Author Archives: The Chronicler

Gulf Shores, Mississippi

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Last week of January, 2017.

A quick perusal of the app-map suggests that the road and coast stay in close proximity, which would be a continuation of what has become the style for this journey, a close and intimate connection with the Gulf of Mexico’s shoreline.

Of course, I’d made that egregious mistake of presupposing, of visualising a place; I’d had an image of swamp mangrove, bald cypress trees swagged in Spanish Moss, a curtain of silent marshy vegetation between ourselves and the water, with only occasional glimpses of the sea. Where sand had birthed a beach, a canyon wall of condominiums would have sprung up, each tower sequestering its own private beach. It’s an image drawn in part from previous travels along other similar shorelines. Only it’s been a revelation: the surmised image has been shattered. True, there have been bogs and resorts, but the sand spit barrier islands have easily out-competed the concrete .

Then we arrive on the Mississippi Shores. The state has a relatively short exposure to the Gulf, but has garnered a blazon of disaster publicity. Hurricane Katrina made landfall here on 25th August ’05 and in so doing glaringly exposed an ossuary of political and social skeletons. The clean-up is complete, but the evidence still visible. Yet for the distance cyclist there is the glory of an uninterrupted boardwalk, post-Katrina now rendered in cement, that runs for over sixty kilometres. A classic promenade with an uninterrupted view across the shoreline to a vast open sea that today is gentle rippling steel, edged onto a mottled mackerel sky of fractured sun shafts.

Derelict pier post Katrina

To landward are the storm survivors, avenues of grand oaks that lead to the gracious plantation mansions, interspersed by vacant lots of clipped grass with a forlorn, fading ‘for sale’ signs. Ghost plots: even the vacant cement plinths, the concrete flight of three steps to nowhere, have been removed, as if no memorial should exist to depress the real estate’s value. The sole reminders are a series of sixteen commissioned high rise public conveniences distributed all along the coast, high enough to carry the high water mark, the surge of twenty-three feet.

Stand and look out over today’s innocent ‘scape, it’s near incomprehensible to contemplate the power of that past hurricane’s natural force. It’s easier to stay in the present tense and return to the easy pedal-trance down by the shore.

Some people see life in one way….

I calculate all that power to be somewhere in the region of 840 horses champing at the bit, waiting to enter the national park. It’s not an extreme example, they’ve been passing us ever since we left Miami. No, we are the oddities; we with our fore-end quarter of one Clydesdale power of bicycles.

That multiple assemblage of rig, which could contain up to eight people and would still be considered one unit, yet two people on two bikes are of an equal score. The charges are similar. In fact they will be seniors who will have purchased a ‘$10 life-time, all-state pass’ and so gain free entry and a half price discount to hook up their motor coach. But that’s not my grump; they’ve served their sentence, paid their taxes, earned their benefits, no….. They will now be provided with a hard standing, sewage drain, water tap, 50 amps of electricity, manicured lawn, grand shade trees, all supported by a splendid wrap around view. The tent camper, paying exactly the same tariff, (we’re not alone), will be crammed onto the tyre-rutted, tree-less, grass-less, value-less corner into which one of these septuagenarian driven behemoths would have difficulty negotiating.

The injustice can feel stark and yes, I am in a grump, in part as our immediate and near intimate neighbour had an in-depth two-hour ‘phone conversation, one that terminated at two in the morning.

And yet I know who has the greater freedom, as we, the following night, pitch in a beautifully secluded spot reserved for those that are prepared to walk a short distance from their mode of transport. And a couple explain how they’re stuck, unable to move on, as they’re awaiting delivery of a new servo motor, to replace the one that retracts their bedroom extension.

Whilst others see it differently…….

 

 

 

 

Juxtaposed signage…..spotted in New Orleans:

One’s the patron saint to several countries, the other the liberator of several more….. however I suspect this is the only place where their lives have crossed.

Next Coast

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GoldCoast, GulfCoast, GolfCoast… GaleCoast, the former three are genuine by-lines, marketing squeaks from their relevant tourist offices, the latter could be true, only it would be too poignant. In point of fact the next seaside’s anointment is ‘the EmeraldCoast’. Which could be a recognition of the pervasive presence of the Irish pub and the black stout’s ability to withstand the quaffing attacks from craft-beer, or is it going to rain?

Emerald = Green = Water = Wet.

All the indicators would appear to be in place, the portents are lined out along our route: Bent Palm Motel, Gulf Winds Realty, Splash Condominiums, even the ‘gentle cleansing face and body bar’, aka soap, is called ‘Rain Breeze’.

One of the realities of hyper-continental weather prediction is; if the ‘Weather Channel’ says on Wednesday that the storm will hit at lunchtime on Sunday, Sunday lunchtime is when it will hit. It does and we’ve already retreated to another prophetically named motel called ‘Aqua Vista’.

Severe weather warnings have been posted in the park’s restrooms, we’ve been queried as to our intentions, helpful friends are posting footage of tornado trashed communities and then I get a message on my ‘phone. True to its name, we do get a view of the water from the motel…. not the sea, which is barely visible between two intervening gables, but cascades of gutter spouts, sheets of shattered spray, thrashing palm fronds, stop signs twisting, shop signs pulsating, cladding stripping from walls, the junction box atop the pole quivers, bangs – and the lights go out.

Quarter of an hour later and the sun has come back, all is innocent; another quarter hour and the streets are wind-swept dry. Did we just have a storm?

The observance of those wayside prognosticators might have been light hearted; this storm was not. These were long-line tornadoes, ones that touch down and stay down, snapping trees, shredding houses, shattering lives. A death toll of sixteen people.

Forgotten Coast

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Still I find it a strange behaviour, for someone to stand outside my latest choice of temporary peripatetic abode – be that a nylon tent or a motel room – and to carry on an intimate conversation. It’s as if my lack of a visible presence has rendered my audio faculties null and void. Out of sight; ergo out of mind. “..there’s nothin’ out here, absolutely nothin’….”. The gent in question carries on in a similar vein as I try, unsuccessfully, to tune out the invasion.

“Nothin’ here”.  It would appear that he’s not alone in the sentiment.  This stretch of Gulf shoreline is marketed as ‘Florida’s Forgotten Coast’.  From estate agent to boat hirer, steamed shrimp seller to house frame builder, all purloin, all make a play on the name.

A series of sea spits, barrier islands of low lying sand dunes covered by saw palmetto, sable palm and Dynasty homes. The sloughs between the sand waves are flooded marshes of black tannins, ponds of indeterminate depths. Crossing a lagoon on one of the low causeways, shrouded in a luminous opaque world of morning fog, bald eagle roosts on a pole. Another time, passing over a bayou, looking down into the depths, to see two ghostly grey forms.  One breaches to take on air, then slowly subsides; manatees, grazing seacows.  White herons stealth-stalk the reed fringes, a crane struggles to swallow a giant frog, an osprey plunge-dives on a slack body of water.

It’s not just the Natural History Channel that’s “nothin’ out here”, the establishment at which we’re the recipients of  the above unwanted conversation, is one of a few motels sitting alongside a corpulent cordage of marina real estate.  We’ve already passed the court house, the hardware store, the grocery market, the gas stations and what is claimed by the City of Carrabella (pop: 2778), as the ‘World’s Smallest Police Station’.
It’s only later that I determine that: 1. my correspondent is being required to relocate from the North to Atlanta, and 2. his definition of remote is measured by the miles to a McDonald’s (forty).  Which also explains why I later discover that this stretch of Gulf is also disparagingly known as the ‘Redneck Riviera’.

Pictures of the Week

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Counting alligators on the Tamiami trail, southern Florida. These medium weights were numbers 33 and 34, between just mile post 45 and 46. And that would only be the ones we saw; you do have to try to keep an eye on the tarmac.

Maple leaves and Spanish moss on a cool (2°C) morning.

 

Every body of water has a warning about not harassing the alligators.

Sunrise, just before an hunting osprey splashes into the water, tries twice but doesn’t get any breakfast.

Sandhill cranes are the iconic migratory bird of central Florida, they travel in their hundreds of thousand from Canada’s near Arctic and can be found grazing suburban gardens and roadside ponds hunting frogs and invertebrates

Snow Noise

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A far-off low grumble sometime in the night. Grows in strength, reverberates through the street, then dopplers away.

The not-dark, dark time. It’s hard to judge the hour, as the smothering snow swallows sound, and reflects a street light thickened with wind-spun spindrift into a monochromatic sepia of sodium soup.  A low grumble that might be a passing cargo jet or a solitary plough out on the highway. It fades, and the insulating, frigid silence settles down yet again.

Later, another light disturbance: the crump-scratch of plastic on stone, the chip-chap of metal on ‘crete, the scritch-scratch of plastic on glass. Somebody is shovelling, clearing their driveway, chapping their scoop to clean off the clag of snow, blade rasping, scraping the frozen crud from their windscreen. Like reading a script with my eyes closed, I can easily watch the world outside our window. A genderless muffled entity, cloaked deep in sensible attire, dark stark against the pristine armour of fresh snow, will be edging their way along their frontage of pavement. Casting scooped gobbets of snow far into their garden. The ‘Good Citizen’….

Still there’s no indication of time, for the neighbour is indulging in that Canadian rite-of-season; the solace of snow clearance, a pastime that adheres to neither clock nor time.

I’m in the throes of jet-lag, my body and geography in a delicate debate that encompasses both coastlines of the Atlantic Ocean. A discussion that is slowly resolving, finding a conclusion, one where the western seashore will inevitably win. Still, it’s four in the morning and I’m wide awake yet again and so able to follow the audio minutiae from Toronto’s new day, and the first of the winter’s snowfalls.

Now Scot’s snaw clearance generally entails grabbing whatever immediately comes to hand; often that will entail scrabbling through the coal bunker searching for a corroded shovel, one that comes with a rat-chewed, worm-eaten short shank, sunk and rotting in a drift of coal dross.  Yout back is bent double when it folds into an origami crumple as you attempt to clear what might be mistaken for a snow-driftlet. It’s not a problem, because by the time you’ve found a replacement, the snow will have melted into a slurry of slush, and another Scottish lowland white-winter will be over. However we’re spending a week in Ontario with my cousin and like the good guest I resolve to mimic that  ‘Good Citizen’, in a city where white-winter has just begun….early.

No indecision in searching out some inappropriate substitution; here all is in readiness – you just have to decide on the appropriate tool from a rack of choices. Is it to be the metal tipped pushing blade, with the ergonomically crafted handle?  Or the load and haul scoop with the aesthetically pleasing shaft?  Or the one with the plain black head and the straight long staff?  I opt to start with the ‘haul’, hurling dollops in front of me, clearing a path down the vennel, trying not to step on any fresh snow, for that will only compact an icy lumpen problem which won’t scrape off, requiring yet another implement: the ‘ice chipper’.   As if that wasn’t enough indecision, now comes the various concoctions of chemicals and grits to help with slipping  and melting.

Pick your tool

Down  the passage between the houses, gouging out a clearway, scrape off the steps for the junk mail postman, down the garden path then turn right and as a ‘Good Citizen’ I tackle the public sidewalk.

What wasn’t on offer was the toy that a neighbour used: a mechanical snow-blower.  He too was clearing his property, great arching cascades clearing the fence, right into next-door’s yard.  Not the Good Citizen.

Cognitive Mapping

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October 2016

“Little do ye know your own blessedness; for to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour” R L Stevenson, 1881.

RLS can be rather long-winded, whereas the Taoists were more succinct:

“The travel is the reward”.

RLS’ labours were with a French donkey. Ours are with a disused railway line.

It takes a mere six hours to ride along the Dava Way, six hours to learn a lesson, six hours to   acquire an epiphany and confirm a guilty verdict.

An old rail bed that rises out from fields of malting barley around Forres, past a museum distillery, through stock-rearing hill farms, over grouse moors, finally to drop down into the Victorian gentility of Grantown-on-Spey. It’s a route and a connection that gives me an inordinate pleasure. I’m already biased, already well disposed towards any ‘rails to trails’ infrastructure; the constant easy grade and the permissive ambiance, the solitude from traffic and the aura of industrial history certainly help, but also the fact that it has taught me an interesting lesson.

Exception to the Victorian rule in G-on-Spey

Without properly realising it, I had assumed that my travelling modus operandi used a similar method-manual for home and overseas travels.  A general destination is flagged, a place chosen as much for its availability and proximity to a source of  ‘return home’ travel options as for some intrinsic touristic value. Thereafter serendipity is employed and that old Taoist proverb observed. In short; we turn left out the door and see what happens. Something always does.

Only, up until now, it transpires that my Scottish travelling method has been the exact opposite.

I’ve acquired a linear, disjointed geographical knowledge. I know the outline, the flow of the coastline, the wrinkles and creases which have created that distinctive shape, that crag-faced gent with his droopy nose.  With ease I can pin-point Inverness wedged in his neck, the crease between one ‘north-east’ and yet another of Great Britain’s multiple ‘norths’.  I can isolate North Berwick by the carbuncle on his shoulder, which impinges into the blue of a mapped estuary.  I can find Arran awaiting mastication in his maw, between Kintyre’s proboscis and Ayrshire’s jaw.  Then locate Inconvenient Shetland which has no connection to the craggy old man, so has been consigned to a box and stacked away up in the top right-hand corner, where it’s closer to its estranged Viking owners than to its presently Brexiting ones.

So when called upon, I can plot my way around my home, or if stumped can generally bluff my way through.  It’s an easy exercise: Scotland is a small place.  Still, it takes us three weeks to cycle that short distance to Inverness.  Small and infinitely convoluted.  Yet in my imagination, many of these places are held by threads, connected by just three tethers and a passion. Glasgow, Aberdeen, Lothian and The Hills.

Without realising it, I’ve acquired a linear, disjointed geographical knowledge, one that has little place for serendipity and a lot to do with obsessive list-ticking.  Now we appear to be entering an age where it is perfectly acceptable to blame others, never ourselves, heaven forbid, for our own failings; so I have no hesitation in naming and blaming Henry Ford and Sir Hugh Munro as the causes of my demise.

If that Victorian hadn’t been quite so Victorianly List-obsessive with his compilation of hills over 3000 feet, he wouldn’t have given the world a new proper noun and myself a compulsive disorder.  The American industrialist with his mass produced motorcar simply facilitated the inevitable.

Ben Somthing is the next new Munro, next desired tick. Load up Mr. Ford’s eponymous black automobile.  Drive to designated hill. Ascend.  Tick.  Descend.  Drive home. Serendipitless.  Linear exploration.  Where Destination is the reward.

However, if I had been carless and reliant on public transport, the descent from Ben Something might have been to an entirely different place, one that would have offered a connection.  Grantown-on-Spey in my geo-spatial imagination is a Cairngorms location and so accessed by way of Aviemore.  Forres, on the other hand, is Morayshire and so you travel there from Inverness.  No correlation existed between the two, until now.  The Dava Way has become that connecting epiphany, that perfectly fitting piece of  jig-saw puzzle.

 

Memory

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October 2016

There’s an aphorism that warns against returning to visit old territories, places that were once known and supposedly understood, places that come with histories, memories and embarrassments.  You know the pitfalls of disappointment, and yet…..

You get the urge to revisit, to check the accuracy of your memory, only for someone to mention that within the first week the new owners had cut down a cherished cherry tree in your old garden, replacing it with the devil’s spawn, a ‘Leyland’ hedge. Or you read a press report that the local authority has bulldozed the street where you were born, name-changing and re-branding to bury old stigmas. Or you bump into a colleague from your old workplace to learn that an idea, long advocated by you, has finally been implemented… after you left.

“…don’t look back”; it’s all relic memory.

It’s a maxim that up until now I have generally adhered to; however after thirty-five years, curiosity has got the better of us.  Already we’ve taken one deviation around our old Angus stomping ground, a county that lies between Fife and four decades of memory. We were married, lived and worked there for three years. The church still serves the parish, shrouded in a skeletal of scaffolding; the reception venue, however, has closed yet again, having morphed through various incarnations.  The school where the Navigator took the local cubs has finally closed, only to reincarnate as a retail experience. ‘A House of…..’ (insert geographical place or clannish surname then offer ‘a Danish style treasure trove of wondrous gifts). Strangely, if said gift was to be recycled the following day through a charity shop it would be termed ‘bric-a-brac’.

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Lock-out @ halls of residence.

As an exercise in nostalgia, it’s vaguely unsettling, emphasised by a lame day of moody weather at the solemn end of autumn. With a City Brechin that still feels like a lost soul, a cast off from the age of exotica; half-day closing and rock hard avocados, Mini motor cars and a publican’s ten o’clock call for “last orders please”. Relocated by a by-pass.

The roads might relocate but surely the towns and cities can’t – and yet they too seem to be out of kilter, their relative remembered positions seemingly disposed, disjointed, displaced.

“don’t look back”; it’s all mothball memory.

Now I know why I haven’t been back before.              Still, we will repeat the same misguided exercise when, a few days later we visit Aberdeen.

The Navigator’s flat that contained four students, two bedrooms, one virulent in apple green walls but no toilet facilities, demolished, replaced by a beautician’s wholesale warehouse. The halls of residence where we both resided, that came with brutalist concrete and a sink but no shower, demolished, replaced by a wildflower meadow and a redeveloper’s plan. The ‘Refectory’ that came with a hall of pillars that were so injurious to ceilidh dancing, has relocated, ‘The Union’;  that subterranean warren of beer-hall Victoriana, has morphed into one of Seattle’s caffeine emporiums. With the addition of a reconfigured Union Street, scattered roundabouts like tiddlywinks and a belatedly started city by-pass, much has changed. Still somethings have stayed constant; the cobbles still dispense a twist of ankles and bone rattling cycle rides, the docks still dispense an eau-de-fish and towering supply vessels, the bakeries still dispense pig-fat rowies and sticky pink buns.

A city that still dispenses a distort of memories, only relocated into a new localiti memoria.

 

 

Victoriana

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’cause there’s no road.

“what, exactly do we have the Victorians to be grateful for?”

-forbye puritanical sexual repression, gloomy over-stuffed morning rooms and the moniker of Royal Deeside? A pertinent question that’s been with me for a few days now.

The credit crunch and the demise of oil are said to have hit the north-east and Aberdeen badly. Jobs have ceased, property prices have shrunk, progeny have returned to mother; however, it’s difficult to conceive of these woes as I cycle into the city. Sunday morning and the preponderance of passing traffic could be classed as luxury off-roader-sports saloons, generically Germanic, generally tagged with personalised plates. I’d taken to surveying, keeping a score, counting one hundred cars and totalling forty-three hits. It helps to keep auto-angst at bay as yet another under-sexed over-sized, engrossed tonnage of steel passes uncomfortably close. The North Deeside road was never conceived to handle this affliction of auto-obesity. Some of today’s cars are 25% wider than their original prototypes; unfortunately the asphalts aren’t. It’s not only the family saloon that’s expanded, as a Brobdingnagian dung spreader comes rumbling around the next bend, down the middle of the road.  One wheel mushes the far verge, road-kill gutters squirting across the road, whilst the other tyre has appropriated a disproportionate percentage of my carriageway. Dwarfed. Shrunken. Overshadowed. Now I know how that other traveller, Gulliver, must have felt.

Fortunately we don’t have to play for too long out here, as I can make out the tricolour signature in  red, white and blue, a sign pointing to the bed of a railway track, and a rails to trails route.  The blessed relief of escape as I slip off that highway is palpable, relaxing in the knowledge that we have this cycle haven for the rest of our day, all the way to Ballater.

img_4635The quiet contemplation of the River Dee lies to one side, with the constant grumble of traffic on the other; screaming motorcycles head for the rally, timber wagons head for the mill, campervans head for hell. It’s not just the safety, but also the sense of unconditional entitlement. I’ve a right to be here. Its a timely reminder of the enlightened efforts by local authorities, sustainable transport campaigning groups and the myriad of volunteers, who have created this pleasure. Twenty years ago, we would have been competing for that grudgingly surrendered part metre of leaf-littered road-gutter. Actually, I wouldn’t.  I’d be away some other place, for which I’d like to think that both I and Deeside would be the poorer. That, and the chip shop in Ballater would have been down a couple of pie suppers.

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Tombstone sleepers.

So it’s a thank you to the ‘Victorians’  for the railway’s construction, although possibly not a full hearted one and that’s due entirely to one Victorian in particular. The original intention of the Great North of Scotland Railway had been to extend the line beyond Ballater; however, The Queen has purchased her retreat and would rather not have to share her Balmoral with her plebeian ‘day-tripping’ subjects.  She wouldn’t have been amused. Whereas, I most certainly am. So much so, that we cycle the North Deeside trail one and a half times, even camping out on one frosty night at Dinnet, just to be able to prolong the experience.

 

Coddiewompling

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For those in the know: A921, Forth Road Br. ~ Dalgety Bay.

Coddiewomple, possibly an Edwardian term for an affliction of giddiness, an archaic item of Victorian lady’s headwear or a Dickensian definition for a truthful inexactitude. Only its none of the above, but is an old English slang verb, defined such: to travel in a purposeful manner towards a vague destination. A neat summation of our travelling philosophy.

The wind was coming from the left as we stepped from our front door:  so we turned right, a sentiment that sits nicely with an intended free spirit travel. I have no idea where we will be tonight, what we might find. How we get there and by which road are equal mysteries. We’re going coddiewompling.

We’ve been suggesting to those who had enquired as to where we might be off to this year, saying that we hoped to find places in Scotland that neither of us had visited before. The Outer Hebrides for example. However a quick weather check with the prognosticators had predicted that copious quantities of rain, measurable in inches, was imminent around Largs, just around the time we might expect to arrive there. Now we’ve both bunkered down before, eating fish and chips in a dripping bus shelter, in an out off season, closed down, holiday town. It’s can be fun: once. So we’ll purposefully travel counter-clock and head vaguely off up the east coast instead.

img_4531Cycled all day, navigated a capital city, negotiated a highway construction, found a closed campground and discovered a rocky promontory. One with a timeline-view of Scottish history.

A span that starts around AD800 with Inchcolm Abbey, passes the ferry landing point where King Alexander falls down a cliff and in so doing, sparks off the warring animosities between England and Scotland.  Moves across the Edinburgh horizon etched by Salisbury crag and the Castle that houses a compendium of black deeds and finally arrives in the twenty-first century with the nearly completed third river crossing bridge. In so doing it travels through my vantage point and this millennia of history, for our tent is pitched in the lee of a Second World War gun emplacement. There once to repel invaders.

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Ghosts of history, shored up bunkers, bricked up workshops slowly being consumed by couch-grass and storm-scalped sycamore trees. Trees that were themselves once an alien invasive species a mere four millennia ago.  Despite the forest, it’s easy to envisage this knoll’s strategic importance seventy years ago; the rail bridge was the solitary dry crossing. Now that iconic structure is being dominated, even diminished, by this new bridge.

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Hopetoun Monument

Just one day away from home and already we’ve found a vague destination which seems most erratic, as I can clearly see our starting point, one that’s punctuation marked by the Hopetoun Monument, a tower that stands outside our flat’s back window. That eponymous crow would have covered our first day’s ride in a quarter of the distance, such is the convoluted geography of our shorelines. It’s a foretaste for this year’s venture, which will take us a thousand kilometres and twenty-two days just to reach Inverness. You could drive there in under three hours.

Today we’ve Purposefully found a vague destination. We’ve Coddiewompled.

“But do you travel in Scotland?”

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For those in the know: act one, scene one: high summer on Route 40 Argentine, some years ago.

“but do you travel in Scotland?”

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She’s probably in her early seventies, an archetypical Italian descended Argentine mother. She’s already garnered our ages, positively complimented our marital status and commented on our negligence in production of offspring. I don’t object to the intrusive interrogation, for she’s fulfilling her other mission in life: feeding strangers. Today it’s husked walnuts and dried raisins and preparing to add lumps of cheddar cheese. We’re blocking the middle of Ruta Cuarenta, route forty, the classic road that traverses the long length of Argentina, its deserted desert dry, grit crafted rocks, wind ripped sand and the occasional drought crippled thorn tree. The chat progresses through the further conversational standards, resulting in the roads we’ve just been riding on, when she asks that pertinent question.

“But do you travel in Scotland?”

Of course we say “yes”, of img_2036course we know our own country. It was only afterwards that I got to wondering just how truthful I had been. When was the last time we ventured north of the Firth of Forth, suffered the attentions of the Scottish midge, negotiated with a bed and breakfast landlady, bought a boggy tent pitch on a fancy caravan site? Our cycling winter ventures in the last few years have majored on the Americas, with a healthy dose of trips around the Lothians.

With the summer season over, we’re going to step out our front door and simply head off with no fixed plan, to keep traveling until weather, daylight or disinclination intervenes.

Time for a revision, a revisit, a return.