In Which I Get Lost and Found

Me, with son-in-law's bike, ready for first ride.

Wednesday, June 19—my son-in-law is off on a business trip and gave me permission to borrow his bicycle.

Today is the first ride. I grab my new helmet and his bike. The immediate problem is that he has odd pedals—specialized toe clips that I assume fit some shoes he wears to ride. Comparatively, I have large, fat feet. Getting those big feet into his clips in my wider shoes proves challenging. Alternatively, I could ride with my feet on the uncomfortable back side of his pedals, but I worry I may be damaging his clip straps by scraping them on the ground, and the back side is clearly not intended for use. Or, I can sort of mash down his clips with my big feet—but again, I don’t want to cause any damage to these clips.

I compromise—use the back side in busy situations where I don’t have time to mess with the clips, but ride in the clips on a trail when I have more time. (On my second, Thursday ride, I was more used to the clips and it was far less of an issue).

But my main issue on this ride was to find Mariott’s Way (spelled with an apostrophe on a sign on the trail, without on the trail map, so I don’t know which is correct but then again, neither do the British), a large bicycle path that slices through Norwich from northeast to southwest and continues for miles in the countryside in either direction.

It is not far from my daughter-in-law’s house. But navigating English streets is a challenge.

There is the obvious problem of remembering to ride on the “opposite” side. I did have to constantly remind myself of that, although I didn’t ever forget. Of course, my instincts of how to watch for traffic were all backwards. However, that made less difference than I thought—by-streets are so narrow that traffic basically moves down the middle anyway, so the difference between the American right side and British left side was only theoretical.

Narrow British street (above) and narrow walkway behind house (below).

Anyway, I had my map and I was off. Very off. Getting lost proved quite easy.

Not too lost, mind you. The issue was finding Mariott’s Way—I never had the sense that I would be unable to get back to the house. I was trying to be careful to minimize turns and to recall landmarks whenever I did make a turn.

The problem was reading and interpreting the map. Now, I am old. That means I grew up long before Google, and map reading was a skill taught in my elementary school days. But interpreting a map in Norwich was different. For one thing, as an old Roman town, the city is arranged with a center from which roads spread out like the spokes of a bicycle wheel—there literally is no street grid. Finding a route that follows a compass direction is not the same as it is in the U.S. where most towns have rectangular grids of roads.

And the British are cute and coy with signage. On the main “spokes” from city center, street signs are rare. Their attitude seems to be that if you’re on a main road, you ought to know where you are, so there is no need of intersection street signs. Side streets are sometimes marked—now always—but the location and appearance of the signs are not in any way standard.

Is “Bobs Your Uncle” the name of a pub or the name of the alley-wide road? Well, if it’s also on the map, it’s a road—and the street signs, various as a they are, are lower and smaller than the signs for commercial establishments.

All in all, the first ride was mostly spent in going back and forth and failing to find the main, most obvious bike path in all of Norwich.

After some back-and-forth, complicated by the idea that I would never be able to repeat the route since I could not figure out how I got there in the first place, I found what seemed to be Mariott’s Way. Or at least I think I did. Hard to say. Mariott’s Way, in Norwich, is apparently a “main” bike road, which means there isn’t any reason for a sign to identify it, because you wouldn’t use it if you didn’t mean to, right?

Some scenes along the trail Wednesday. On Thursday, I could confirm that it was indeed the trail I was looking for.

I may sound like I’m whining. I suppose I am. I miss wide American streets, but mostly I miss rectangular street grids. Beyond that, I truly appreciate the American penchant for uniform and almost universal street corner signage. I suppose one reason the Brits don’t do this is because their walkways and streets are so narrow that such signs would take up valuable space at corners, but trust me English cousins, it’s totally worth it.

But despite the whine, it was a cool and pretty afternoon—cloudy but nice, and I did enjoy being out and moving on the bicycle. I rode a mile or so down the bike trail, presuming it was the one I wanted, and vowed to return the next day (by more direct route) for a longer ride.

Thursday, June 20—We have minor travel plans today. After dropping the kids off at school, we head over to the Coop to get a sim card for my wife’s phone. In preparation for today’s ride, on Wednesday night my daughter and I installed a new card in my phone—and wonder of wonders, I have now a fully functioning mobile phone in the UK!

The attempt to do the same for my wife ended in frustration, for now. Anyway, after the morning shopping, my daughter drove us to a bookshop somewhere in the Norfolk countryside. It was an interesting place—a shop that appeared to be located in someone’s country home, with a longish room stuffed with a dizzying array of children’s books. Our luggage for the return flight home may be a bit heavier.

We stopped at a tea room at a nearby sort of shopping mall for arts and crafts. By the time we got home, it was time to think of the afternoon school run—which I didn’t go on. Bicycle time!

Walkway along a river, somewhere in Norwich. I feel I should not be riding Matt's bike here, but then again I got innocently lost.

 Everything was a bit easier, this time. I had a plan to manage the toe clips. (Matthew, they were frozen by rust in your settings, but rust will respond to vigorous force—check the clips before you ride again, they have been made looser to fit much larger feet).

I got to the trail and cycled north. It was a sunnier day, some broken clouds, but some blue sky, too. I brought my sunglasses, but hadn’t worn then on the half-mile trek to the trail, partly because I wanted the best vision possible to the spot the subtle bread crumbs of signs left by the British. The trail was so shady that I ended up sans shades for the whole ride.

I rode as far as the village of Darby, probably a 4-mile journey. Half of that was on dirt, and recent rains had made parts of that ride a bit muddy, so I decided to stick to paved, urban trail in Norwich proper. I headed towards city center next, and somewhere near a river I lost the trail. I had a short ride along the river, which was pretty, and I apologize to all the fishers whose walkway I inadvertently intruded upon, but then again, Brits, if you don’t want wandering Americans lost on your sidewalks, you might consider more obvious signs.

I rode back and forth on several miles of paved trail in town. Next week, when I will be riding a rented bike, I intend to go farther, paying more attention to the trail and hopefully making it through Norwich to explore in the southern direction—but did not today partly because I wanted to avoid City Center in rush hour. Still, the Thursday ride was nice.

Map My Ride functions again, and in an hour and 50 minutes I rode 18 miles. I hope to top 50 on at least one day next week, but for now I feel a sense of success. I have found the trail! Way out in Darby I even found a sign that confirmed it as Marriott’s Way!

Hooray for signs!

A sign! And below, seen from the trail Thursday, a horse!