Ben claimed the double room, as the boat idea had been his, and I took one of the single beds in the other bedroom.
After giving us the tour of the boat, Neil disappeared back to his house and returned with a bottle of red wine, four cans of beer, some teabags and half a pint of milk.
‘I’m afraid my cupboards are empty at the moment,’ he said, ‘otherwise I would have offered you some dinner, too. The town is only a five minute walk down the road, so I’m sure you’ll find something easily enough there.’
Neil had become a leading contender for the ‘nicest person that we met’ award. This award didn’t exist, by the way, but if it had then Neil would have been a leading contender.
We drank a can of beer each and walked the five minutes into Ellesmere town centre. I don’t mean to suggest that we needed the Dutch courage just to venture into the town centre. Ellesmere is really not that intimidating.
We called into an Indian restaurant after being lured in by the smell. The young waiter told us we would have to come back on Tuesday to speak to the manager. It was Sunday. Waiting two days for the possibility of getting a free curry was a little impractical.
We had another rejection from a takeaway but then a kind man from the kebab house gave us a large portion of chips to share.
‘If only we had some bread,’ I said, ‘then we could have chip butties and wine back on our boat.’ That was a line I never thought I would hear myself say.
‘Great idea. I’m sure we can get some stale bread from the Co-op over there,’ said Ben.
Ben was not suggesting that Co-op is notorious for selling stale bread. He meant that shops that sell bread are likely to have surplus stock at the end of the day that they are forced to throw out. It was 9.30pm, by this point, and the shop was half an hour from closing.
‘We don’t tend to have too much bread left at the end of the day but I’ll certainly look for you,’ said the lady in Co-op, who had the face and manner of a friendly lollypop-lady.
‘Here you go. Is this alright?’ she said, holding out a small loaf of freshly baked granary bread. When I say ‘freshly baked’, I mean freshly baked a few days previously.
‘That’s perfect. Thanks very much,’ I said. ‘We managed to get some chips down the road, so we’re going to make chip butties.’
‘What a good idea. You certainly are on an adventure. Do you have any butter and ketchup?’
‘No. Thank you. We’ll be fine with just chips and bread,’ I said.
‘Don’t be silly. You can’t have a proper chip butty without butter and ketchup. Can you?’
‘No, I suppose not.’
‘Wait there, I’ll be back in a minute.’ She returned a minute later with a packet of butter and bottle of Heinz Tomato Ketchup.
‘Wow, you’re amazing. But how did you... ?
‘Shhhhhh,’ she interrupted, putting her finger to her lips, ‘breakages.’
We had expected to see some element of generosity from the small independent establishments that we asked for favours at, but we had anticipated the opposite from the big corporations. We had assumed that the amount of bureaucracy involved in the larger supermarkets would restrict their ability to show generosity. However, we had been proven wrong on several occasions. It seems that even working for a large corporation allows some element of free will. And if rules can’t be bent, then there will always be ‘breakages’.
If, like me, you were curious about the origin of the word ‘ketchup’ (No? Just me?), I will fill you in. It is thought that the word comes from the Malay word kēchap, which was also a sauce. But rather than being tomato based, it was made from fish brine, herbs, and spices (not so great in a chip butty). In the 18th and 19th centuries the word was used as a generic term for all vinegar based sauces and it was not until the 20th century that the word became synonymous with the tomato sauce that we know today. Thank you, Wikipedia.
Back on the boat we each assembled two huge chip butties, and opened the wine. It was a lovely warm evening so we sat on the small deck at the back of the boat.
Before our trip started I imagined all sorts of possible scenarios of where we might spend each night and what sort of food we would eat. Sitting on the deck of a luxury narrowboat with two chip butties and a bottle of wine had never even entered my thought process. Sitting there with the bright, starry Shropshire sky and the gentle lapping of the water on the side of the boat, was the most content I had felt in a long time.
The boat felt like it was swaying a lot, but when I stepped briefly onto the land to check on the bikes the ground continued to sway. We moved inside at about midnight and made a cup of tea, to try and offset the half a bottle of wine and two beers that we had both consumed.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked Ben, who had been in the kitchen for some time.
‘I’m just washing my pants,’ he slurred.
‘Ok. Why?’
‘Cos they haven’t been washed for days.’
‘So you thought that midnight on a canal boat would be the best time to wash them? Have you not learned from my mistakes? How are you going to dry them?’
‘You’ll see. You’ll see.’
I sat there with a cup of tea in one hand and the remains of my beer in the other and listened to an Elvis Costello CD that we found in the cupboard. I was disturbed by a familiar humming noise.
‘Are your pants in the microwave?’
‘Yep, they sure are. Two minutes should do it.’
‘That’s genius,’ I said, jumping from my seat and joining Ben in the kitchen.
It was very odd to stand and watch a pair of Union Jack boxer shorts rotate on a microwave plate. It’s not something I had ever done before, nor something I can ever imagine doing in the future.
DING.
‘They’re done!’ said Ben excitedly.
He took the boxer shorts out of the microwave.
‘Shit!’ he said, throwing them to me. ‘They’re bloody hot.’
‘Arghh,’ I said, catching them, ‘and they’re not even dry. It’s like an extreme version of those hot towels that you get in an Indian restaurant. Except, I’m not washing my face with these. What’s this brown stain on the arse?’
‘That wasn’t there before!’ shouted Ben.
‘It’s a burn mark! You’ve burnt your pants and now you’ve got a permanent skid mark on your arse.’
Day 10 - A Welsh puncture
Ellesmere to Up Holland - 58 miles
We were greeted in the morning by Neil with a huge pile of toast and jam. After a long, leisurely breakfast on deck, we were on the road by 10.30am.
‘What the hell? How come the road signs are in Welsh? When did we enter Wales?’ said Ben, skidding to a halt.
‘Hang on, I’ll check,’ I said, pulling the day’s directions from my pocket.
It was too difficult to cycle whilst holding the route book, so each morning I would write down the instructions for that day onto a scrap of paper which I then kept in my pocket. This whole process took at least ten minutes.
‘It says here: ‘Between Ellesmere and Penley, the tour briefly enters Wales – the first indication being the road signs’. Well they were right about that. Yes, it appears that we are in Wales.’
‘Cool. England tick,’ said Ben.
‘Yes, but we’ll be back in England soon. We can’t get to Scotland through Wales, you div.’
‘Yeah, I knew that. I was just saying.’
We were just about to set off when I looked down and noticed a huge thorn sticking out of The Falcon’s front tyre.
‘I think we’ve got a slight problem,’ I said, pulling out the thorn and holding it up to Ben.
‘Oh, bollocks. Is it flat? What are we going to do?’
‘It’s completely flat. I guess we just walk and ask at the first house that we see if they have a puncture repair kit.’
‘Why did you have to go and get a puncture in the middle of nowhere?’
‘I didn’t choose to get a punc
ture here did I?’
‘No, I’m just saying that your wanky bike has caused us no end of problems.’
‘It’s a puncture, for god’s sake. It could have just as easily happened to your mighty bike.’
‘But it didn’t, did it? It happened to that pile of crap.’
‘You’re being a bit unreasonable. We’ve cycled nearly 400 miles and this is our first puncture. That’s pretty good going, isn’t it? It’s just a puncture. It’s no big deal.’
Half an hour of walking later we reached a group of three houses. There was no answer at the first house. Or the second. Eventually, after a few minutes, a man with a smile that filled his entire face answered the door of the third house. He laughed when he saw us, as though he had been expecting us.
‘Hellooo,’ he said, ‘have you come to look round the house?’
‘Err, no,’ I said, ‘Sorry to bother you. Are you expecting people?’
‘No, no, it’s fine. How can I help you?’
‘We’re on a bike ride and we’ve got a puncture. I don’t suppose you have a puncture repair kit and a pump that we could borrow?’
‘Oooh, that’ll be the thorns,’ he said. ‘They’re cutting the hedgerows today and there are thorns all over the road.’
‘I told you it wasn’t my fault, Ben.’
Ben was too busy staring in disbelief at the man who had answered the door. Despite living in Wales, he had a distinct Yorkshire accent. His animated face was full of character, including a unique triple curved dimple on his chin. I can only assume that this was the result of a lifetime of smiling and laughing. He looked like an affable gargoyle, and I half expected water to spurt from his mouth.
‘I think I’ve probably got a repair kit in the garage. I’ll go and have a look for you. Everything’s a bit disorganised at the moment as I’m in the process of moving,’ he said, pointing to the For Sale sign at the end of his driveway. ‘I’ve got someone coming to look around any minute now. That’s why I was a bit confused when you came to the door. My name is Peter, by the way.’
Peter was a genuine character. He emerged from the garage with an unopened puncture repair kit and a hefty tyre pump.
‘Here you go,’ he said. ‘I knew I had one somewhere. Not sure why, as I’ve not owned a bike since I was a child.’
Peter had lived in Wales for 15 years, and was planning to move to a smaller house just over the border in England. During the ten minutes that we spent repairing the puncture in his driveway, he didn’t stop laughing. It was very refreshing, and was the perfect antidote to Ben who moaned incessantly about The Falcon. He confidently claimed that he could remove the inner tube from The Falcon’s tyre with his bare hands and that ‘tyre levers are for losers’.
‘Why don’t you just get a couple of teaspoons out of the picnic set? It would be much quicker,’ I said.
‘No, I can do it. It’s easy. Just you watch,’ he said, gritting his teeth and turning slightly purple as he pulled and tried to prise the inner tube from the tyre.
‘You look like you’re struggling. Why don’t you just give me a couple of teaspoons? I could’ve had it off by now.’
‘Hang on!’ he snapped, turning blue. ‘What use are teaspoons going to be anyway?’
‘To use as tyre levers. What did you think?’
He continued to exert himself, so I reached into his rucksack and took out a couple of spoons while he wasn’t looking. Ten seconds later, the inner tube was out and I hadn’t had to turn blue.
‘Oh, I didn’t think it would be that easy,’ said Ben.
‘Have you ever actually repaired a puncture?’ I asked.
‘Well no, but I know they are annoying.’
Being brought up in the country, I was used to having punctures and so was fairly competent at repairing them. Ben, on the other hand, was a puncture repair virgin. He watched, in genuine admiration, as I set to work.
‘How long is it going to take?’ he asked.
‘Five minutes.’
‘Five minutes? I thought we were going to be here for bloody hours. I didn’t realise it would be so quick.’
‘I wondered why you were so miserable.’
Peter stood over to one side, watching us and laughing the entire time.
‘You two are like a married couple,’ he said.
Just as we were packing up, the estate agent pulled into the driveway with some prospective buyers. Their faces looked slightly bemused at the sight of two strangely dressed men and their possessions strewn across the driveway.
‘We’ll get out of your way. Thanks so much for all of your help, Peter. Good luck with the house move,’ I said, as we frantically squashed everything into out rucksacks and pushed our bikes down the road and out of sight.
‘I’m very impressed by your bike mechanic skills,’ said Ben.
‘Thanks. I can’t believe you’ve never had a puncture in your life.’
‘We don’t get many thorns in London. Actually, I did get a puncture once, but I couldn’t be bothered to repair it.’
‘So what did you do?’
‘I just bought a new bike instead.’
After Peter had mentioned the hedge cutters, it became very obvious that the road was covered in thorns. Just to be on the safe side, and to keep Ben happy, we pushed our bikes for half a mile until the road was clear.
After just five miles in Wales we crossed back into England, and the county of Cheshire. It was very fitting that although it made up just a tiny fraction of our total route, Wales still made its mark on our journey by giving us our only puncture of the entire trip. And although we didn’t meet any genuine Welsh people in Wales, the one Welsh resident that we did meet was completely unique; a fine ambassador for the country.
We passed through the town of Farndon, which hosts the National 24-hour Cycling Championship. The winners tend to rack up mileage of over 500 miles in just a 24-hour period. This is quite astonishing considering we were covering about 60 miles in an eight hour day. The prospect of doing three of these stints back to back, at three times the pace, was incomprehensible. I hate proper athletes. They make the rest of us just look rubbish.
We reached Chester and were a little disappointed to discover that its occupants didn’t all look like the cast of Hollyoaks.
On the occasions that we passed through other town centres along the way, we had both felt a slight feeling of claustrophobia and a desire to get back into the countryside. This was partly because cycling in urban areas is so much more demanding, and also because people in towns tended to be more hesitant and suspicious of us. Chester felt different somehow. The town itself is very striking with its mixture of Roman, Medieval, Victorian and Tudor architecture. The streets were also packed with tourists walking the streets aimlessly, so we fitted in perfectly.
Chester was the last English town to fall to William the Conqueror, and it has the most complete city walls in Britain. Two facts that I am sure you will be thrilled with.
Despite all of the history and culture on offer, we had hunger issues so called into Subway to try our luck. Craig, the friendly South-African manager, offered us a foot long sub and a drink each. We ate half there and then, and stashed the other half away to eat on the road. I mean that figuratively, of course; we didn’t eat our food off the tarmac.
On the way out of town, we called into a bike shop called The Bike Factory, where a man kindly oiled our bikes and tightened Ben’s brakes.
‘The cycling’s fairly grim between here and the Lake District,’ he warned. ‘You’re heading right into the heart of all the industry around Merseyside. Be careful, because the cars don’t have much time for cyclists around there.’
Just a few minutes after leaving Chester we were back in the beautiful countryside, with the ugly sprawl of the industrial Ellesmere Port visible in the distance.
‘Maybe our route avoids all that ugly stuff,’ suggested Ben.
‘I hope so,’ I said, ‘but I don’t think it does.’
; ‘I desperately need some shorts,’ I said to Ben. ‘My balls are unbearably uncomfortable.’
‘No kidding. I don’t know how you’ve lasted so long in those ridiculous trousers. I only managed a couple of days in those tracksuit bottoms and they were quite comfy. You should’ve cut the legs off those long ago.’
Ten days of wearing thick woollen suit trousers had finally taken its toll and the sweating, chafing and itching had become excruciating.
‘I probably should cut them off, but that wouldn’t stop them being uncomfortable. I need some real shorts or my balls are going to disintegrate,’ I said.
‘Thanks for that mental image,’ said Ben, ‘I just sicked up a bit of my Subway.’
We reached the town of Frodsham, where the town sign proudly boasts its accolade of ‘North West in Bloom – Best Small Town 2001’.
Ben spotted a sign for Frodsham Leisure Centre and we followed the road towards it in the hope of finding some abandoned shorts. The Leisure Centre turned out to be a school, too. The main doors were locked, but we caught the attention of one of the ladies in the office who came to the door and opened it hesitantly.
‘Can I help you?’ she asked, looking us up and down.
‘I hope so. Do you by any chance have a lost property?’ I said.
‘Have you lost something?’
‘Not exactly. We are on the look out for some shorts.’
‘Sorry, no. I don’t have access to the lost property cupboard I’m afraid.’
She had not been particularly welcoming, but we could hardly blame her. We were a pair of strangely dressed men, on school property, asking to have a rummage through the lost property. It’s no wonder she didn’t welcome us in with open arms.
Free Country: A Penniless Adventure the Length of Britain Page 18