NCN 1 King's Lynn to Lincoln

The River Ouse Relief Channel

Stage 4 of the NCN 1 (Dover to the Shetland Isles)

King’s Lynn to Lincoln 151km

Journal note written in a garden centre cafe outside King’s Lynn
O tormenting wind
be my friend.

Breakfast in a garden centre
Bacon, beans, eggs 
Sausage and hash brown
Coffee and toast.

A Cyclisti’s breakfast

A pause by the Ouse
The horizontal;
mirror of the Ouse
reflecting gold-edged earth and sky
on which ducks have scratched
their v signs.
The vertical;
willows, pylons, poplars, rustling reeds.

Journal notes made later in the day
I try not to be riled and pissed off 
by the taunting of the wind
I remember from school-days
how a teacher once said
“React to a bully and he’ll bully again
Ignore him and he’ll go away”
(eventually, he should have added).
I tell myself that the wind will go away
eventually.

It doesn’t

Somewhere near Wisbech I ride past a field of roses
stretching as far as the eye can see
like coloured cabbages
red, yellow, white and pink
Not a blemish nor a disease upon them.

Fenland roses

Defoe on the way to Wisbech, across the Fens.
’….from whence we passed the fen country to Wisbech, but saw nothing that way to tempt our curiosity but deep roads, innumerable drains and dykes of water, all navigable, and a rich soil, the land bearing a vast quantity of good hemp, but a base unwholesome air’.

Journal Note written beside a field of Sunflowers
This is like riding the Tour of France
with the road lined with 
cheering sunflowers
I play Ned Boulting’s
commentary in my head
as he makes sense 
of my lone break
and David Millar tells a 
world-wide audience
how the peloton racing behind
will not catch me
‘today will be his day and it is great to see’
he says to the millions watching
as I cycle with my panniers 
bulging with my gear
into a head-wind
at 20kph
but
the pack’ll not catch me
not when I am in this mood
racing towards glory!

Cabbages
A tented field truck is pulled behind
a crawling tractor on which 
do lie the sans culottes
reaching down 
to slice the neck
of cabbages with their knives
wearing the executioner’s colour
of yellow.
The gilets worn by security
and the executioners, are the same
Is there a meaning here I wonder?
they toss toss the garrotted head 
onto a belt drive.
A woman is walking alongside the trailer 
the execution knife in one hand
cabbage in the other
She stops her cutting
and waves at me both arms high in the air
her face lit by one huge smile.

Fenland cabbages

A poor rhyme composed over a snack stop on the River Whitham, created in desperation to stop my mind thinking about this incessant headwind.
on either side of the river lie
great fields of barley, beet and rye
which feed the world and meet the sky 
through which a long straight road runs by

Journal Note beside the River Whitham - taking a break from headwind
Thirty-two miles of riding beside a river into a headwind
willows bend
distant cars and their nightmare noise
unable to leave the road alone
pigeons, gulls and a cormorant
and a house named Xanadu 
making a Brexit statement by flying 
St George’s flag.
Small square boxes built of deep dark red
bricks - without embellishments or anything 
to make them look even reasonably attractive - 
shelter behind wind-breaking trees
water everywhere in fleets and drains
dykes and ditches
pleasure craft chugging a wide winding river
crew 
waving at a weary cyclist
struggling into the wind.

A fneland dyke

Journal note on another headwind break
I ride towards
the tallest building in the world
(in 1321).

The Fens are like my veins
dykes fleets and ditches
everywhere
meeting
dividing
go off in different directions
like drains.

Journal note upon arriving in my room at the Premier Inn Hotel, Lincoln
The view from my window with
Twenty cars in a car park
a crane, white van, six green bins
and a traffic cone 
in the middle of
a concrete space
walls of new offices in 
red white and grey
and dark dull sky.

Just seen on the local news that Humberside has turned a deep dark, red - Norfolk was white, Lincolnshire pale pink. (Deep red - the colour of Lincolnshire bricks - signifies the most severe in terms of Covid Cases.) Since the plan for tomorrow was to be cycling into Humberside, I’ve decided not to risk catching Covid and will return home tomorrow.

Journal note from Lincoln
So what do I remember of this ride today 
but wind?
which sought to blow me home
Every tree on this flat plain
bent like a wagging finger
Don’t come, it seemed to say
for Covid lurks beyond.

Fenalnd

Journal note written in the hotel about eating in Lincoln during a pandemic
I book a table in the Whig and Pen by phone. I arrive and have to enter the QR code into my phone for track and trace. I cannot get it to work, so the masked and visored waitress hands me a pen and she asks that I write my address and phone number on the form attached to the clipboard. Once done, she gives me two squirts of hand-sanitiser and asks that I put on my mask. She says she is going inside to make sure everyone is seated and that there are no waiting staff serving and could I remain outside until she returns. With the all-clear, she tells me to take the stairs and my table is numbernine on the left. There is another QR code on the table, she says and I can order my food using that. 

Only one other couple in the restaurant. 
Food takes an age to appear. 
It is lonely drinking a pint of Lincoln Ale and eating a nearly cold slow roast pork belly, with half a raw carrot on the side, in a big room with only one other couple who do not seem to be talking to one another.
I finish my meal and go downstairs to pay. 
The waitress is dressed for home and asks ‘was everything alright for you?’ 
‘More or less’, I say.
‘Yes’ she says, ‘paying by card?’

Empty streets save for a gaggle of girls who are pissed. Their hair hangs in wet strands across their faces, arms wrap around a friend, hands hold cans and fags. Their bosoms are barely held in their skinny tops and belly buttons gather rain. They sing, shout and scream. ‘Hello love’ one shouts at me as they pass.
A young male youth runs across the street and hurls himself at metal shutters protecting a shop window. He slumps to the ground, groans, gets up, walks across the street and repeats the drill. His friend in a dark alleyway shouts encouragement  ‘Do it again’, he laughs.
Which he does.
Further down the street; An old man with close cropped hair supported by two young girls either side, teeters between them, his feet barely touching the stones beneath them. 
‘Good evening, Sir’, he says.
‘Good night’, I reply. 

Mickelgate, Lincoln

Being tracked
with QR codes
bar codes
NHS apps 
and the like makes me
wonder if there’s a man in an office
in somewhere like Southampton
staring at a computer screen
which tracks people like me
as radars do ships.
Keeping an eye on things
who’s obeying the rules
who’s not.
He’ll be leaning back in his office chair
right now as darkness sets in around the windows
and under a fluorescent tube with
a cup of lukewarm coffee in his hand
and he’ll be saying to his colleague at the next door screen
‘He’s in Lincoln now you know
that cyclist
ate at the Wig and Pen’.