T de T: ends and beginnings

I couldn't resist flipping up my helmet and having a chat with the cyclist waiting beside me in the queue at Portsmouth harbour, 'I was exactly where you are now some years ago, though I had much more luggage than you do. Far too much in fact.' I could have bored him at length but, luckily for him, they waved us through.

Cycles, motorbikes, cars and ferries.
Anyone see a plane in the sky?

On board the MV Bretagne I was struck by how little things had changed since I last headed south with a bike. Now, as then, the HMS Victory was seen in a spectacular sunset as we left Portsmouth Harbour. 

The same tacky Brittany Ferries mascot was still in evidence, together with a new pal - Pierre le Bear - a souvenir keyring of which was being created before your very eyes, on a 3D printer. (All that technology being put to such mundane use.)

And now, as then, we had barely passed the dramatic Emirates Spinnaker Tower before the noise levels in the bar were notched up a peg or three by Brits determined to start their holiday early. There may even have been a major sporting event on the big screen then as now but I didn't hang around to find out: it doesn't take much to drive me on to the modern equivalent of the poop deck...

...there to share a beer with Nick because this was not the start of a cycle tour of discovery but a few days motorbiking round northern France with some eurochums; a mini adventure.

What else is different? In place of my usual parsimonious reclining chair, was a fancy pants cabin that Nick insisted was 'de rigeur' for this crossing and ahead lies the prospect of some jolly biking company - of whom more anon. 

A surprisingly good shot of the old chap doing his
Nelson impersonation as we sailed past The Victory. 

Yet, as we were about to hit the sack, for some reason, Nick threw a line of of poetry at me from the bottom bunk: 'We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and to know the place for the first time.' He was rather surprised when I guessed its origins correctly but, although I couldn't claim in any way to have been on the kind of journey that TS Eliot had in mind, it was a striking coincidence to hear these lines at the very moment when the idea of things going full circle was so vividly before me. Now, as then, a house had been sold, belongings packed away, a new page turned. 

Writing that page will start properly a couple of months hence, when I head off to Ireland to begin pushing at my comfort zone. For the moment then, bonjour à l'Europe, willkommen zu unseren Freunden, let the rebuilding of our shattered friendship with Europe begin with the supper to which I now depart.