Day 141: Sligo … Freewheeling

Tags

Anthony Easthope, Bicycle, Halfords, Inishowen, Joseph O'Connor, Roddy Doyle, Sligo

A Cycle on the Celtic Fringe … Part 42

The first man in Halfords doesn’t see much of a problem. The second man knows his bicycles and sees the problem straight away.

“Jeez, you need to be Samson to get that wheel on.”

He looks at me quizzically. “You mean to say, you got that wheel on on your own?…Twice?” He pauses and re-appraises the slightly wheezy fifty something standing before him. “Sure, I’ll not be picking any fight with yourself.”

There would have been no contest. I may have been an inch taller but he was of an altogether stronger build. Amiable and skilful with a knowledge of bicycles that was gained following his father into the family shop before places like Halfords undermined them all and put them out of business.

His first reaction is the same as mine. To want to lay the fault at the people who had put me back on the road in Omagh. He rings them up. “Can I speak to the lads in bike hut…yesterday…new wheel.” He nods sagely as my hero of yesterday gives his side of the story. I wasn’t looking for blame. Really, there wasn’t any blame to be given out. The explanation on the other end of the phone continued a goodly while, and as it did, the firm set features of the Sligo man began to relax and were replaced with a well practiced smile. “So what you’re telling me is that that was the only wheel you had and you put it on so as to get him out of the clarts and on his way again. Sure enough…we’ll sort it. Thank you for your time.”

The Omagh boys had been the outriders. I was now under the protection of the real cavalry. The problems that had beset the bicycle from day one were about to be fully addressed. This was the fifth mechanic to have a look, and this fellow knew his biscuits.

In goes a new axel. It needs cutting down to size. No fancy tools here, just someone who can respect the thousandths on a tape measure and use a hack saw with control. The operation gets repeated on the other side. All the time he is friendly and charming and demonstrating a highly developed sense of humour. If you are looking for genuine craic, look no further. Witty, original and amiable. The work takes two hours and he never shows the slightest impatience with it. He adds a new quick release and checks his work and checks it again. It’s only fifty miles from Omagh to Sligo. It’s a good deal further to the next branch and he isn’t going to have me stuck in a ditch. What I see is simple. A skilled and determined man giving the sort of dedicated service that I wish we had in all shops. The bicycle has done over 8,000 miles since he repaired it and the wheel has not caused a single problem since.. It is one of the real pleasures in life to see someone who really knows how to do their job.

He insists I try it out around the car park. He watches me in exactly the same way as my father watched me make my first stabiliser free pedals in 1964. He appears to exhude the same element of pride in a job well done. He doesn’t charge me a penny. Merely shakes me by the hand and wishes me good luck with the rest of my journey.

It had been a bit frustrating, yes. But that was all. Some people had helped me in Omagh when I was on the verge of giving up. Their help needed a little adjustment in Sligo and that gave me the opportunity to meet one of the kindest and most skilful men in the west. Problems, indeed, can be seen as opportunities once we have had a good old swear.

The road back into town was fair and wide. The same road two hours earlier had been long and ugly. I went past the racetrack and thought that a day at the Irish races would be a day worth having. I’d missed a meeting the week before. Maybe they’d have racing at Galway. And, once again my mind is drawn and torn between making sure I get home healthy and still in credit, and seeing all the things I wanted to see.

All Irish petrol stations have a supermarket attached. This one had a Mace which used to have branches in the UK. I buy milk and cheese and yet more of the oatcake biscuits that were becoming a private passion when eaten with apples. In town everything is closing. A chemist stays open long enough for me to grab some bubble bath and the bookshop closes its doors for the night after selling me a copy of Inishowen.

I’d had my share of frustrations in the day but they were all forgotten as I listen to the bells of Sligo ring out six chimes while I slide under a thick blanket of bubbles in a restoring bath. I’d chosen the Joseph O’Connor book because his novel, Star of the Sea, had told the story of the famine so well. This novel tells of an altogether different Ireland but I seem to have hit gold in deciding to explore the country by bicycle in the daytime and through literature at night.

Anthony Easthope enjoyed the Irish element among us students in Manchester. He told us that making a list of all the great comic writers in the canon of English literature is to conclude that they were all Irish. It was a passing whimsey at the time, one of his few comments not designed to be controversial. (I liked him for his willingness to upset. Not everybody did. We had plenty of lecturers who never upset anyone, but I can’t remember if I learnt anything much  from them). Easthope listed Swift, Congreve, Goldsmith, Sheridan, Shaw, Wilde and Joyce. He could easily have continued with Beckett and Behan, Stoker, Cary and O’Faolain. We could drift beyond writers who made you laugh while pointing out something bigger and include William Trevor, Frank McCourt, Mary Lavin, Seamus Heaney, CS Lewis, Louis MacNeice, Laurence Stern and Robert Tressell. We could have contemporary writers like Roddy Doyle, Dermot Bolger, Colm Tóibín, John Boyne and John Banville.

It was a remark made in whimsey but it was a remark that planted a seed. When he said it I may have read three or four of these writers. Almost as a direct result of this off the cuffness, I have gone on to read all of the others and many more. A veritable horn of plenty. Anthony Easthope died before he should have done and before he’d been able to mix it with the big hitters. He would have given them some time on the ropes and they would have been all the better for the tussle.

For now, my muscles were relaxing and I was letting Joseph O’Connor take me down some delightful wrong turnings. The summer evening stretched out before me and I still had the real Sligo to discover.

* Anthony Easthope lectured in English and Lingusitics at Manchester Polytechnic in the 80s.

** The photograph of the Dawes bicycle is what my bicycle thought it looked like after being repaired.

Day 127: Larne

Tags

Antrim, Bicycle, Brendan Gleeson, Larne, Northern Ireland

A Cycle on the Celtic Fringe … Part 32

 

(Note to self: Add in Amanda Ros: wiki isn’t bad but Robertson Davies (p221-225) is wonderful on her (unintentional)  contribution to humour.)

After worrying about being left  out on the street, the night in a comfortable room is a treat. I close my eyes around ten o’clock and open them again on the stroke of six. Apart from my bicycle, my two happiest travelling companions are my mug and The Old Wives’ Tale. The bicycle has been all over with me. It’s toured to the north of Scotland and around most of England. It’s been a multi thousand mile commuter, it’s been around most of Northern France. Altogether it has clocked up over 25,000 miles. It creaks and groans and shows its age but it has never seriously let me down and it has allowed me to see a bucketful of things I wouldn’t otherwise have seen. The mug holds a happy three quarters of a pint, has some poor slogan to the effect that , like old wine I get better and better. I have no liking for wine but I like the fact that the mug was made by Spode. I lived and worked in Stoke on Trent for a short time in the 1970s and had friends in quite a few of the pot banks. I always liked the colour of Spode ware and though this is earthenware rather than bone china, it is still a lovely blue and white.

The book took me a long time to penetrate but the two heroines have been good travelling companions. I’ve taken every opportunity to read a chapter, reading about their exploits in cafes and lay-bys, outside churches and while leaning on a bridge o’er a brook. That was me. They spent their time in Stoke and Paris.

Between six and eight I write my letter home and have the idea that staying another day here is not the stupidest I’ve ever had. The room is big and the bed is cosy. There’s a real town on my doorstep to explore. I can catch up with sleep and writing and I’ve only 150 pages of Arnold Bennett to go and I’m keen to find out what is going to happen. It took me along time to get to like Constance. I’ve been secretly in love with Sophia for days now. I love her despite her many faults. maybe, like the character Millament from the Way of the World, I love her because of her faults.

Breakfast is my first real Ulster Fry, and the hotel does justice to the reputation of the dish. It’s basically another (yes another) full fried breakfast but with the addition of black pudding and a soda farl. I recognise a good number of my fellow passengers from the ferry. I continue to see them over the next 24 hours. The breakfast table is the only time I ever saw them without a pint in their hand and a good story to tell. They fed and drank like gannets yet never appeared drunk or less than friendly and courteous. Like me, they have all booked in for an extra night. They catch the ferry the following morning after huge leave takings. They had travelled miles and miles to the bar nearest the ferry port and spent 36 hours knocking it back.

I book an extra night at reception and go off to walk around Larne. I see my first Orange Hall and walk along main streets bedecked in red white and blue. Where the British flag doesn’t fly, the flag of Glasgow Rangers Football Club flaps proudly in the breeze. Larne has long and strong links with the Scottish mainland and events in the town in 1918, which became known as the Larne Gun Running helped to create the right to Ulster Unionist Self Determination. This in turn was significant in the eventual division of the island and the establishment of Northern Ireland as a country.

In the post office I try to buy two maps; one of the North and one of the Republic. I hand them over and the woman seems reluctant to serve me. She’s studying the maps very closely indeed and I’m fearful that I have accidentally upset some etiquette. In fact, she has decided that I don’t need both of the maps and is only allowing me to buy the one that covers the whole island. I feel nicely looked after.

I have two sources of knowledge of Northern Ireland. The first is being brought up with constant BBC news stories of the troubles where everything spells danger and discord. The second is knowing a stream of people from the province and finding them the polar opposite. One of the gentlest and wisest men I know comes from Omagh, the best guitar player I’ve ever played with came from the County Down, the funniest man I met  when working in Yorkshire came from Coleraine and the kindest woman in Manchester was from Port Stewart. My first day on Ulster soil bears out the story told by the people I know, rather than the stories told by news reporters.

There’s an Asda and a cinema across the road from the hotel. I get in some simple supplies and plan on seeing The Guard in the afternoon.

Back in my room I wash out socks and pants and shirts. I think it’ll take me minutes but it takes over an hour to wash and rinse and wring and hang. I give thanks for living in the era of the washing machine. It wears me out and I sleep contentedly through the afternoon and into the early evening. I may have missed the film but I see it later with T in England… it is a very good film to see with someone else. Brendan Gleeson is a comic genius as well as being a brilliant actor.

Larne was where emigration to America began in earnest. There is a statue marking the first sailing. Boston was founded by people who sailed from Larne and owes much of its Irishness to this small town at the head of a loch.

As I fall asleep on my second night there I wonder if I wouldn’t be better spending yet another day here and resting up fully before venturing inland. I’m very taken with the place. Cycling is addictive; so is not cycling.

Day 106: When the Road Points Up to the Sky

Tags

Bicycle, Britain, Cheese, Cycling, Hawes, Hawes Dairy, Red Leicester, Vale of Belvoir, Wensleydale

A Cycle on the Celtic Fringe … Part 16

There were three possibilities in the lads laughter and sending me on my way with the shout of “Good Luck!”

Did they intend some mischief upon me? One of them was astride a quad bike and a rather unfit fifty something on a bicycle might be a source of taunting fun higher up the slopes. Or even an easy way to fifty pounds. I would probably have given them that for a ride up on the quad bike.

Was there some hidden danger lurking in the fells and flanks of the pass? An unfenced cliff? An unchained bull? A landslide that has blocked the road a hundred metres from the top which forces me to re-trace two hours pushing?

Or were they just pleasant, friendly farm boys who knew just how long and steep the road is?

It was this and no other. Dales folk are as honest and decent as anyone you can find and the more generations they’ve been in the dale, the more decent they seem to become. There are plenty of “quality of life” newcomers to the lower valley. Offcumdens, as they’re sometimes called. “Hello, we’re locals.” as they refer to themselves. This far up the valley it’s farms and farmers only. These are the true folk of the dale. The lads were quietly laughing at the silly old bugger with an over packed bike, waddling, red-faced on the nursery slopes, but, I’d bet last year’s salary that the same lads would drop everything and give over a morning if they thought I was in any real difficulty.

The road is simply one of the best roads in Britain. The river stays with you for quite a while before revealing itself to be a true specimen. A geographer’s delight. The higher you climb, the easier it is to understand the mysteries of the water  cycle. You just look at where everything is, what everything looks like an what everything is doing. Water flows downhill. At the bottom of this hill is a maturing river and everywhere else are streams, marshes, little pools and lakes, tiny tumbling falls, evidence of flooding and of drought. the clouds mass overhead and sometimes the rain is simply deposited on the ground without even having to fall from the cloud.

This would be a superb road later on in the trip when I’ve grown the legs. To do the whole mountain in the saddle would be an achievement. I have no idea how easy this is. I didn’t have the legs or the bicycle, and not a single other cyclist went past me all the way to the top.

The valley becomes almost glacial, as in U shaped. The swallows who had made it this far seemed to have the very best of the English summer. I can’t see a swallow without feeling happier. The multitudes of them up here were a continuous pleasure.

A policeman calls on the last farm. There’s no sign of arrest or investigation. A cup of tea and a talk about stocking levels I’ll be bound.

Near the top we start to get the false summits. It’s taking me an age but I’m as happy pushing a bicycle up this hill as I’d be doing anything else. The really steep bits are real stings in the tail but the eventual views are breathtaking. For the last half hour one of the three peaks has been looming closer and closer. I don’t know which one. By the time you reach the top, Wharfedale is gone and Wensleydale spreads its beauty from horizon to horizon.

The decent is too good to waste. Cheese and dairies have made this valley famous and the dairy herds extend a long way up. Shippens and byres are found much higher than I expected. And they’re still in use. The smell of fresh cow manure attests to that. Around the farm gates it gives the tarmac a protective covering. Well, not that protective. There’s something in cow dung that levers the macadam from the road. the potholes that this causes keeps a cyclist like me honest.

It had taken me hours to gain the ascent and less than twenty minutes (without rushing) to drop down into Hawes. I’m revived and refreshed as I re-enter another town I got to know pretty well when I was so much younger and knew so much more than I do now. I padlock the bike to a rail and wander slowly round. It all seems so long ago and far away where Haworth and Kettlewell came back in a rush.

It’s a tough as teak little town is Hawes. It’s resurrected itself from near economic disaster when one of the big dairies closed down the Wensleydale cheese factory. The locals bought it, opened it up again and in doing so almost single handedly resurrected the British cheese industry. We’ve always made good stilton and sold it around the world but our pride and joy were always the everyday cheeses, each of which is named after a geographical location, even though the cheese may be made anywhere but there. Stilton is such a cheese. It’s made In the Vale of Belvoir (pronounced Beaver). the best stilton was made in Hartington in Derbyshire but this plant has had a troubled recent history.

 

The Hawes Dairy started making Wensleydale in the proper way. The big dairies care for profits and unit sales and having the name seems enough for them. In Hawes, the cheese makers restored the traditions that made Wensleydale one of the finest cheeses. The example was followed across the country and it is now possible to get really good Lancashire, Cheshire, Double Gloucester and Red Leicester cheeses as well as Cheddars to rank against anything other countries can produce. You can still get the mass produced versions of these and if you don’t shop around this is what you’ll end up with. Thanks to Hawes though, English cheese is once more on a high.