Things that make you feel small

Things that make you feel small:
~Swimming against the current of the Rhine.
~Trying to sleep in a tent in an almighty thunderstorm.
~Gazing up at the Gothic spires of Koln's Dom
~Taking a three year old up 1260 steps noticing she's not tired and you're almost dead.
~Cycling across a continent, knowing there are five more you could try.
~Listening to a gospel choir knowing you can't sing.
~Accidentally cycling into a neo-Nazi demonstration with police vans behind you.
~Realising we're less than a quarter of the way to Venice.

Crossing the line

Somewhere we crossed a line and something changed. It wasn’t the border; that passed without about as much fanfare as a coffee in a café. The road from Holland to Germany has no obvious border. No flag, policeman, passport control, bureau de change; not even a Wilkommen sign. Not even a line in the road. Just an EU blue sign marks the end of one nation and the beginning of another. 

European borders are not what they used to be. Gone is the excitement of passport checks, a customs inquisition or foreign exchange transaction while struggling to mentally switch languages or find your new phrase book in you pannier. No, no such drama these days; the price of freedom of movement. Shame, for it made European travel so much more fun.
Somewhere we crossed a line and something changed. Somewhere in Germany, riding up the Rhine, sweet innocent Rhineland left us following her dark industrial brother.  No more pasture, wheat field, canal, orchards and windmills. No more cobbled squares, village pumps, churches, bakerei, cafes and mediaeval charm.  No more bird song or whip of wooden boom gibing on the wind.

Freight barges dominate the river here, overruling currents to drop loads where and when they want to. In the dockyards juggernauts rattle on industrial cobble, past railyard and dock to smokestack horizons. Dockside is blockside, concrete buildings, modern lines, function dictating form; no place for art or architecture here.  The grey sky says it all. What need for colour beyond the charcoal, silver and grey of the great industrial revolution.  It’s easy to yearn for sweet Rhineland but we need to experience these contrasts to appreciate the many different characters of the Rhine.

Somewhere we crossed a line and something changed. I couldn’t tell you which day it was or when or where it happened but there’s been a quiet transformation in the family in the week we’ve been on the road. We’re not the family we were at home, now shorn of our usual routines, personal space, possessions and private time. Now we’re tied together on tandems, trying to work together, pushing and shoving, jigging and jostling, hugging and hitting, learning and loving, as we struggle to figure out a different way of being together on this journey. 

It takes a while to work it out, to find our new places, roles and ways of relating, to appreciate the complex meshings of our different characters, but as we do we come to know that as a family we can also forge ourselves into a team.

Getting into the rhythm of the road

Our first full week of cycling. Filled with the usual first week questions of how to establish a rhythm, pace and sense of purpose for the trip. Setting the ground rules, figuring out how we function as a family; what works for us now as opposed to last year, individually and as a group. It’s probably the biggest juggling act we do all year and as usual at the beginning we are inept at handling all the balls. At home the rules have been long established. We all know what we do and we know our place and role within the family. Here, it’s all up for grabs. These days any one of us is capable of putting up the tent, shopping for bread or sorting out bedding. But for us all it’s an unfamiliar world; we don’t speak the language or know the area and there’s no one to rescue us if we’re stuck in a city without a bed, or lost somewhere on the Rhine. Stuart decides to make each person a different team captain every day. It’s on a rota and everyone has a turn. Matthew takes it all very seriously and works out coffee stops, playground breaks and a route for his day. Cameron instantly loses the captain’s armband and can’t be bothered to make a decision of any kind unless it involves a happy meal. Hannah defers her decisions to Dolly. When it’s my turn to be captain Stuart makes me navigate which results in a row.  Stuart meanwhile can’t give up making the decisions and undermines everyone all the time. 

It takes the kids a few days to realise that the most expensive ice creams aren’t sustainable on a long trip like this. It takes a few days for us all to come to terms with the daily routine of cycling, and with the tiredness that accompanies it. And for Stuart and I to figure out how much cycling is too much. A challenge for us is how to make it safe without being dull; and how much we humour the narrow interests and preferences of an 8, 7 and 3 year old. Do we divert to campsites every night or throw ourselves at the mercy of fate and locals? How much of the budget do we spend on conventional attractions? Two days ago we splashed out on visiting a Roman town complete with breezeblock coliseum. But the kids preferred the dollar’s worth of Haribo sweets they were rewarded with afterwards for being good little Roman soldiers.     

One thing we know from experience..when it all goes belly up, it’s the children that come to our rescue; pedalling hard to get us to where we need to be, navigating or putting up the tent in the dark. Last night, in Duisberg, after a long 50 kilometre day of cycling, we biked to where the hotel was marked on the map. It turned out to be several districts away, involving a 20 kilometre ride. Tired legs had to take us without complaint to a hostel with no cooking facilities and we would have to make our own beds. While Cameron climbed into the buggy and fell asleep, it was Hannah who powered Stuart and his tandem right across town. “We are the winners” she shouted as she passed me, in the suburbs, one hand in the air in a victory salute. A true captain doesn’t always have to ask her dolly.

The Language Barrier

In the town of Maarsee we make a detour from the main road. A tent icon on our map indicates there is a campsite nearby. But it seems unlikely, as row after row of houses line ordered roads full of smart terraced homes. Neatly dressed people take their evening stroll. I ask for directions to the campsite from two matronly looking ladies standing gossiping by the roadside. They have no English and we have no Dutch, but they quickly understand we need to camp, as we keep hopefully repeating the word ‘camping.’ The ladies launch into an animated babble, pointing left, then right, then round the corner. We try to keep up, pointing left then right then round the corner with them, but it’s pretty obvious we don’t know where we are going. An elderly couple walk past holding hands and are dragged into the debate. They have no English either, but shout a lot and point right then left then around the corner. Five minutes later they are still debating, screaming at each other in Dutch, and we are standing helplessly with our bikes, wondering how to close the conversation down when we don’t speak the language. A woman and her daughter walk past with their dog, enjoying the evening sunshine. Soon they too are babbling, pointing right then left then round the corner. When two more people are brought into the conversation and eight people are now pointing right and left and around the corner, we start to laugh.
We spent a week in Holland at Easter, and not a single person spoke Dutch to us. In the last few days we have been desperately swotting up German, unconcerned about the Dutch language as we haven’t needed it. “Everyone speaks English,” we happily agreed, as we bought bread or negotiated for a youth hostel. But clearly, if you venture more than 200 metres off the main road, they don’t.

The woman we initially stopped grabs us by the arm, then points into her house. We shake our heads vehemently; we can’t stay with you. But then she grabs a bike from her hall, and pink flowery dress billowing behind her, she beckons us to follow her. Left, then right then round the corner we go several times, before pulling up at a caravan park. The gentleman at reception doesn’t need much English to tell us we aren’t welcome. A simple ‘no’ is sufficient. But now we have two problems; the first is where to sleep and the second is how to dismiss the lady in the flowery dress who seems intent on accompanying us on wherever we go next. It seems the nearest campsite is in Utrecht, fifteen kilometres away. We thank her for her time and she babbles on enthusiastically. We bid her goodbye, and she talks even more. We get on our bikes, cycle left, then right, then round the corner, and she parts company with us at the main road. It’s no place for locals, they speak a foreign language there.

Two hours on and we reach the campsite in Utrecht. Here everyone speaks English, or rather Irish; the run down site has been taken over by a gypsy community. “How much did your bike cost?” is the first question they pose before crowding us with their queries. Babies in nappies, cats, teenagers and a goat hang out all over the site, and the men hold an Irish football tournament across the only available field. We put up our tent with an audience of children, and a goat wanders onto the groundsheet and makes off with the Ritz crackers. Our children chase after it and retrieve a box covered in goat flem.“Is that your goat,” Stuart jokes? “Yes,” a child shrugs. The goat is very interested in our bikes and the tent. We shoo it away and it urinates on the tent next door.

At bedtime I take all our valuables and our children into the tent while Stuart goes off for a shower. A few minutes after he leaves, there’s a snuffling at the front of the tent, then a shaking, then something rams it. “It’s the goat,” I squeal, bashing it with my novel. Further along the tent the material shakes violently. “Go away you stupid goat,” Hannah cries, whacking it with her dolly. Then, a rustling from the other side. “It’s the goat, he’s over there,” cries Cameron. At the same time one of the gypsy girls shouts, “Here goaty, come here goaty.” I am incensed. “Who brings a damn goat on holiday?”I start to whack the side of the tent with my book where the goat was last seen, and pull open the zip. Crouched on the ground is Stuart, on his knees, with two fingers against his head to make horns. He’s ramming the tent with his head. I whack him with my book on the top of his horns. My language, I’m afraid, is unrepeatable, but everyone, from the Dutch to the Irish, gets the gist of it.

The storm before the calm

Everything's gone crazy: tandems in the yard, trailers in the living room, panniers on the breakfast table. Clothes, sleeping bags, tents, toiletries, toys, tools, torches, tickets, plasters, ponchos, passports, locks and keys, maps, guide books, cameras, credit cards, kitchen, and more. Everything you need (or think you need) to take a family of five on the road for seven weeks. All waiting to be packed. It just all seems so complex. So many things and all got to fit into those panniers. There will have to be some culling - of things not people!

 

Right now it all seems so crazy and complicated. So much to think about and remember.  And that's just the packing. Then there's the other list: money to get, hostels to book, campsites to research, library books to go back, house to clean, mp3's to load, phones to charge, washing to do, teachers to thank, kids to bath....... Too much. TOO MUCH. And what for? What could possibly be worth this living nightmare?

 

Answer? The simplicity that follows. For once it's all packed and loaded things life on the road is pure and simple. Eating, drinking, camping and pedalling, laughing, living and learning as family on a romp across Europe. It's the certain knowledge of that that will get us through to lift off in just 47 hours.

In the grip: pre-trip gear anxiety

Do you suffer from pre-expedition gear anxiety? You know that feeling there’s some vital piece of gear you’re missing without which your trip could take a turn for the worse and be ruined in ways you can’t yet imagine? You don’t know what this gear is but you know it might be out there somewhere, in one of the many mountain hardware stores, outfitters or camping shops you feel obliged to visit in a vain and time consuming effort to allay your generalised anxiety by either finding the missing link or confirming you really have already got every possibly useful gadget known to man.



I can’t believe I still get it, after so many years of planning and gearing up for tours. Although I’m getting better at resisting the pull of the gear shops in the months and weeks before departure day. For I increasingly know in my heart of hearts that it’s not the hardware that makes our tours a success but the software – our skills, mental attitude and experience, things you can’t buy off the shelf but have to nurture and develop in yourself and those you travel with.

I had an email from someone recently, who sounded in the grip of gear anxiety: “What are the most important things to take on a family bike journey?” she asked, “I'm a bit paraniod that I'm going to forget something!” We exchanged lists of gear at first, comparing notes on what she had, what we took and what she though she might need. But in doing so we nearly missed the most important things because it’s not getting the hardware ready that matters (although it does) but preparing the team....

Family expeditions are an essentially human endeavour. And while it’s easy (and tempting) to focus all your attention on packing your kit bags, your success depends on getting yourself and your family ready together. Of course what you’re going to need depends on you, your family and what you hope to achieve so there’s no easy list to follow here. But it’s interesting to think about what the other ‘stuff’ is that you and your family need to make your adventures together a success, for everyone.

Here’s where we got to thinking about making our long-distance cycle tours a success; it’s a kind of mindset kit list for a happy family tour.

1 Positive attitude(!)
2 Patience and flexibility.
3 Determination (but only if you really want to get there)
4 Imagination (to overcome whatever obstacles you encounter)
5 Good route choices (safe, quiet= enjoyable, past interesting things to stop at)
6 Clear goals everyday (that everyone’s on board with)
7 Keep everyone looking ahead (things to look forward to: today, in a few days, this week, next)
8 Well managed expectations (about hills, hard days, easy days, when to stop, where to stay)
9 Staying open to unexpected (even if it slows you down or takes you off route)
10 Accomodating everyones needs (the hardest but probably most important)

So, what would be on your list?
(Here's a tip: Make a list. It'll keep you away from the gear shops. You'll save you a fortune.)

European Tour: a physical, cultural and linguistic family challenge

Well it just didn't seem enough to just ride to Italy, so we're hatching a more sophisticated plan. And hopefully a slightly flatter one. After hours spent staring at Google Maps I think we may have an itinerary for this summer's family excursion. We're going to challenge ourselves linguistically by visiting six countries, riding across France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Austria and Italy on a ride from the English Channel (as we Brits call it) to the Adriatic, starting in Dover and ending in Venice (hopefully).

Once across the Straits of Dover we're going to head across the battlefields of Northern France and Belgium to pick up the Mosel Cycle Route in Luxembourg, follow it's winding course to Koblenz, and then pick up the Rhine or Limes Cycle Routes south, then make our way over to follow the Romantic Road Route through Bavaria then cross the Alps and Austria on the Via Claudia Augusta to reach Italy on what looks like it could be a 2000km Western European epic. Now how many maps are we going to need?