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Sea Crossing and United Kingdom


This ship has an information board explaining where different types of whales and dolphins might be ... I've been up and down three flights of stairs looking for my cabin. I've now found the correct corri... This isn't an overnight crossing so I won't actually be sleeping here but I will have a shower and l... Leaving France. I think this is the first time I've been on a ship where there have been car decks higher up than my... Next stop: Poole. A featureless ship, probably a car transporter. It's not a great picture but I was surprised to suddenly see these very bright lights go past my win... Poole. My second bedroom of the evening. This is one of the lighting options. Fortunately there are others. The view out of the window is of a Lamborghini garage. It's expected to rain until at least one o'clock today. I'll stay here until midday, which is the la... I had already encountered one of them and had to step over it before I reached the sign. I've found a dry place to check the map on the phone. This must have been a multi-track railway line once. The earlier section is now quite a major road w... Sunshine! The rain has finished and the Sun is already drying my clothes. I think there could be such a thing as too many gnomes. Ah, the rare "pegasus crossing". The Fish has probably been a rest stop for travellers on this road for hundreds of years but now the... Ringwood. Ringwood. Unusual benches in Ringwood. This is the A338. It goes all the way to Salisbury but the traffic is heavier than this picture sugg... Fordingbridge is administratively in the New Forest District but it doesn't feel like it. I haven't ... Wiltshire scenery Makes a change from baguettes. This road is signed as the Wiltshire Cycleway and just here it runs alongside the River Avon. It rem... I can see Salisbury. Salisbury Cathedral. Part of the cathedral close. It's famously the tallest cathedral in England, at 123 metres. I don't know what that is. Beause I chose to deviate through the cathedral close I get to go through two of these gateways. Salisbury, with a military transport plane in the sky. Here's where I'll be staying tonight. Part of this hotel was built in the 13th Century to house people who were constructing the cathedral... The outside of the hotel and the courtyard are just as I remember but the inside has changed quite a... Outside my room. The rooms feel quite modern. This isn't how I remember this hotel at all. The bathroom floor is tile... I haven't drunk much today. I've only had about a third of what was in the big bottle. The two small... One thing that this room does have is an iron so my shirt is looking less creased than it has for th... Salisbury. Salisbury. The area around the cinema is quite dark. Breakfast at the Red Lion. I've cleaned yesterday's dirt off the paniers and my shoes but I still need to do the rest of the bi... Little weirs on one branch of the River Avon. Salisbury. Just a house. Here's another one. Later in the day I would see a thatcher at work. A barn in Upper Woodford with a blue clocktower. A house with a lot of firewood stockpiled in its porch. I don't know what this is. I didn't see it. The camera took this picture by itself. Lords Walk is the small gassy area that you can see. It has unusual opening hours. I think that when the railway existed it would have been on top of that embankment so the signal mus... A tank cossing. There is a little white spot on the dark hill on the right. We'll see more of that later. Approaching another tank crossing. Another view of that white spot. A frying pan just left by the side of the road. This is what that white spot was: the Alton Barnes white horse, one of eight which are carved in cha... Downland. I'm walking up a long hill, grazing on blackberries as I go. A view with cows. I admit it would have been better if they had been facing the other way. The village green in Lockeridge. I'm now in the rounds of Marlborough School, on a path which I hope will take me to the town. I did ... The Marlborough white horse is quite a small one behind the tennis courts. An information board near... A toy shop in Marlborough. Marlborough is on the old coach road from London to Bath. It has never been by-passe so this wide Hi... Marlborough. I don't know whether this is saying that Salisbury and Andover are the same distance from here or wh... Tonight I will be staying at the Bear. Just another view of the High Street. The room is smarter than the outside of the building would suggest, and it has an en-suite bathroom.... I certainly think I'll be all right for tea and coffee, especially since I've only had one hot drink... My view is dominated by the town hall, although that milestone is also sitting there at the end of t... The hotel has a selection of DVDs, and at least one game. There happens to be a bike shop just on the opposite side of the town hall from where I'm staying. I... Today will be another day where most of the riding is on converted railways. The first is up there. Decimal miles. That's unusual.... The road which I am avoiding by using the railway. The site of the station at Ogbourne St. George. The railway obviously used to be down there so I don... A bit more of the route. A slightly strange collection of buildings. I don't know whether this is still a church or whether it's a house now but it has a place to charge... What a helpful sign! Another path through the woods. On a section a bit like this later in the day, a bird of prey came f... This bridge over the M4 is colloquially known as the Curly Wurly Bridge. I don't know why it has a l... The other side is curlier, which is necessary because the land is lower there. A heron in Coate Water Country Park. A miniature railway in the same park. The magic roundabout and Swindon Town's football ground, which was ... The edifice at the end of this road is another church. When I asked yesterday evening I was told that the pub would be doing breakfast this morning from 8 ... All I know about these is what the sign says, which is:... Cricklade which, as you may remember, s twinned with ... Cricklade. I think this bridge might at one time have carried another railway over the one which I am using. Th... According to a man who was walking his dog, the reason why the trail deviates away from the old trac... Apparently that's how high this plaque is. Here it is in context. Cirencester. Cirencester. It looks like I'm not the only tourer here. Cirencester. A latin square. The similar stone which is in the distance on the left says that the town was first ... My room. This is one of the few nights when I've had a view of my bike. Some complimentary chocolates. A maze of stairs. "Greebled" is a word that I would use for this hotel. Cirencester by night. A Friday market. Cirencester. Cirencester. A village called Woodmancote. Senery on the Thames side of the Cotswold Ridge, the ridge which separates the upstream end of the T... A pig. Lots of pigs. Now the piglets are coming to me as if they think I've got food, but I've just seen how they've been... My first view of the Malvern Hills. The row of holes at the bottom of that wall are the Seven Springs, which could be considered to be t... Almost immediately after emerging from the springs, the water disappears into that dark pipe to go u... This gives more of an explanation. Cheltenham. Cheltenham. On my drive to Portsmouth a few hours before starting this year's blog, I popped into this bike shop... I'm now close enough to home that I know a lot of the roads around here. I've never been this way be... The M5 is busier than most of the French motorways that I crossed I'm nearly at my destination for the day but now I want to go this way. It turns out that I can actu... My last hotel of the trip. The last kilometre to get here should have been easy because there's a bi... The normal rooms had all sold out so I've got one of the modernised rooms, which looks like this and... Either one person has quite a diverse taste in drinks or putting empty cans on this fence is a local... The River Severn with the Malvern Hills in the distance. A straight flat road which I always enjoy, both on a bike and in a car. It looks like there is something missing from the top of the spire. Perhaps a weathervane. Hybrid religious symbology. Just a view. The lumpy hill is British Camp, an Iron Age hill fort used from the 2nd Century BC until around the ... Scenery. A trailer load of hay bales coming through Upper Welland. The last steep hill of the trip. I assume that the tractor and trailer in the previous picture must ... A bus shelter and a glimpse of the view. The A449 through Malvern Wells is spookily quiet. I assume from the absence of traffic that the sect... Unexpectedly I'm welcomed back to Great Malvern by bagpipe music. I didn't get that when I finished ... My trips in 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2009 all started with me cycling out of Great Malvern, in the era b...