Good morning England...and Scotland
6 a.m. A little sweet music runs out from the speakers over our heads. It's time to go for a wonderful 8£ breakfast on deck 11. We'll take a better one in our cabin, thanks to our permanently full cycling bag fridge.
One hour later, our ferryboat is boarding at Hull. First english city for us, and first meters…on the left side of the road. We change our mirrors from left to right. Now, we just have to do exactly the contrary that our reflexes tell us. That's an everyday care but we get used to it, even if every morning, for one of us at list we have to say "sssst, it's on the left!"
First stop. We buy a road map. It's very precise, but the scale says "4 miles for 1 inch". Well…we just have to translate the miles in kilometers…as long as we know what is an inch ! We'll quickly understand how english humor is in our frenchy everyday life.
There are others :
-Dear farmer, how many hectares have you got ?
-Hectares ? I don't know. But I have 200 acres !
-… and… how many litters is this tank ?
-It's 100 000 pints.
...
Interviews are a good exercise for mental calculation.
A "normal" camping place
Go back to the first day. After the units, we taste another speciality of this country, at list at this time : rain and hail stones. That's called "scottish shower", well done, but it could also be called "english shower". Imagine that you want to cycle down the road with a hand to protect your eyes, the other one on your brakes, trying to see something, to avoid the cars and the holes in the road (and, of course, with the same beautiful and comfortable waterproof suit as last year). You'll be sure that we always drive carefully.
BUT, don't worry, except the rain and the 15% coasts, except the fact that we needed a lot of newspapers for extra-isolation in our sleeping-bags, we really enjoyed England and Scotland.
The reverse of climbing
Rain and good climbing offer a sensational gift : the landscape.
Move your legs, breathe, take the fresh air and open your eyes. You'll see lights, colors and shapes. You'll feel extremely free, extremely thankful for all this beauty. Thankful, even for the rain falling on you.
There is no sentence to describe it, no picture. How could you describe a feeling, a sensation, how could you give substance to the light ?
Close your eyes and imagine, just imagine drops like a curtain on this nature show. There are hills, hiding hills, hiding hills. There are green pastures with sheep, little hedges and stone walls. There are bloomy rapeseed fields giving light to the horizon. There are pines dancing with the wind or cutting in the dark sky irregular shapes. There are the clouds pierced by the sunlight, like a permanently changing outstanding beauty.
These landscapes fit well with the heart of their inhabitants. Philip, Richard, Lyn, Lain, Margaret, Alan, Ada, Robert, Douglas, Phillip, Alison, Alec, Duncan, Margot, Jan, Quentin, Stewart, Lesley, just to give some names, welcomed us like friends, with smiling simplicity. A delicious meal, a good bed, a cup of tea, a shed, a dance, even a beautiful house, any kind of help… we were fully helped ! Even a 96 years old woman knitted for us beautiful slippers for the night !
About farming, we also have some things to tell, picked up in our notebooks :
-There are still "Estates" in UK. It is big properties of lords with a manor at their center, transmitted from father to son. An estate can have several farms : some of these are managed by employees (a sprayer, a gamekeeper, a plower…), others are rented (or sold). The tenancy of the farming land and farming buildings is also transmitted from generation to generation, by inheritance. But the children of farming are not so much interested in this hard work today.
-It's very difficult to become a farmer if your parents aren't. The land is very expensive (around 6000£/acre (more than 12000€/hectare) and there is no help for installation. In UK, the translation of european directives help over all the biggest farmers.
-We set up our tents between the ewes cages, on straw. The lambing season was beginning. No-one this night, although David was getting up regularly to check the herd. 2-3 pairs of twins on the morning. The lamb prices have doubled recently as there is a good market conjuncture. The lambing period gives a full time job for day and night. Check if the lambs are well, if the mothers take care of them. Some are lambing inside, but others outside in the fields, what could be a danger because of the coldness of these days. There is wind in the rocky hills and John gets up at 5 o'clock every morning to take care of his Blackface ewes. It's hard. The wind is very cold.
-Robert builds a new shed every year. For him it's important to grow, to have new projects ahead. Comfortable new beds for his 400 dairy cows, new milk feeding system for calves, GPS fertilization…The dairy farms here are big or are not.
-Quentin has sold 15 hectares for road construction, and bought 120 others, farer, with the same amount of money. He says that when you win at the lottery, you don't throw the ticket. Working with his son, he grows over all grass and wheat on more than 1000 acres. "It's essential to have larger and larger units to make it viable." They have beef, but less than before. As many of their colleagues, they take care of horses. "With one horse, you earn as much money as with ten cows. And it's less work."
-Duncan and his son have crops, sheep, cattle and horse livery. Margot, his wife, takes care of cottages for tourists (very comfortable^^). For Duncan's son, you can live with 200 hectares, but if you want to invest in better machines, you need 400 hectares.
-We discovered here a new way of selling animals : the auction market. It permits more to get satisfying prices than the selling to big companies.
Well, that's a few… If you want any description of the beautiful coast close to Edinburgh,...
or how we escaped this 15 miles diversion (we were the 24th of april) :
…see you in a few weeks ! Thank you all for your commentaries that we like so much :) and good job for the class which works on it !
