On the 6th of April 2005, cousins Jamie Mackenzie and Ben Wylson set off on their bikes on a journey which will take them to over 50 countries and to every one of the worlds great continents, all without the use of an aeroplane.
Monday, October 29, 2007: Strike
'The bloody French are on strike again' we were told by a family of Geordies at the train station; a father and two teenage sons. They had been holidaying in Malaga when the younger and skinnier of the two kids had got up in the night having had a few beers, sleep-walked on to the balcony of the apartment, thought he was in a hurdle race, vaulted the low railing and fell a full 5 storeys to the ground below. The next thing he knew he was in hospital and in pain having broken just about everything there is to break in the human body. They were now desperately trying to get back to Newcastle with a son in a wheel chair on a non-existent French public transport system. All rail, bus and metro services were affected and through the great glass entrance doors that led to the platform area we could see a lifeless TGV train. Ah the French...how strange that an entire nation can be compared to a jar of malt extract. It all seemed somewhat symptomatic of our luck over the past few days. Everything we'd turned our attention to since leaving Anna Pretty's house in La Coruna had a hidden clause, a stumbling block waiting in the shadows to trip us up, a certain annoyance attached to it. Staying at Anna's house had been a relaxing time, a time to gather our thoughts and contemplate the next few days...the final few days.
In the evenings we ate Tapas in smoke-filled restaurants, drank beers, wine and coffee in the sun, then walked back to the flat in the old city along the cobbled streets, full with tiredness and ready for sleep. Since our days aboard ship, sleep had all but deserted us. At sea, tiredness, although it would always come eventually, liked to come along at an inconvenient moment which required you to push it aside, and after that it seemed never to stay long enough to take you away. Night times were spent staring at the ceiling, thinking, thinking, thinking. The mind was wired and charged, it would be bolt upright in your head knocking out thoughts, stirring anxiety and creating riddles of phantom emotion that simply had no answer, no remedy. Eyes became sunken and hollow while the body was plagued with lethargy.
Our days in Deportivo La Coruna provided a chance to change the cycle. For three days straight at Anna's flat we caught up with the lost hours. Sleeping in until past midday, eating salami, cheese and chunks of bread then sleeping some more...just because we could. The bus from La Coruna took over 12 hours to work its way east over the top of Spain to the French border town of Irun. We slept all the way then cycled to the train station.
Now, however, we were utterly stuck. We spread a map of France on a bench and ran a finger over our intended route north. By the end of the day we somehow had to get from this nowhere town on the Spanish border to Dunkirk, a town just about on the Belgium border. It was nearly a thousand kilometres away and already it was fast approaching mid-morning.
A squat middle-aged woman who was dressed in a black head scarf was looking frantic. She wore dirty clothes and had eye brows which met in the middle. It turned out she was from a Baltic country and didn't speak any English. Her nightmare of getting to Paris was compounded further by her autistic daughter who was becoming more and more anxious with every passing moment. Another woman, a plump French lady, strode into the train station and immediately began shouting at the one man who was on duty; a volunteer who had come along to direct, advise and help people in any way he could. His information was limited of course, yet most who understood him were grateful for the slivers of insight that he was able to provide, but for this lady...who walked straight up to him and unleashed a barrage of abuse in an almost hysterical manner. Our French is only marginally better than our appalling Spanish, so the content of the rant was lost, but the tone of it certainly wasn't...and neither were the well-aimed gobs of green spit she was launching at his face. The raised voices and tension were too much for the young autistic girl who reacted loudly to the erratic noises and chaos, sending her mother into an even deeper frenzy. It was a surreal and helpless scene that lasted for five minutes before the police arrived to calm everyone down and cart away the plump lady.
We had one option remaining and that was to hire a car from the Biarritz airport. Ideally we would have liked to have taken everyone with us, helped them all out if we could but the last, very last car the rental company had was a fairly small vehicle and it was all we could do to fit in the two bikes and a young American couple who needed to get to Paris.
We drove for nearly 9 hours almost without rest. The countryside became greener and greener and altogether more English looking the further north we went...there was even a chill in the air. The longer the day went on and the closer we got to Dunkirk, the quieter we became as a sort of recognition and realisation began to sink in with ominous weight. Through the centre of Paris we went, dropping Katie & Dan off at the door of their hotel and continuing on, straight out the other side. The first sign for Dunkirk loomed in the head lights; 250 kilometres still to go and it was now past midnight. The roads were quiet, the stereo only picked up a French fuzz and so the only sound in the car was the annoying clatter of a leaf that had got its self stuck in the air vents. I can't remember what time it was when we finally arrived in Dunkirk. Tired and unsettled by the emotion of the day, we found a dark car park by the water's edge, down near the back of the university, turned the engine off and slept upright in the car for the remainder of the night.
The following day, having collected our thoughts and aimlessly walked the streets, we set our alarms for 5am and on Saturday morning crept quietly out of the hotel room and into the dark of Dunkirk. The ferry was due to leave at 8am so we had plenty of time. The previous evening we'd found time to set up at a bar and have a few beers. They were all of local import, just across the border in Belgium and with a reminiscing chat had washed away the entrenched anxiety that had been building over the past few days. That morning, though, as we pedalled the final few miles of Free Wheels East and with our heads now fuelled with a hangover, we felt utterly spun around and bewildered with everything that was, and soon would be, taking place.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007: The Final Count Down
It was on the 17th September that the Frederiksborg pushed off from a privately-owned port in Houston and began a 22-day voyage via Jacksonville and Baltimore to Casablanca.
Preparations were hampered by delays and stow-aways. Several desperate men had jumped aboard in the Dominican Republic and successfully hidden themselves for nearly three weeks amidst bundles of ropes, before finally being caught out in Texas and throwing the trans-Atlantic operation under the weight of yet more paper work and protocol.
The kindness of Chris, our friend within the ranks of Nordana USA, was extended beyond just passes to board the vessel and went on to encompass an evening, prior to departure, of sumptuous food, beers, whiskey, double-barrelled shot-guns and a night time session with an AR15 assault rifle. It was as surreal and fun as it sounds.
We arrived in Casablanca with the customary bouts of cabin fever and nervous anticipation of the road ahead. After the securing lines were cast down, we saluted our Captain and his humble crew, waved a fond farewell and rode the bikes onto African soil. Continent seven had been achieved and with it came the completion of our challenge. All we had to do now was get back to England.
Today we are in northern Spain, tomorrow we'll be in France and the day after that in England...two years and seven months on from when we departed. For now we're focusing firmly on getting home in one piece...recent events, including our Atlantic crossing, the ride through Africa and the final leg through Europe will be revisited and detailed upon our return, but for now our minds seem preoccupied with a few other pressing matters.
These are magic days and yet, although the ride is coming to a close, perhaps the toughest challenge of all still remains.
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