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Ready to leave my flat again. Look, I've still got the same bike that I had last year. That's quite unusual for me. Don't worry about the extra bag on the back; that will be gone in a few days. Unlike last year, it's not raining at the moment although... The Malverns are back there somewhere. I'm afraid we can't see them though. This cycle path has become a bit overgrown since I last used it. Some of the plants were rather spiky. There's Gloucester, seen from the recently completed western by-pass, complete with cycle path. I like this road. It's much more pleasant way of getting to the south of Gloucester than Bristol Road was. This bit's not ideal at the moment though. I circumvented this flood on the grass to the left. Later, I would have to ride through something similar and couldn't help worrying whether the panniers were waterproof enough to protect the laptop. Pessimists! Although the sky was still decidedly overcast, the rain had long since finished by this time. Sadly, so had the monster tailwind. Checking my map in the Pucklechurch area. I haven't brought a paper map of today's route and I'm intending to rely on them as little as possible on this trip, just as an experiment really. The dark sky is helping here because it means I can see the screen quite... I wasn't expecting this area to be quite this hilly, having taken a bit of a detour to the west to avoid the Cotswolds. I've got to go down the road between those two hedges on the right next. The same hill. I found the 140 metre hill between Bath and Bradford-on-Avon, about an hour after this, to be particularly annoying as both towns are on the same river. Still, what would you expect from a road with as silly a name as 'Sally in the Wood'. Edington, with the edge of Salisbury Plain behind it. The good thing about having all those unexpected hills earlier was that when I reached this one which I was expecting, it didn't seem like a very big deal. I've made it up onto Salisbury Plain. That's good. It's actually rather warm and sunny where I am, despite the appearance of the sky ahead. The tailwind is back too. I could really real it pushing me up these hills. Stonehenge! I spent quite a while choosing a good spot from which to take a photograph, thereby ensuring that I was still about 2 km away from the hotel when it started absolutely chucking it down with rain again. I think I know where I'm going for dinner. It was absolutely rammed in there, and considerably understaffed, as if they hadn't been expecting such an inundation of people. They had run out of all drinks except tea and coffee and most of the food was off too. A lot... One of the items which the Little Chef still had in stock was some kind of west Wiltshire free-ads paper. I found a use for this one. Well, if it is going to have an enormous lonely hearts section and not even bother calling it 'Devizes and Desires', this is... But I haven't got a car! Some dappled shade on the southern part of Salisbury Plain. I think that might be my ship up ahead there. It's... quite big isn't it? by the way, the yellow plastic bag is a souvenir of my visit to Poland last year. It's one of the best carrier bags I've ever had, although it's developing a few small holes now. Southampton docks. Here's the ship then. Inside that shed is a large area for unloading luggage from cars and coaches. That was where I dismantled the bike. I bought a bike bag about a year ago but only found out on Friday that it isn't big enough for my bike. Clingfilm time... Wow! What a room. There's free champagne there look! I wasn't expecting somebody to come in and tidy the room while I was at dinner though and when they did they took the champagne away again. Unfortunately, they must also have found that I had stuffed my damp trainers with... Whoever heard of having a private balcony on a boat? I'm afraid the view from mine isn't one of the best. What do you think? This is what was in the yellow bag. I'm not sure if it will be smart enough for the formal dinners later in the week but it will do for tonight. Whose is that ridiculous clingfilmed package then? Looking down Southampton Water towards The Solent. This is quite a busy piece of water. Some workmen touching up the ship from a giant crane standing on the dock. This is ship's eleventh deck. My room is back there somewhere. Another view of the ship. Probably not the last. One of the Isle of Wight ferries. They're cool boats these; they don't have a particular front or back so they don't need to turn around at each end of the trip. Part of the bridge. 'Caution wet varnish'. It looks like the ship gets a bit of a once-over every time it comes home. Just beyond here was somebody planing a little spot on the deck which had gone a bit splintery. By all accounts, the QE2, now nearly at the end of its 40... This is how lugage gets onto the boat. My bike must have come across in one of these cages. Boat. A car transporter ship. It looks like a lot of cars get imported and exported here. The 'Todd English' restaurant. This food in here is meant to be very good and it's the only food which isn't included in the price of the crossing. If it's as good as they say, the £15 extra sounds pretty reasonable. It's near my room too. I wonder if I'll... These corridors are amazing. This one leads to the library, not that you can see it from here. That's tidy, isn't it? You would hardly know there was a bike in here. Another car transporter has turned up now. Yes, yes. Boat! I'm not sure who all those people are. Friends of people on the boat, I suppose. The size of this boat is amazing. The upper observation deck, six floors above me, is easily higher than those silos. I don't think the ship will be towering above its surroundings by next week though. These boats look like they've come to see us off. More little boats. We're being followed! Boat. Portsmouth is up ahead on the left. On the right is the Isle of Wight. This boat tracked us for quite a while. The Isle of Wight again. A tennis court. Who would have thought it? This part of the boat was probably designed with better weather in mind. The deck here is marked out for some kind of game called shufflleboard. Quite windy. That's where we are. I wonder what that does. This is part of the spa. I don't think I'll go in there. Apparently, this ship was deliberately designed as a bit of a maze so that you keep finding interesting new areas during your time on board. This corridor, on one of the lower decks, has a selection of board games. I don't know who has left some scrabble letters there spelling... Somewhere back there, Britain has just acquired a new Prime Minister. I wonder what he will have done by the time I get back. Waiting for my clothes to dry. I borrowed this book about Chaucer by Terry Jones from the ship's library but it keeps sending me to sleep. The Grand Lobby. It's amazing how many of the passengers are going to be returning on this ship next week. Hardly any of the Cunard literature makes any mention of round trips so I hadn't expected that. Apparently you have to book them as two completely separate trips. In my... I haven't seen this room before! I haven't been here before either. Apparently people who bring all their belongings to this room and then take them off the ship themselves can disembark at least an hour before anybody else. I reckon there's enough space here for my bike not to cause too much of an obstruction.... This picture of the main dining room doesn't really do it justice but it would seem a but rude to wander further in while it isn't open or to take pictures in there while it is. Banks of seating reach up to the windows at either side of the ship... Apparently, there's a storm up ahead. We're deviating a bit to the North to avoid the worst of it but the captain says there will be waves of about 7 metres all night and we should secure any loose items. I don't know it this will affect how long the... The needlecrafts group is smaller than I had expected. There are a few shops around the main lobby but they don't look like they sell the kind of thing anybody would want to buy. A few bags of sweets, for instance. I've finished all mine and won't have any for when I get back on the road now. A... Here's one of the theatres, where Giancarlo Impiglia is about to give a talk about the invention of cubism. I've watched a couple of films in here and also seen the first two in a series of talks on the history of the Warner Studios. The speaker, a former Warner... The champagne wasn't taken away, look; it went in here! It's smaller than I remember it, and not real champagne either. I've brought a piece of ethernet cable with me but not a dial-up modem cable because I didn't think there would be a number that I could dial. The literature about the wireless network on the ship says there is a dial-up server which you can access from your own... The ship handled that storm very well. The winds were force 8 to 9 and there was more movement at the ship than at other times but I'm not aware of anybody having felt ill. All that seemed to happen was that a few things fell off tables, which was... More people enjoying the sunshine. I found a machine earlier which changed my last remaining money into American dollars. They're very uninspiring banknotes, aren't they? The one and the ten seem to be the same size and are very similar drab colours. The numbers aren't even written very prominently. How... We must be approaching land now because the television is coming back. We had Sky with Irish adverts, and a few other channels for the first couple of days until we sailed out of the European satellite beams. Then, Aljazeera turned up for a couple of days, which seemed a... Afternoon tea in the Queen's room. Apparently people were dancing in here yesterday but they don't seem to be doing that now. Smart public toilets. This was an attempt at an arty shot of the sunset reflecting off that blade. I'm not sure why they have spares there. I wouldn't like to have to change one. Another view of the sunset, this time seen from the top deck. It was unusually peaceful up here. There was nobody else on the deck, including the large clear section which is marked on the model downstairs as a helipad, and virtually no breeze despite the fact that the ship... This is a rather poor view of the ship's other theatre. The Golden Lion, which is billed as an English pub. It's not totally authentic though; two of these people in front of me are smoking. I did hear yesterday how many bars are on this ship. It was something like 15. They do have Karaoke though. Unsurprisingly I suppose, the tune being rather over-egged by that woman over there is Sinatra's 'New York, New York'. Incidentally, we are now passing through the deepest water of this voyage. The ocean floor is about 5.3 km away. Casino. Even now, I'm still discovering new parts of the ship. Somebody reckoned that a real Picasso was sold on board yesterday. Nobody else believed it though. There's some pretty dense fog on the sea at the moment. From the middle of the lower observation deck, it's only just possible to make out the top of the ship. Up here, I'm pretty much out of it though; look at that blue sky. We must look funny from... I'm surprised this part of the ship doesn't get used more. It probably does in sunnier parts of the world. After dropping us off in New York, the ship will be going on a little trip to the Bahamas for a few days. After that, some 1700 of the passengers... I like these paintings of fruit. They're painted directly onto aluminium. There's one of cherries somewhere. They look absolutely delicious. I spent a while lying in the sun here listening to the music being piped around the pool area. It was mainly fairly easy listening but there was one number which sounded like the theme from some kind of a horror film. That woke me up! The piped music on... We're leaving a trail in the sea and a trail in the air here. I'm not sure why the trail of smoke is curved like that though; we haven't been round any corners. This is blue sea, isn't it? There are bits of plant-like material floating on it. I wonder if that's a sign that we are close to land, or at least close to sea which is shallow enough to have seaweed growing in it. Professor Derek Fraser discusses politics following the last of his lectures on the welfare state. Re-assembling my bike. I hope nobody objects to me wheeling something this size off the ship, and that there's nobody else in the lift with me. I'll wrap some clingfilm round the wheels so they don't get the carpets dirty. It's probably also safest to leace the pedals off for... I don't know what this is but we overtook it. Incidentally, two of the deck crew, who drive the ship, put on a talk about it in the lecture theatre this afternoon. One of them reckoned that although she can't match the speed of the original Queen Mary, QM2 is... Here is one of the first class dining rooms set out for breakfast. Incidentally, on the way to the main desk just now, I took a wrong turning and found myself in another bar I had never seen before! We're on the final approach to New York now. The Verazano Narrows Bridge can be seen as a string of green lights on the right of the picture. It was the world's longest span prior to the completion of the Humber Bridge. I think it was described as such in... The approaching New York skyline. The red dot on the left which is higher than any of the others is on the Empire State Building. The red ensign has just been lifted. It will soon be joined by a few other flags that make quite a racket flapping about in the wind. The bridge again. It's strange how rooms never seem to get locked on this ship. This is the library, which is closed at the moment. The books are locked away but anybody can wander in here. I'm surprised there aren't people looking out of those front windows; it's warmer in here than up... Here comes the sunrise. Pretty. Hello, boats. You can see the ESB clearly now. The bright pointy thing a few buildings to its right is its friend. There are more pictures than I've really got captions for here. You can choose which ones you like the best. I hope it's going to fit! Sorry. I really wanted to get a picture of this and it came out blurry. This is the funnel going under the Verazano Narrows bridge with, so they say, 4 metres to spare. Everybody seems to be up here watching, many of them in dressing gowns. There was a cheer when the ship managed to fit under the bridge. Yes, well done Captain. How clever of you to stop the ship unexpectedly getting any taller! Seriously, I can't complain; it's been a very... This will be New York then. The same really, Just talk amongst yourselves for a while; I'm taking pictures. More of the same. Now we get our first view of the Statue of Liberty. Can you spot it? It's near the left and very small. A view of the New Jersey shoreline, featuring the Statue, of course. And now here it is with a bit of the boat. Blah, blah, blah. Sunrise! I like the way it reflects off those buildings along what I think might be called the East Side. Apparently there's another sun coming up in the west. Maybe it's a reflection. New York harbour at sunrise. Here are those huddled masses you ordered. Manhattan again, with one of the Staten Island ferries glinting in the sun. Self-portrait. Staten Island, with two of the ferries. I suppose it would be silly to point out that we are now 'stuck between the moon and New York city'. Is that a gun? Looks like it's going to be a nice day. The forecast is for sun, 26 degree temperatures and very little wind. I want to ride it! The bike seemed to raise a few eyebrows, and comments from some of the crew such as 'well, that's one way to get around on the biggest ship in the world'.

New York

It said on the news that security around ports and airports in the USA wasn't being increased as a result of the Glasgow bombing. Fair enough. I'll just spend ages here messing around taking the clingfilm off, adjusting things and photographing myself then. Here's the road. Now I had better get on it. Interesting parking. How do the cars nearest the kerb get out? Look at those traffic lights. This is America all right. They go straight from red to green when they change though. I never like that. It always makes me panic and try to accelerate so hard that the chain slips. That can't be good for it. There's a good cycle... Definitely America. The white building is New York Technical College. I know Americans are meant to be fat but that's ridiculous. Incidentally, there is a symbol for a moped that they could have used. And a symbol for a 3 tonne weight limit for that matter. A view from the Brooklyn Bridge. Isn't that beautiful? I believe this bridge also once held the title of the world's longest span. That was a while ago now though. I was told it was a pleasant ride over this bridge and it certainly was. It's good that the walkway is raised above the roadways to... It's funny how after a good 70 years, the ESB still towers over everything around it. Not that those other buildings are what you would call short, of course. Thank you, QM2. You made that part of the journey very easy. Enjoy the Bahamas. Southern Manhattan. The hexagonal US Court House, with three fire engines partially blocking the road in front of it. Some bloke asked me to take his photograph here. I'm not sure I would have been so trusting. It was quite a nice camera. Provision for bicycles in New york seems pretty good. This is Union Square. Another view of Union Square. Union Square. I don't know what that big number is meant to represent but it was increasing at a rate of about a billion every second. 'These vagabond shoes... are longing to stay...' so I'll leave them here. Well, in the bin. The Green Market in Union Square, where somebody was collecting second hand clothes. That sorted out what I was going to do with the jacket and tie. I thought the shoes were too knackered to give to anybody. I also found a cash machine just by here. Those water towers... That little building on the left says it's the New York Film Academy. I would have expected such a place to be bigger. You don't often see that building pictured from this angle. Can you see what it is? The Flatiron Building, shaped to fit the sharp wedge of land between Broadway and 5th Avenue. Some say it was the first building in the world to use the steel frame construction of modern skyscrapers. Madison Square Park, not to be confused with Madison Square Gardens which is something else. Yes, some of the trees are meade of metal. Random bridgey thing. I've never really known why my saddle has the words '5th Avenue' stitched into the back of it. It's come home now though. Lovely looking building, isn't it? Don't mind me. I'm just taking pictures again. Here's the bottom of it. Seen enough yet? There are two famous buildings in this picture, in the sense of buildings which I had heard of before coming here. Can you identify them? Incidentally, the deep blue flag flying from that building on the right is the flag of New York state. Thanks to the PriceWaterhouseCoopers building here... Here's the first of those two buildings: Grand Central Station. It has more platforms than any other station in the world. Behind it is the MetLife building, formerly the PanAm building, from where it was once possible to catch a helicopter flight directly to the airport. Here's the other. You saw its spire glowing in the early morning gloom. Now here it is by day. The Chrysler Building. I think I prefer the ESB myself; this one's a bit skinny. Hello, birdies. I'm not sure why the picture is at this angle. Diplomats parking only. That's what it says on the sign. Sure enough, here are some diplomatically registered cars. It's good to see that pedestrian lights now have pictograms on them. There's no more of that 'Don't walk' nonsense you see in films. $205? That's a bit random, isn't it? In the background here are some of the flags of the United Nations. The United Nations building. Word of my trip got out on an Internet newsgroup while I was on the ship. A woman who worked in here suggested that I might like a tour. Unfortunately, I'm in a bit of a hurry; I've got to get to New Jersey today. Also,... That's a good-looking building. Before I came here, everyone seemed to be banging on about how much traffic there is in New York. It's complete nonsense. For example, this is 47th Street. It really is open. Here are the big display boards at one end of Times Square. Times Square. There's some kind of roadworks hut in front of me but it looked like the area beyond it was reasonably crowded so I didn't bother going round there. One of these things. This is near Times Square too. I didn't expect a horse. These roads which do have reasonable amounts of traffic are a bit confusing. They are almost all one-way with parking along both sides and a cycle lane on the left. Where the cycle lane is blocked, cyclists seem to pull out into what I would... A statue of Columbus in the middle of Columbus Circle, about the closest thing you'll get to a roundabout around here. Columbus Circle. I'm heading into Central Park now. The cycle lane is the one on the far left, the one with hardly any bikes in it. I didn't understand what people were doing on this road at all and didn't know what to do when I had to overtake other cyclists because they were all in the wrong... Bikes. Horses. This is still Central Park, of course. Just buildings really. Part of a large group of cyclists who are just setting off. So far, they are mostly in the proper lane. It won't last. The Guggenheim isn't looking as swirly as I had expected. That can't have been his real name. All these traffic lights turn green at once. I wonder how fast you would have to go to get through all of them. This used to be the riverside cycle path which was highly recommended. It seems to have gone. 12th Avenue, underneath Riverside Drive. I see I've started to blend in as a local already. I had two people ask me for directions while I was in the Midtown area and a few minutes ago, some bloke not only wanted to know where St. Nicholas Avenue was but also... I've found the cycle lane again now. There were a couple of signs showing how to get around the closed section. Cycle lanes are pretty good in New York. It seems that anything marked as a cycle lane has a better surface than any other bit of road. The George Washington Bridge, the third of today's three great bridges. It was also the world's longest in its day. Apparently, there's a children's story about this bridge and the tiny red lighthouse under its right-hand support. It was something about the lighthouse being worried that it would be no... Wrong way! The underneath. And again. I saw a few of these today. The George Washington Bridge Bus Terminal. Not the prettiest building I've ever seen. A lot of the signs in this area are in Spanish. About to cross the bridge. No wonder it felt small! Bye bye, New York.

New Jersey

That didn't last long, did it? A house with a shrine. Rutherford, where the railway station goes right through the middle of the town. The traffic has to stop when there is a train there and passengers just get off into the middle of the road. The trains around here have funny-sounding horns on them, like the kind of sound effect... Belleville is a real place. I bought a Coke from these guys, my first purchase in America. It is getting very hot now. I remember it always being warm from the two times I've been to America before but it didn't seem likely that the weather would turn like this as soon as I got... After 40 miles of riding, I haven't come far from Manhattan yet. If bikes were allowed through the Holland Tunnel, I could have got here much more directly. Strangely, the so-called 'New York City spur' of the Adventure Cycling Association's Atlantic Coast route doesn't start in New York City at... Here's a pleasant residential area, unlike some of the districts I passed through to get here, which looked a little on the rough side. Rahway is providing everything I need at the moment: somewhere to park the bike, somewhere to sit in the shade and a little shop behind me selling drinks and some slightly odd sweets. The yellow flag represents New Jersey. On last year's trip across Europe, I had entertained the idea of geting a photograph of the national flag in each country but I never got around to taking one of a British flag anywhere. Perhaps I will be able to get a complete... A pretty lake in the Plainfield area. There was a sign near here saying 'skate at own risk'. It must get pretty cold here in the winter. Two issues here. For a start, 25? On this road? From what I've seen so far, American driving is decidedly slow. Secondly though, what is it with putting so much writing on signs? If you just put a red circle round the number, everybody would know it was a speed... The Adventure Cycling Association provides maps of its routes. I've been following the so-called New York City spur. The maps are at a pretty small scale, so that they aren't too heavy to carry, but have a detailed description of every turn you should take. Unfortunately, it said that you... Somerville. There's a bike behind glass in that big concrete frame across the road. Somerville library. Here's my motel. I didn't expect it to be here because Google Earth marks it as being about 400 m away. It's worth knowing if there are going to be errors like that. If I had gone to the marked location and not found it, I might have panicked. I don't think I've stayed in many motels before. It's like a hotel room but the door is on the outside wall, to the right of the picture. I came in, walked through that doorway to where the door would be in a normal hotel and started groping for the... Some parts of this area are more historic than you might expect for America. I think this town, Raritan, dates from the 17th century. Breakfast wasn't very good. It was just some cornflakes with no milk and a doughnut. Not a jam doughnut either, just a toroidal bit of chewy... Raritan's old bridge. Oi, mate! You don't want to stand in there! You'll get your feet wet! Back home, this would probably be considered quite a big river. I chose last night's motel partly because it was close to the point where I would leave the urban sprawl of the New York area and head out into countryside like this. This is a very quiet road with a good surface and nowhere near as much broken glass as... Information signs like this are quite common around here. I've seen photographs of such things in the on-line journals of other cyclists. I don't know if you find them everwhere in the USA. An equestrian crossing. I like it. It seems a funny tern to have coined though when Americans don't really seem to talk about pedestrian crossings, favouring the rather nasty term crosswalks. There's a deer there. It stood in the shade watching me for a couple of minutes, then came out and started eating. I saw a dead one on the road a few minutes ago. I was coming down a hill yesterday and was startled to see a small monster in... I had been warned about these open grate bridges. They are made of a metal latticework. You can look straight through them into the river. It's meant to be quite hard to control a bike on one. This sign suggests getting off and walking. Another river. A farm. Lambertville, where I have stopped to buy additional water and stock up on sweets. Unexpectedly, sweets don't seem very common around here. I had never contemplated the possibility that Haribo might not be have cracked the American market. What sweets there are seem to be either unappetising or in very... This is still Lambertville. There's an old canal running parallel to the old railway, on the other side of those trees. The bridge across the Delaware River to New Hope, Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania

It's another lovely day. Part of a large yard full of school buses. I think the schools are on holiday now. What I've never really understood is what these buses do at times other than the start and end of the school day. I believe that's central Philadelphia in the distance. Malvern! This is the first example I've seen of what I once heard called 'single-storey America', large out-of-town shops and restaurants surrounded by even larger car parks. It has been suggested that Wal-Mart would be a good place to get an American SIM card for my phone. I could do with... 'None shall pass!' 'The Black Knight always triumphs!'. When I first saw one of these signs yestrday, I thought it meant I couldn't go any further down the road. What it actually seems to mean is 'no overtaking'. You know: red circle, red car, black car. It seems that double... This is Lancaster. It seems that I've only ever found myself in Lancaster in England when things have gone wrong and I've been in need of food late at night, a new pair of glasses or something like that. Luckily, I'm only here today because it's on my route. Somebody... I think all licensed radio transmitters in the world might have four-letter call signs like this but strangely, in the USA, not many radio or television stations seem to have bothered thinking up a proper name. This then is WGAL. I think I heard somewhere that thay all begin with... Anybody want any 4th of July fireworks? Oh, how American! I'll be riding on the Lincoln Highway quite a bit over the next few days. This is just before the bridge across the mile-wide Susquehanna River. I knew they used some funny old units of measurement here but what on earth is a bushel? Quarts seem quite common for measuring the size of drinks. More common than pints actually. I was a bit confused looking at a bottle today to see that a quart seemed to... The town of Yorkshire in the county of York. Something seems not quite right there. The town of East Berlin. It doesn't look much like the East Berlin I visited last year. I visited this area once about 11 years ago but can't remember if I went to Gettysburg or not. I recently read the on-line journal of a family called the Vogels who spent about a year travelling round the USA and the north of Mexico on bikes, ending in New... Here's an inspiring sign, at a sawmill. Signs like this are everywhere: restaurants, churches, schools, fire stations, car repair places. On school I saw yesterday had obviously decided to go one better and had a huge full-colour matrix display board embedded in their perimeter wall. It was flashing messages like... There was some heavy rain a little while ago. Luckily, it's just one of the scattered showers that was forecast and the air is warm enough for me to dry off almost straight away afterwards. The rain was quite refreshing actually, except initially when it washed the salt off my... This is pretty, isn't it? This stream is known as the Falling Spring Branch. I will be following it for the last few kilometres to my hotel on the outskirts of Chambersburg. These green signs mark the cycle route I'm following. One of several routes marked out by the Pennsylvania Department of Transport, Route S runs pretty much along the southern edge of the state. I joined it shortly after crossing over from New Jersey and have been following it ever since.... Dinner. In my experience, European hotels are never very keen on guests eating in their rooms. Some expressly forbid it. If I want to do my own shopping and eat it in the hotel, I normally feel I have to smuggle it in in a bag and get the rubbish... Central Chambersburg. A marker for the Lincoln Highway in Fort Loudon. The cycle route has been off and on the Lincoln Highway since yesterday. A this point, the modern route 30, which also coincides largely with the Highway in this area, has just peeled off in a different direction and straight into... I'm going to have to cross that ridge. An extensive, and currently unused, picnic area at Cowans Gap. The 170 metre climb wasn't as hard as I had feared, which is just as well as there are some bigger climbs to come. Admittedly, there are hills this height around where I live but I wouldn't normally climb them... A bathing area on Cowans Gap Lake. The weather here is mild enough that swimming in a lake would probably be quite enjoyable. Incidentally, in case anybody has been waiting for it, here is the flag of Pennsylvania. Looks quite like the flag of New York really, doesn't it? Most... A bridge on the Pennsylvania Turnpike is being replaced here. When the Vogels passed through in the other direction on the 25th of May, there was a huge pile of rubble blocking the road. Rather than take the six-mile detour recommended for motorists, they carried their bikes and luggage over... Possile. Actually, this sign was flashing up different messages so quickly that I didn't notice the mistake until the about the fourth time it appeared. The cutting is for the Turnpike, which doesn't quite have to climb to my current 600 metre altitude. I'm fairly sure this is the highest... The descent down that hill in the background was another fun one. This is Breezewood. It's not a large town; you can see pretty much all of it in this picture. It has no shortage of restaurants and motels though. It's really just a large motorway service area where Interstate... They really will fly a flag from anything, won't they? Bridges on the approach to Bedford. The river here is known as the Raystown Branch. Bedford. I think the Lonely Planet guide said that Washington's presence here made this the captial of the USA for that one night. I haven't brought the guide with me this year; it's a bit big and is almost entirely about places I won't be visiting. I've got my computer... Bedford. More of Bedford. Bedford is the first of this trip's towns which I know I've visited before. The only thing about it which I can remenber from last time though is the Moose Lodge. It took a few minutes to find it again just now. I hadn't seen many benches until today so I grabbed the opportunity to have a rest on this one for a while. There turned out to be quite a few of them next to today's roads. The altitude is now just over 800 metres. I'm afraid I got off and walked part of the way up here. What's this? A speed camera? If it is, it's very small. Perhaps it's the 'electrical mechanical device' which drivers were warned of on a sign a couple of days ago. I've seen enough on-line photo journals now to recognise that this is how American road signs indicate a downward hill. Sorry to keep banging on about their non-compliance with what I think is known as the Vienna convention but why would you indicate a downward hill using a picture of... Another roller coaster of a road. Those are the first wind turbines I've seen on this trip. I wish it was the front of them I was seeing. There is a definite headwind now and what I was saying the other day about the downhills seeming longer than the uphills... The road down into the town of Somerset. This view reminds me of my approach to Sturovo in Slovakia two years ago. Those police cars aren't waiting to turn left by the way; they're just parked their with their lights flashing. There are a couple of others loitering around the... It may be warm but it's not 55 degrees. Ooh! Solar grave crosses! Can I have one? Incidentally, the Flight 93 mentioned here was one of a series of airliners hijacked a few years ago. Three of them were used to destroy high-profile buildings in New York and Washington DC and received a lot of media interest at the... More of Somerset. Sorry about the overhanging wires but they are everywhere in every town. They make a real mess of the place. Birdhouse. A drive-through bank! What will they think of next? I've just realised the significance of that big hill I crossed earlier, near a village called Dividing Ridge. Before it, I had been in the drainage basins of rivers which run down to the east coast. This however is a stream called East Branch. It flows into Coxes Creek, which... Inside the Opera House at Rockwood, where I am enjoying some ice cream and a slice of pie. I opted for the 'Rockwood' flavour, which allegedly represents the town, although I'm not sure how. I don't think I would have chosen it if it had been given any other name.... Rockwood Opera House. A trailhead on the rail trail, ie disused railway, which will form the next 140 km of my route. To be honest, it was probably a bit excessive to have built two railway lines along this valley in the first place. The other one is still operating. A natural water feature beside the rail trail. This bench has been placed here for people to admire the shady babbling stream coming down the side of the valley. It is very beautiful along here. Fellow users of the trail. More scenery. The river does a looping meander here. The railway originally crossed it on this bridge, went through that tunnel and then straight back across the river again on another bridge. Having crossed the bridge, the cycle path deviates from the railway's original route though and follows the river instead. The inside of the boarded-up tunnel. It reminds me of that scene in one of the Thomas the Tank Engine books where one of the trains gets bricked up inside a tunnel because it refuses to go out in the rain. It's a shame we can't ride through here. I... This is now the Casselman River. Wonderful route, this. No hills to deal with at all. For a while earlier, I did have the sensation of gradually gaining height although I knew I was going too fast for that to be possible. I think what was happening was that the river next to me was going... I've seen a photograph of this before. Confluence, my destination town for tonight. The Casselman, Youghiogheny and Lauel Hill Creek all combine here. Baseball at Confluence. I'm staying in a little bed and breakfast place tonight. There had been some slight confusion with my reservation because initially it had been booked for the wrong day so I was a little alarmed when I got here and saw that the place didn't look open. The screen door... Stabling for the bike. The Confluence House. This house used to belong to the town's doctor. Apparently it was rather run down when the current owners found it but they renovated it and filled it with a load of furniture they had somehow acquired over the years. The Confluence House again. There are five other guests here. One couple are driving around the area and are off to Fallingwater today. The other three are a family from Pittsburgh, of whom the father and 13-year-old son are cycling the rail trail to Cumberland in Maryland, in the opposite... The Confluence House. A couple with a tandem. There seems to be some kind of bike event on at the moment. She's reading the information about it there. I didn't read it myself. That's their bike in the distance. It's a Cannondale. they are made in Bedford county, where I was a couple... Ohiopyle. Popular with cyclists. I hope those babies enjoy their ride. I like these bridges. This valley is popular with canoeists and rafters as well as with cyclists. A good sweeping corner cutting through the rocks. At times, it rather feels like being in a train. The famous Frank Lloyd Wright house 'Fallingwater' is about a kilometre from here, up a stream called Bear Run on the other side of the river. A type of bird I don't recognise. Electrical stuff. The cycle lane through Connellsville. Connellsville park, with a bike and a big inflatable raft. That's not the Washington I'm going to, which caused some confsion when we were discussing routes over breakfast this morning. Barges of coal on the Monongahela. Some of the information boards along the rail trail said that the Youghiogheny valley was a big mining centre and the coal was transported down the river to the steel mills in Pittsburgh. I heard some explosions along the valley, which were probably mining-related.... Look at this petrol station. Not only is there a burger bar in the shop but you seem to be able to order your food from a screen next to the pumps. There's also a pump in front of the shop for people who have come here and forgotten to... This was lunch. Apparently, the restaurant offered free wireless Internet access. The railway and the Pennsylvania Turnpike both soaring high above me. The railway bridge looks typically American whereas the motorway bridge struck me as having more of a French appearance. Sorry about the quality of the picture by the way. My camera has stopped working so I've had to resort... All this Americana is quite useful really. Without going more than a few hundred metres from my motel, I could reach a Wendy's for Dinner, a Denny's for breakfast and a petrol station where I stocked up on sweets and bought some maps of the region which I will be... It seems you don't have to have done much to be commemorated with one of these tourist signs. This one says that William Holmes McGuffey wrote some school textbooks around here. I saw on on Friday which was about somebody who had once moved into the area and set up...

West Virginia

I'm now on Highway 40, known as the National Road. It claims to be the oldest long-distance road in the USA. It was begun in 1811, about the same time as Thomas Telford's road to Holyhead through Snowdonia. Highway 40 now runs alongside I-70, which is why it doesn't get much traffic. I like that arrangement except that where the two roads are right next to each other, the constant traffic noise from the Interstate means that I can't tell when something is approaching me from behind on... The old bridge carrying the National Road across the Ohio River. Actually, this bridge only goes to a large island in the river but the bridge from there to the Ohio shore isn't as impressive. It's a funny shape! The new bridge, used by the Interstate. I'm afraid I never saw a West Virginian flag. I did look for one.

Ohio

Is this a raccoon? It's not one of those groundhogs I've been seeing. Also, was it smoking when it died? St. Clairsville, featuring an Ohio flag. It's not even rectangular. I'm optimistic that these hills are going to end soon. St. Clairsville. Some of the house numbers around here are absurd. These mailboxes are numbered 68389 to 68399. I think the hills are starting to subside at last. This looks like a very little-used road. Highway 40 gets subsumed into the Interstate for a while so I decided to take a detour of some 15 km along here. I didn't expect the road to be made of gravel though and was a little reluctant to venture onto it... I'm now at a junction of three roads with no signs. It's not marked on my paper map so I'm having to resort to Google Earth. I'm about to learn to treat Ohio like Romania and never touch the little roads. I spent an hour and a half on roads... 'Ye who enter here abandon all hope', it says. Good advice. Excessive, do you think? Barnesville, which has machines selling some of the cheapest cans of drink I have seen for a long time. Some of them are less than 20p. Normally, drinks are a dollar from these machines. I was unable to use them for a couple of days because I didn't have any... This is one of those things which I've been calling groundhogs. I would see loads of them in Cambridge later this evening, although they would all disappear down holes when they saw me coming. A few deer went bouncing along in front of me while I was lost on those... Approaching the town of Quaker City, I passed this horse-drawn buggy going the other way. I didn't photograph any of the Amish ones in Pennsylvania because I believe they don't like it. I assumed that the people in this one probably don't live by the same standards though because there... Another plethora of hotels, this time on the edge of Cambridge, Ohio. I'm staying in the Hampton, which is behind me. I knew when I booked it that it would be up a slight hill but was expecting then that the bike would still have gears. I had to walk... It's quite a posh room, but then I am paying about twice as much as I have for the last few nights. I'll be in another Hampton tomorrow, which is the last of the acommodation I booked before leaving home. I suppose I should think about booking the next few... For the first couple of nights, I assumed it was just a sign that I was in incredibly dodgy motels which had somehow avoided ever being inspected, but it really does look like it's acceptable in America to have a light switch in the bathroom. Perhaps the electricity here is... This is what we want! About half of today's ride on route 40 was like this. I think the writing is meant to say A sweet factory. Appetising-looking sweets are still proving elusive. I've brought two bars of chocolate with me today and they are already both completely floppy, like bags of water. Surely people must have noticed by now that chocolate doesn't work here. The Y-bridge in Zanesville. The Licking River meets the Muskingum here and roads from all three pieces of land meet above the confluence. Railway stuff in Zanesville. The small hills stuck around for a little longer than I had expected but they really will end in a few miles. I've managed to repair the gears, by the way. I took the gear lever apart and found a little bit of metal stuck inside so I removed it.... Not water, it's a mirage. I only passed through a couple of towns today and, unlike yesterday, didn't keep seeing signs showing the temperature. Yesterday, they started at about 28°, rose to about 33° by the late afternoon and then started to subside. The only ones I would see today... I think I'm finally down onto the flat prairie now. Look, here's a little house. This will be the new scenery. The Ohio Department of Agriculture. Any takers? Columbus, state capital of Ohio. Art, probably. A prayer garden. Columbus. Columbus. I came here in 1996. Absolutely nothing looks familiar though. Google time again. Something to do with education. A placemark on Google Earth reckoned that the original Wendy's restaurant opened here and that it was still here. I can't see it. These people have all been teachers in Ohio. The Ohio Statehouse. The enormous blocky building is the Supreme Court of Ohio. The Church of Scientology. The Planters Peanuts shop. That's quite a cool paint advert. I like the way it covers a large part of the car park, including three cars and the bottom of the ticket office. Somebody must have had to re-paint the parking spaces on top of it. Buses here are impressive. This one is demonstrating the wheelchair access ramp which can be deployed automatically. They also have a rack on the front for carrying bikes. Here's a pretty place to leave the bike. I hope it's happy here overnight. The view from my room. On previous trips, I have a lways liked it when I get a room with a big window which can swing fully open. I don't think there's much chance of that in this world of air-conditioning though. <br><br>I went to a nice bar a coupe... When I left the hotel, the sky was very dark and threatening to rain and there was an incredible wind. As far as I could tell between all the buildings, it seemed to be coming from the west. Pretty soon, the wind stopped but the rain started. I took shelter... Another farm. Do you think a four-lane highway is really necessary here? It's amazing how suddenly the traffic disappears when you leave a city. Interstate 70, which follows the same route as highway 40 for several days of my ride, is about 1800 metres to the right here. It also has four... Highway 40 now by-passes this village. This is the old road through the centre. It's a ranch! Not a farm, a ranch! Corn painted on the road. I don't know why. A load of old junk. Is it a trick of the light or is that caravan in the middle about big enough for a dog? I wouldn't expect to see blackberries in July. I was about to eat a couple but remembered some of the funny animals I've been seeing and worried that perhaps these weren't what I thought they were. I passed a deer standing in the middle of the road in a built-up... A drive-through cinema. I believe there's one of these in the Salisbury area somewhere. Benny Twophones. I finally got around to trying to buy an American pay-as-you-go SIM card. The shop didn't sell SIMs on their own but did sell me a phone for £10! I'm going to go and use that drive-through bank on the left next. Not long after I left the shops, it started to threaten rain again. I'm not exactly sure how much further I've got to go because the bike computer is talking nonsense, I haven't managed to find a paper map and I'm not getting Google Earth out in this weather. After... The view from the motel. The rain only lasted for about ah hour so I almost certainly would have been able to reach my intended motel if I had waited. It wasn't quite as far away as I had feared and, since my previous two trips have been in an... Enjoying a ribeye steak in the Buckeye State. It's a bit huge. There was meant to be a salad with it but the waitress got fed up of waiting and brought that out before my snails. Near Dayton, the normally straight highway 40 makes two detours. I had thought that it had been diverted to make way for the airport but they actually seem to go around areas of woodland like this, the Five Rivers Metropark. There must be loads of Crossroads Motels but the name still makes me laugh. Englewood Dam. I opted for the path along the bottom of the dam, even though there's nothing wrong with the road along the top. It's prettier this way. The Future Energy and Conservation Centre. I've turned round to look at it, which is why we can see the fronts of the turbines. Unfortunately, the wind is still against me, for the sixth day in a row. The forecast for the next few days doesn't show any change. Various... Lewisburg. That pink car looks like a bit of a classic. Apart from the unusual animals, one of the ways in which this area seems more foreign than those of my previous rides is the cars. The majority of vehicles here are of makes which you very rarely find in... You might just be able to make out the blue 'Indiana' sign up ahead near the bridge. The building on the left is a large fireworks shop. It's proximity to the border, along with the fact that it is the first of several I will see over the next couple...

Indiana

The rather pleasant centre of Richmond. Enjoying a lovely cool raspberry ice-cream from a van just up the road. The wonam working there was asking where I was going. She seemed more confident than me that I would reach Indianapolis today. I think she gave me three scoops for the price of two as well. Sunny Richmond, Indiana. I wasn't expecting to find a lively swimming pool like this in a residential area. An array of snowploughs at the Wayne County Highway depot. You would never believe from the current weather thay such things were necessary. The headwind is still at it, of course. It's easy to gauge the wind in the USA because you are usually within sight of a flag. This is how cement mixers look in America: back to front. This one is travelling to the left. I have panicked a couple of times when I have though one was reversing at high speed onto my road. This road is like one big long museum. This is near Knightstown. One of the towns along here has a sign saying that it was where the Democratic Party first used a rooster as its emblem. I can't remember if that was Knightstown though. Come to think of it, I... This structure intrigued me briefly. It looked like some kind of corporate building but had no obvious name. It turned out it was a school. <br><br>Incidentally, I was looking the other night at a photo journal by somebody who had ridded almost the exact same route as me from Washington... The ones on the right have an unusual design. The little markers like the one which says '102' here appear every mile and almost certainly give the distance on this road from the far side of the state. They also appear on bridges with the extra number underneath. It wouldn't be until the next day that I realised this... Greenfield, the last proper town before the built-up area surrounding Indianapolis begins. It's looking like there's a chance I might make it all the way there. I'm confused just by the poster. I think it's the third line I don't really understand. A few minutes ago, I passed a water tower with 'Look up to Jesus' painted on it. I've seen a lot of that kind of thing. Indianapolis Heliport. I thought this was a joke when I first saw it. I had forgotten how many limousines there were swarming around the city last time I was here. I only saw one of those this time but it does seem to be a pretty wealthy place. Here it is, look. Indianapolis. I'm surprised I got this far. 130 miles is the threshold for what I regard as a long ride. Although I have ridden further in a day before, I'm not sure if I've done it into a constant headwind and I certainly haven't done it... A similar view by night. This is the hotel. My room is on the top floor but on the inside so it has no windows. It looks like it used to have skylights but they have been boarded up. It's next door to the heliport too. And I thought last night's trains were noisy! <br><br>At... Downtown Indianapolis. A lot of the manhole covers had steam rising from them. There's one in the middle of this picture. I have a vague feeling that that might have been going on when I was here before. Victory Circle. Here comes one of the horse-drawn carriages which were trunding around the streets. All the best-looking cities seem to have these: Indianapolis, New York, Bruges. Vienna has them too. Victory Circle. And again. One of several art installations around the city centre. Last time I was in Indianapolis, I stayed here, the Hyatt Regency. I seem to recall the room being about £25. Now they want £120 for one, which is why I'm not in here tonight. The blue bit at the top is the Eagle's Nest, a revolving restaurant. It's probably... This animation of a woman swinging her hips is another of the art installations. There's a similar one of a man walking. Interesting that 'centre' is spelled properly up there. I feel like I've walked into somewhere from a film now. This is a place called Steak & Shake, of which there are a few in Indianapolis. It's still thriving at the moment. I don't know what time it closes. Perhaps it doesn't. Unfortunately, I didn't manage to get a... They have Megabuses here! This one says it goes from St. Louis to Chicago. I don't know how much of that route you get for the advertised $1. Whatever it is, it sounds like even more of a bargain then the British Megabus. Flowers. You may have noticed that I'm not in Indianapolis. A combination of the Internet and the Yellow Pages in my hotel room showed that there were no bike shops anywhere near to highway 40 on the west side of the city. The best-looking ones were all about 12 km... Another Belleville. The ground is starting to get just slightly hilly again. Unexpectedly, the headwind seems absent this morning. I'm making terrific progress. I could be in Terre Haute by 2 o'clock. Even a bike shop wouldn't close earlier than that, would it? Brazil, Indiana. There's the Indiana flag. Also the home of Fat Bikes. I slowed down slightly towards the end of the ride. After about 40 miles, I got a puncture. By the time I had repaired it, the headwind had come back. The ground got a bit hillier too. Then I got another puncture. Both tyres... In Komarno in Slovakia, they had built a hotel into the unused space under a stand like this. I spent the night there. Here it is, Fat Bikes, which... wait for it... shuts at two o'clock on Thursdays. It obviously is a worldwide tradition amongst bike shops to be of no use whatsoever. From what I saw through the window, it seemed to be stocked with all sorts of useful stuff. My bike... Sundsvall had strangely-painted dragons all over the place. Bratislava and Budapest each had cows. In Terre Haute, it's small horses. More horses. According to the sign, this junction, the intersection of routes 40 and 41, was known as 'the crossroads of America'. The man from Fat Bikes gets to work on mine. He started repairing the faults which I knew of, then proceeded to find even more. There was period when he though I had some strange European size of tyre which you couldn't get in America but it turned out that... On a whim, I decided to follow the old National Road (highway 40) through a village here instead of using the by-pass. There's no real reason for doing so; with the interstate so close by, it's only traffic going to the local villages that ever uses highway 40 so the...

Illinois

'Ye Olde Glass Shoppe' on the right there. It replaces windscreens! Also, note the fire station here. Fire stations seem very prominent in pretty much every town. They are often smarter-looking than this was, have banners advertising events such as quiz nights and generally seem to be an integral part... I thought we might have had the flag of Illinois on the right here but that's not it. What we do have, unexpectedly, is the flag of Norway. I'm not sure what the large structure is. Something to do with processing limestone perhaps. There was a lot of that about... Covered bridges are something I remember from my 1996 visit to Pennsylvania. I was disappointed not to get to ride through any, or even see any, this year. All I saw was a couple of signs pointing the way to some. I don't get to ride through this one either.... A very quiet, by-passed section of the old road. I think I may have lost my map here. It's lucky I've got Google as a back-up. This is what we want! This is the Cumberland County bridge on the Embarras River. It's a reconstruction of the original bridge, which was built in 1830. A display board nearby shows how unlike the original it looks. I also think the diaplay could have done with a little more... Here's something I associate with westerns: towns which proclaim their population. this is the first one I've noticed. The stripey sign is one of the ones for the old National Road. That's what I'm following. There's a very long train going past here. The engine is already out of sight behind those two trees on the left. It was running very smoothly. I couldn't hear anything at all from the trucks once the engines were out of earshot. There are several companies in the St. Elmo area which make drilling equipment. I saw a few of these pumps operating. The mid-west. There aren't many photographs today. That's partly because the bike was running so well that I didn't want to stop it, partly because writing all this rubbish takes so long that I never get a good night's sleep, but mainly because there's not a lot to see here.... Many of the towns have signs at the entrances honouring individuals or teams who have had some success in the last few years, normally of a sporting nature. This one does seem to be pushing things a bit though. As I passed a bank earlier, the big matrix display board... Ever since Chambersburg, I've liked the idea of having another pizza in my room. It would save time because I could eat it while writing all this and is definitely not a problem for the hotels. Some of the room key cards have featured delivery pizza adverts with the slogan... Inside Wal-Mart. I came in here to find some new plastic bags and a replacement map, although these strawberries look tempting too. It's a big place. It looks like they sell pretty much everything. There didn't seem to be any maps in the books section but an assistant eventually told... My road on the right, the interstate on the left. It goes on like this for miles. Unfortunately, the headwind is back and this time it seems to be personal. A rather abrupt railway crossing. This is where we leave the National Road, or perhaps it's leaving us. Don't worry though; there will be an even more well-known road along soon. By the way, this is a village called Pocahontas. Named after the film, probably. More typical Mid-west scenery. It's getting warm again. Another closed road. 'It's really closed. Bridge is out' says the sign on the left. Fortunately, there are alternative roads nearby. This is what we've been waiting for. The classic long distance road. The Mother Road. 8.124038... A leafy part of Edwardsville. Here's a good one. A sign used to denote a cycle route: 'no cycling'! The visitor centre at the Lewis & Clark Memorial Park. Lewis & Clark were the leaders of the first overland expedition across North America and back, in 1804-1806. There are some good cycle paths in both the Illinois and Missouri parts of the St. Louis area and this visitor centre... Route 66 again. The federal road number for route 66 was withdrawn long ago, although parts of it are now numbered 66 by their respective states. I've seen several websites saying that the route 66 name no longer appears on any maps or signs. I've got some maps which mark... The Chain of Rocks Bridge. I've been looking forward to this. It carried route 66 across the Mississippi from 1936 to 1955, or 1965 or 1967, depending on which account you read. The view from the bridge. The weir is a rock-fill dam. The two buildings are intakes for the city's water supply, located in the cleanest, fastest-moving part of the river. Seven states down. Seven to go. Up ahead is the dangerous 22 degree bend which was the reason why the bridge needed to be replaced. Nowadays it's only open to pedestrians and cyclists.

Missouri

One of the water intakes, with central St. Louis in the distance. Downtown St. Louis. The 192 metre tall 'Gateway to the West' arch, in a park on the bank of the river, is on the left. I didn't know if I would be able to see it from here. It seems strange, given that it's meant to be a gateway, that... A police car parked outside a petrol station in Riverside, Missouri. I wonder what the Toughbook is used for. The policeman was gone for ages, probably getting doughnuts or something. If I had known, I would have had a better look. My route passed the end of the airport near here. The next incoming plane passed directly overhead at a very low height. St. Louis Airport. I should give up trying to photograph flags really. This one is completely unrecognisable. Interesting building though. The pool area in my hotel. I'm glad to be here. Today's ride took longer than I had expected. Sadly, the attached restaurant had no frozen custard on the menu. It did have shark though. Creve Coeur Lake in St. Louis. Apparently there are various native legends relating to it. One of the pedestrian and cycle paths in the Creve Coeur area. It's a skate path too. Above us is the expressway heading for the Page Bridge. A roundabout! You don't get many of those around here. The cyclists all seem to know how to use it though. Actually, everybody was staying in lane and overtaking very well on these paths, even the pedestrians. <br><br>I have to say that drivers in America are all very polite. I... Here's the expressway again. The cycle path joins it for the bridge across the Missouri River. The Missouri. I was surprised at the number of cyclists in this area. Perhaps they are just out for a ride because it's a sunny Sunday morning. Given the number of churches you see everywhere, I'm surprised there's anybody left on the streets at this time. <br><br>It looks like the nearest frozen... The bloke with the baby from the previous picture has done what I'm about to do: looped down from the bridge to join the Katy Trail. Nice house. A pleasant little wooded area sandwiched between the trail and the riverbank. The Katy is another rail trail. It's name is a corruption of K-T, short for M-K-T, which is short for the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad. I can't help thinking that that in turn must have been short for a longer list of states since Texas isn't contiguous with the other two. <br><br>Presumably,... The bridge across Femme Osage Creek. According to the information board, and I don't know how this can happen, nobody knows who built it. Lots of motorbikes out today. They can't use the rail trail though. This is a popular rest stop where the road meets the Katy Trail. I noticed today that some of the bars and restaurants I passed were calling themselves saloons. Perhaps they've been like that all the way from... That looks like a happy barn. This region of the Missouri valley is known as Rheinland because it attracted a lot of German settlers and contains many vineyards. I can see another similarity with Germany: the cycle path is made of a powdery white dust which gets everywhere. Anywhere else, the counties give their minor roads numbers. In Missouri, they give them letters. This is a better picture of the Missouri flag than the one I took yesterday. The other good thing about it is that it shows I have a bit of a tailwind. My route 66 map tells me that the Meramec Caverns, which contain a restaurant and shops and are also known as Jesse James' Hideout, were the most popular tourist attraction along the route. There seemed to be hundreds of adverts like this for them. I don't know what the Beatles... Which one is the real 66? It doesn't really matter; they all go to the same place. Very few people going about their normal business seem to use the outer roads, just people who are out having fun like me and several groups of motorbikers. A large Finnish group overtook... Nothing special really. Just a restaurant with a waterwheel. All the books and websites which say that route 66 has been virtually forgotten are clearly talking rubbish. Every business along the road is milking its route 66 connection and the shield design appears on everything. Here, somebody has neatly combined it with another local obsession. I would say the route was very much alive and kicking. Hello? I've never had a hotel room like this before. I can't really comprehend the circumstances in which you would want a room like this. There's a hydraulic mechanism behind the bed which folds it into the wall. Haven't I seen something like that in the Meaning of Life? This is the Drury Hotel in Rolla. I didn't bother booking it since there are loads of hotels in every town along I-44, and motels in the gaps between towns. There's a motel across the road which appears to be offering rooms from £10. I was drawn to this one... There used to be a motorway running through here. Google's aerial photograph shows traffic still using it while the new alignment was constructed. Parts of route 66 were re-aligned several times but here the replacement interstate has been too. Somewhere in the process, all the bicycle-accessible incarnations have been lost... A gravel road. It was somewhere along here that I was startled by a 'woof' from the undergrowth and two dogs jumped out and started chasing me. They were the first of many dogs to chase me today, the only previous one on this trip having been back in Pennsylvania.... A dodgy-looking bridge over a delightful little stream. Some cars did used it. I've just been surprised by another dog, by the way. A four-lane section of the old road, on the way to a bridge known as the Devil's Elbow. There are no businesses along this stretch so it gets very little traffic. The road surface here is terrible. It's made up of big concrete slabs. Most of them have cracked, they... It seems some people don't approve of all of the roadside businesses. I couldn't help noticing during the day that an awful lot of roads, businesses, sports teams and geographical features are starting to have the word 'bear' in their names. I don't know if this is something I should be concerned about. Looking back, it started this morning when I went... Cloud. Pretty. Today took a lot longer than I had imagained. It was very hard work. I've changed my mind about those hills; I don't like them at all. Having a whole day of those really drains your energy, especially when the air is hot and humid and you keep getting chased... This petrol station in Ash Grove has under its canopy, on opposite sides of the shop entrance, two benches which look like they've been blasted out of a huge piece of stone. The other one is labeled 'Democrats'. I didn't know which I was but luckily nobody tried to engage... The rather attractive Turnback Creek. 'But I don't want to turn back now!' It seems you have to say that here. I think it must be in the TransAm rules. This yellow string ran along the side of the road for miles. My only thought was that it was an optical fibre for something. I didn't like to examine it too closely for fear that I maight break it. If that's what it is, it seems very exposed to being... Another classic TransAmerica photo: the junction of roads A and Z. Some people are easily amused. What's of more interest to me is the landscape. It's flattened out. As I was pushing the bike up the last big hill, an old chap in a pickup pulled up to give me... Need any farming equipment? Here's one of many giant irrigating machines which cover the prairie. Somewhere in the distance is the central focus where the water comes in. This huge arm trundles around it. When I first saw the aerial photographs of the cirles of lush crops which these devices produce, I didn't believe... I think I've been in America too long: when I first saw this thermometer, I read the temperature as 97 rather than 36. This is on the supermarket in Golden City, where I bought some nice nectarines and some rotten strawberries, as well as replacement drinks, of course. One of... Golden City. Behind me, the road continues in a straight ine to the Kansas border, 29 miles away. It's a Cyclist! This is Joel or Josh or something. He's from the west coast and is cycling the full TransAmerica from Oregon to Virginia. He was talking a bit about the route behind him and told me something I have heard mentioned before but never really believed: apparently, there... Reindeer? Moose? I haven't been chased by any dogs today; they just watched and some of them woofed. The only animals which seemed to make a real fuss about my presence were two baby goats which I passed several hours apart. <br><br>I had to stop for a peacock in the...

Kansas

My motel in Pittsburg, Kansas. The receptionist seemed insistent on me bringing my bike into my room even though it is upstairs and there are loads of other bikes just over there. While it was in there, I noticed that in a couple of places, there are gaps in the... The whole of Kansas seems to be covered in a huge grid in units of one tenth of a mile. Typically, there is some kind of road along every tenth grid line. Luckily, the cycle route is staying on the surfaced roads. The grid system makes navigation so easy that... Girard. Population 2773. Storage tanks at the petrol station in Walnut. I've seen these photographed before. Oh good. Again. Broasted? That's never a word. The town of Chanute was named after Octave Chanute, who advised the Wright brothers and provided publicity for them. This is a giant mobile and its propellers are going wild in the wind. <br><br>I've had enough of fighting the wind. Today's route has been virtually flat but has felt like... I know someone called S Plummer! It's a shame the 'S' of 'S Plummer Ave' here has been shrunk to make way for that aeroplane. Sunflowers are the symbol of Kansas. I saw one, small but perfectly formed, growing by the roadside about 30 km before I entered the state. These are the first I've seen since. In the distance on the right is a 'nodding donkey' extracting oil from the ground. I've seen more... Apparently, Kansas is famous for having stone fence posts instead of wooden ones because a large part of the state has no trees. That doesn't really explain why in this region, where there are trees, all the stones have been collected into neat piles and used to mark out the... This field contained a few bits of road like this. It looks like roads get dumped here when they aren't needed anywhere else! Coyville. Population 71. I think there are only three towns in Wilson county. Now 'onto Toronto pronto, Tonto', as the Lone Ranger once said in a bad joke. A rare hill. The brown sign says that an area called Holiday Hill is off to the left. That sounds like a funny place for a prison. Cross Timbers State Park. I've got some more good sweets here. The scarcity of them must just have been a north-eastern phenomenon. Cement mixers are the normal way around now too. <br><br>I suppose I should have known I would find lemon drops here; they obviously had them in Kansas in... I don't think the reservoir is meant to be this deep. I had heard that there had been some problems with flooding around here. The receptionist in Pittsburg was saying yesterday morning that a lot of peoples' homes had been affected. That was just before she said how hers had... Toronto, with the kind of main street that makes you want to have a gunfight. The Country Junction shop and restaurant, better known as Lizard Lips. It's well-known with cyclists. There was even a guestbook for me to sign. Sadly, I forgot to take my camera to the toilet with me so you don't get to see the signs saying 'Hizards' and 'Herzards'. It's funny... The view from Lizard Lips is a bit bleak. It makes me feel I'm at a windswept beach. The wind seems a little more intermittent than yesterday. Then again, perhaps I'm just suffering from it less because today's route concentrates a little more on going north than yesterday's and a... I had wondered why the hotel which I have reserved for tonight was called Blue Stem Lodge. An information board next to the road says that this area is the Blue Stem Grassland, an area of 4.5 million acres on which a million head of beef cattle are fattened up... A lot of the cows seem to enjoy standing in lakes. Some hay on the move. A nice-looking house. I have just met two Swedish cyclists going the other way. They brought more good news. Apparently, the heat is more bearable to the west of the Rockies than here because the air there is drier. I'm looking forward to that now. I'm getting bored of Kansas... Eureka. There's nothing special here. I just liked the evening colours. It's not a large town. I'm on the main street here but this road seems to lead straight out into the country. More beef grazing ground. Cassoday! One of two trains which came through Cassoday. They were both very long and pretty slow. I saw the first one trundling through the town when I was about a mile away but it had only just cleared the crossing by the time I got there. They make quite a... These cows were in the stream but didn't seem to want to be photographed there. I was a bit puzzled about why large groups of cows were huddling together like penguins in the blazing sun. I could understand the ones which were huddling under trees but most of them were... It seems that I somehow lost my Adventure Cycling Association map in Cassoday. It doesn't really matter though. I can remember this part. It's 38 miles in a straight line. <br><br>Incidentally, although I've come some 2620 km to get here, I'm now 1984 km as the crow flies from the... Interesting shape for a house. In the absence of the Adventure Cycling Association's map, I've had to resort to Google Earth again, along with a paper map of Kansas at a scale of about 1:700000 which I just picked up at a petrol station. My destination for tonight is Hutchinson, which is slightly off the... I don't know why seeing a school bus in a car wash amused me. It wasn't as funny as the dustbin lorry which I saw in a car wash on a trip across the Netherlands. Yoder's Ornamental Concrete. That's what it is. On the left is highway 50, a good, straight, very flat road with one lane each way for traffic and equally wide shoulders for me. I passed a group of three heavily-laden cyclists going the other way, which surprised me as this isn't... A house flying the flag of Kansas. I like the silhouette of a cowboy leaning against the tree. Something similar in Newton depicted a dog trying to reach a cat sitting in the tree. This is reputed to be the longest grain elevator in the USA, about 800 metres in length. It's obviously not big enough for the town of Hutchinson, which also has these ones and more. Talking on the IP phone. What a great system! The quality wasn't absolutely perfect but you can't complain when you get two 10-minute transatlantic phone calls for 20p. 'Welcome to your outdoor adventure' said an unexpected goodie bag in my room. It was full of beauty products, plus one small chocolate bar which I ate. I like the warning 'may contain non-food items'. The prevailing wind around here is from the south, as borne out by the tree under which Bikey will be spending the night. There's another drive through bank on the right. Now I'm off to see if any of these large buildings is a supermarket. <br><br>I was amazed how early... Ah, there's no place like home. This state must be known for something else. It turns out that 'Target', two doors away from my hotel, is a hypermarket. I found everything I needed and, in the process, saw a lot of things I didn't need. These radios interested me. There are some very modern-looking designs on the middle shelf there but they're all analogue.... The Hutchinson Cosmosphere. Apparently, they just asked NASA if they had any old rockets they didn't need, and got given this one, another one which is now on the other side of the building, and a load of other stuff. I think they scrounged some off the Russians after that.... Really? A bike shop not being open? Who would have thought it? Actually, the place doesn't usually open on Sundays and another sign on the door says that it normally opens at 2 o'clock, which I'm pretty sure wasn't what it said on the website, so this sign could have... The Arkansas River. This won't be the last time we see this. Scenery typical of the region. I was expecting this. A few minutes ago, I had barely aligned myself onto this road, which the cycle route is meant to follow in a straight line for 75 km, when I spotted a cyclist coming the other way. He said that he had had to scramble under two... One of the college buildings in a place called Sterling. The town of Lyons, featuring an unusual collection of non-American flags. I wonder why they're there. Lyons again. The state flag is showing a bit of a headwind just now. A moment ago it was a tailwind. I've had both, of varying strengths. It doesn't seem to be able to make up its mind. I've stopped worrying about those predictions of thunderstorms now. It seems that... This is in a place called Ellinwood. Sadly, as I'll be off the proper TransAmerica route for most of the day, I won't get to see some of the expected sights, such as the unicyclist mailbox. That beats third place at Miss Illinois County Fair! This is at the entrance to a town called Great Bend, situated on a bend in the Arkansas River. I'm making good progress now. I thought I would because the wind seemed to settle down to blowing from the south and for a few hours now I'm generally heading slightly north of west. It's lucky that the going is as easy as I had hoped because I rather recklessly... One of several similar railway bridges along the route. Another of those irrigators. On the left is the town of Alexander, with a population of about 80. On the right is the visitor centre. The information board doesn't say much but I welcomed the rather smart building containing toilets and a water fountain. I think I'm in a good mood now: I was... All day, there seems to have been some kind of competition going on to see who can transport the biggest and least aerodynamic load eastwards along this road. They really suck you backwards when they pass. It's funny how none of them seem to be going my way. Here's one of those stone fence posts. Apparently, Rush Center, a few miles back, has a barbed wire museum. I didn't stop there though as it's said that people in Rush Center don't like cyclists. That's strange because everybody else seems very friendly. I had forgotten about this landmark. Elaine's Bicycle Oasis in Bazine, which offers accommodation for cyclists. I had thought of staying here but reckoned I could reach Ness City. I'm quite happy to carry on riging; it's a lovely evening and the air is cooling down now. I'm not sure which of these buildings is the... Flat, isn't it? It's hard to believe that I'm now 670 metres above sea level. It's the graffiti barn! I agree with others who have passed this way that this barn does seem to have the only graffiti in the whole of Kansas. New ones must be added frequently too as it looks different in every photograph. A train, grain elevators and a cattle lorry, all typical sights in this area. These ones are round the back of my motel. The cattle trucks create a lot of wind. I think the cage-like structure must have a high drag coefficient. <br><br>Sadly, it's too late for pizza. The inside of the Derrick Inn. I don't know what it used to be but it's a bit of a funny motel. There's a pool and jaccuzi at the far end of this room. Each downstairs bedroom has a door into this atrium and a door into the car park.... I don't know why there's a telephone in the bathroom. Perhaps I should have used it. My mobiles still don't work. You also get all this for free. The window between my room and the atrium is smashed in one place too. Perhaps the owner of a bike shop once stayed here. At first, this looked like a graveyard, apart from the smiley face. It actually seems to be the display of a stonework company. The Ness County Bank building, known as the 'skyscraper of the plains'. Ness City is another of those small towns. I'm standing at the central crossroads now. All the streets are this wide though. I assume this artwork is meant to be visible from the road. Perhaps it is when the grass is shorter. This could be the biggest yet. The going seems very hard today. Flags and the occasional thing blowing across the road show that it's coming directly from my left side but it seems to be making everything very hard work.