2nd UK trip, day three

I know I'm not posting these on time, or in order. I wrote the below on, like, the 14th of August. I am a Time Lady. Sorry. (If you have no idea what I meant by that--watch some Dr. Who.)

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There are no silences here, in this hostel. The windows are open against the heat, and Manchester traffic rumbles constantly by underneath. Wailing sirens, streams of raucous revellers, impatient horns. The door to the room squeaks and clatters open. People come and go, following their own disparate schedules. Sleep is taken only in snatches and fits. The blue silicone in my ears is very imperfect insulation, but I make do with what I've got. Being dry and off the street is all I need.

I allow myself to sleep as long as I want and take a leisurely breakfast out of packets and tins downstairs. With tea of course: the lifeblood of my travelling. Then a train to Huddersfield, a nice conversation with a local lady who has an electric bike; green streaming by the windows, layered over sandblasted stone and aged brick. The hills are formidable and render electrics on a bike a necessity for all but the most hardy cyclists. But I've only five or six miles to Holmfirth from here, so they give me little pause as I set off into them.

The road twists around and among the hills, skirting thru small towns along the way. The smell of old forest permeates the air. Mildewed leaves and dirt and mossy trunks. Much of the way is sheltered under canopies of branches and leaves, natural tunnels with a peaceful darkness to them. The air is moist and sky overcast, but the atmosphere is that of natural, subtle beauty.

Holmfirth is small, set tumbling upon the road into a valley. I'm here because my Grandmamma said that I should come. I'm glad she did. She cannot come herself, so I'm her eyes and ears for now. I don't take as many pictures or video as I should like, but I do my best. Happy birthday, Grandmamma. I'll be seeing you very soon.

The ladies in the tourist office are imminently friendly, and gab and gab with me until we realise that the exhibition will close before I get there if I don't move out. I've already essentially missed the tour bus, so I buy a DVD that will take us on it later, and head down then to Compo's house. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, it's from a long-lived British show called Last of the Summer Wine, filmed in this little slice of Yorkshire for decades. Grandmamma is a big fan.) After the museum, shop, and tea in the Wrinkled Stocking tea room, it's off to find the series' iconic pub. I would stay for a bit of summer wine (haha) but I'm full and it's been raining off and on for a while, so I head back the way I came, into Huddersfield. The shut-up shops have transformed the town from bustling and busy to dreary and empty in the few hours I've been gone. The roadworks on the ring road don't help either. It smells like dust and wet concrete. The train comes late.

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Fog blankets everything in whitish grey outside the train back into Manchester, and I am sitting on the floor in a train that had no seats for me to take. BK rests against a pile of cases next to me. I like how bicycles can travel on the trains here, free (as space permits). The entire country opens up to me that way.

It'll be York tomorrow, then. Not much else from this day or the next to communicate. My poetic mood seems to have waned. We'll see what's left of it in the coming days, I suppose.

Pax.

2nd UK trip, day one

With this dawn comes responsibility. Pre-booked tickets and interconnected plans, a fabric of preconceived direction unlike anything my past self has ever really given me before. The morning air is already bright with warmth. I cycle alongside vans and articulated trucks to the Dublin port, entering the industry-heavy realm of twisted coloured metal, stacks of aging shipping crates, petrol fumes. I am boarded onto the lower deck of the ferry with all the HGVs. There is a three-bicycle rack there by the gangway, where BK will wait patiently for me to return to her, bracing herself by one wheel against the rolling of the sea. I say goodbye and make my way upstairs.

The sea is smooth and clean as silver. I stare out over it, this ethereal reflection of the air. Three hours of sleep is hardly enough to keep me going past this point. Food first, then rest, curled up in a booth with my bag between my legs like some kind of canvas egg. I awaken when we approach the other shore. The water glitters violently as we forge ahead to dock, and I disembark after the biggest truck, a guppy swept up in the slipstream of a shark.

Two trains follow close after one another and I hardly register either one. Marshmallows and peanut butter and a ribbon of land unspooling rapidly behind. Ill-behaved children and ill-tempered parents. Fits of sleep stolen before muscles relax into the rattling panes.

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Every city has its own unique character. It is etched into the street signs, spattered in graffiti, lurking in each grubby corner. To be understood it must be seen, smelled--felt, boiling off the concrete in the sweltering heat of a midsummer's day. Manchester is its own self. A wizened old man, hunching over his meagre river with a shifty smile.

reflections off the road: back into bad habits

Well, here I am back in Dublin, and slipping immediately back into all the bad habits I thought I put behind me when I set off on my grand cycle. Watching youtube videos all day, after being youtube-free for almost 30 days. Sitting around refreshing pages over and over waiting for updates. Getting hardly anything done. I'll run an errand or two, then sit down at the computer for hours. Wash a few dishes, put a few things away, then sit down again.

I really need to start having dedicated Internet-Free Days. I think I will start with one day a week: Friday. Every Friday I will do no internet except email on my phone, and research if necessary. I will try to do more creative things. I will restart my non-cycling workout routine. I will start a new comics project. I will sketch or write in my journals more often. I will make a blog entry twice a week and a youtube video once every other week.

I'm putting these goals in public now so you guys can get on my case if I don't follow thru. If you see me on the internet on Friday, say, GET OFF THE 'NET, WOMAN. If I don't post a blog entry once every three or four days you can email me, WHAT ARE YOU DOING. WRITE STUFF.

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Tomorrow morning I'm getting up at the crack of dawn to take a ferry, with my bicycle, to the UK. I'll disembark in Wales at Holyhead and then take a series of trains to Manchester. I will kill zombies again at an abandoned manor house out there, go visit Holmfirth and take pictures/video for my grandmamma (it seems to be the #1 place she would visit were she to come to the UK), then take a train to York and cycle up to see an abbey that my mother absolutely adored when she was here. Then I'm going to Cardiff to do the Doctor Who Experience that just opened down there, and will probably return home after that, altho' I haven't bought my return ticket yet just in case I would like to stay a bit longer. The trip will only be 7 or 8 days total, and I'll come back just in time to prepare for my sister to come visit me on the 21st - 29th!!

I will write blog posts from the road possibly, but may not post them until a few days later. I have some "reflections off the road" blog posts that are only half finished right now that I've been procrastinating on... haha, good going, me. I had a wonderful 27-day streak of being more creative and I went and blew it on the internet once I got back to my flat. I was gone so long I forgot that my carpet was red and was literally surprised by it when I returned home. Now it's been days since I've properly left this tiny little room.

My time abroad is rapidly coming to a close. It's up to me to make the most of it from now on.

Pax.

back from England!

Just spent about ten days in England, travelling about. Started in a monastery in Essex, near Tiptree; spent four nights in London after that; then killed zombies in Reading; next, went to the spa in Bath; and finally, wandered about Oxford before catching the ferry home from Holyhead.

Originally I intended to go up to Edinburgh for a few days, and also see some of North England (think, York, Hadrian's wall etc), or at least a few more sites in England, such as Cambridge or Dover or whatever I thought of at the time. However, my hamstrings and knees really started to bother me after the zombie-killing, which involved lots of sprinting, including sprinting up and down stairs. Because I want to do my cycle tour of Ireland more than anything else, I decided to come home so I can get some massage, do my physio exercises more diligently, and warm up my legs on the bike for a bit before setting off. Since cycling is easier on the knees than walking, I still think I'll be able to pull the trip off. I may have to cut it off early, but we'll see. Whatever happens, I won't stop travelling.

Before I go, I need to figure out how to best update this blog and/or youtube on the road and buy some more kit so we'll see about that.

in August I plan to visit Cardiff for the Doctor Who experience that just opened there, perhaps kill more zombies in a different experience in Manchester, and if I have a few days go see more of Wales or Scotland. It all depends on when my family intends to visit me, because of course I want to show them all around Ireland--but they'll only be here say for 10 days or so.

I'll write up some posts about my travels in England soon. I have tons of pictures and snippets of footage. Sorry for the delayed reports; one thing I definitely need to work on is reporting on things as they happen rather than weeks later... but better late than never, so they say.

pax.

update

Well, right now I'm in an internet cafe right outside Earlscourt station in London. I've checked into the youth hostel in Holland Park, which is actually really nice I think, for the next four nights. Tomorrow I'll get up and do a walking tour of London to get my bearings... I have an oyster card already, and a seven day pass for the rental bikes, so I'm all set for transport. On the 15th I'm heading up to Reading for the zombie experience that I booked, and then from there I intend to travel north up into Scotland, do some kind of tour of the highlands, fly out of Edinburgh (I have a return flight out of Glasgow but I might just ignore it altogether since it was so cheap and I may want to stay on longer), or something...

London and Dublin have a lot of similarities, and the tube reminds me of the trains in Japan (so weird to see mostly white people on 'em), so I feel at home here. I just wish I knew what I wanted to do with my time, y'know? I'm really bad at vacations. Like, really bad.

The weather is pretty miserable so I'm probably not going to do much today. Rain rain rain. Apparently there was some flooding in Essex last month. After weeks and weeks of drought warnings. Gotta love mother nature.

Everything's really expensive in London, whoa. I think it would be gas to live here though. I'd apply to Oxford or Cambridge or something but no way I could afford it, like. How can you squeeze a city like this into four days? That's what I wanna know.

My internet access is gonna be really spotty from here on out but I'll try to post updates as I can I guess?

pax.