Edinburgh
In Edinburgh I was lucky with the weather for a change and could walk around the city in pleasant sunshine. There was a lot to see, even though the city is full of tourists, so for example tickets for the castle were already sold out long in advance. I often had to look both up and down, because some streets are here in two levels above each other.
From Edinburgh I proceeded southeast along the coastal cycle paths and in the town of Berwick I crossed the river Tweed from Scotland back into England.
Northern England
Beyond Berwick I went over the coastal dunes and stopped by at the Holy Island, accessible only at low tide, with the mighty Lindisfarne castle, and from there turned inland to the southwest, through the hills and rural landscape of Northumberland. There I also crossed the Hadrian’s Wall.
From there onwards through the counties and their respective capitals Durham, with its castle plateau above the river, and York, with its castle fortress on a hill in the middle of the city. And still south to the lowland region of the Fens, relatively sparsely populated but densely interwoven with canals draining former wetlands, where most of the landscape is between two meters above sea level and two meters below sea level, and on the only hill in the middle of it stands Lincoln, with its castle and monumental cathedral on top.
This lowland stretches all the way to Cambridge, which is not only a university town, but in summer also a popular tourist destination, as it seemed especially popular for parents of potential students from Asia. Further south towards London, there is a slightly hilly landscape with fields and forests, which almost looked like home.
On a bike I wanted to avoid London. But east of London the only way across the Thames are motorway tunnels and bridges, so I had to use the local absurd service, where in order to avoid allowing pedestrians and cyclists on the bridge and yet fulfill the political assignment that those must also somehow get across the river, every cyclist has to find a special phone hidden in the ugliest part of a giant industrial zone and functional only at certain hours and from there call a special shuttle car to get across the river.
Southern England
Southeast of London, it took me a long time to at least partially escape the heavy traffic all around and continue east through historic Rochester, groves with lots of squirrels, or touristy Canterbury with its famous cathedral.
In the town of Sandwich I turned south and drove through the grassy dunes around the coast towards the white cliffs of Dover. Dover is guarded by a massive castle on one side and a system of forts on the other, but the town itself, cut off from the beach by a motorway, has a rather shabby and neglected atmosphere. And before I took the ferry to France (which is already visible from here), Dover wished me goodbye by again truly English weather.
