What a difference the bike makes. I was somewhat concerned that the sluggishness I felt during yesterday’s ride was mostly due to my deconditioning. With the new hybrid bike, however, I found myself being able to keep pace with Jamie easily (though he did take both panniers). We were going to stop at Alnwick castle (which stood in for Hogwarts schools of wizardry in the Harry Potter series), but thought better of it, and passed up a couple of other castles along the way. Ultimately, we stoped at Seahouses, where we devoured two orders of fish and chips and found that we really enjoyed “mushy peas”, as unappetizing as that sounds. Mostly because I’ve been making noise about seeing the puffins, we ended up on a boat cruise to the Farnes islands, which are covered with sea birds including the ever popular cute puffins as well as guillemots. As we were approaching the islands, we saw hundreds of fat bids with short stubby wings, frantically beating the wings to just barely clear the water to fly (looking very clumsy in comparison to the terns that were gracefully flying all around them). These pathetic flyers were guillemots, which are actually of the penguin family, which makes their awkward flight somewhat understandable. That they would even attempt flight with those chubby bellies was admirable. Having taken 3 hours or more with lunch and puffin viewing, we pedaled toward Lowick, a lonesome tiny farming village, where we would check into the White Swan Inn. We had another great meal at the pub, of chicken Jalfrezi (who knew that British pubs can make such good Indian food?) and steak and Guinness pie, while emptying a bottle of merlot.
