Your favorite C&V tour memory
A recent thread asking for guidance about a good vintage bike for touring got me reminiscing about the trips I have taken on vintage bikes. I’d like to hear about your best touring memory. Kindly let me share mine.
My favorite memory is from April 1983, 19 days around Ireland on a dark blue Fuji Finest, equipped with red Cannondale panniers and front handlebar bag. Wisely I swapped the tubulars for clinchers before the trip. The Fuji certainly wasn’t the best for touring, but I loved it and it was what I had at the time. It was just two of us, we were and still are good cycling friends from school, and it was my first trip abroad.
It rained 17 days out of 19, but most days were a “grand soft rain” as the locals told us.
When the wind and rain were a bit too much, we rode the train, buying a rail pass for our bikes and putting them in the mail car, and adjourning to the cozy, warm and dry dining car.
What a great and vivid memory to watch the misty green fields roll by, endless stone fences, thatched roof whitewashed cottages while enjoying hot tea and scones, all to the sound of the clack-clack clack-clack of the old train on the rails.
Those train rides gave us a bit of a reprieve from the chilly rain. Warmed and dried out a bit we got off the train when the scenery looked enticing, collected our bikes from the mail car, and rode off down narrow roads into the rich green Irish countryside.
I learned that biking through a foreign land is a wonderful way to learn its secrets. It is a baptism of sorts, especially in the rain.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day to you all.