Reflections on Touring England

Both while touring the UK and since returning to Canada, I’ve given much time to reflecting on this journey and the impressions I have come away with. Though they all comprise the United Kingdom, England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales each have their own climate, geography, people, history and thus, sense of identity. Touring on two wheels through a country and among its people does afford perspectives quite unavailable from behind the steering wheel. Here are a few such observations from upon the saddle.

On Monday, May 23rd, 2011 I began touring the UK, commencing in the city of my birth, Winchester, Hampshire County. The day before my brother, his wife, their son and I walked around this ancient city. We explored both its monuments and history as well as our own monuments and history. We visited the house we grew up in prior to emigrating to Canada in 1979, and I found the road where I first lived with our parents before my brother was born. We walked the same streets where we had once been pushed in our strollers or had played with friends. Despite it being more than 23years since my last trip, it really did feel like home.

Throughout England I felt an underlying current of familiarity, even when exploring regions I’d never before visited. Surely some buildings and monuments were familiar because of reputation or significance but, it was within the banal of the everyday that I felt comfortable. As days turned to weeks, that feeling became more pervasive; it felt almost as though I’d quickly slipped into an old pair of shoes. The more I wore those shoes, the more they became a part of my identity.

England, compared to many countries, is old. Very old. In fact, the age and significance of England became abundantly clear as I rode from town to village, from Roman ruin to stone-age monument. And these weren’t obscure, little-known places or artifacts, but rather they gush with significance for both Britons and all humanity. Rarely would a day pass that I was not compelled to stop at the side of the road and gawk in awe at some monument or building. Along with a few pictures I would, when ever possible, pass my hands over those ancient stones or sculptures; an attempt to establish a direct physical connection with the hands that built the various structures.
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Wales, and in particular, Snowdonia, is an outdoor wonderland. With its forests, mountains and hills, it is a place I should like to revisit very much but this time with my mountain bike. Scotland I really fell for.

The remarkable diversity of the countryside, the empty roads and the generous people of Scotland have left a very strong impression on me. They are also a hearty, patriotic breed with a pride in the strength and resilience it takes to survive and prosper in a place this remote. At times, I thought back to my time in the Texan desert and reflected on the similarities between the two. And like the Texan desert, I will be sure to revisit the Scottish Highlands.

Perhaps one of the greatest feelings I came away with after this tour, is the sense of proximity to England. Until this trip, England had always been a lifetime and an eternity away, somewhere I used to live but a place I’d never really known. Having spent several weeks there that imagined barrier has fallen. So now as I look forward to returning to the British Isles again sometime soon, it seems like such a simpler thing to do than I had previously imagined. Which, I’ve come to learn, is the story with most things in life; we build imaginary obstacles to our happiness but, when we do confront those challenges, we see just how insignificant they really are.