Monday June 24th - Eurostar Brussels to London, train to Hereford. Overcast, cold most of day 15°C to 12°C
Don't park your bikes on a post in London - you might get sued.
An overcast day. No cycling to day apart from getting from train station to train station. The Eurostar is so smooth and takes 2 hrs to get to London we're they're an hour behind European time. The Eurostar arrives at St Pancreas station in London and we have 4 hours to get to Paddington, just 5k up the road. We've booked into a B and B called Somerville house in the centre of Hereford ready for 5 days of cycling over ancestral grounds.It's bleak and misty when we awake at 6.30am. Ian boils the illy in the bathroom and we have a cup of tea whilst we pack. No time for brekky this morning. Brendan retrieves our bikes from the courtyardand we load up and cycle out the back door with instructions to turn left them right then left. Ok. Now where.
The pigeon catcher inside Paddington Station.
Bikes on train to Hereford
Somerville House - home for 5 days
English Country Gardens
Hereford Cathedral
Hereford steak at The Orange Tree
Hereford Cathedral at 9.30pm
Ian drags out his Samsung notebook with GPS and starts looking but I'm impatient to get to the station. We don't have much time as the bikes have to be put into baggage about 1 hour before departure. I stop to ask someone and of course everyone knows where the centre of town is and Brussels Zuid, even if they've never heard of Sainte Catherine's Metro. So two quick stops to ask directions and we're back in familiar territory and into Brussels Zuid where we take the bikes to baggage. Hopefully they're on the same train as us or we're stuffed.
We eat some left over cheese and ham for breakfast whilst we're waiting. Through passport control, customs then security and whoa, they take away Ian's gas bottle. I half expected that to happen but was hoping it would be ok. No so. The Eurostar is not full today - it's Monday morning and most people use it to hoot back and forth across the channel on the weekend. It's such a smooth ride, but for the 19 minutes we are in teh Chunnel is a bit nerve wracking - understandably even I don't want a volatile gas bottle in the luggage.
On the dot of 9.57, the Eurostar rolls into St Pancreas and we walk at least 1k to retrieve our bikes from the Euro Despatch. No problems. It's cold. Even colder than Brussels. My thermometer reads 12ºC - and that's inside the station. A coffee would be nice to help warm up before tacking the A401 up the road to Paddington station. Ian stands the bikes up against a pillar outside a coffee shop and laces them together to stop them falling over. But while I'm inside buying two latte's, a station attendant gives Ian a lecture on how he can't tie stuff (she calls our bikes) to station infrastructure or it could damage it and we might get sued for thousands of dollars - we must be in England. The words litigation and suing aren't in the French language. Don't blame anyone else if you bump your head on a 5 foot high doorway or trip over the two hundred year old uneven cobblestones - I like that system. Take responsibility for one's own accidents no matter whose fault! So Ian dismantles the cable tie and watches as they precariously wobble and we sit down to have a hot coffee.
Down the road - but on the footpath - as those British drivers are as discourteous to cyclists as Aussie drivers - and we reach Paddington station. There's no camping shop in site where we can buy another gas bottle. A quick trip to the Marks ad Spencer food hall to buy lunch for the train and we see an eagle hovering around - It's been especially brought in to shoo away the pigeons. It must work. There's no pigeons in site.
After picking up our tickets for the London to Hereford train trip and we find the warmest spot in the station to curl up and wait. There's 24 tickets all up - tickets for bikes, for going and coming legs, tickets for bike reservations and general tickets for off peak travel. It takes me 10 minutes to sort them all out.
At 1.30 we load the bikes into the baggage compartment, find our seat on the train, and sit down to enjoy lunch - ham cheese and tomato. The weather is clearing the further west we go. That's a good sign. At 3.30pm we reach Newport in Wales and need to change trains. We know the next train to Hereford leaves at 3.36pm but the train conductor informs us it should be OK, UNLESS we need to go up and over the bridge to another platform. And yes, when we arrive, we find we need to push the bikes into a lift to get up the top, race over to the other side, squeeze the bikes into another lift and get down to Platform 4. Bye Bye train. It pulls out just as we get there and we have to wait 30 minutes for the next train which arrives and there's only one bike space. It's a bit squeezy and we try to smooth talk over the tickets which show our bikes were booked on the previous train - which we missed.
Hereford at last. And the sun is shining. It's just the perfect sized town - big enough to have everything you need in the way of shops, small enough so you can't get lost. We're booked into the B and B Somerville House - of course - and it's just a 3 min hoot around the corner from the train station - and we didn't get lost. Rosie and bill are there to greet us. We're up on the 3rd floor in the attic. It's reserved for the young ones - I instantly feel better. The view to the Black mountains and the Hereford Cathedral is beautiful. Our hosts make us a cup of tea in the lounge room then we take our stuff upstairs and do a weeks worth of washing which Ian hangs on the line while watchin Lleyton Hewitt beat Stanislas Wawrinka in straight sets.
By now it's 8pm and brilliant sunshine. We're not exactly starving. We've already had 2 big meals and we've done nothing but sit on trains. Rosie recommends the Black Swan as a nice English pub for dinner so after a shower we walk down around the fast flowing Wye River into town and look for the Black Swan. We can't find it, but right about where it should be is the Black Lion - close enough so we go in for a drink. The locals tell us there is no Black Swan. OK. It doesn't really matter - any port in a storm. But they do recommend the Orange Tree for a steak and chips. It's just up the road and the Hereford steak is superb - with chips and salad on the side - washed down with a Five Foot Shiraz from Australia. Apparently 400 years ago, there was a lady who lived in the house who grew oranges to sell to the locals.
The walk home is still in sunshine, but brisk - make that cold. Ian grabs the washing off the line and we collapse into bed - tired but not from cycling - mostly from shuffling bikes and baggage on and off trains - but it will be worth it. I'm going to check out the hallowed ground of the ancestors.