JC Adventures Chapter 1
Headed overseas at last!
I finally had to pay for a passage on a Norwegian freighter, out of Montreal.
Steaming down the St Lawrence River and out into the wide Atlantic on that big ship was a real thrill for a prairie boy who hadn’t ever seen ships or the ocean before. Ran through some stormy north Atlantic weather and some fog, with the fog horn blaring, all exciting stuff.…. Can’t turn back now, with so many unknown adventures ahead! Those were great exciting times with so much to discover……
No going back now….
The U.K. – July 1962
My first view of England
Landed in Avonmouth, the port for Bristol, on 6 July 1962. Walked down the gangplank and stepped on foreign soil for the first time, a bit wobbly after the time on the rolling ship.... Started walking the road to Bristol and straight away spotted a couple of “…Bobbies on bicycles two by two…”, straight out of the Roger Miller song, ‘England Swings…’, what a buzz! Now I just had to find “…Westminster Abby, the tower of Big Ben, and the rosy-red cheeks of the little children...”
Walking the street in Bristol, marveling at the quaint differences, with my pack that had a ‘Canada’ sign on it. A little old pensioner called out, “Hey Canada, wait up!” He had served with Canadian troops in WW2, and wanted to offer his hospitality. So, I ended up going for lunch of baked beans on toast at his place and hearing his stories. I did notice with embarrassment that when I scooped a big dollop jam to put on my toast he was taken a bit aback, and I noticed that he only spread a very thin coating on his toast. Then I realized how meagre his pensioner’s life in England was, compared to our abundant habits in Canada….
My entry to London was dramatic. I’d hitched to an outlying suburb, and then got on the ‘tube’, the underground subway. Rumbled along thro the tunnel and stopped at various stations, then arrived at the terminus. Rode a series of escalators up and up, and then walked out a doorway right into the heart of London at Piccadilly Circus! What a blast! As my uncle, who was over there in WW2, said, “…Just like a gopher coming up out of its hole…”
Of course, one of the next fabled features to find was Big Ben, and hear it chime the hour. I’d heard the chimes on the BBC World Service on my shortwave radio so many times.
Big Ben at last.
So typical of London, big red buses and umbrellas…
That was 57 years ago, but no end yet….
Heard bagpipes being played in the distance
while viewing Edinburgh Castle.
(bagpipes are best heard from a distance…)
but it didn’t show when I was there….
Ireland
Then across to Ireland. Hitched around the south, kissed the Blarney Stone, etc….
Very stony fields in western Ireland.
Very slow hitching cause Ireland was pretty poor in those days, and there was very little traffic on the road.
So in Belfast and bought a 49cc NSU moped so I could have my own wheels.
Visited the homelands of the Gilpin clan in Copney County, Armagh. Scrambled around an old graveyard, looking for headstones of ancient relatives, and found this namesake.
Then to England again and rode that slow little moped all the way to London. Then sold it there cause it wasn’t anywhere near powerful enough for travel on the open road….
In London I found a job for a couple of weeks. It was running errands and making tea for the staff of an office right in the centre of the city, while the regular fella was on holiday. It turned out that making tea for English ladies and gentlemen wasn’t as easy as it would seem. They didn’t like my tea at all!…. I couldn’t tell what was wrong cause I don’t like tea the way the English like it. That warm milky muck they drink reminds me more of Indian chai or hot chocolate…. I prefer orange pekoe tea straight from the pot, with no sugar or especially no milk, so it’s very different. When someone caught me adding the milk after pouring the tea there was uproar! I couldn’t tell how much milk to put in first, always too much or too little, so I was adding the milk last so that I could judge the colour better. It was a really big issue for them, and the whole office was disgruntled, and they made it clear that they wouldn’t be happy until the regular old dandy fella came back….. It’s the only job in my life that I really failed at…. What a waste of time, with the adventures of all of Europe so near….
Europe
In September ’63 rode the ferry from Dover to Ostend Belgium. Walked down the ramp with my pack on my back, first steps on the European continent, a significant thrill for a prairie boy….
Not far along was a roadside shop, so I stopped to buy some cheese. Now this was going to be my very first experience with speaking a foreign language (except some confrontations in Quebec…), so I was a bit tense…. Now this was Belgium, so French and Flemish and some German spoken here. First I tried my (failed) school French, so said “…le fromage, s’il vous plait…” The 12-year-old boy behind the counter yammered something back at me. I tried a couple of more times, cause I realize that pronunciation is very important in French, but still more yammering back at me…. I had started to study German from a book (up to page 20) so tried “…der kase bitte…” The boy yammered something back again, getting impatient and aggravated…. Then I must have mumbled to myself in English, cause then he said, “Well what language do you speak??” It turned out he spoke French, Flemish, German and English, and had understood me all along, but had been asking me what sort of cheese I wanted, cause of course there are so many varieties of cheese there. So, as I walked on up the road into all those countries with different languages, I decided that we need a common language, and since English is already pretty much it these days, and especially since I already speak it, then let it be English. So, I reckon I’m doing them a favour by giving them a chance to practice their English so they can improve their international skills….. Of course, I use ‘special’ English, spoken slowly, words distinctly separated, and try to find simple words instead of big words. I feel sorry for beginners trying to understand spoken English, because we tend to run our words together and speak rapidly, not much better than for me to try to follow rapid-fire French with all the words run together….. Take a lesson from German and Spanish, which are much easier to pick out the words you recognize.
Hitchhiking was good in those days. It was generally accepted as a valid way for young travellers to get around to see Europe. Usually didn’t have to wait too long for a ride, and then very often with someone who had hitched around themselves when younger. So that made for safe rides and interesting conversations along the way. People weren’t afraid of hitchhikers, and hitchhikers weren’t afraid of drivers then, so different from these days…. Not allowed to hitch on the autobahns, so on the approaches to the autobahns there was often a bunch of travellers all wanting rides. The Germans laughed at the British, who politely queued and waited their turn as if it was a bus stop, while the Germans just barged up to the front and scrambled to be the first into any car that stopped.
There are excellent trails all through those mountains, and guesthouses along the way, where hikers and climbers can roll out their sleeping bags on a wooden platform and share in a simple hearty meal. There were even grandmothers and little children hiking those trails. What an excellent service, so typical of Europeans….
Moved from one Youth Hostel to another. Nearly all cities in Europe had them. Inexpensive, and really interesting company, other young travelers from everywhere. Each hostel had a common kitchen where there was lots of meeting and greeting and sharing of food and ideas with travelers from all over the world. Just staying in the hostels was an educating adventure.
Hitchhiking was slow in northern Italy. People friendly enough and wanted to help, but most cars in those days were tiny Fiat 600’s full of big Italians, so no room, even tho a couple of them did manage to squeeze me in, very cozy….
One evening I was camped in a ditch beside a very quiet road when I heard some hiking boots clumping by. Turned out it was an American, and he stopped to join me. All I had for food was some rice, and all he had was a can of corned beef and some ketchup. So, I boiled up the rice and then he added the beef and sauce and we had a fine satisfying meal. We had noticed before dark that right across the road was an apple orchard, and wanted some desert, so decided to snitch a couple of apples. He climbed the fence in the dark, and then I heard a splintering crunch and a crash, and then he came back with his coat full of a bushel of apples, and a dog barking in the distance…. The crash had been when he pulled down a big branch and broke it off the tree to get at the fruit, not a good move…. So, we had our fill of fresh apples then into our sleeping bags. Next I knew it was first light, and a burly Italian was kicking me in the ribs and yammering about the apples laying all around. He was really angry about the damage to his tree, so gave me another good kick then went to call the police. So, we got up on the road and hoped for a ride, and sure enough a gravel truck stopped, and we rumbled away just in time…. The driver was a fat jovial Italian in his grease-stained undershirt, who sang classic opera at the top of his voice as we thundered along in that noisy old truck…. Classic Italy!
Always on the move, saw lots of highways and countryside, not interested in cathedrals or other tourist attractions. Hitched through the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Italy, Switzerland, southern France, and Spain.
Spain was a poor country in those days….
Gibralter
I’ve long had a fascination with Gibralter,
and wasn’t disappointed.
Gibralter was a little bit of Britain all on its own. Even a café that served ‘bangers and mash’. But do stay away from the apes on the top of the rock, cause they’ll rob you, and bite if you fight back…
Morocco
Joined up with three of those Brits, and we headed across to Morocco, and set foot in Africa for the first time, another big thrill….
Got as far as Fez, but the weather was too bad at that time of year, continuous cold rain,
so not very comfortable….
The Brits were already nearly out of money. It seems they were lead by a guy who worked the summers in the Jersey Islands then headed out travelling until he ran out of money and then went to the nearest British Consulate and asked to be repatriated back home.
I was tired after so much fast travel, and needed a rest from the road. So, headed back through Spain and northern France.
By now it was November, so cold short days, and hitching in France was very slow. At dark one day I was stranded with no traffic. There was a road divider post with a small light in it, and I found a little bit of warmth if I sat on it, cause it was freezing cold and I didn’t have enough warm clothes….. After dark there was no chance of a ride, so I started walking to keep circulation going. Then I saw a hay stack in a field and climbed over the fence to burrow into it to keep warm. But the dogs at the farmhouse heard me and started barking – sounded like big dogs…. So, I scrambled back over the fence and kept walking along the road. I couldn’t keep walking all night, so when I found a bus shelter I decided to camp in there. The bench seat was concrete, and there wasn’t the insulating blue foam sleeping pads in those days. There’s nothing colder and harder than sleeping on bare concrete, so it was a really miserable night. In the wee small hours of the morning I was so exhausted from shivering all night that I wasn’t sure that I could survive ‘til the sun came up….
Cold and hungry, so I felt really dismal when I started walking again….
But, as so often happens, just when things are looking really bad, they can turn really good. I’d been walking a few miles to try to warm up, when passing a farmhouse right next to the road, an old lady saw the ‘Canada’ sign on my pack and shouted, “Ah, Canada!” And dragged me in for a big mug of milk coffee and breakfast, boy that felt grand! What a life-saver…. She remembered the Canadian troops who had liberated that part of France in WW2, and wanted to show appreciation, and couldn’t have been appreciated more! Then I got back on the road, now with a warm feeling inside. Soon a little Citroen 2CV stopped. They’re even smaller than the Fiats, but when they saw the ‘Canada’ sign they insisted I squeeze in, and we chuffed merrily along the road. What a change in mood from last night….
Eventually I got to Paris, but this wasn’t “April in Paris”, it was November in Paris, and cold and grey and dismal…. I remember stepping into a café to ask directions cause I was lost, and being rudely pushed back out the door without even listening to my needs. Rudeness that you only find in big cities, and in my opinion, Paris does rudeness best of all…..
Hitchhiking wasn’t going to be very practical in this weather, so got on a train to the ferry at Calais. The fella in the seat across from me looked like an artist – paint all over his torn jeans, a bright wool jacket, and wild woolly hair with an artist’s paintbrush behind his ear. Turns out he lives mostly in the Jersey Islands, a haven for such artists and layabouts…. I told him of my rude reception in Paris, and he then gave me a lesson in presentation. He admitted that he wasn’t an artist, and had never even tried to be an artist, but had just smeared the paint on his jeans and carried the paintbrush to ‘pretend’ to be an artist. With that image he reckoned he was invited in and had great hospitality in the Paris ‘arty-farty’ set. Wined and dined as guest artist, and very often a warm bed to share… Never had to prove his worth, just the image was all that was needed… He pointed out that I looked more like a hobo, with plain, worn clothes and a dirty trench coat, and could only expect to be treated as such
Back in the U.K.
Back across the channel and in London again,
in a bleak and unusually savage early winter.
This is not at night, it's daytime!
just what China is doing now…
No good-paying construction jobs going, and the Irishmen shared them out among themselves, so no use applying at a worksite…. I tried for lots of jobs that I knew I was capable of doing, but couldn’t make the right impression. I was feeling pretty down, and undoubtedly looking it…. Then I remembered the words of that alcoholic in Montreal, and went out and did as he said. First a haircut, and didn’t realize how shaggy I’d been and how I felt lighter and cleaner already. Then a new shirt and trousers, and finally new shoes. The new shoes made the biggest difference! Smooth and clean inside and not sagged at the heel, felt really good. I’m sure I stood taller and felt more confident, and then got a job straight away. I hope the fella in Montreal is keeping his own advice and hanging in there OK.
Went to work at Evershed and Vignoles in Chiswick, West London, assembling electro-mechanical instruments. Very basic soldering and fitting work and low pay, but inside out of the cold. I’d BS’ed my way in by claiming experience as an instrument technician, so was keen to show what I could do. The first instrument took me three days, the second one two days, and the third was easy in one day, and I was back to the supply department getting the parts for another one. Then the supervisor had a quiet word in my ear that, “…we figure that we should take two days to build one of these, so don’t spoil it for yourself and everyone else on the job…”
Often I’d forget and accidentally finish another instrument in a day, but then couldn’t get more parts until the next day, so would take it all apart again and polish everything and fiddle and diddle the time away. I don’t know how the other guys could work so slowly to fill in the time…. There were six of us sitting on stools doing those instruments, but three could easily have done the same output…. Several of them had been doing this for many years, and thought it a good job…. So that was my introduction to British labour practices, no wonder they couldn’t compete in the world…. So, it was a l-o-n-g, boring winter sitting on that stool…..
I bought a new 250cc Francis Barnett motorcycle and prepared it for travel next summer. It was a crap machine, but it was really cheap. I was planning what spares to carry, cause I knew there were no agents on the continent, and found that there were seven different types of bolt thread on that machine, even odd ones like ‘cycle thread’…. I rode to the factory and talked to them about it, but all they could say was they were an “old-fashioned manufacturer” and didn’t feel like standardizing anything…. That would come back to bite me later on in metric Europe, as you will see….
To Scandinavia
Spring finally came, and 8 Jun 63 I crossed the channel again, this time with my own wheels. Didn’t get far into Belgium when the head-steady bolt broke…. Bad design to start with, depending upon an extended bolt joining the head and the frame to survive the flexing that the vibrations would cause. Found a motorcycle workshop where they specialized in motocross bikes. The mechanic took one look, and said disdainfully, “…Bah, English…” and tipped out a big box of old bolts on the floor, various imperial sizes, and said, “…Good luck…” I dug and dug through that pile of bolts until I did find one with the correct thread and correct length. And away I went.
Across a long dike with water on both sides in the Netherlands in pouring rain. On through northern Germany to West Berlin, which was still a divided city.
The highway passed through East Germany, but we weren’t allowed to leave the highway. The tensions were such that when I stopped to offer assistance to a broken down East German motorcyclist, he panicked and waved me away urgently, all the while looking around to see if anyone was watching…..
East side of the Brandenburg Gate.
Through Denmark and on the ferry to Sweden and on up into Norway. I those days Sweden still drove on the left as in the UK, and Norway drove on the right. At the border the lane markings on the road just crossed over, and you had to get used to the new system right away and keep it in mind. I managed OK until one day when leaving the KonTiki museum in Norway. It’s out in the country with a fine road, and it was a beautiful day with no traffic. I was powering at speed around a sweeping left-hand bend, dragging the footrest and hanging right in near the curb, thinking, “…I’m safe from any oncoming traffic here…” Then as I straightened up I noticed a car coming in the distance in ’my lane’, and wondering what he was doing there, then it suddenly hit me that I was completely on the wrong side of the road!! Swerved over to the correct side, and had visions of what would have happened if I’d met that car while in the bend at speed…… Never did make that mistake again…..
My Norwegian grandfather came from the Hallingdal valley, so I stopped to have a look. Very pretty, with tiny farms in the narrow valley and spruce forests up the mountains, but I could see why he had to leave to find more room. He left Norway when he was 19, and first settled in the woods in North Dakota because it looked like the woods back home. But the soil was poor, and he then realized that was why he left Norway in the first place, so he moved to central Alberta and settled on the best of prairie farmland you could hope for. When the farm was established and going well, he left it to his son and moved to a remote lake in the northern spruce forest that reminded him of Norway….
I found a job in Norway, working in the forest. Those spruce forests up the mountainsides are all leased by farmers in the valley. Those forests are carefully tended and maintained and harvested very sustainably. After a mature forest is cut down and the logs hauled away to the timber mill, a dense thicket of saplings sprouts up. This is too dense for best tree development, so the first growth of saplings are thinned to one meter apart. Then when the young trees are 100mm (4”) diameter they’re thinned out to three meters apart, and stacked up and saved for firewood. Then the remaining trees can grow on into large logs suitable for the sawmills again. If an area was extra wet then the spruce was cut out and birch trees were, favoured, it was very carefully managed. It was my job to do that thinning, so lots of axe work, and scrambling up and down steep slopes, great exercise for fitness.
There was a small cabin up on the mountain, so I was camped in that pristine environment. Blueberries were so abundant that my poo turned purple…..
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Sure glad I had my own wheels for all that grand remote country.
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One day while going too fast on a gravel road, came over a rise into a steep dip and then a sharp right turn under a rail line. No way I could make the corner, and a high stone wall directly ahead…. Luckily I had the reaction to do the classic ‘lay the bike down’ maneuver - pull on the upside handlebar while locking the rear brake, and quickly pulling the downside leg out from under as the bike goes down flat on its side, then hang onto that handlebar and crouch on the bike as it skids along the ground on its side. Slid right up to the wall, then got off without a scratch to me. Bike a bit scratched, but far better than trying to brake on that gravel and hitting the wall head-on….
Of course, there’s lots of rain in that country, but I found that if I pulled my feet up onto the fuel tank and crouched down behind the windshield, I could stay pretty dry, if I went fast enough. I don’t know why, but I had an urge to sing when riding like that (don’t ever sing otherwise…) The tune that seemed to suit best was the hymn, ‘Rock of Ages’, of which I only knew a couple of lines. But I do remember blasting through a village in the pouring rain, hunched up like that, singing at the top of my voice, and noticing people turn to look, but I was long gone by then….
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I sure enjoyed those Scandinavians and their culture. Everyone so intelligent and reasonable and relaxed and peaceful. One night when it was too rainy to camp out, I stopped at a farm, and asked to camp in the barn, cause I knew it would be full of sweet hay. But they insisted that I be a guest inside their very cosy house, and visit with them. Of course, they all spoke excellent English, and were very knowledgeable, so we could have some really interesting conversations. But it was a bit embarrassing to have an old Swedish farmer ask what I thought of a certain English author that I hadn’t even heard of let alone read….
Crossed the channel back into England in early September, after a great summer in Scandinavia. Sold the bike and lightened my pack for an overland hitching trip to Istanbul and beyond….
Now some new adventure coming! But that’s another story….
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