Figure 8 On A Bike

London Views London Bridge We woke up on the ferry to Liverpool, well technically Birkenhead . Groggy, but stubbornly, we did not give into the on board coffee not wanting to give them any more of our money. At the "NOT border" border control office we had to reassemble our bikes. The officer conducting document checks (they never bothered checking ours) told us we should rethink our plans and hop on a train as everything was flooded. I asked him for an online resource we could use to check on closed roads, "we don't have anything like that, but if you get into trouble just hop on a train". "Sure thing boss". We rode away with mild concern over our future.

After having our fill of cool hexagon-rocks and the rather shabby hostel it was time to pack up and hit the road back to Belfast. A concerning short-term forecast (as opposed to the equally concerning long-term forecast) had now become a full fledged named storm - Babet - which was supposed to start hitting Northern Ireland that same day. Babet, shmabet, we thought; the weather was going to be bad all the time anyway, and we needed to catch our ferry and get a move on to potentially more rock climbing. So we started that day of biking mentally prepared for terrible conditions, and at first it seemed likely, with grey threatening skies, burly winds, and cold temperatures. Stopping at Ballintoy Harbor along the way we nearly got blown off the rocks and into the ocean. We hid from the wind in a picnic shelter, and while eating cookies reflected on how maybe it was a poor idea to visit one of the locations used as the Iron Islands for the "Game of Thrones" TV series in October...

After a questionable amount of sleep the soft "ding-dong" of the ship intercom roused us at about 5:30 AM to prepare for docking in Belfast . We found an attendant to get us tickets for the bus off the boat (now we needed a *ticket* to use the bus to get on and off the boat??), drove 3 minutes through the dock, and found our bikes and the box truck with all our luggage. Reorganizing and reassembling into riding mode was a monumental task at 6:30 in the morning, with no coffee and only a little sleep, but thankfully the security guard on this end mostly just bemusedly watched. Unfortunately the nice-looking cafe that we'd plotted to spend a good hour or two in didn't open that early, so we hung out at a poorly-heated Greggs with mediocre coffee instead. What a long 24 hours. The main (and really only reason) we wanted to visit Northern Ireland was to see the Giant's Causeway, a true geological wonder. Northern Ireland hosts plenty of rock climbing as well, especi...

Looking much less lost this time around, we walked on down to the Liverpool industrial estate with Cycal bike repair shop, eager to see Callum's work cleaning up the bikes. And man did they shine! Ignoring the dings, knicks, scrapes, scratches, bits of rust, Susan's beleaguered front fork... well, OK, maybe they didn't look *new*, but in our eyes they were beautiful. Sadly, Callum couldn't finagle a new fork situation in time for us, but thankfully no other repairs were major; a new cassette for Susan, and for the first time in a couple months my tires matched (since my front tire had also developed a bulge and wasn't long for this world, he replaced them both). I think the mech said that every single bolt on Susan's bike needed tightening. Shiny, sparkly, smooth-riding bikes! Thanks, Callum!

With some things squared away in Liverpool , we were ready to take a vacation from our vacation and spend about a week in Kraków , Poland, for the Unsound Music Festival. Poland Unsound is a music festival that "focuses on a broad swath of contemporary music — emerging, experimental, and leftfield — whose sweep doesn't follow typical genre constraints". Basically a bunch of weird music that I like to listen to and Susan finds herself enjoying a surprising amount of the time. I'd wanted to attend Unsound for years, ever since I read about an event there where Burial performed underground in some salt mines (more on the salt mines later), so I was super excited for this part of the trip to finally be happening :). Our RyanAir flight left fairly early in the morning, so at about 4 AM we groggily shouldered our packs and stumbled groggily (and as quietly as we could) out of our hosts' home to start the ~40 minute walk to John Lennon International Airport, doing our ...

Bonus photos from Scotland! Too much neat stuff to share to make it in all the posts Heading towards nice camping at the Gleeb!

The morning after Storm Agnes, we had a lovely breakfast in the guesthouse. I stayed in their nice bathrobe as long as I could, but eventually we had to bike to the ferry in Ardrossan . We got our tickets and Ben did that thing he does where it is REALLY close to time to board (to my anxious brain it is very close, in reality there is just enough time, and in Ben's brain he has like all the time in the world) and he disappears to go to the bathroom. He barely showed up in time for us to board before the cars. PHEW. The ferry has a LOT of signs about not being mean to staff. We had seen a truck the day before with a sign angrily criticizing the ferry company. We chatted with some folks, I guess the ferry had been really unreliable recently and hasn't been updated in forever and people had been upset as it is the only way on or off the island so when it gets canceled it is very disruptive. *fingers crossed we don't get stuck on an island again On the boat towards Arran...