discovery tour, day 3

[kirkcudbright]

May 3 - Berwick-upon-Tweed to Newcastle-upon-Tyne

The ride out of Berwick follows a grassy farm track along the top of a 100-foot cliff - very pretty, but slow. After about 6 miles of that, the bike path cuts inland to follow along a railroad track for a further 6 miles - rutted, dusty, and not nearly so scenic.

To save time, we got off the bike route and onto the A1. Usually you can tell what sort of road you're on by the number: 'M' roads correspond to interstate highways, single-digit 'A' road are major arteries, two-digit 'A' roads are not quite as heavily trafficked, but may not be appropriate for biking, three- and four-digit 'A' road are usually pretty quiet, and all 'B' roads are good for biking. The A1 is like US-1 - but in this case, like US-1 in some of the northern sections - long, straight, wide shoulder, and surprisingly light traffic at this time of day.

On the other hand, we pressed our luck by continuing on the A1068 toward Tynemouth. This should have been a minor road, but had all the traffic that was missing from the A1, with a narrow shoulder. The trouble was that there weren't a lot of other roads along the coast, and today was a bank holiday, so traffic was starting to pick up by the time we got on it. At one point, Mitch stopped us by a bus shelter to yell at Dan for endangering the party, and for not telling him when we were or weren't going to follow the bike route.

So we got back on the bike route, which twisted almost at random through towns, and along the beach, all the way to Tynemouth. We'd agreed to meet up with the van at Tynemouth Castle, and it was decided there to sag into Newcastle. (We saw a lot of sights on this tour, but only from the outside.)

We got royally lost in Newcastle trying to find our hotel, which was right next to the train station. You wouldn't think you could miss the Train Station in the Center of the City, especially since it's sign-posted, but the signs don't actually say "train station" - they just have the BritRail logo; it went much better once we focussed on that. Honestly, I think we would have had an easier time on our bikes (except Mitch doesn't like riding in traffic).

The hotel is one of the grand old hotels, with chandeliers coming down through the 6-story staircases into the Lobby. Dinner was good Indian, albeit at 8:30, when we had to be up early the next morning.

Afterwards, Mitch apparently talked privately to Scott (the Otto Bock sales director who rode with us the last 3 days) and Karen (the Otto Bock marketing director who's overall in charge of the trip), and the word came down from on high that we have to stick to the bike route from now on, with no deviations.

This is the thing that's most driving Dan up the wall now, more than the slow pace, and the getting lost. He's the group leader, and he makes daily reports to Karen, where he tries to accentuate the positive. But he feels that Mitch is undercutting him by back-channelling all his complaints directly to Karen, so she's getting an entirely different picture from Mitch, and the trip is getting micro-managed from Minneapolis.

Along the cliffs south of Berwick.	Jeez, I just love these half-ruins, don't I?
Weckworth Castle (we didn't go inside).
Tynemouth Castle (we didn't go inside).