To Dover and the English channel

  • Banksy art in Dover.  When I walked around the corner, I had a moment of thinking that someone was actively working on the picture.  Recommended viewing for some politicians:  chip away at one star (Brexit) and watch the cracks spread over the whole sky.




Garish driveway and statues for a house.





Hillside art in the chalk "downs."  Unfortunately, not of the Stone Age sort - this was to commemorate the crown placed on King George in 1902.
The downs are rounded hills of chalk in southern England.


The cliffs of Dover really are white.



A most extraordinary man I met today, 97 years old and survivor (though severely injured) of 27 bombing raids over Germany in WW II as a belly gunner  in Bomber Command (where mortality in crews was 44%).  For more, see below.





Old guy with a cane, pretty old but vigorous looking.  Asked about our bike ride and bemoaned his inability to still do that.  97 year old on an outing with a veterans group.  It's the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Royal Air Force.  He was a WWII vet, belly gunner with "bomber command."  Flew 27 missions over Germany - mostly to the industrial area around Essen.  Fatality rate for bomber crews was 45% (plus another 6% severly wounded and 8% taken prisoner of war).  He was extraordinary.  He told the story of many of his "buddies" being killed and horribly injured.  He suffered a severe leg injury and was told he'd never walk again, but is still hobbling at 97.  When he was 70, he did a charity bike ride from London to Abbeville in France - 185 miles plus ferry ride.

After the war, he and his wife started their own small business, and made "lots of money" and spent it all travelling after they retired at age 65.  They traveled 7 times to Australia where he had 70 relatives.  Asked if any of them were descended from or actual convicts (Australia's original settlers were convicts transported from Britain), he allowed "none that I knew of."

His wife of 66 years died of cancer 5 years ago, and telling us of that brought him to tears.

What an extraordinary guy, what an honor to have met him, and gotten to know him for 3-4 minutes as he was getting onto his tour bus.
…

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fun facts from Scotland

Image
Male swans get into fights over territory (presumably with female swans that go with the territory), and try to kill each other by holding the others head under water to drown it. Scotsmen can be frugal:  a small town was offered a nearly new bridge  on the river Esk by a company who had built it for moving building materials to a new construction site.  The town turned down the offer because bridge maintenance would cost too much.  The bridge sits unused except two days a year when it is opened for access to horse racing. Scotland and northern England has more than a few hills - mostly short - with gradients of 15 to 20 percent.  These get your attention as much as the old castles - many dating back well over a thousand years - that are scattered about. The bridges of Newcastle (OK, we're in England now) are nesting sites for Kittiwakes this time of year.  Late summer they fly across the Atlantic to see the tourist sites in Newfoundland and Greenland, then return in March. 
Read more

On to Germany

I tried a few brief conversations in German and was reminded that I had forgotten pretty much all of the German that I had learned 50 years ago. Crossing the border from Holland into Germany, the most important change noticed was the sudden presence of bakeries with elaborate pastries - fruit tarts and the like.  Nothing like it in any of the other countries so far.  Compared to Britain, Belgium, and Holland, the houses are bigger, plenty of new construction of homes, set back from the road, large yards with grass lawns.  Larger gardens, and flowers even on the second floors.  Bike paths are no more extensive than in Holland, but with more extensive maps and signs.  Lots of wind farms and solar farms, as well as solar panels on roofs - rare along the North Sea coast - perhaps because there is so little truly sunny weather there. Northern Europe continues in a heat wave.  Hot and sunny near 80.  And steady headwinds the last 2 days and forecast for tomorrow. Today was a pretty
Read more

Big rollers through the North Yorkshire Moors

Image
Pretty green rolling green highland country with lots of sheep, few small towns, and numerous short and seven longer climbs.  It's rolling land, but with short steep drops and climbs for each stream. Every one of them had segments of at least 15 percent.  The photo is of the "official" gradient of a climb that we had just come up. As always in Europe, a castle  Sunset on the North Sea  Steep
Read more