A Yorkshireman of a certain age who likes most genres of music and most makes of old car. Travel is a joy, not least to escape the British winter. Travel by bicycle is bliss and if I’m not lost in music then I’m lost in a daydream about a hot day, tens of miles to cover and the promise of a great campsite and a beer. I like to think I’m always learning and becoming wiser. However, on the latter point evidence is in short supply.
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The lights went down and the full house at The Barbican roared as Rateliff energetically declared his arrival with Suffer Me. Not missing a beat, we were through three songs before he paused to acknowledge the crowd and give the first of his heartfelt thanks for everyone coming out; he was quick to point out it had been a long journey from his modest start in Missouri to sell out tours in Europe. Now fêted in americana circles it was clear that his appeal was to a crowd that liked to dance and wanted irresistible rabble rousing choruses. I can confirm that once exposed to his irrepressible charms then resistance is futile.
Like continual starbursts the eight piece band played a storm of rock n’ roll, old fashioned R&B with flourishes of Stax soul and gospel. The fact that Rateliff records on the latest incarnation of Stax brought to mind the Memphis Horns with saxes (baritone and tenor) working the audiences’ hips and feet like puppeteers and a trumpet for good measure creating some true highs. I’m On Your Side, also from his 2021’s The Future, confirmed, if you’d had any doubts, that here was a mesmerising master craftsman at work, often pacing the stage and switching between piano, acoustic, electric rhythm and lead guitar.
Songs from four albums made up the set list with a debut, for the British audiences, of tracks from his latest release South Of Here. If the audience were less sure about these new songs due to their lack of familiarity then on the remainder including Intro,Love Don’t, Hey Mama, You Worry Me and a cover of Springsteen’s Dancing in The Dark the joint jumped. Young and old alike leapt around with hands in the air, spilling beer and being transported whilst joining Rateliff on the choruses.
Returning for a couple of encores S.O.B. was the most animated I’ve ever seen the venue over my regular attendances; I’ve never seen such a consistently high energy set. It was one of those gigs where you just had to be there. If there was ever an artist who probably released great albums but was best experienced live then he’s the epitome. I implore you to make sure you get a ticket for his next UK visit. I will.
So, to complete our odyssey we left Spartanburg and headed north to the Great Smoky Mountains. This is a National Park with mountains/hills, rivers, waterfalls, a wide selection of wildlife (especially bears and deer), trails, history and, in places, lots of tourists. The Appalachians are a vast area stretching to Canada but I think it would be fair to say that when the name is used it registers in people’s minds as the rugged countryside of North Carolina and Tennessee. In the 19th Century there were Cherokees, early white/European settlers, thick forests and wildlife. The people living there seemed to eek out an existence by subsistence farming. Appalachian is also often seen as a variant in certain music genres, whether, americana, folk or roots music (acoustic).
We stayed a couple of nights in Bryson City, the proverbial one horse town comes to mind. It is however home to a heritage rail line. This ran into the park and along the Fontana Lake. This is a reservoir that at one end feeds a hydro electric power station. It looked idyllic with a lot of properties (house boats) floating on it as well as boats. The train ride was a run up the line and back again; why there were so many passengers in the 12 carriages will long remain a mystery as when I alighted I felt it was five hours of my life I’d never get back.
On leaving the town and saying goodbye to the horse we found a hiking trail. After all our city time we were yearning for some greenery away from the crowds. This was a complete tonic. The walk reminded me of strolling beside the River Wharf at Bolton Abbey.
We started to experience crowds when we drove through Cherokee and arrived at the fascinating Oconaluftee visitor centre that graphically explained the history of the park from the time that the Cherokees were the sole inhabitants until the European settlers arrived. Following the Europeans arrival then the loggers came and a major industry was established in the clearing and selling of timber. When this eventually fizzled out in the early 20th Century the area was turned into a National Park and is today a major resort area.
We drove the Newfoundland Gap, which was full of traffic but everywhere you looked the scenery was sensational.
We arrived at Gatlinburg. A place that has a little romance in it for me after it’s the town that “Sue’ found his father in the song A Boy Named Sue. The town blights the image of the Park in the eyes of many as it’s a resort with stacked hotels, fast food, child friendly entertainments, fairground rides, intense congestion and nowhere to park! We drove straight through and onto the other blemish, Pigeon Forge.
This bigger town was full of cheap accommodation, restaurants and some entertainments including the opportunity to dress up in 19th Century garb for a photo! One of the major draws is its proximity to Dollywood. This is a theme park owned and named after Dolly Parton. Despite my affection and admiration of the country artist then wild horses wouldn’t have dragged me in there . After some lunch and a visit to a supermarket we headed to the attractive and quiet Townsend. Our property back up in the woods was a base.
One day we drove to Cades Cove. The advice was get there early to avoid the congestion. This single track ride around a large wooded area was very popular and there were many visitors, even at 9am, cameras with long lenses snapping at anything that moved. I was initially a bit indifferent to the experience in a slow moving traffic jam until we actually spotted several bears. The clue to where the wildlife was, as you proceeded slowly, was the sight of volunteer marshalls in hi-viz , they were usually near bears and attempting to manage the cars. People leapt out of their cars to snap them (and in true US style left their cars running with the aircon working.). All in all we saw eight black bears.
For Anna who visits the North America seemingly in pursuit of wild bears it definitely ticked a box.I was so inspired that I procured one to take back for Isabella.
In Townsend we continued to explore with walks, visiting a local heritage museum and I even found a country club to use their static bicycle in the gym.
As my thoughts turned to home a worrying thought entered my head: the hire car was contracted to be returned to Savannah and not Nashville where we were headed. (The bland Hyundai Tuscon was underpowered and not much fun; I was surprised to see it’s sold in the UK.) This ‘return’ worry was well founded and eventually I spoke to Avis and they, for a fee, allowed me to return it to Nashville. This is what we did and found the airport easily and flew back to Blighty having had a wonderful time but looking forward to a rest!
To complete and continue our May and June 2024 American adventure I have written a couple of posts, this is the first.
From Memphis we drove to Nashville and took an internal flight on Southwest Airlines to Savannah, Georgia. This internal carrier slightly excited me because 40 years ago when I was doing my MBA they were a case study as a low cost airline taking on the established, larger players. Clearly they’ve done well to be still hanging around as some of their competitors have gone such as Pan Am and TWA. One notable part of the experience was being told by the air hostess to sit wherever there was a spare seat on boarding.
From here we went to stay with my niece, Victoria and her husband (Ben) and son (Henry). They have been here for some time as Ben works as an expat for a large UK company that manufactures and sells in the USA. Victoria works in interior design and young Henry, complete with American accent, goes to school in the town. Savannah is lovely as a coastal resort, university town and the home to the third largest container port in the USA. On this latter point you can see ships coming and going but otherwise the town seems quite separate.
The weather continued to hot and very sunny and we had a grand time with some family neighbours out and about on a pontoon in a sail to Little Tybee island.
In fairness the shirt was a Christmas present
Ben and Victoria are keen cyclists, who wouldn’t be on flat pothole free roads in sensational weather? I went out with their club on Saturday morning and as Ben disappeared to ride at 21mph I hung grimly onto Victoria’s wheel for 47 miles. It reminded me of Australia but a lot faster!
After our busy schedule in Nashville and Memphis (and lots of driving) it was nice to chill in luxurious surroundings before leaving to pick up a car and drive toward the Great Smoky Mountains. (Yes, the ‘e’ disappeared sometime ago, very troubling to a grammar pedant like what I am.)
Leaving Victoria we drove north to Spartanburg. This was a couple of hundred miles, it’s here that rain fell, about time (!) although it was still warm. We’d switched between eating out or catering for ourselves in apartments for breakfast or evening salads. After a few days on the road eating out starts to wane. On this night we slouched out to the magnificent Waffle House, a well known nationwide cheap greasy spoon. I do worry that the ingredients are full of all sorts of chemicals but it does the job and I always console myself that I’ll eventually be back to a less toxic diet. When we did shop there was often an ‘ethnic’ aisle in supermarkets mainly humouring the large Latino diaspora and Brits. Frankly the further north we got into the Smokies the ethnic aisle had a further reach around the store as some of the products could have been expanded from Latino and British to Hill Billy and Red Neck!
A Barnes & Noble store in South Carolina. I wonder how J K Rowling pays the rent?
The next morning we were promptly up to the nearby BMW plant for a tour ($10 each). Here they make the X Series from the X3 upwards. It’s a vast assembly and paint plant where they ship over 400,000 cars a year with 60% exported including back to the UK. They’ve invested $12 billion here since the plant was opened in the 1980s. We were lucky enough to see the fixing of doors, rear hatches and bonnets to the car all by robots. The lifting, placing, alignment and fixing was done by these massive arms that swung around with precision and grace. There were several lasers ensuring the component was a perfect fit. We also had a video, a look at the paint process and then were given a medallion. Sadly this didn’t come fixed to a gold chain for me to wear with an open neck shirt.
BMW X3A big lecture on not taking photos on the plant despite employees, on the plant, wandering past us on their mobiles!
From here in North Carolina it was back to Tennessee and the Smokies and maybe a bear or two?
Thanks to the App for UK’s sports radio channel TalkSport I was able to listen to some of the Championship football Play Off Final. The rest of the match I followed by looking at the BBC Sports website. I never had any serious conviction that Leeds would win, and they didn’t. After the result I was comfortably numb. Leaving Nashville we had a brief stop in Franklin before arriving in sleepy Memphis in our Subaru Outback.
A turkey sandwich not completely dulling the pain of another season in the Championship
In a straight line on the Interstate the car was fine but worryingly redolent with all sorts of baffling safety features that flashed up with irritating regularity on the dashboard. Lane control alerts, a speed pegging back cruise control if you got too close (100m) to a car in front, nasty bleeping if the car was switched off and you hadn’t restored the gear stick into ‘Park’, bleeping if the door was open when stationary, only opening one door when you pushed the button on the key fob; not all the doors. I came to hate it. On my own car at home I’d managed to switch all this Nanny State crap off. I would still be in Nashville had I attempted to fathom out how to do this on my Subaru.
Object of hate
I say ‘sleepy’ Memphis, the Downtown area was deserted and this was Memorial Day weekend. It should be jumping. This day commemorates all the fallen military. It was nine years since I’d been here and I thought it was going to be buzzing like Nashville: I was wrong. Also Anna had read that personal safety due to robbery and violence was something to concentrate on. The violence statistics were awful for the city. I’m not cavalier about what I wear or carry when out. I’m never anxious but thoughtfully aware. However, on an early stroll along the Mississippi we cut away from the river and climbed up toward a plush housing estate.
Anna and the mighty Mississippi
As we’re wandering along Glen and his wife Vicky greet us. He’s 83 years old (he told us twice) and a long term resident after a military career, a colonel no less. As we exchanged pleasantries and we say we’ve come from Nashville and music is our reason to visit. In a flash he’s onto his iPhone and produces a clip of a song by Glen and the Graduates, a sixties pop song. Glen apparently turned down a record contract to pursue a military career when a fledgling pop star. Who knows if he’d have made anything of himself but it was a great tune. As we’re digesting this he goes on to recount a recent local tragedy where a man is walking with his wife and small child nearby when they’re held up at gun point. The man was shot and lost his life. He talks of America in chaos with divides in society. Another vote for Trump, especially when you read the back of his calling card.
They depart, to continue their walk, urging us to be careful. Gulp!
I have to say the weather has been beautiful but hot and the evenings delightful. This led us to visit Beale Street. The history of music and important careers being nurtured here are part of blues folklore. The street has a few bars, a lot of gift shops and not many punters. I recollect it was a lot more vibrant. We did venture into the most famous bar, BB King’s Blues Club, to dine and listen to the band. The bands were sensational but they didn’t play any blues, I think the audience, all tourists, liked the rock covers they played. The vocalist could really sing with a great delivery.
We visited the National Civil Rights Museum. This is one of the most impactful collections I have ever visited, it was my second visit. It merits a compulsory visit in my not so humble opinion. Outside was a lady protesting about the museum gentrifying the area and masking so many troubling issues for all the Memphis residents. She’d been there for 36 years and on establishing my nationality proudly advised she’d been in The Guardian and met Harry. (Neither of these events ticked my box!) We had a back and forth about her point of view and I quickly felt I had got in a discussion with the local loony and was trapped. As I walked away she broke into God Save The King. Cuckoo.
A must visit. A world class museum.
Despite the poor press Memphis seemed fine and again all the folk were deferential, courteous and kind; so much for threats. Anna had checked out concerts to discover that Lionel Richie and Earth, Wind and Fire were playing at the local arena. At $58 for two tickets how could we not go? Break Wind and Fire were a 10 piece with now only three original members.
Earth, Wind & Fire
They had the crowd up from the get go. It’s quite a sight to see the heavy frames* of many of the 19,000 audience gyrating. For me the sound mix was terrible with the voices and horns sounding muted and tinny over a steady thunder of over amplified drums.
Lionel, a mere 74 years old. All the hits!
Lionel Richie fully adopted a Southern persona, a little different to when we saw him in Sheffield! He, and his sound, were magnificent. You should see him. Toward the end he went into a philosophical muse about the world post Covid and everyone getting along. The black woman behind us repeated his words, like a call and response in a church. When he finished she turned to leave the concert and reached down put her hands on each of our shoulders said “I love you” and was gone. Only in the South, only in the South.
Ample
In a cafe in a chap asked me about my shorts. Clearly he was impressed with my sartorial elegance. I told him the brand and we parted only to bump into him later with a couple of his pals. They advised us they took their vinyl to the Crosstown Concourse to listen to them on an immense hi-fi system. The building was the former Sears catalogue building that once serviced a nationwide mail order business. Clearly we all know how that ended. This listening room was donated by a Memphis luminary and in comfort you could listen to your music. We said we’d meet them there. We did and heard some Black Sabbath, Lemon Twigs and Elvis Costello with Burt Bacharach. One of the chaps started somehow on politics and started to vent about Trump. I changed the subject but I only mention this to confirm how vocal and public people are about their views and there’s little accommodation of their opponents.
Other museum visits included the Stax record label museum, the original home of legends like Otis Redding, Isaac Hayes and err… Lena Zavaroni. This is a terrific stop.
Nice shoes and socks, I know. Even sadder is that I wore them here in 2015!What??!
As part of a pilgrimage I again visited Sun Studios. Here Elvis Presley got his break and we got a number plate! We’d parked up outside a garage and Anna, concerned that we had parked in someone’s spot ask an employee if we were allowed? James Dean (Moss) not only confirmed it was but regaled us with his Mancunian heritage, something personally I would have kept secret, and then dived into his car to give us a number plate off a recent car wreck. As with all these older blokes we got a life story… 78 years old, had retired, had got bored (as not enough to do around the home or at his church) and so he’d found another job. Reluctantly he released us to visit the museum!
Unexpected gift!
When not absorbing culture we had a less frenetic time and I’d managed to find a couple of second hand record stores to spend paltry amounts on records by Billy Preston, Sharks and Blood, Sweat & Tears.
I like my history and we went to the Cotton Museum. Cotton was a vital 19th and early 20th Century crop that provided a great living to all but the black slaves and their descendants. The museum dwelt on this, its demise and move to California where technology and mechanisation make it a very different affair today.
From here it was back to Nashville to fly to Savannah, GA to see our niece and husband. It is, as they say, ‘all go’.
We asked the air hostess where we should sit as it wasn’t clear on our Boarding Pass. ‘Anywhere!’
*Obesity is commonplace here ranging from overweight to morbidly obese. It would not be uncommon for a couple in their 50s to pay $20,000+ per annum as a premium for their health care insurance. The high cost must, in part, be driven by the health issues that this weight contributes toward conditions such as diabetes, cancer and heart disease.
(This isn’t a travelogue, let’s be fair, a quick glance at Trip Advisor will tell you more about Nashville than I could, but an outline of our time in the city and some observations that appealed to me.)
Thanks to Amex and British Airways we’d acquired some credits to get a cheap low cost flight to Nashville, Tennessee. I’d been here in 2015 but the chance to return here and then to Memphis was not something I was about to pass up. If the original flight was cheap then the chance to upgrade from Economy to Premium Economy was irresistible when asked at Check In and we made the nine hour flight in greater comfort albeit about £668 poorer for the two seats. It was worth it.
Wider seats and more leg room. Also an unfortunate chap sat next to me who was on his first trip to the USA and and was hosting an event with corporate guests. Slightly anxious!He’d be pedalling one of these later!
We’d booked accommodation in a self catering flat in Downtown and from here we’d see the sights using, mainly shank’s pony. The city or Downtown is ‘party town’ and with nine years elapsing I last cycled here it seemed to have got brighter, louder and, as with all the USA, dramatically more expensive. In most large US cities then sprawl is enormous and the tourist hotspots don’t define the character of the town and in reality as you drive in the suburbs you quickly realise that probably most residents, in Nashville, care little for country music.
They reckon the average American has a wage 40% higher than a Brit. (That may be the average (mean but not the median or mode I suggest) difference but not for all as I explain below.) They need it! I couldn’t say all the prices were 40% higher than the UK but it was getting that way by the time you added on Sales Tax and subsidised the restaurant or bar owner by lobbing the waitress a 20% tip. In fact tipping has progressed to be a further optional sales tax eg. In a coffee shop you’re invited to add up to 30% for someone who stands behind a counter, writes your name and coffee specification on a paper cup, hands it to a co-worker and then smiles at you, mutters something banal and insincere such as ‘Awesome! Have a wonderful day’ and moves onto the person next in the queue. We spent most of our leisure time in Nashville and Memphis in attractions or in areas of hospitality and it became wearing the continual begging from guides or musicians for tips. ‘I don’t get paid to give this talk’ or ‘your generosity will help us pay for dental treatment..’ etc. This latter one came after we paid a door cover charge for the band!
Museum exhibits
One economy were Uber taxis. This facility is a blessing with the App and they are cheap! Two of our drivers were on vacation from their ‘day’ jobs! Rather than sit at home they clocked on for a few hours. Americans get a paltry holiday allowance and it seems that even when they do have time away from their main job they get out and work. You do feel Americans work a lot harder than Europeans. Another driver, Jennie described herself as ‘big’ yet complained as we shuffled into her SUV, when leaving Walmart, that she hardly knew how her last passenger at ‘500lbs’ (35 stone!) had squeezed himself into the car. Like a lot of Americans Jennie, mid forties, suffered from an over active knife and fork and you’d scratch your head as to why they risk these future mobility and health risks.
SongwritersIconic music clubToo shiny not to photograph!
Her size, however, might have helped in her main job as a Correction Officer. She worked at a County Jail and was trained in prisoner restraint. For all this she only received $19/hour, whereas on a good Uber day she could make $40/hour. We asked if she ever had troublesome passengers? ‘No, not really’ as she’d only had to use her firearm (nestled in the centre armrest) twice! The biggest problem arose when an aggressive Mexican had taken her phone and purse to suddenly see the error of his ways when he was facing a loaded pistol. She did comment that this Mexican was probably an ‘illegal, like half of them’. (Another vote for Trump there.) Sadly this interview was going well until arriving at our destination, which foreshortened this fascinating discussion.
Burning some more calories on top of the 20,000 steps per day
You might expect a little information on our musical discoveries. On the main drag in Downtown, Lower Broadway, there were numerous bars with live music. By 8pm it was cacophonous walking down the streets with thousands of mainly younger folk parading in T shirts, short skirts, cowboy hats and boots. They were out to party. It was exciting, a bit like moving with a tide of football fans about to enter a stadium for a key match. On one night we visited a bar where the beers were cheap and the music up beat and sweaty. We chose Robert’s. This bar promised honky tonk country music from the house band. On another night at Chief’s we saw a proper concert with an artist whose music I’d collected Julie Roberts (not Julia). I’ve written up the gig – see the preceding post.
Julie Roberts
However before that we’d spent lunchtime at Third and Lindsley attending a chat and concert by five songwriters (Gary Baker, Billy Montana, Randall Fowler, Greg Barnhill and Jill Colucci. Four of these had written major hits for major artists over the last 40 years.
The artists included Garth Brooks, Trisha Yearwood, Sara Evans, Wynonna and Lee Brice. The music was terrific, the setting iconic and the history of the songs and their creation captivating. The Country Music Hall of Fame was another morning’s entertainment: a truly excellent museum in the centre of Downtown.
The gardens inside a hotel. Delightful at The Gaylord Opryland Resort
I’ve been in the States a lot and it’s always pleasing how clean the toilets always are (!), how unfailingly courteous most people are, when you might, say, meet on a narrow stairway the other apologises and gives way immediately. However, it still hits you hard how the concept of recycling or waste hasn’t yet had adoption. We looked around for different bins for plastic or paper waste: no chance. We tutted at noting trucks parked up for hours with their engines running or any fast food meal came with disposable styrofoam plates, plastic cutlery and acres of superfluous greaseproof paper. The world’s resources are finite. They don’t get it do they?
Friday night (and it’s bright)
We coveted and were jealous of the space. Their supermarkets had wide aisles. They had free parking spaces (and lots of them). Their suburbs were sprawling with spaces between the offices, factories and residential housing. Somehow this space created a feeling of calm and plentifulness to me.
Robert’s on Lower Broadway
Nashville was mainly white and even the tourists were white. For the first time, in a long time, I observed there were no ethnic Chinese or Asians tourists: I was used to York. Clearly the magic of Hank Williams, Dolly Parton and Willie Nelson had not spread eastwards. If the Downtown streets were white with a handful of African Americans then the retail outlets away from the centre employed many races.
Typical club on Lower Broadway with three levels
Post Covid there is a scramble for labour in low paid jobs. The working US elderly called it a day, never to return or younger workers moved to jobs that allowed them to keep working remotely. In a Walmart we shopped as the staff chatted to each other in Spanish, not socialising but running the store. I approached a chap for help and asked ‘where can I find sesame bagels please?’ The assistant (Latino?) looked blank but handed me his device to type in what I wanted (to enable a store search) rather than attempt to fathom out what I’d said. A quick practical solution but probably not from a training module he’d attended.
Why?
It must be a challenge running a $648 billion business dependent on low wage labour when there’s a chronic shortage. The average Walmart hourly rate is $17.50/hour (£14/hour). The UK’s comparable wage for a supermarket is c£12/hour and the UK cost of living is lower plus the employee benefits are greater. This is a nation where the rich are living on a different planet to hundreds of millions of others who need more than one job to make ends meet. It’ll be interesting to see how this excess of demand over labour supply plays out over the next decade. Can a machine put fruit and veg out or collect all the trolleys spread across a car park?
Nashville exceeded our expectations. With a surfeit of music and sightseeing we took an Uber to the airport to pick up a car for our drive west. I donned my Leeds United shirt as today was the day of the Play Off Final…
A walk along Nashville’s Lower Broadway on a Saturday night is an assault on the senses. Bar after bar, on up to three floors, is blasting out repertoires from George Strait to Guns N’ Roses with live bands. The noise is immense as are the crowds of ‘out of town revellers’ in T shirts, shorts or short skirts; many with cowboys hats and boots. It’s a sight to behold as this sea of flesh hunts hedonistic delights. At the bottom of the strip is Eric Church’s new venue Chief’s. It’s here on the third storey, where the hardwood floor has been filled with chairs, the crowd are awaiting the appearance of a South Carolina belle.
It’s twenty years since Robert’s released her eponymous debut and this is an anniversary party. From being the PA to a record label boss she found, in short order, that she had a Top 10 release and was well on her way to being a new important country chanteuse. That album undoubtedly remains an early millennium classic but for several reasons her career faltered after a few years and her output has been sporadic as well as her appearances since. Managing long term health challenges (MS) has been a necessity yet on stage this night she was perpetual motion in sparkling stage outfits that failed to eclipse her personality: excitable, warm, kind, often hilarious and slightly scatty.
Debut album in 2004
It may have been party time on the street below but she soon had the sell out audience up off their chairs and joining the choruses. The whole night was participative yet intimate. Break Down Here, a Top 20 hit off the album, is an earworm gem and it came up early as she played the song in the order of the album. An uber excited audience was singing word for word as Robert’s beamed from the stage enjoying the ‘love’. Her gift, the voice, is a joy to hear as its expressive plaintive tones can bring you heartbreak, despair or longing. With many anecdotal detours she delivered the eleven songs with a five piece band that notably had her husband, Matt Baugher, on keyboards and Mark Oakley on electric guitar.
After an intermission where many of the audience, mainly from the southern States but some further north had refuelled she returned to play songs mainly from her 2022 release Ain’t In No Hurry. This album took several years to compile with Shooter Jennings producing. It boasts contributions from Erin Enderlin and duets with Jamey Johnson and Randy Hauser. Whilst it had its moments such as a cover of K T Oslin’s Do Ya’ where Robert’s demonstrates her Southern Soul credentials the selection of songs brought into sharp relief how exceptional her debut was. After Men & Mascara we had another run through Break Down Here and then before the encore, where she could thank all the individual members of the band again or express her gratitude for us all coming out (again!) we found the exit and another bar where duelling grand pianists were running through Elton John’s catalogue, after all the night was young.
Campbell is a genuine legend. He was a stellar musician and multi-million recording artist. His catalogue is often peerless. Sadly, his later years were difficult due to battling Alzheimer’s before his death in 2017. There was much coverage during his decline showing the challenges. Throughout these latter years, during the onset, he continued to record; this album is mainly a rework of 2011’s Ghost On The Canvas. This reimagining involved re-recording the original album and inserting some duets. The arrangements are brighter than the original with a contemporary feel. You might be forgiven for wondering why they’ve bothered? I did but came to welcome the project.
The original release is a fine, probably neglected, album that can stop you in your tracks as Campbell poetically sings about his ‘confusion’ and gradual slipping into a state that makes him forget his loved ones. However, with bravery he sings about this journey with no rancour yet resilient reflection on a life well lived. Julian Raymond (producer, now and in 2011) wrote much of the album, with great sensitivity, with Campbell and the sound is hallmark/classic Campbell: string drenched, cinematic 60s pop/easy listening embellished by his never rushed tones and those guitar flourishes that he had the talent, in spades, to deliver.
This album retains the original vocals (obviously) and you can admire Campbell’s mastery; the poignancy of the backdrop of his condition is never far from your mind. The songs are duets with artists who don’t normally turnout such as Carole King, Daryl Hall, Brian Wilson and Eric Clapton. (Other contributors include Elton John, Sting and Dolly Parton.) Brian Wilson worked with Campbell in the Beach Boys and Raymond adds some nostalgic 60s Beach Boys harmonies. Like most of the songs on the album Campbell and Wilson don’t flinch on delivering the unvarnished truth: “I am a broken prize all neatly wrapped but cracked inside / All the king’s horses and all his men, they lied / As I look at you and at my life, what do I see? / The person that I wish that I could be.”
Another brutally honest lyric comes from a song Raymond wrote for the 2015 Glen Campbell documentary I’ll Be Me “ I know I’ll never be the same again / I hope I’ll still remember you / Above it all I know our love will transcend / On my long walk home”. This is a duet with Hope Sandoval (Mazzy Star), she’s a surprise choice to join him on this, yet a superb pick. Campbell seems to get little mention in country music circles nowadays and if to address the deficit Eric Church joins him on Hold On Hope and delivers one of the album highlights.
The original album with such excellent songs was always a great platform and this 2024 version is a fine and touching piece of work. Also, If you get to listen to the original you’ll be in for a treat.
Well it seems a lifetime since I was cycling in Australia. The heat is definitely a distant memory. One reason for the February/ March antipodean jaunt was to escape the wet and cold with the plan to return to a promising spring. That went well as a plan didn’t it!
So finding tasks indoors was a priority and hence the essential activity of Swedish Death Cleaning. This is not a Scandinavian metal rock band but a delightfully named task where you sort through accumulated possessions (lurking, in my case, in the garage) to dispose of them thus eliminating a chore for your children when you depart this mortal coil. My stuff was mainly paper based and included my father’s 1980s photograph albums of his trips to The Far East and South America. The tough reality is that these badly photographed streets, buildings and monuments taken with a mediocre instamatic camera are of no interest other than to himself and he’s not been around for 35 years.
When not in the garage I commissioned a new iMac. The old one was operational but was no longer supported by Apple and couldn’t accommodate various Apps. Sadly IT has a built in obsolescence that I had to acknowledge after 13 years. I got the new machine up and running and, importantly, talking to the external hard drives, optical disk reader and printer. Some ‘help chat lines’ were used and I ‘got there’ in the end with a minimum of foul language and tears. which in my case was an unexpected and pleasant development for the other resident of the property. One amusing anecdote was my attempting to resolve a software problem with Microsoft Office. My helpful contact, Abimbola, was very attentive and we spent nearly three hours going backward and forward on a chat line attempting to eliminate this glitch. Given all the dead time that such a dialogue entails I Google’d his name to discover it was Nigerian. When he asked for permission to ‘enter’ my iMac to scroll through the screens I did have a vision of this developing into a surprise scenario where he actually was a Prince and I could become the lucky recipient of an inheritance of $3million should I simply make a small administration fee payment!
Time for a visit to Duxford Air Museum
The presents Mrs Ives has been industrious in compiling family trees using Ancestry.com from both sides of the lineage. The further you go back the more surprising it is and some of the stories are worthy of a boxset. One relative did prison time after being involved with organised crime involving drugs in Australia. I remember him and suspected there was more to his career than met the eye but to find documents on the internet outlining the whole dodgy structure and his rôle within it was a shock. On Ancestry.com you can have your DNA analysed. Under instruction from the females of the Ives family I duly spat into a tube and awaited for its return. I have written about this earlier. However, one facility on the website is for others, via the DNA profile to see if there are any other matches out there…. we received an email.
This Leeds lady had a suspicion that her mother had had a dalliance during WW2 when her husband was away defeating Hitler. She was the result. The dalliance was with one of my uncles. Needless to say I remember him as a dutiful father with two daughters, which may have been as this birth came about when he was single although his paramour wasn’t! If all this wasn’t enough excitement for Anna then she’s now following up some of these discoveries and I’m meeting cousins. Some I haven’t seen for 50 years and another who I have no recollection of having ever met!
My mother was the youngest of six children; the second youngest was Jack. He had two children, Jonathan and Alison. We met them in deepest Essex and it was wonderful. In fact most of my memories of aunts and uncles are ancient or virtually non existent but I well remember Jack and his wife Barbara. There was a lot to catch up on. Worryingly Anna has other appointments in the diary…
Anna was similarly unhappy at the weather (and even more unhappy that I’d escaped it for a month Down Under) so a few days was organised in Madeira: my first visit. It was certainly a cut above the Canary Islands albeit more congested and literally mountainous anywhere away from the promenade in Funchal. The island is beautifully maintained and there is a great selection of restaurants, bars and sights. We had a splendid time including a night watching Leeds United at an Irish bar where the full set of emotions were experienced. I truly can’t wait for the football season to finish so that the torture is over until August.
Lastly, on our fairly upmarket housing estate the Police have raided a house that was a cannabis farm! The only drug problem in our sleepy retirement village, I thought, is whether the local surgery can process all the prescriptions for the pensioners who abound here. Apparently the house, at the far end of our estate I hasten to add, was rented out. Reports are that the house was adapted inside for the cultivation with all sorts of vents and hoses installed to facilitate the growing of the popular weed. Apparently the renters/farmers had departed by the time the local constabulary visited (quelle surprise.) The house was let through a (useless) Letting Agent, who obviously took their monthly 10% but never visited the property during the occupancy. The owner will have to spend thousands to restore the house to something habitable and pick up an enormous unpaid electricity bill.
Country music fantasises about rural America: church, family, John Deere, small towns and endless dirt roads. The irony is that many of those who proselytize are often winners of TV talent shows that took them away from graphic design or tele sales jobs. So up steps, Aussie, William Alexander and believe me he’s walked the talk and has the blisters on his hands as an itinerant stockman working in the wide-open spaces of New South Wales to sing about a rural life.
Here there are sun baked, self-sufficient folk, living in settlements maybe a hundred miles from the next, temperatures settling for months above 35°C and a no nonsense focus on feeding the world. If you visit the countryside in NSW you’ll find it hard to discern the difference between here and, say, Kansas as the lonely 18-wheel Macks and Kenworths rumble up and down the highway.
In between tending his cattle Alexander picks up his acoustic guitar and plays Western songs about these communities and their histories. On this magnificent album he wrote six of the ten songs; the remainder all originate from Australia. The unofficial shearer’s trade union song Castlereagh composed by “Banjo’ Paterson is a tour de force. Paterson is famous for writing the nation’s unofficial national anthem Waltzing Matilda. Here, our shearer and general station hand is sick of working for low pay and has disdain for the ‘scabs’ who do. The endless roaming for work and scenery painting in the lyrics is a cinematic history lesson in its own right.
All You Need To Do starts with a wonderful low yodel followed by some pedal steel and then Alexander’s very special, irresistible, tenor arrives with a lullaby ballad that reminded me of Elvis‘ Love Me Tender in its arrangement and poignancy. Away from the sonorous ballads and social history he can cut a rug and Blackwood Town is a lively two-step where Tommy Brooks’ pedal steel lights things up as he speculates about hitching a ride for a night out in town. Of a similar pace is the Happy Singing Bushman, a melodic highlight with its gentle paced playing. Again, it’s the voice that captures you.
When I could message Alexander, after all he’s a busy man and hardly sat at a desk, he cited his musical influences to be Slim Dusty, Tex Morton, Buddy Williams and Colter Wall. In fact, Wall, the most prominent and successful of recent Western players, comes to mind when the proverbial needle hits the groove on this release. If you think that Wall had the help of Dave Cobb and RCA Studio A to record and release his collections then here, without all that resource, the song curation and excellent production are similarly as sympathetic and true to the original genre. Truly fabulous.
Beyoncé’s latest release has made mainstream news headlines. The album has been promoted and accepted by many critics as her moving her tanks onto the lawns of the country music industry seeking acknowledgement of black artists’ contribution and the freeze out nature of Nashville. I think the narrative gains traction because critics see country music as a Southern pre-occupation and, frankly, the politics down there probably aren’t theirs. However, before we get to the music she was clear before its’ release: “This ain’t a Country album. This is a Beyoncé album.” True and in many ways I could finish the review here.
During Covid she decided to write a trilogy of albums of which Renaissance, in 2022, was the first, a dancefloor album. Here the lyrical themes were about black and gay tribulations. The second in the series, Cowboy Carter, moves on to replicate the format of a collage of songs, talk and samples with icons of the genre but this time addressing black artists, their marginalisation in the genre and how this and other heritage white music played a role in her own musical education.
American Requiem presents her credentials to be considered ‘country’ because of the activities of her forbears, her, maybe, modest upbringing and striving (more of this in 16 Carriages). It seems clear that Nashville’s hostile reaction to her 2016 CMA’s appearance with The (Dixie) Chicks still stings. On the record she’s worked with some lesser-known black country music artists and Dolly and Willie have walk on parts either introducing songs or pretending to be a country music DJ (how could they resist the royalties!)
However, apart from the smash hit line dancer Texas Fold ‘Em and the Jolene cover there’s no discernible country music over the 78 minutes. There are references in several lyrics to country tropes such as ‘Marlborough Man’ but the accompanying music could be hip-hop or some such. Throughout she has used a number of country music artists to play or sing and whilst most are not discernible there are some snatches such as Tyrant that recycles Cam’s Diane.
I’ve mentioned the country moments above but there’s a deep dive into Beyoncé’s white music influences with samples of the Beach Boys, Nancy Sinatra and a faithful cover of Paul McCartney’s Blackbird, the latter having a lyric about a Civil Rights event that seems in keeping with themes raised here. Similarly, if you listen closely you’ll hear a fraction of Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Chuck Berry and Son House making the point that they’re black but have influenced country. On most of the songs she uses traditional instruments, which nicely distances this from her R&B output, including acoustic. There are sumptuous harmonies throughout that give many melodies allure.
One critic on BBC Radio Four did concede that whilst most of it sounded nothing like country then the storylines were pure country! Tenuous would be a kind summary of their attempt to bolt it onto the genre. Like me you may have hoped that this was her Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music (Ray Charles) or even a brilliant covers album like Almost Blue (Elvis Costello). Instead, there are a lot of genres briefly covered and discussed with several spoken interludes.
For all that, it’s an excellent pop/soulful album bursting with melodies, interesting arrangements, intriguing samples and complex yet fresh production. I liked it and it went a long way to explaining how she’s amassed $1.16 billion with her husband, Jay-Z, and scooped up 32 Grammys along the way. She’s had a hand in all the original song compositions, arrangements and production. She’s a formidable talent not least for the curation worthy of a musicologist.
She puts in the words of Linda Martell a lecture about genres, and more to the point that they shouldn’t exclude. This is a clumsy message directed at the industry. Genres are a retail tool to categorise certain sounds to enable their promotion and sale. When’s the last time you turned your back on a good song because it wasn’t country?
So, stand by for it being lauded in the Grammys. Texas Hold ‘Em has probably done enough to earn a gong but I shall be dismayed, and even more detached from the Big Label music corporates, if they dare put the album near a country music category.
To attempt to get a wider audience I put some posts on social media. One of which was quick and easy to compile and post was using Instagram. Instagram suggests you should put hashtags on your posts. I’m pretty hopeless at this but I did add #yorkshiremanabroad as it appealed to my pride at hailing from God’s own county and the suggestion that there was danger, audacity and adventure by being away from the hallowed turf.
Imagine my surprise when I was clear of Canberra I got a new follower. He was a casting agent for a TV show. I paid little attention to it until Jerilderie when I got a request to talk on the phone. Now you have to remember that I had enough on with cycling, camping, feeding, writing a blog and, frankly, coping with the tour to be overly excited. So eventually the call takes place, as I’m leaving Jerilderie I mention I’m free and we could speak. When I left the town on a sleepy Sunday morning I was keen to get cycling to beat the inevitable heat. So stood on the hard shoulder feeling the temperature rising as I speak to Andy about his opportunity isn’t where I want to be.
Andy is casting for Rich Holiday Poor Holiday, a Channel 5 show that also has been put on Netflix. He likes this slightly eccentric Yorkshireman who’s riding with a rear view mirror attached to his spectacles through bewildering heat to Adelaide from Sydney. He asks me a gazillion questions and wants me on the show. However, he wants the family as well. I’ve never seen the show and have no real idea of what the plot entails.
I wrap things up and say I’ll ask the family. Obviously one member of the family is rather preoccupied with a new baby to be considered but maybe Anna and Katrina? The show’s proposition is that they send rich folk on a poor person’s holiday and vice versa. The reaction of the participants is the entertainment. It seems I’m a rich person and I’d have to find 16 unpaid days for filming to go on a naff holiday. The thought of slumming it in poor accommodation had a great appeal rather than another night in a tent but it’s not compelling is it?
If you’re an influencer or a very sad self publicist it may be an opportunity you’d jump at. For me then my inner Jonathan Edwards was not activated. Katrina quickly responded saying that she was not up for ‘camping on the Brecon Beacons’ and Anna was intrigued enough to watch an episode to see what it was all about but wasn’t interested afterwards. So I emailed Andy declining his invitation. In years to come if my Favourite Eldest Daughter ever asks what I did for her then I shall quickly remind her of the time I presented her with a passport to a career on the silver screen and she said no.
I mooched about Adelaide before returning. I’d got there with too much time to spare and as the temperature was 38°C it wasn’t a lot of fun outside. In planning my route from Sydney I never thought there was so little between Mildura and Adelaide to detain me or even offer up a place to stay. Adelaide’s a modern city with plenty of green spaces but a return visit isn’t on my mind.
Adelaide OvalRiver TorrensArt Gallery of South Australia
The flights back to Manchester went smoothly but over 20 hours of flying is hard work. Back home I discovered I’d lost half a stone in weight, which is pleasing but watching it go back on won’t be!
Truro to Adelaide (Frewville) 58 miles & 358m climbed
My sleep patterns have been akin to a baby over the month. I’m usually spark out by 7.30pm and awake, bright as a button, at 4.30am with an hour awake somewhere in the middle of that. When I awoke at 3am in the morning it was to messages from an Australian mobile number asking me to call. I thought there was no way I’m doing that! However the messager did ring after 7am. It was my Indian landlord saying the credit card I paid with on Booking.com had been declined? We agreed I would pay in cash and his ‘helper’ was being despatched to my ‘cupboard’ to collect the readies.
Wondering if this was a fraud taking place I called Anna to have her check the credit card statement to see if indeed it had been a successful transaction. It transpired the card had been cancelled. I coughed up the cash.
At 3am I also booked some Adelaide accommodation. Not the best time to do this stuff but needs must!
On your last day, on the bike after such a ride, it does have a ceremonial procession feel about it but it was still a demanding ride. The road climbed out of Truro but then I hit the flat on a hard shoulder where the surface was such that Max Verstappen would have been drooling. This led me to Nuriootpa where when I stopped to look at Google Maps to find breakfast a teacher asked me about my trip. It was outside the school entrance and he was ushering the sprogs inside. I’ve seen a lot of school children in the morning on this tour and I’m always slightly surprised to see all the boys in shorts all the way up to 18 in age, but why not?
Poached eggs and smashed avocado. Civilisation was beckoning
After a leisurely stop it was clear to see I was in wine country.
I was still on the A20, that along with its miraculous hard shoulder, suddenly became a six lane motorway. I trundled along until I got to the start of the northern Adelaide conurbation. However, it was still 30 miles to my hotel, just south of the centre. The A20 continued to the centre but became a fast ring road with little in the way of cycle lanes. The centre of Adelaide has tree lined streets and some old buildings but on these outskirts it was tyre depots, second hand car dealers, manufacturing units and endless McDonalds and busy intersections.
When I got to the City I came off my old friend, the A20, and now, following Sat Nav, found my way to the hotel.
I had got a splendid room for c£400 for four nights, about £100 below the going rate. This discount was courtesy of Booking.com who through my prolific use I seem to have accumulated discount benefits. (The city is expensive at the moment due to a month long festival (of the arts) in Adelaide.)
The next day was my birthday, sixty nine, and as has been kindly put, I’m now into my seventieth year or as my Favourite Youngest may summarise ‘eighty minus eleven’. Well, after the 1,045 miles I feel there’s life in the old dog yet. The next day a vital task was to get a bike box.
Take your pickJust about all in there
I had the chore, after getting a free box from a bike shop, of carrying this two miles back to the hotel! It’s a bit small but one way or another it’ll all cram in. Then followed laundry, shopping and sleep.
The next day saw me get the bus into town and I mooched around. The centre, bathed in hot sunshine, is attractive spacious and greenery isn’t too far away.
Some refreshments were taken in a beautiful arcade.
‘Do you want ice cream in that?’ ‘Of course’ Misery and moderation will resume back in York.
And if I can’t find a car museum what’s the next best thing?
Bought a Candi Staton and Dwight Yoakam album
So I have two more days to see the Adelaide Oval (although don’t mention England cricket at the moment), the river, the Botanic Gardens and other assorted sights. However I will sign off now.
Thank you for following. It’s been a blast and I know over the following months I’ll reflect on the many Aussie people I met/talked to, John in Canberra, the kind interest in Blighty from family and friends, the country life with its contrast to the diverse cities, the heat, some of the beauty of the countryside but the thousands of square miles of scrub/bush, the well equipped campsites, the two kangaroos leaping alongside me, the early morning bakeries with their sandwiches (mainly egg and bacon), the growling monster trucks 24/7, the unforgettable/unforgivable Macquarie Pass, the early starts and the fact I didn’t damage my passport!
It was cold in the tent first thing. I never expected that! With a plan for early starts it means you have to pack and break down the tent in the dark. I managed to do this. It helps having no close neighbours to annoy, except the 18 wheelers on the A20 (and they can’t hear you.)
Fruit trees re-appear
The start was through Renmark, a built up area and even though the early morning traffic was intense it was nice to have something to look at. Even a little agriculture came back into view rather than the open scrub land. However soon I had cleared the town and was back out on that hard shoulder that had now re-appeared as a rough asphalt track. Some genius, working for South Australia’s equivalent of the Highways Agency, had laid a hard shoulder from different material to the carriageway. Think of the saving! It was awful and shook the bike and me. I reckon I rolled at 2mph slower: generally not a big deal if you are moving at 60mph but significant if you’re moving at 12mph.
Brilliant (and vines)
As a consequence I rode on the carriageway until I espied a vehicle bearing down behind me using my rear view mirror and then I hopped back over the rumble strip onto the ‘track’. This regime was demanding and needed a level of concentration and so no music or podcasts for me all day.
Trees and still the Murray River at Waikerie
Lunch came into view at a service station at Waikerie and my specially made cheese and tomato sandwich scored 8.5/10. From here it was 26 miles to Blanchetown. By now we’re hitting mid 30°s temperature wise and cycling is a grind. I push on.
Blanchetown, in a valley down to the Murray River, arrives after 77 miles.
Back in the day there must have been a busy ferry service
After a long search up and down steep hills in the small settlement the campsite comes into view or not. Despite the checks and confirmation that looked very shut to me.
Gulp!
I cycled up the hill to the Blanchetown Hotel to implement ‘Plan B’ it turns out they’re just a pub and restaurant. The landlord shares his ideas on accommodation options and they’re another 30 miles away, or as he ruefully commented ‘a forty minute drive’! He also commented there were hills to negotiate.
A little crestfallen I regroup and as Mao Tse Tung once opined ‘the longest journey starts with the first step’ and it’s back on to the A20. I bought some water at a petrol station and pointed my trusty steed west again.
At this point I must mention my relief and delight at my fitness. I was often feeling weary but the legs were strong, knees uncomplaining, the back didn’t hurt and I could always press on. I carry too much water on the bike, however, to run out means going further forward or stopping altogether are both dangerous. Better the weight than the thirst. My bicycle hadn’t missed a beat throughout the ride. By now it needed servicing but it’d get me to Adelaide. Thank you Cycle Heaven bike shop in York!
So first up were some roadworks. Over a couple of miles they were resurfacing and it was passage by convoy and enormously dusty, clearly not a concern if you’re in a truck can 10 feet up. After this it was 400m of climbing. I hadn’t done this since earlier on the tour!
Toward the top of the first hill. The trucks grumbled their way up the 6% gradient.
At a Rest Stop (this is just a lay-by often with a bench, a gazillion ants, poor shade and litter) I stopped and with my friend Booking.com booked a miserable looking motel in Truro. By now I wasn’t overly fussy about where I’d lay my head but as I was arriving after 6pm some certainty appealed.
Pushing on the heat faded but the rolling hills keep appearing and then I rolled into Truro. The only motel is a fairly down at heel affair where Reception is locked and the mobile number I’m instructed to call has a voice mail message. Strangely, I’m not anxious, after 107 miles I’m just knackered and happy the ride’s over.
I get a call back from an Indian chap and he instructs me to sit tight whilst help is being sent to open up. This arrives and I’m let into a shoebox of a room. I ask about food options. There’s always the petrol station, she says, and the pub up the Main Street may be open.
Most towns have their memorials to the fallenNight and day these beasts roll through. The noise is immense in the motel.
So showered I wander down to the pub. Is it open?
No lights shone and more in hope than expectation I tried the door…
It was and I ordered a couple of pale ales and some fish and chips. A fair reward for a long day. A surprisingly happy ending.
Early morning texts and calls are to follow from the landlord courtesy of Anna’s cancellation of the credit card…
There was no escaping that the stretch from here to Adelaide had little to see and big distances between the towns. I hadn’t easily completed long distances on this tour because of the heat and now it just had to be done. I left the motel at 5.50am, well before daybreak. To accomplish this meant fitting lights.
I’m very reluctant to cycle in the dark because of safety but on Mildura’s residential streets it was quiet (and cold 12°C!) and seemingly safe. There were a few joggers and cars about. I thought if I left so early I’d minimise my exposure to the heat and given that it was Sunday the A20 wouldn’t be busy.
As I get to a junction to join this main artery road my mobile buzzes: a WhatsApp message. I hadn’t spoken to Anna as I’d wanted be off. It must be her. However, I stopped to check it. It was from Lyndon, a fellow music scribe and a kind supporter of my travel blogs. He passed on the information that an American music podcaster, friend, ‘good egg’ and seriously ill man had passed away. He had an aggressive cancer and it had taken him in weeks. I think he was only around 60 and had retired to pursue some hobbies and now this. Awful. Another friend and close friend of my wife had, the week before, advised that she was dealing with cancer again. I’m so lucky to do this but the real world will always intrude. With this sadness I pedalled on deep in thought.
“On a dark desert highway cool wind in my hair…“
I complained about the quality of the the hard shoulder to Mildura but from Mildura it was fine and I sped on and by my first stop at 9.30am I had 36 miles ‘in the bank’. I stopped at a tatty truck stop and had a coffee and sausage roll. I’m afraid most snacks in Australia involve beef, pork or chicken, oh and of course, cheese. Naturally none of this is fresh but nicely processed and out of the freezer.
Now this diet is very much an American one. The Australian large distances from fresh food opportunities, the need for fast food and the tastes of the customer are adjacent. Also, in terms of ethnicity, so are the proprietors: Indian. They are prodigious acquirers of truck stops, small supermarket franchises and hotels. It’s always men over 30 years old working all the hours available in these distant places. I salute their industry.
(Sandwich update. I bought one from Subway the night before. Tuna, of course. By the time I got to it. It was maybe 4/10. Message ends.)
My destination was in South Australia, where I gained half an hour due to it being a different time zone. As a State they are vigilant and determined to stop the import of a certain type of fruit fly. This fly lays its eggs in fruit and so you cannot bring fruit or vegetables across the border. Dutifully, at an earlier Rest Stop, I ate my banana and nectarine before approaching the inspection point on the road. I was pleased to be waved through but given there were lanes for trucks, camper vans, caravans and cars I did remonstrate that if they were taking this control matter seriously there should be a bicycle lane. Obviously they thought the heat was getting to me and smiled weakly.
Anyway I cycled on and by lunchtime I reached a town, Paringa. Here it was (Sunday) sleepy and mid 30°s and I chose to camp even though the local motel was attractively priced. My Indian host said my pitch would be A$45. I disagreed and pointed out that I didn’t need a ‘powered’ site. I hadn’t had space in my luggage for a TV, air con unit, fridge freezer and microwave. He saw my point of view and reduced it to A$35.
The site was well appointed but terribly hot. I tried lying down in the tent to discover it was a sauna. From here I went and jumped in the small swimming pool to cool down. After this I gave serious thought to making some dinner at the site ‘cook house’ but the haze of flies helped me make a decision to go across the road to the pub for a meal and pint.
On the next table there was a couple from Adelaide. I asked about whether there’d be camping at a town further up the road, Blanchetown? They said yes, as did a lady I phoned in Blanchetown and so did someone at the bakery the next morning. I climbed into my small abode feeling happy about today’s ride and that tomorrow looked straightforward. Oh how wrong you can be…
For possibly no good reason I felt behind schedule and felt even worse about the rest day when the next morning I discovered how cool it was! I needed my fleece as I strolled to find breakfast. I found it and my microbes cheered as I treated them to muesli, yoghurt and fresh fruit!
A real treat
However in the picture is one of my errors: the caffeinated coffee. (In the afternoon I attempted forty winks and I think this drug prevented sleep.) So after breakfast I ambled down toward the river where there was a Saturday market.
I’m sure the attendance was helped by the cool temperature. Mildura is a sizeable Victoria town with a lot of residential housing, The two big reasons it’s on the map are the fruit industry, which is vast, and employs many folk and attendant support services (and an armada of trucks ferrying the produce on the main highways.) The other draw is the Murray River that makes it quite a tourist spot. My Aussie pals from Barham (Barram!) were headed here and all the folk on my subsequent paddle boat jaunt were out of State tourists.
In the centre were many food outlets, in fairness nothing very upmarket, and regular shops such as supermarkets.
After a quick look at the stalls, mainly of local crafts, I went to find my 19th Century paddle boat for a trip on the Murray River.
She’s now diesel but once was steam and plied her trade on the river hauling timber, today it’s tourists. We had a nice couple of hours going through a lock and cruising along the river before being disembarked.
View from the boat
I mooched about in the afternoon and avoid lots of steps and come 5pm, even though not particularly hungry, I found a restaurant for a pizza and fries. Food is fuel and then I found myself in bed falling asleep just after 7pm! I wanted a good sleep to achieve a catch up and to set me up for some long rides to Adelaide. I was still concerned about the heat and the difficulty of getting to Adelaide with so few good camping or hotel stops. This was churning through my mind as I drifted off.
PS. I have been creating some social media to complement this drivel. My first wife studied my output and commented that my video and images with music was sufficient without my ‘talk’ videos. Nobody likes honesty do they…
Tony Ives’ Blog 