Newsletter from Wednesday, August 2nd, 2017
Rain, drizzle, rain buckets, mizzle, pouring rain, streaming rain, precipitate, downfall... In England this falls normally on one day from the heavens. In the mean time we've cycled from the east coast to the west coast and we've seen pretty much every type of weather here, apart from the snow.
Still there was a lot sunshine, sometimes in combination with rain. In almost every day we saw multiple rainbows. And the headwind isn't so strong either. For Dutch people that is.... Even this special weather does nothing to lessen our enjoyment of this wonderful route! And the Way of the Roses is a wonderful cycling route! Especially through Yorkshire Dales with a lot of its - not to high but still very steep - hills. I even had to push my bicycle up one hill on foot, because at the third steep climb at 16% (without going down hill once) my legs suddenly refused to operate.
The Way of the Roses is named to the Wars of the Roses. A battle between The House of Lancaster (red rose) and The House of York (white rose). They fought for the right to rule England in the 15th century. For those watching The Game of Thrones, it is based on The Wars of the Roses. Bye the way, this battle continues up to this day through football (soccer) with Manchester United (red shirts from Lancastershire) against Leeds United (white shirts from Yorkshire).
In York we stayed an extra night. Remy wanted to go to the greatest railway museum of the world. In the second half of the day I had to convince him that there's more to York and luckily I succeeded.
This morning we've arrived in Morecambe, the end of the Way of the Roses and started to descent towards the south. Here we follow the border between Wales and England.
While I'm writing this, we're in a cheap hotel in Preston, by lack of campings near by. We could guide our muddy bicycles through the lounge and the restaurant to the back and are now safe in a toilets for invalids under lock and key. It's the weirdest thing so far, but at least we are warm and dry!
In hindsight we should have taken a different header photo for this newsletter. The photo was taken by Bob on the beach near our house with the threatening clouds from England which we thought fitting. Of course we were asking for it...
Until next time!
Remy & Gea
The photo's below are taken in Yorkshire Dales. Click to enlarge.
