D’Oylys tea rooms at Bolton Percy. Cream teas with scones, butter, jam and cream ! Plus real Yorkshire tea. Note the butter. Some cheapskate tea-rooms miss it out. An absolutely delightful cycle ride through early autumn clear and delightful sunshine.
When it comes to time-trialling on Bromptons we certainly take the biscuit – or in this case most of the cheap wine provided by the local council. Fastest overall, fastest woman, and oldest competitor. Yay !
Oh, and we found time to watch the finish of the first stage of the Tour of Britain too !
What is really the best thing about canal boating, apart from being in a cosy floating shoebox, is being in a boat and looking down on the countryside. And nowhere better than on the Leeds and Liverpool canal above Gargrave, where the canal climbs onto nearly its top level through the Pennines and winds along the contours in a most spectacular fashion.
And you can moor just about anywhere for the night, in the depths of the countryside, far from any roads or rails or airports, andclose to sheep and cows and birds and other noisy nocturnal critters.
Under new management and trying hard. Interesting selection of guest beers, mini beer and cider festival, nicely spruced up rear yard. Worth a visit.
The Viking ship museum at Roskilde is fascinating, as are the replicas that sail on the fjord outside,
but the real Viking age experience was at the National Museum in Copenhagen. In Denmark the Iron Age goes up to 1050AD or so, which includes the entire Viking period. You have never seen such a cornucopia of objects. Makes you wonder how careless all those ancient Danes were, losing so much stuff, or how rich they were, to be able to afford to bury such costly objects with their dead. Or to acquire such wonderful foreign goodies from the Mediterranean world. And it’s all so brilliantly displayed and lit. All the text is in Danish and English, in equal size type. Astonishing volume of finds.
Can you believe main city streets with wide cycle tracks at each side and delivery lorries unloading and not parking on the cycle track ? Can you believe streets lined with full cycle racks all day and well into the evening. Can you believe none of the thousands of cyclists wearing lycra, or cycle helmets, and just sailing about their business with elegant ease ? Can you believe traffic light phases specifically for bikes ?
Copenhagen.
It seemed we could have a comfortable, hotel style room with two single beds, triple glazing and air conditioning, but with no ensuite and a little way out of the city centre (Stockholm), or ensuite facilities, and extremely central location, and no ventilation except an open window onto a 05:00 to 01:00 bus route, an 04:00 bin collection, and beer deliveries to the two cafes opposite between 6 and 8 am. (Copenhagen). But the Copenhagen one did have a very nice little cafe on the ground floor where you could get an excellent German weissbier so it wasn’t all bad. As an aside, you might think the Carlsberg in Copenhagen would be superior to anywhere else but actually it’s just as dreadful as in the rest of the world.
I really liked Stockholm. Good fish to eat in the restaurants and surprisingly good beer to drink. We wandered trhough the old town and found an eccentric bike shop which sold and hired out Bromptons, had a poster for the 2009 Brompton Championship in the window and also had things like Brooks saddles and leather saddlebags.
Swedes have a very positvie attitude towards sunshine , they adore it, especially it seems, near water. The city is on several islands between Lake Malar and the sea and everywhere beside the water there were busy sunbathers. On a hot summer Saturday it seemed like the entire city decamped onto the ferries out to the enchanting rocky, tree covered islands which stretch for miles between Stockholm and the sea. They varied from tiny rocks to islands just big enough for a house, a hammock, a jetty, a summerhouse and a Swedish flag, to islets about a kilometre long and/or wide with tiny coves and beaches each with a complement of bronzed bodies.
In both Sweden and Norway, they really DO summer. They embrace it, they revel in it, they bask in its brevity.
A 7.30am train from Oslo to Stockholm – some rather quaint and elderly Swedish Railway carriages – big windows you could drop down and a loco hauled train. Seemed rather odd for an international service but then the Norwegians and the Swedes have a famously arms-length relationship. Lots of lakes on the Norwegian side of the border – picturesque as ever – pity about the number of trees between the track and the water sometimes. Southern Sweden quite flat. Rail entry into Stockholm crosses the harbour on a low bridge – suddenly spectacular.
A very few hours in Oslo poses the question of what to do. Walking on the Opera House roof is fun, watching the harbour is fun, getting lost around the castle is a bit trying, so we headed for what I have always felt to be one of the most amazing places anywhere – the Vigeland sculptures in their parkland setting. I was bowled over by these when I first saw them in 1966 and they remain totally impressive, from the circle of baby figures, to the avenue of active figures to the quieter groups round the amazing central pillar. I still find some of the pieces incredibly moving, particularly those showing older people or family groups
And so it got to early evening, and we went in search of the restaurant in the park, near the sculptures. Alas, the terrace was empty, the pavilion closed, but a handy sign pointed us round the corner to a new location, another, west-facing terrace, where I had one of the tastiest meals I have ever had in Norway, not a country normally famed for subtlety in cooking. (Bland and tasteless or very strongly fishy or cheesy). But this roast salmon on sweet potato with capers was absolutely wonderful. And not vastly expensive, either.