Uphill, Against the Wind: Blood, Sweat and Tears. Cycling in Europe, 1987

By Douglas Reid

We were seeing France as few tourists see it, from the back roads and in the small villages which only French tourists see, if tourists see it at all.  No trains stop in these villages, but we’d see occasional bus stops. We rode through villages in which no tourist car ever stops, only weary bicyclists. We were living for a few hours

• Language: English
• Publisher: Douglas Reid
• Release date: Feb 5, 2020
• ISBN: 9781087869070

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Uphill, Against

the Wind

Blood, Sweat and Tears.

Cycling in Europe, 1987

.

By

Douglas Reid

.

Photographs by the Author

© Copyright 2019. All rights reserved.

Published by Douglas Reid.

Contact Douglas at [e-mail]

paperback ISBN: 978-1-0878-6495-2

ebook ISBN: 978-1-0878-6907-0

Themes: TRANSPORTATION / Bicycles

BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Industries / Hospitality, Travel & Tourism

PHOTOGRAPHY / Subjects & Themes / Regional (see also TRAVEL / Pictorials)

Front cover illustration by Peggy Euser

Uphill, Against the Wind

In early 1972, my college buddy and I walked into a travel agency in Denver to buy airline tickets to Europe. Our plans were to fly Icelandic airlines from New York to Luxembourg via Reykjavik. The tickets were ridiculously cheap, $125 round trip. It seemed cheap then and seems really cheap now. We’d spent about a year saving up for an epic trip to Europe, where we’d hitchhike, ride trains and bicycle around.

Travel agents are pretty much a thing of the past now, but were quite necessary in a time before the internet. The agent in the office was my dad’s acquaintance and was around 55 years old, which seemed ancient to us; we’d just graduated from college.

While we were getting to know our travel agent, and getting vague answers to impossibly exotic questions, we asked him if he travelled much. Not anymore, he replied. At my age, travel is just too damn much work. You boys are doing the right thing, traveling while you’re young.

It didn’t seem to us that we were that young, but he was right about a couple of things; he was old and as we were to find out, travel was hard work.

That trip was my first time abroad and my imagination was fueled by perusing "Europe on Five Dollars a Day" by Arthur Frommer, and reading novels like Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller.

Five dollars or less was a hopelessly unrealistic amount to spend in a day. It required that we make no visits to bars or pubs, only going to museums on the once-weekly free day and sleeping in youth hostels where the doors locked at nine, morning and night, and students were housed like Franciscan monks.

We learned not to believe everything we read. And if your idea of a good time was something other than sitting around in the evening singing Gregorian chants in the youth hostel with your new best friends, then, like us, you’d go out to the pub and drink a few lagers with real people. We learned, effectively, the only way to live on five dollars a day was to live like a monk.

We didn’t stay in Europe as long as some of the true adherents of Five Dollars a Day but I’m sure we had a better time while we were there.

My next trip to Europe was with my wife Nancy in the summer of 1987. We were going to do things a little bit differently than most European travelers. We were going to ride our bikes. We were not going to ride tour buses from Brussels to Paris. We were going to make few concrete plans. We were not going to mingle in the evening with a group of Americans that we’d just spent the day with seeing the Louvre. We’d shun guidebooks and follow our intuitions. Most nights we planned to camp out rather than stay in chain hotels. It was going to be difficult, but we’d have a story to tell when we got back home.

And for the most part, we followed our plan. We pedaled our bikes an estimated 3000 miles and rode puddle jumper trains another estimated 3000 miles. Camping five or six night a week and treating ourselves to a B&B or pension one night of the week was part of the plan. We had a blast. And we also worked very hard.

My sources for this book are limited. I have nothing but fond memories of that trip; meeting interesting new people, experiencing scenic views, great adventures, quaint villages, romantic restaurants and occasionally drinking in the evening with special new friends.

My journal, on the other hand, tells a totally different story. A story of hardship and woe, rain and wind. Both my memory and the journal were telling the absolute truth.

After 32 years I still remember details of things that I didn’t bother to write down in my three-ring binder of a journal. Rest assured that my memory of this adventure was more accurate shortly after it happened, but I couldn’t have written this book then. The memories had to ferment and simmer.

I had two other sources helping me to write this book. I had the photographs that I took, around a thousand of them. Some of the pictures I have no memory of taking; captivating looking people, incredible places and beautiful landscapes, which while interesting, provide no help in telling this tale of our journey.

In addition, I had Nancy’s journal. It invariably has a different perspective than mine, even if it’s just a slight difference. I marvel now, as I have for many years, how it was that we both had the discipline to keep journals. I also marvel that they are as complete as they are, and that after all this time we could find them, lay our hands on them amongst the detritus of 32 years of living.

After dusting off and re-reading our journals, I was shocked to find how obsessed we were with the daily minutia of obtaining non-existent morning coffee, or how pissed off we were when there was no hot shower at campgrounds.  And our endless bitching about wind, hills and rain.  Why was I expecting to find entries only about touring castles, feasting on coq-a-vin, or effortless cycling days?  That happened too.  But on a daily basis we cataloged the grind, the drudgery and the pain. 

I have Nancy’s memories as well if I take the time to interview, prod and aggravate my wife until she lets go of them. They are valuable too although she mostly doesn’t get any credit for them. I offer my apologies.

It is now, in hindsight, that I reflect on the life-long impact of this journey.  In the 32 years since this bicycle trip I haven’t stopped traveling.  After those three months on the road, I couldn’t help but become a more seasoned traveler.  And hopefully, a more respectful, tolerant, eyes-wide-open traveler.  Mark Twain, as usual, said it best: Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness...

A Note about the Photography

When we got home from our 1987 trip, we put all of our favorite slides into some carousels and enthralled our friends and relatives with a personally narrated slideshow. We did this for years, and Nancy and I enjoyed it every time. I can’t vouch for our audiences.

Many years later, about 2003 or so, while moving to Utah, we left our precious slides in a storage locker in Livingston, Montana. While we were away in Utah there was a flood that ended up saturating our storage unit. We weren’t aware of the incident until several months later.

As luck would have it, many of our slides survived unscathed, but others were totally or partially damaged. The photo of the Dutch lady in her traditional costume was one of the damaged slides. If you look at it closely, you’ll see water damage, mold spores and spots. The damage is much more evident in color than black and white.

Depending on where the slides resided in the three carousels and boxes, the damage was either total or not at all, or somewhere in between. For instance, all of the photos of the Royal Hospital pensioners in their red uniforms were destroyed or beyond salvage. But the photo of the RH pensioner in his blue uniform survived.

Whole regions of Europe were wiped out, such as several days in Paris, but the day in Montmartre and the Sacre Couer survived. Claremorris was gone but the one photo I took in Belgium survived in all its glory.

I hope you enjoy seeing the ones that weren’t damaged and that you can imagine them in color. In any case, I am grateful that any of the slides survived at all.

The Terrine

We rode 80 km (49 miles) the day we left St. Malo and headed south for the Loire Valley. Three things stand out in my memory about the ride that day, which was Day 48 of our journey. The first thing I remember, how surprisingly unremarkable the scenery was. And the second, how many goddamn sunflowers does one country need? And how hot it was.

The sun beat down on our backs and exposed skin, turning our arms and legs a painful red. The back of our hands, already imprinted with a bicycle-glove tan line, became brown on one side and sweaty on the other. We drank all the water we had carried with us and were forced to replenish our water bottles a time or two. Good water, bad water? Who knew?

The back roads were flat, uncrowded and tree-lined. It is said that it was Napoleon who had planes, which are sturdy, tall and leafy trees, planted along the roadsides to form cool and shady tunnels to shield his troops marching to-and-fro across France from the summer sun. The same sun we were cursing now. But I think it more likely Napoleon had them planted keep to the horses fresh, but I don’t know. What I did know is that the roads had almost no traffic and when cars did pass, they did so with plenty of room to spare. Bless the French and their penchant for bicycle travel.

Hardly a speck of wind blew to hinder us and the sun kept beating down. Halfway twixt two tiny villages, we overtook an old fellow on his bicycle. I stopped a little bit ahead of