Cycling UK Forum

meic wrote:I find that every time I go somewhere, I discover how wrong I was about that place. My impressions prior to the visit were mostly based on what I saw on TV.
The fact is that the TV gives a very distorted picture of what the world is really like.

My most vivid illustration of that was a tour of a township in Capetown : a wonderful experience,led by a couple of amazing residents


I'm a trendy consumer. Just look at my wobbly using hovercraft full of eels.

Having read the comments, one thought comes back to mind. There are two kinds of knowledge of places - one a (relatively) superficial by visiting once (and probably seeing the sights), the other a detailed 'know it like the back of my hand' on acquired by visiting time and again.
I think that the second is vastly underrated in our culture. I like a regular off-road ride through woodland: I've been doing the same route at least monthly for almost 15 years - I've seen it change, know where the animals are usually found and enjoy the passage of the seasons. If that's what the OP was feeling then I agree!

Cycle touring does allow much of the second type while doing the first - because you are much more in touch with your surroundings, can hear and smell (which you cannot in a train or car) and also stop at a moment's notice.

You cannot really know any place in depth without living and working there for months or even years. When I visit places where I have lived in the past my mind is full of place related memories. But when I cycle through a holiday location I don't have that richness of association. I just enjoy the landscape, the bits of local culture I have access to, and the people I meet. All good things, but not really the same as getting to know a place. That takes a long time. The people I envy most are not the travelers, but the people who spend their entire lives living in one area and never feel a desire to go elsewhere.

hamster wrote:Having read the comments, one thought comes back to mind. There are two kinds of knowledge of places - one a (relatively) superficial by visiting once (and probably seeing the sights), the other a detailed 'know it like the back of my hand' on acquired by visiting time and again.
I think that the second is vastly underrated in our culture. I like a regular off-road ride through woodland: I've been doing the same route at least monthly for almost 15 years - I've seen it change, know where the animals are usually found and enjoy the passage of the seasons. If that's what the OP was feeling then I agree!

Cycle touring does allow much of the second type while doing the first - because you are much more in touch with your surroundings, can hear and smell (which you cannot in a train or car) and also stop at a moment's notice.

Thats in part what I had in mind - I really envy those whose work means they move around the world staying here and there for months at a time which allows them to treat places like their own backyard. But I was also thinking that many of the really good places, like wandering around Romes ruins could be a bit boring ( how many ruins have you visited and thought "so what?" ) and best "visited" in another way, how many collections of ruins can you take? To get a real feel for Romes Empire architecture would take a lot of foot work and time? I am sure there are places that just bowl you over and a matter of have to be there. There was a recent programme on the Bibles Hidden Secrets and the woman wandered around the large collection of fallen down masonry of a temple and pointed out the super large chiseled out foot print at the doorway of the god who lived there, amazing ( but I wouldnt want to put all the effort into going there!) - I would never have seen that had I been wandering around bored out of my mind at all this rubble. What you can do with the media we have access to depends on your imagination, maybe I am better than most. Unlike many here I don't have a great interest in seeing first hand the squalor and hard life of 3rd world cultures, too depressing.

Its easy to get 'templed out' on these two week tours. I now avoid anywhere that involves lots of temples or ruins, it gets boring. The thing that interested me most in Peru was how people lived, the colour, the markets, a farm miles from anywhere deep in the jungle and chatting to the lone farmer who had no electricity, no fresh water, a hundred miles from a doctor or hospital. I dont see anything wrong with being confronted by poverty, by terrible polution, and by folk whose country is developing with little regard for the green agenda. It puts things here, our concerns and lifestyle into context and focus. It may be just a couple of weeks but it gives you 10x the info you glean through TV programmes.

Al

When I travel, my experience is my own, from the planning to destination and home again. That includes meeting local people, and getting their view on something; eating in restaurants or trying local cuisine...

No television program can give me the taste of food, the smell of rain on the wind, the satisfaction of climbing 500 metres up a mountain to be rewarded with a stunning view. Yes, the telly can show me the view, and explain the natural history. The telly can do some things that travel can't so easily, like show me the same view as it changes throughout the year. Or what it probably looked like a billion years ago. Or go 'behind the scenes' where the public aren't allowed.

But what the telly cannot do is give the satisfaction of having gotten there under my own power. Or the peace of standing there by myself looking at it. Or the joy of free-wheeling down the other side of the mountain.

I find exploring a new place for myself as interesting as the place. Riding along and trying a track that wasn't on the map, or stopping at a wee little nature reserve just because I saw it there are all part of the experience for me, and not something that television can do.

al_yrpal wrote:One incident from my travels sticks in my mind. Standing on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon with 50 other people as the sun went down. At first the sun was above the clouds and it was all yellow, then the sun came lower than some clouds and the view was orange, then lower than more clouds and for a moment the view was grey. And so on until the whole thing turned to gold as the sun sank below the horizon.

No one said a word…

You cant get that experience from the telly.

GC in my list of "nothing like the real thing" too. When I was there I looked at it and decided straight away I wouldn't bother trying to take pictures of the Big Picture with my 35mm compact. When I was in the village shop at some point I looked at the professionally shot posters, and they didn't do it any justice either.

And there's also this aspect... http://www.theshovel.com.au/2013/12/09/man-forced-to-watch-concert-through-his-own-eyes/

Pete.

Travelling isn't for everybody and it's fine to decide it's not for you. As with many things people are very passionate about their hobby and can't understand why it isn't for others.

As for photographs, I don't understand why some tourists need to take 1001 photos of a famous landmark.

I've toured quite a bit on the bike. Always Europe and I have no desire to go anywhere else. I think I'm getting a little jaded with it now though. I dislike queues, I dislike big cities. I dislike being in busy tourist areas, so things are not looking good. I don't take many photos as I can't see the point and there is usually a better shot of a scene on the net. I'm finding travelling abroad with the bike a lot of hassle these days. I seem to be enjoying my day and club rides more. Good company and my own bed at night. I don't agree with the derision of travelling by motor transport or rail. I can enjoy both.Also please be aware that not everybody works in an office. Others travel as part of their work. I spent some time as a lorry driver. Not trucks, I'm not American. I can remember rolling down off the M56 onto the M6 on an early Autumn morning with the trees there aflame with colour whilst there was classical music on the stereo. It was a wonderful moment. Also passing the Humber bridge at dawn and seeing it lit up by the flame red sky. Waking up in the Lorry cab after a nights sleep and being enveloped by the early mist coming off the North sea. Sat in the cab near the New Forest eating a bowl of cornflakes as the dawn came up. I was still travelling and having wonderful experiences. Yes I've had much the same on the bike but it does not always have to be the bike.
I was brought up in Ireland in the 50s. People say" oh what do you think of Donegal," Waterford or Cork etc. They are suprised when I say I have no idea. We never strayed more than about 30 miles from where we lived. My 99yr old gran never went further than the small town she lived in. Never wanted to and seemed quite happy.

Unlike many here I don't have a great interest in seeing first hand the squalor and hard life of 3rd world cultures, too depressing.

You have been watching too much TV! I certainly find third world country villages more pleasant places than London by a long way.

I have been invited in to people's "houses" in many different countries, I never felt the poorer ones to be any more miserable than the richer ones, in fact the reverse often seems true.
This is the point about traveling, it can really open your eyes if you arent led by the nose as a tourist.

Another point is that it makes you see your own lands in a new light when you return. I remember going to sit at Wales's southern point on my return to the UK and the deep purple bruised by pollution sky was as impressive as any of the sights I had seen across the world.
I find that cycle touring can lead to me not meeting the locals and just riding along quite apart from the people I am passing. Hitch hiking was far better for getting you into people's company.
As far as I am concerned, foreign historic sites are just as boring as those in the UK. I like the living countryside or the living people.

mercalia wrote:I am not against foreign travel

I am. Except for myself. Most tourist hotspots are becoming absurdly overcrowded and travel is contributing more and more to pollution. Cyclists have reason to be morally superior but not perhaps if they fly.

The odd thing is that as foreign travel becomes more popular, the differences that made travel interesting start to melt away. It's a sort of twenty first century Midas touch.

horizon wrote:The odd thing is that as foreign travel becomes more popular, the differences that made travel interesting start to melt away. It's a sort of twenty first century Midas touch.

"When I were a lad" there was a period when I read a lot of books by people who had, for various reasons, travelled, fairly recently, to remote places. Books about the ascent of Everest, or David Attenborough's Zoo Quests. You had to be a real keen roughie toughie type to do it in those days. Not surprisingly I felt that a career as an explorer might suit me too. I was pretty crushed when I realised that the very books I had enjoyed had pretty much filled in the last white spaces on the maps
When I was born it appears one could still go to villages that had never seen a white face. Nowadays I suppose an equivalent challenge would be to find one where mobile phones are unknown
That's an enormous change to occur within the working lifetime of one man.
My dad always used to say "Thank God for Butlins and the Costa del Double Diamond. If it wasn't for places like that you wouldn't be able to go anywhere without being ankle deep in holidaymakers"
I think he was about right!

There is no 'Big Deal'. I've been around most of the UK - much of it on two wheels, there are good and bad places and the riding varies from terrible to challenging.

When I go abroad it's to see and experience different cultures/food/scenery to that at 'home'. TV/internet may give you a taste of places but it doesn't let you sample the food, enjoy the views the camera doesn't show you. For some stuff you really do have to be there!

I'll continue exploring Europe and the UK in person - you can't beat being there!

There are plenty of things you can't experience in the UK. As an academically trained geographer and geologist, travelling has enabled me to see and experience many things not available here.

Just a few: glaciers, earthquakes, tropical cyclones, volcanoes, etc, etc. Not to mention flora, fauna and different people.

I love where I live, but there's a real thrill to being in an earthquake that it's hard to replicate in Essex.

That's you simonhill: I'm prepared to wager there are people who have sat by the pool for two weeks unsure of which country they are actually in. As long as the sun is shining ....