to let get dusty once back home, restaurants with their sidewalk cafes packed with people watchers. 

Unfortunately, it being a packed Saturday afternoon in the tourist area of Ghent, trash was everywhere. The place looked very dirty to me. All my pictures were of things up high.

Ghent does have a nice castle, however. It is well worth the time to visit it.

Ghent was nice enough in a rather used sort of way. I am glad I went there, but I was looking forward to going the other direction to Brugges more. My B & B was about 25 miles from Brugges, but in the opposite direction from Ghent. Again, the roads getting there were fun, especially on a Sunday morning with no one stirring.

Unlike Ghent on a tourist clogged Saturday afternoon, trash thrown everywhere and trash cans overflowing, Brugges on a Sunday morning was super clean.

Like many of the European cities, especially in Holland, Belgium and Western Germany, Brugges has a lot of old canals. I still think it would be fun to explore Europe on a house boat, just drifting through all the canals. I think it would be too slow and peaceful for me though.

I was all ready to kick back and explore this part of Belgium for days, but then -- surprise!! -- I managed to get a hard-to-come-by ticket to tour the CERN Hardron Particle Accelerator. But it is at Geneva and I have two days to get there. Gotta hustle along. My route will be down through the forested Alsace-Lorraine  area of France, and then along the Jura Alps to Geneva. It should be a fun, if frantic, ride.  Much of the time I was on super highways (Interstates? Autobahns?). I don't much like those, but they are a great way to make time. AT one point I was in the left hand of two lanes, passing a truck and doing about 70 when the man in the car behind me got tired of following me I guess, and he passed me. There were some hand signals back and forth between the two of us. My heart was in my throat!

It was the smaller country lanes up in the mountains I liked better. Sometimes I could look way down and see beautiful villages in the valleys.

Lots of farms in this area. The wheat has been harvested, and not the farmers are bailing straw and taking huge loads of it down the roads. They can really back up traffic.

A fun thing: many of the farmers, or their children maybe, and many of the towns had made sculptures out of the straw. They were pretty clever at it. I did not take any pictures (too far to go and not enough time), but I wish I had. My favorite was a tractor made of straw.

But finally, saddle sore and ready to quit, I came to a viewpoint in the mountains and, look, there is Geneva way down there. It is hard to tell much about it from my picture, but maybe you can see Lake Geneva down there.

Odysseus says he is more than ready to quit for the night.

I am in a very nice hostel in the heart of the city, right on the shore of Lake Geneva. There are dozens of people here in the lobby right now, each of them trying to use the internet which clogs things up. So, I am going to quit for this update and go take a much needed shower.

Ron

Wales

In my last post I was telling you that I was in the mountains around the Lake District in England. Those mountains are impressive -- not like the Alps or the Rockies, both of which are enormous and majestic -- but more for the fun riding on single lane roads up through great herds of sheep.

I said in my last posting that I had dropped my bike on my foot.  Can you tell which one I dropped the bike on? 

That poor foot turned black and blue on the bottom and around the toes.

The toes don't look too bad here, but as time went on they turned more and more black. They looked dead. It has been over a week now since my stupid accident, and, although the color is returning, the foot is still swollen.

Anyway, as I say, I rode down into the Welsh Mountains of Snowdonia. I really like it there. The riding was marvelous, although the weather continued to be bad with rain every day.

From Wales, I rode back into the flatter lands of Southern England. I wanted to go to Stratford Upon Avon, Shakespeare's home town. I was there years ago with my wife, and I remember it very well.

My foot was feeling better, so I was able to walk along the river and explore a bit. It sure is pretty there. I wonder what it would be like to travel the rivers of England and mainland Europe in a rented houseboat like so many people do.

After walking for a mile or so, I came to a cute little ferry ran by a man who pulled it across the River Avon with a crank and pulley system. He charged 50 cents to go across.

The main thing I wanted to do in Stratford was go to the Royal Shakespeare Theatre to take in a play. My wife and I did that years ago when we were there together, and I really enjoyed the experience. So, I went to see "Merchant of Venice", but I was very disappointed: it was done in modern day costume on a bare stage and the actors mumbled their lines so that I couldn't understand a word they said (well -- to give them some credit, it may have been that my 71 year old ears have gotten too weak to understand people on stage). The next night I went to see "The Jew of Malta", a play from the same era but by a different writer. It was done in period costume with good stage sets and great acting, and, maybe because I remembered my hearing aides, I could hear every word. Unlike the previous night's show of The Merchant of Venice", this show got a standing ovation from an appreciative crowd.

I stayed at a beautiful Youth Hostel in Stratford. It was really nice -- one of the best places I have stayed at all summer.

There was a "motorcycle only" parking area in town. I parked there each night when I went in to a play. I felt really safe doing that. No one will bother a bike hidden behind a wall. The parking at the hostel was similar. It was also hidden behind a wall.

But finally, my time in Britain is over. I am ready to head back to the mainland. I wanted to take the Channel Train (The Chunnel) over to Calais, France, but there are huge groups of North Africans in Calais trying to sneak aboard lorries and smuggle themselves to England. The police in  England have the main roads closed and the lorries stacked up for miles. I guess they were checking every truck for illegals. All I know is that I could not get to the tunnel. That is okay. A ferry will work just as well. It will also give me a chance to see the English Channel a little better. The last time I came across the Channel on a ferry was 45 years ago when I brought a group of grouchy high school students to Europe. There was a back-up today of cars trying to get on the ferry. Everything was running a half hour late.

But look, behind the ferry -- the famous White Cliffs of Dover.

So goodbye to England, at least for this summer. I will miss it. It is definitely one of my favorite places on Earth (even if they do talk funny there -- Y'all better staighten up that accent, ya hear?).

Here is a map of my UK trip this summer.

I am in Calais, France tonight, staying in a very nice Youth Hostel. I plan to ride up to Ghent, Belgium tomorrow.

More later, Ron