Day #1 - 3: Land's End to Bodmin

Real quick. Something odd about being on this side of the world. Now all of a sudden I have to click 'no to cookies' on every website ever. It's annoying. But I digress.

Still weird that we're not in Korea. But I'll adjust. We had a late start from our Warmshowers because the host wanted last minute advice on which house to purchase. I obliged. She also informed me that she's getting divorced because she knows he's cheating and after 35 years of marriage, can't stand to be with him. Also, her kids don't have any respect for her. I was just like this the whole time 👀👀

Now four years ago Holly, me, and mother were riding these very hills even to Land's End. But I assure you they were much easier than today. We were doggin' it. For reference, in Korea we could average 10 mph. Now we're struggling to get half that. Cornwall is very hilly and I didn't heed the warnings of others who told me "it's harder than the Alps, or Rockies!" Yes and no. But yeah, we've been struggling here.

This hill is steep even though it doesn't look like it.

There's constant poop on the road from these creatures. It's like we're back in the 1800's.

Hey, let's get a stamp!! Not today! I miss that fun hunt in Korea.

She likes to be held.

We paid big money and waited in a long line to get this proper shot with our names on it. The official Starting point: Land's End.

This bike path is dirt! That's all neat. I love my review mirror. It's so handy that I'm starting to wear my Depends.

We're trying to enjoy ourselves on this ride.

One of the trillions of old churches here. Just like the innumerable castles in Japan, I can't get enough of them.

St Michael's Mount! A famous castle on an island you can get to during low-tide. Only in Cornwall!

I taught her to smell the flowers. 

Typical view here.

Reminds me of Plablo. 

We struggled to find campsites but they were closed, so we splurged and got a B&B tonight.

If you're familiar with Poldark, you'll know the rich history of mining in Cornwall. There are hundreds of thousands of remains of the mines from the Olden Days. Kinda like in Globe, Arizona.

Nice playground to rest at!

Holly had been craving Fish 'n Chips so she walked across the street from the playground to the local chippy and indulged.

Action shot before the cars came.

One of my favorite treats in the UK got a new flavor! Delicioussssssssss.

They take two naps a day.

It's like they just build one long building that stretches an entire block and slice it up like a loaf of bread then people live in each slice.

Huge double decker busses still traverse these tiny roads like they fit or something. England was not made for the modern car. I'll keep saying this till I die.

Huge cathedral in Truro.

"The children love me, Smee!"

We're camping in a park. Holly was worreid about Chavs bothering us but we were fine.

We woke up to rain and rode in it for a few hours until we arrived at this Tesco (one of the many British grocery stores) to get a Full English Breakfast. Time to dry off and feast.

In hindsight, we would have plugged along here instead because taking two long breaks before lunch killed our destination goals.

This place was all neat. Like the Biodome 2 in Arizona that I've never been to.

She liked this thing.

A fun machine blowing smoke rings everywhere!

Huge egg.

And we're off!

See the beef I have with these roads? They barely fit one car. If two cars are coming at each other one has to backup until they find an opening to pullover and let the other pass. It's the same with us since we have a big trailer and can't just squeeze pass.

Also, you don't want to squeeze past because Stinging Nettle is lining the roadway. I had a brush with them four years ago and hated it so much. Itches and burns for a full 24 hours. I hate these evil things so much.

The infrastructure is ancient but still works.

Tiny little hamelts and big gawdy churches. The best.

My favorite. At the end of the day they love to roll around with each other.

See, if we had no kids on this trip we wouldn't have any fun at all.

Getting to Land's End, England

Ahhh!!! How did this happen so fast?? I've never done back-to-back tours before. However, the USA has won back-to-back world wars so top that. 

When we were planning this trip, we went back and forth on a few options. Should we keep it small and just do Wales or should we go all out and include the nasty Isle of Man? (Nasty because of their flag. Go look at it. Who does that?) We decided to keep it simple and ride the popular route from Land's End, England to John O' Groats, Scotland - a classic one end of the country to the other end type of tour. Not unlike what we just experienced with Korea. 

As I said in the previous post we are using our Montague bikes - full-size foldable pieces of equipment. They have been collecting dust for almost five years here in England at Holly's house. We used them during our Japan tour. We also broke many spokes as I've mentioned hundreds of thousands of times already. So when we sent the bikes into the shop to be tuned up we told them to build us a wheel worthy of Mordor. Now we'll be putting it to the test.

Trains are such a coolo way to travel. I'm not sure if I like ferries or trains more but both sure beat flying and driving in a car. The best form of traveling is, of course, by bicycle.

For the 6 or so car train, there are only 4 bike racks. That's dumb. There should be racks in each car.

I'm just glad we got on a stop before the masses so we could get the coveted table seat. At some point in the journey, people were standing, or sitting on the floors.

Almost six hours later and we've arrived in Penzance! Fun fact, last time we were in Penzance was in 2021 during our honeymoon. I think that's a sign.

We stayed here at our first Warmshowers host. This house is so neat. I loved the layout. And I didn't even go upstairs.

Placeholder: Korea/UK Tours

This is the best "you've scrolled so far" meme I could come up with for the placeholder between these two quick tours. "Ladies, not your best effort!"

We just finished with Korea, now we're in England. Some may say we're being overzealous. I'm starting to think that. Others ask me how I have so much time off?

We left our bikes behind in Korea and shined up our old Montague bikes that had been in Holly's shed for the past 5 years. Let us all pray they function well.

Epilogue: Korea

Shortly after I started this trip with Holly and the kids I had a subtle thought that we should have opted for spending a month biking around Korea and really going through all parts of the country instead of only doing the 4 Rivers Trail. Since it’s so close to where we live in Okinawa plus Korea is very bikeable and family friendly. Holly agreed as well. But alas…

Even though this wasn’t our first rodeo, it felt like we had forgotten a lot of things and just acted like total n00bs. It also felt like we were caught with our proverbial pants down and that we rushed into it, which was semi-true.

Some key differences from this tour compared to previous ones:

-            Two kids to manage. Lily Rose was the easiest baby ever. Joaquim not so much. That made it tricky waking up multiple times at night for feedings and comfort while biking on 4 – 5 hours of sleep. But with that said, having the two kids interact and play together was the best thing ever and exponentially more fun. They love to roll around and wrestle. Also, after a tiring day of biking when your child gives you a great big hug there is nothing better than that. Another reason to not wait till your traveling is done before having kids, right, silly DINKs?

-            Heavier loads. Now we are carrying more diapers, more food, more clothes, more liabilities. I think at most I was pulling 180 lbs with the trailer, kids, bike, and gear.  After breaking two spokes the first two days, I was reminded with nightmares from all the spokes I broke back in Taiwan last year as well as the Japan and America trips. Fortunately, two was it though, Holly was a champ and took on a lot of weight, which helped tremendously.

-            Can’t use Google Maps. I like to have a loose plan and make up part of it as I go. Korea doesn’t let Google Maps function properly which is my go-to for research and navigation. I had to use Kakoa Maps instead. Some features were fun as it was very bike friendly but results are in Korean and there are no offline maps available for download. Contrary to what everyone says, Korea doesn’t have Wi-Fi “eVeRyWhErE”.

-            We biked on bike paths 95% of the time. It’s wild to think that there was the option to almost never be on a road with a car, and if we were, we had a lane, and if there wasn’t a lane, then it wasn’t high-traffic, and if it was high-traffic, it didn’t last long. Get the point? With that said, we actually missed biking on roads with cars and going into cities since the 4 Rivers Trail doesn’t really go through towns. How weird is that?

Something I loved: hearing the Bean sing her songs while I pedaled. She would sing songs she made up as well as classics such as Baby Shark. It’s the best ever.

Something I hated: the cars tint all their windows, even the windshields. And it’s dark. Many times it’s the reflected kind of tint so it looks like a mirror. Why did I hate this? Well, the Koreans aren’t the friendliest of drivers and some can be quite rude and honk their horns at us because they’re so impatient. So I’d match fire with fire and be impatient back by yelling at them, waving my arms, sticking my tongue out. But I can’t even see anything because of how dark the tint is. It’s not very satisfying. Imagine getting road rage and you don’t even know if it’s working on the other guy.

Oh, we missed one telephone booth!!!!! Ahhhhhh, I was so mad. There goes that $100,000.

 

Day #11 - 12: End of the line...North Korea!

Well, this trip has just gone by too darn fast. We're passing through the great metropolis of Seoul-Incheon but it doesn't feel like it because we're riding along the river and out of the traffic and worse, traffic lights.

The number of other cyclists has increased similarly how when we started the trip there were a ton of them due to the holiday weekend. 

I wake up to the children staring at me like this.

Holly is riding down to get the next stamp in our telephone booth hunt!

This bridge's purpose is only for pedestrians. Isn't that wild they'd build something this grandiose and not intend to have a single car on it?

✅✅✅

We only got a few more telephone booths to find to get that 100 grand!

Look at that neat bridge. They're like the Japan of bridges.

Time to take a breather at this nice park!

Sweetest children ever. And I'm biased, too.

I was coming back from The Can when I heard Holly shout, "Kimball, help!!!" And when I got there she said, "Wait, take a picture, first!" Joaquim had a huge blowout. Again? you're thinking. That's how you live for the future. My motto is I have to preserve this moment.

I love to match. And I love conquering a tough uphill like we just did here. Even if I have to push my heavy +150 lb load.

Stamp, stamp, stamp!

There were several tunnels in the Seoul region, which was nice because it was starting to get hot (like 75 degrees F) and the tunnels were 20 degrees cooler.

We stopped by this local restaurant to enjoy dinner. A mom and son were working together and she offered to hold him while we ate! I love that about Korea.

"Joaquim, let's go wake up Mama!"
"Yes!"

Our campsite by the river. They were playing a bunch of old 70s American music and it felt like I was back in the Deep South again.

Aren't these telephone booths fun? Yes.

The Korean kids were practicing their English with the Bean.

This park had a 7/11 next to it which was a relief because that chocolate milk we got tasted so good! Sometimes I wonder what biking would have been like in the 80s and then I realize it wasn't as good in some ways. Case in point.

Why does it feel like they are stacking these telephone booths all at the end?

These recumbents are getting out of control. Look how low to the ground he is. Does he want to die?

I love the tall buildings. But you already know that.

I hope we didn't forget one...

They even got rock climbing walls set up at these parks. "wOw [insert country name] rEaLlY hAs EvErYtHiNg!"

Sometimes the ink is a too dry for the stamp, so I told Holly to add a bit of water to it. Can't take any chances these days.

Uh oh! A flat less than 10 miles before the end! Dagnabbit!

Yesterday, I noticed the threads were showing on our trailer tires. We just bought them new a year ago for the same issue and they're already wearing out. Holly said it's because of the weight that's causing them to not last a long time. Hopefully, these new ones will be better. There was a bike shop a mile away from where the flat occured, so I hightailed it there for a replacement.

When I see a windmill, I get so excited because there's nothing better than seeing one of these giants in the sky just working it.

"We beat it!"

There's our route we just did.

Last telephone booth! Let's make sure we got all the stamps so we can become filthy rich!

Stupid metric system. Why would you measure the length of a country in meters? Idiots.

Sleeping good after a succesful trip done well.

The kids like to play with the rocks. I will be sending them into the mines soon enough.

It's been a struggle to find bike boxes so we can pack up our bikes for the flight home but this shop finally had them.

Across the river is North Korea. Something wild that they do is play the eeriest, creepiest sounds from huge speakers directed towards South Koreans just to get under their skin. I read about it several months back and made an oath I would hear it for myself. It's like something from a horror film.

Had to be there!