Today we rented a car and drove to Southampton to see their Christmas market. From there, we went to Portsmouth and spent the afternoon in their historic dockyard district. As a fan of Patrick O’Brian and his naval novels, I loved it. There was just too much to see and do for one afternoon. I believe another trip is required.

Here’s Ellen in front of part of Southampton’s medieval city wall.

They call them “Dutch pancakes,” but in Dutch they are “poffertjes” and I have wonderful memories of buying them from street vendors in Amsterdam while visiting my dad’s side of the family in the ‘70s. So of course we had to buy some. Hopefully we will get to Amsterdam and buy the real thing sometime soon.

HMS Warrior, at one time the biggest warship in the world. Launched in 1861 (I believe), it was probably one of the Royal Navy’s last wooden warships.

The Mary Rose, Henry VIII’s favorite warship. Sunk around 1545, raised in 1982. Thousands of items were found with the wreck, making it the largest source of Tudor items in existence. Things like tools, weapons, personal items, etc. It was preserved in the mud off the coast of Portsmouth. It is cool to look at a leather boot and picture it on the owner as he carried out his duties, probably thinking about his wife or sweetheart back home.

When the museums closed, we headed to dinner: fish & chips.

Here’s the tiny Fiat hybrid we rented. Turns out that the gas, £35, cost more than the car, £32!

The bike trip ended this morning when we were dropped off in Oban. I plan on posting a lot more photos and videos in the weeks to come. For now, here's a group photo, taken in a Tesco parking lot in Oban this morning:

We learned at dinner last night that Ed blogged about having breakfast in 48 states, at Breakfast Across America. He and Pat, his wife -- called the "Healthy One" in the blog, made 5 car trips around the US to hit the 48 contiguous states and have breakfast in each one. The blog is a lot of fun. Charles Kuralt, the CBS newsman of "On the Road" fame, made a list of 12 locations to visit in the US, one for each month of the year. Ed's new project is do so. I think he said that he only has one left -- Ely, Minnesota in July. I look forward to reading that blog!

After saying goodbye to everyone, Ellen and I went to Flit Self Drive to pick up our rental car, a tiny, 4-door Kia Picanto. After not driving a manual for 6 years or so, and never driving on the left side of the road, I'm doing it now. I'm grateful that the weather is great and that Ellen is navigating!

We did a little shopping (chocolates and clothes), got lunch at a fish & chips shop (their front window said that National Geographic rated them the 3rd-best chippy in the UK; I didn't know that Nat Geo was in the ratings business!), and then hit the road for Oban. Driving the narrow, twisty roads was an adventure. Ellen was able to appreciate the beautiful scenery a lot more than I was.

We're now in Aberfeldy, doing some laundry at an outdoor(!) laundromat. When the clothes are done, we'll check into our AirBnb nearby in Weem.

In the morning we'll finish the drive to Braemar, and watch the Highland Games!

Here's the outdoor laundromat:

We had to get to the route early in order to beat the crowd, so we had some time to kill after we got there and staked out our position along the barricades. The Moulin Rouge was only a few hundred feet away, so I got a photo of it.

This video (link) shows our location on the barricade. It was taken about 2 hours before the racers arrived. We learned after we got there, and as is obvious from the video, Place Pigalle is a red light district. The videos I took are PG-13, but, just so you know, if you show them to your kids, you might get some questions.

The route made a turn half a block from the Moulin Rouge. I took a video (link) of the crowd at the turn.

The House of Orange-Nassau is the reigning house of the Netherlands, so the people dressed in orange in the videos are Dutch. There was a group of them across the barricade from us. The racers representing the Netherlands are also in orange tops. Normally the racers don't acknowledge the fans, but it was nice to see the Dutch riders acknowledge the Dutch fans with a smile or a wave.

By the time they reached us, the racers had already been racing over 5 hours. The winner, Belgian rider Remco Evenepoel, crossed the finish line in 6 hours, 19 minutes, so his average speed was 43 kph, or 27 mph. Try doing that on your next bike ride!

We love to bike in the area between Harpenden, Luton, and Whitwell. It's mostly agricultural, with some small villages. The roads are often only one lane, with occasional pullouts to let cars pass each other. Hedges often run alongside the lanes, hiding whatever is on the other side - usually a field. When there is a break in a hedge, you're often treated to -- what to me is -- an embodiment of what William Blake meant when he wrote of "England's green and pleasant land."

Anyway, to get to this area we have to cross the River Lea. It's a small river here, and is only 42 miles long, but it punches above its weight. It rises in the Chiltern Hills, a chalk escarpment northwest of London. The river's Wikipedia page states that it is a major source of drinking water for London, and its origin in the Chilterns contributes to the extreme hardness (high mineral content) of London tap water (and ours too I'm sure). The river has been used as a political boundary since the Iron Age. It flows into London and joins the Thames, and the two rivers are treated as London's major internal barriers when the powers that be review the boundaries of London's parliamentary constituencies. Izaak Walton, author of the classic The Compleat Angler, fished in the Lea, and the river is featured in the book.

With that introduction, here is the Lea. The video was taken from a bridge in the village of East Hyde, during a bike ride.

Video of the River Lea