All was well while we were in London, but as soon as we began our journey to Scotland, one calamity after another drove us to cut our time in Scotland short and to save the trip to Ireland for another time.
First, we couldn’t get on our train because we didn’t have bike reservations, so I appealed to about 50 people waiting in line at the ticket counter to allow me to cut to the front. We found out that there was no space for bikes on our train and got bumped to a train leaving 30 minutes later, which wasn’t so bad. We boarded our train and all was well until the engine on a different train ahead of us on our track caught on fire. After a short delay all trains proceeded except our train, which had to stop the journey in Newcastle because it was an electric train. But we got on another train and arrived in Edinburgh about three hours late, right as the sun was setting. So we found a room at a hostel that was in an old church building. Edinburgh has amazing buildings: castles (one built on an inactive volcano), churches, tall monuments that look like church steeples, everywhere. It’s an amazing city! We explored it a bit on bikes in the morning in the pouring rain and wind.
We began cycling to the East coast of Scotland on the canal trail, which was a lovely paved path winding along a canal, under low brick bridges and over the top of tall aquaducts. All was well until the rain intensified to a torential downpour. Knives pf rain penetrated our rain gear and we became soaked to the bone. Then the pavement ended and the trail became a muddy, flooded single track. That was no longer fun, so we biked on roads, slightly lost the whole time, until early evening and holed up at a cute B&B for the night. I did a lot of gear cleaning and maintenance that evening.
The next morning the rain ended but the wind got stronger. We biked about 50 miles across Scotland with a strong headwind past rolling hills with grazing sheep and cows, and avoided getting hit by impatient drivers several times. Scott got a flat from biking on littered bike paths and having to repeatedly go over curbs to get from the end of one bike path to the start of another. Temperatures dropped to a non-camping level, so we sprung for another hotel room and ate dinner at the adjoining restaurant. We celebrated surviving the day with shots of Scotch.
The next morning the front desk receptionist greeted us with, “Are you sure you want to do this?” as we walked down the hall with all our sacks. We didn’t have much choice, so we pedalled about eight miles to the ferry port in pouring rain to sail to Ireland. When we got there we found out that we read the ferry schedule wrong online and the last ferry from this port left 35 minutes ago and the next one would leave in nine hours. We had the option of biking a long way to the other ferry port down the coast. At this point we were fed up with the weather and unbudgeted expenses, so rather than pushing stubbornly ahead as normal, we decided to go to Ireland some other time. We biked to the train station and bought astronomically expensive train tickets to Harwich Town where we could catch the ferry back to Holland. We had to make three connections. One required us to madly dash for three miles through crowded streets of London to another train station. Amazingly, we made all our connections and arrived at Harwich after dark. We biked back to the same campground where we stayed on our first night in England, had a pint at the pub, confirmed with the bar tender that the ferry to Holland leaves at 9 in the morning, and went to sleep.
We woke up at 6:30 the next morning to catch the ferry, but when the port came into view and we didn’t see a huge ferry, we knew something was wrong. Turned out that today was a rare maintenance day for the ship and the next voyage was scheduled at 11:15 PM. So we had to spend over 12 hours in tiny, sleepy Harwich. We spent quality time at a road side burger wagon called Ray Ray’s, chatting with locals. Caught up on business at the library, enjoyed an authentic Saturday afternoon pub experience (I was the only woman there), and spent a bit of time on various park benches.
In the evening we boarded the overnight ferry to Holland. In the morning we were back in cycling paradise. This time biking with the wind at our backs on flawless bike paths in sunny Holland. We are now taking our time in Holland, having more appreciation for it after a week on calamity island.
