A very long bike ride (V)

We had a great night at the British Army tank base, the name of which still escapes me, its a huge place stuck in the middle of nowhere, its nearest city is Hamburg but its a long, long way away from there, it has a small village next to it with absolutely nothing there, so everything is provided on the base, housing, a supermarket, a “pub” for the squaddies and an officers club – our host later explained that until the demise of the Soviet Empire the base was just one kilometre from the East and West German border, hence it being a huge tank base, if the Russians had launched a land invasion it would have been there and the British Army wearing their NATO hats would have been the first line of defence – now it was stuck in the middle of nowhere and scheduled for closure.

By some miracle of wrangling our nice organiser man had snaffled us a floor in the sergeants quarters, a cut above the squaddies barracks we had a large four bedded room, each occupant having a quarter of the room divided up by steel lockers, it was fine for one night but I can’t imagine living your life like that.

A very long bike ride (IV)

Having deposited the first pair of bike riders just outside Rotterdam we drove off to Utrecht to let the second pair set off, by now it was mid-morning and according to the plan at least four pairs should have been on the road by now and the convoy should be 120 miles further down the road than what it was, this was not going so well.

Arriving in Utrecht we drove around for some time before finding a police station, it was obvious to anyone with half a brain that Utrecht was a considerably bigger city than we had assumed it to be and that it had a quite complicated one way system to cope with, and that it didn’t seem to have a central police station that we could find, we did however find a small police station in the suburbs.

A very long bike ride (III)

We awoke the next morning as the ferry approached Rotterdam, the tale of the POLICE CRIME SCENE tape around the lamp posts still causing doubts in our heads, doubts over whether it would work, doubts over whether we’d ever be seen again, whether we’d spend the rest of our lives riding around Holland trying to find a lamp post with POLICE CRIME SCENE tape tied to it.

The first two cyclists away were the roughest two lads from the Bradford Task Force, big, shaven headed dolts on mountain bikes they looked more like two football hooligans going out on the rob than police officers raising money for a cancer charity, but the bravely volunteered to be the first away and we stopped outside a public park in Rotterdam and waved them away.

The briefing was brief, Rotterdam to Utrecht was their leg of the epic journey, a single road linked the two cities, a cycle path rode alongside the road, we would all drive to Utrecht and the next pair would be released there, what could possibly go wrong ?

We never saw them again.

Video Saturday – Roger Daltry

For just a few months in the summer of 73 it was acceptable for young men to have loosely tangled perms and wear denim dungarees, a few fleeting months of nearly morphing into a girl, we almost made it boys, we almost crossed the gender boundaries, only to be defeated at the last step by a harsh winter and the realisation that we all looked like big jessies.

Fortunately I never owned dungarees.

PS – Thats Rod Argent on the left, don’t say “who’s Rod Argent ?”, it makes me feel old.

Illustration Friday – Wrinkles

I freely admit to blagging this one from a Norman Rockwell painting

There’s nothing wrong with copying from the masters.

It will enlarge by clicking

A very long bike ride (II)

So there we all were gathered around a table in the bar on the ferry as it sailed the North Sea to Rotterdam and with a very long bike ride through Holland, Germany and Denmark beckoning, we leaned forward eagerly to hear how it was that we were going to achieve this in just five days.

The man in charge was a very pleasant policeman from the Road Traffic dept at Wakefield, the whole trip was his idea, he was a very genuine man and genuinely wanted to raise a lot of money for charity (MacMillan Nurses) on this ride, he’d already gone to a lot of trouble to organise this event, really he had – it was just a bit unfortunate that he hadn’t thought the actual ride itself through very well.

In fact, not at all.

A very long bike ride

It sounded like a good idea at the time

To ride your pedal-cycle from the centre of Leeds to the centre of Copenhagen in the company of some police officers.

Copenhagen in Denmark that is, the real Denmark that is, not a little village 20 miles away called Copenhagen, the real Copenhagen, lots and lots of miles away, and some kilometres too.

Sceances

So the widow goes to a sceance to try and make contact with her dead husband.
The medium establish’s a contact with a spirit,

“Is that you George ?” the widow asks
“Yes love” comes a faint voice from the ether
“What’s it like where you are ?” she asks
“Its very nice” the faint voice replies
“What do you do then ?” she asks

The Odd Couple

When our mum died in 1992 our dad did a re-evaluation of his life, he had retired a couple of years earlier and I was paying him a small fortune in monthly payments spread over a time period of “for ever” in repayment for his share of the company – I didn’t see it coming and he set me up good and proper.

He and our mum had made Benidorm a second home over the previous ten years and had many English and Spanish friends out there so he started to take longer and longer holidays, renting apartments from whoever had one to rent and at the same time his old mate Brian started to tag along too, sharing the rent.

The Basque region of Spain

As hinted previously this largely unknown area of Northern Spain is stunningly gorgeous, being Alpine in appearance it would surely be a huge, even massive, tourist attraction if the people who live there weren’t the most miserable twats on gods earth, with big chips on their shoulders too.

The ongoing terrorist situation in the region does nothing to attract tourists or investment either, but its mainly the most miserable twats on gods earth tag that does them no favours.