Moss Side: Reflections on my second rec tour
After breakfast, having been given a break from the kids, (thanks love) i set off on my pushbike to find a good route out of Manchester. A guy who turned up on Facebook, Ian, had amazingly enough taken his time to plot a route for me, so I stuck to that. I cycled to Cheadle and turned around. About 16 km.s all together and I realized a lot during these 2 hours. First of all, I found out when meeting a possible partner the other day, that free camping is not allowed in England. This will make things a bit more complicated of course. Secondly, I realized I am out of shape. As usual, so it will take some time to get rid off the beer belly and get into shape. So, that means shorter days, shorter distances initially. Thirdly, I have realized the last week that Sardana is just incredibly active and demanding right now, so I see a few obstacles coming up….tomorrow we will start raining together, even though the proper stroller hasn´t arrived yet. But much other stuff have. And yesterday a great Moss Sider, Ness, we tried out a drone to see if it would work. We didn´t make it the whole way, but it looks promising.
The journey today, once I left Fallowfield, it was an all white neighborhood more or less, like another world. But just after awhile I realized how incredibly boring it is without a cultural mix. Suddenly everything was clean, tidy and….boring. Everyone looks the same, behave in the same way and, yeah, boooring! Traffic, even if it was a Sunday, was bothersome and this will be the challenge, finding routes to avoid this eternal traffic. Having said that, I see they´re used to slow moving vehicles, which we definitely will be!
I also checked how well the ViewRanger App works, it was great and I did a punkt where I turned around. See both maps here, ViewRanger here and Punkt here! So the question is now, will i have a female English partner tomorrow? We will see! And who should come Dana or Eva. We parents are trying to figure out who this is best suited to. Dana´s advantage is her age and she hasn´t any friends as such yet. For Eva, her friends at school are very important. On top of that, the jealousy between them is tiresome right now. And , having toddlers, and a wife who is doing her exams exactly now, takes its toll. There´s a lot of things i just have to forget.And, like now, when the girls are sleeping, we two parents will work until the early morning hours. Again. Two weeks to go….And my helper and researcher in Moss Side, Anastasia Roache, just left three weeks for South-Africa, that is a major loss…..