Northwestern Europe: High Points In Low Countries

IRELAND

It was 1986 when I’d last been on a motorbike in Ireland. And the same could be said for Fran. The amount of water that’s flowed under the bridge since then made our arrival on Pferdi quite the significant event. Well, for us anyway. After two nights at sea we docked at 5:00 AM. It felt wrong to be suddenly on the other side of the road. The sidecar was now next to the drivers in the outside lane while Fran drove on the inside along the hedgerows. Having been a shy child, I was looking forward to riding round my hometown incognito. Ha! I though, the nuns will never recognize me in this! But while Pferdi impressed the young and the old, he failed to stir those in-between. Looking like she was waiting for the executioner’s axe to fall, my 9-year old niece climbed in voluntarily but with none of the poise of Anne Boleyn. At some point during the short ride she relaxed and returned peppy as her pigtails and wanting more. My uncle on the other hand had no such qualms. His youth was spent messin’ about with pipes and garden hoses at the bottom of quarry lakes, conducting his very own Deep Sea Diving for Dummies course. Sitting in the sidecar at age 86, he listened tolerantly as Fran recited the usual pre-trip instructions: “lean into corners, wave at our public and if stopped by a cop, tell him you’re having a baby and we’re rushing to the hospital”.

After spending time among the various ruins and haunts of my youth we drove over to the west. It was the coldest, wettest, most miserable journey we’d had on Pferdi, ever. We both agree on that though on the day in question, we didn’t agree on anything. I’d dawdled around so much we didn’t leave till mid-morning and lost any dry miles we might have had. Around 2:00 PM we parked in some God-forsaken spot for lunch. I sat in the sidecar peeling bits of wet paper off a dripping ham sandwich while Fran went for a stroll in the rain. We were both feeling very low. Our bike pants and jackets were leaking in places we hadn’t known about and when we reached the shores of Lough Derg, we undressed on our friend’s veranda. After that things began to look up. Warmed by an embroidered farwa coat from Jordan and a drop of coffee in his Bourbon cup, the ice in Fran’s cold heart melted while he thawed in body and in mind. Contentment reigned for the rest of the stay and we were glad to have known Cleopatra, if only for a short while. Shortly after we left, that renegade chicken was found claws up not far from the hen house she refused to grace with her presence. Perhaps a short period of walkabout was worth a lifetime inside. But I guess we’ll never know.

FRANCE

Our destination was Norway but first we had to cross the water again. Compared to the ferry from Spain, the sailing to France was only 18 hours and cost a small fortune. But raising prices is what Ireland does best and Irish Ferries wasn’t going to let the first mass exodus in two years pass without taking full advantage. The line at the port in Dublin held a mixture of European nationalities and Irish, some of whom seemed to have the entire BMW accessories shop on board. The sunny air of camaraderie that had hung over the harbour in Bilbao was lacking here. People clung to their own little groups so the wait to board was more of a pleasant endurance than an enduring pleasure. The happiest face wasn’t even going anywhere, just a port worker waving us towards the gaping hole of the car deck. “Love de sidecar” he said. “It’s a fookin’ cracker”. They wouldn’t let us park with the other bikes but the upside was we were first off. At the top of the ramp, the other bikers leaned over the balcony smiling and waving like old friends. A bit like those passengers on long flights who suddenly start talking when taxiing towards the arrivals gate.

Early morning Cherbourg was drizzly and grey. The motorways were quiet but the service plazas were packed. Driving north through Norman countryside we passed signs for the D-Day landing sites and battlefields but we didn’t stop. Outside of Lille on the second night I celebrated my birthday a day late. We bought a few beers and as it was a balmy evening, drank them in the parking lot. When hotel rooms get claustrophobic, hanging-out at the bike is a nice alternative. We call it the Three Wheel Bar ‘n’ Lounge. It’s a reliable watering hole, always open and the metal boxes provide a stable surface for cocktails (beers) and tapas (jars of olives). While I think my entering a new decade deserved Veuve Clicquot, the beer did a good job of putting a sparkle on an otherwise weedy, untended corner of French suburb.

It wasn’t at all what we’d expected. The whole of Europe seemed to be on the move. Locked-up for over two years, everyone was starring in The Great Escape. Driving was enjoyable but stopping was not. Small gas stations and service plazas were totally inadequate for the throngs that descended for fuel and refreshments. And after a sobering winter and spring avoiding Omicron, we were still not used to being round so many people. Just when I thought nothing could be worse than standing in a long, unmasked line for two toilets, a busload of 14-year olds joined the queue, jostling and hopping about on crossed legs. We couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

BELGIUM

Across the border the Belgian fields were burnt yellow and church spires peeked out of islands of small forests. Signs for Ypres brought images of war. These were hard to reconcile with the sunny Saturday morning and cycling mothers towing laid-back toddlers in carts. In a small town in East Flanders we stopped outside an old, red-brick rectory near the central square. We were visiting a friend we’d made in South America; one of the lucky ones to reach Tierra del Fuego before the pandemic. The house was a surprise; a huge place on several floors. Though its inhabitants were not religious, they’d retained the relics of earlier days. The walls were adorned with ceramic angels and paintings of clog-shod children before flaming, heavenly visions. The smell of dark wood and candlewax hung in the air and distorted panes of glass framed glimpses of a leafy garden.

We parked Pferdi around the back, next to his old Yamaha friend. It had so many stickers from stops on the Pan American Highway the metal could have disintegrated and still it would have held together. Old stories never die. I felt both glad and sad looking at it. Stepping through long grass to the back of the house, a small grotto and stone statues rising from the undergrowth had us wondering if we were disturbing any long dead rectors. But we weren’t and in the end, the only thing to carefully avoid was the clothesline.

Watching barges on a peaceful canal, we caught up on the old days when crossing new countries every few weeks was a normal occupation. Finally sated on memories, we indulged in the comforts of the present: odd-shaped sausages, meatballs and gravy, monastic beer and fries with mayo. A stroll into nearby Holland was a failed attempt to walk it all off but we’d got distracted by the vicuna farm. Ghent was unexpectedly beautiful with its fairy-tale turrets and flying buttresses; a step back to the Middle Ages. Our accidental approach from a narrow street turned dramatic when it opened onto a large, sunlit square. There was also a parallel, colliding world along the river whose banks were bursting with effervescent youth, picnicking families and the ubiquitous bicycles. Back into the shadows of St. Bavo’s Cathedral, we saw the altar piece The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb. After spending some quiet moments before its famous panel, “The Lamb of God”, we returned to the sunlight somewhat subdued. Belgium may be a small country but there was so much to see. We’d just have to come back. I think there may be a few beers we missed too, so that settles it.

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HOLLAND

Onward and upward. Literally. Like the state of Iowa, I could have snoozed through Holland but there wasn’t enough of it to make it worthwhile. The cottage in Zweeloo was at the end of an afternoon, at the end of a lane at the end of a road in a patchwork of fields so flat we felt ironed into insignificance. There didn’t seem to be any towns. I’d had that odd sensation where I was looking down at the three of us, a tiny speck on a straight road, busily zipping from nowhere to nowhere. I don’t think we were too full of sound, and Pferdi doesn’t do fury, but watching from that height I could definitely believe we signified nothing*.

GERMANY

I only realized we were in Germany because the gas prices went down. Nothing else had changed since France, the same fields of white gold and dark green islands. The tangle of roadside ferns were burnt red, copper leaves crunched underfoot and river beds were dry. Autumn in July. There was construction and detours everywhere, but no signage and no workers. How very un-German. We were sent across rutted tracks, behind barns and along our very un-merry way through pastures and villages that bore no relation to where we needed to go. There must be no visitors to this part of the world. It was just assumed you knew the other way round.

We spent the night in Heidenau. If they made a movie of this particular stop, it’d be billed as the Twilight Zone meets the Children of the Corn. We were the only people staying in the large, old farmhouse. The room had last been decorated sometime in the ‘50s, in attractive shades of brown and darker brown. But it was very clean and very large. Downstairs a busload of seniors were having a day out and had just finished lunch in the hotel restaurant. Several old men showed an interest in the Ural before leaving us standing on the empty street. If it wasn’t for the lingering smell of frying pork I’d say we’d imagined them all. Sometimes ‘’Livin’ the Dream” feels like being stuck between the pages of a very strange, but dull book. Trying to make something of the afternoon we took a long walk through town. Its front gardens had abandoned tricycles and silent swings. Out the other side the wheat stalks rustled and stood much taller than us. And still we hadn’t seen a local. No one showed up. But luckily neither did the Children of the Corn.

Back in the real world, we reached Hamburg. We drove for miles along a container-lined autobahn. The only other time we’d seen anything like this was on the Caribbean coast in Costa Rica. There too we were walled-in by trucks and containers, only most of those contained bananas. Come to think of it, they were the only colourful thing about that place. The poverty there was dreadful. Now, probably passing some of those very bananas, Pferdi felt like a Formula One racer, speeding past queues of stopped trucks at the exit for the port. We were now in Schleswig-Holstein, on the Jutland Peninsula. It looks like it should belong to Denmark (and maybe they think so too), but it was still Germany and for us it was the end. At least for now. It was also the last of the familiar countries. I had high hopes for Scandinavia. It was time for something completely different.

* From Macbeth by William Shakespeare.