Nick Bain Cycling: Nice Holiday With The Parents

The last couple weeks have been a pretty nice, cruisey week. On the 31st July I flew over to London to meet up with mum and dad and spend a couple of days looking around London with them. Hoped on the Tube and headed in town and man was it hectic. Being completely squished in the tube with heaps of other people and the streets were just mental with people and cars and sirens. So many ambulances! We got on the double-decker tour bus and cruised around the London sites. Got to see all the classic things like Big Ben, London Bridge etc. So much walking too! Not used to walking so much, I sit on my ass for a living so my feet and legs were killing me. Also had a look around Winston Churchill's Bunker which was really fascinating. The next day, London turned on the weather for us and it was a clear-ish blue sky day (Bit of smog, not like NZ blue sky) and really hot. We went over to Buckingham Palace to say yo to the Queen and had a walk around some park. We couldn't stay for too long cause we had to catch the Euro Star over to Brussels at 2 so it we couldn't have more of a look around London. Had another pint with the whanau in a English pub, so I can tick that off my list, before we headed on the train. I really liked London, I wouldn't mind going over there for 6 months or so and working in a pub and travelling around Europe or something for a bit of fun.
Picked up the rental car from Brussels train station and we drove back home sweet home. The next couple of days I showed mum and dad around Belgium and we went to Brugge and Ghent for a look around. Dad and I had a few classic Belgium beers and we sat in some nice cafes next to the canals. It was nice to have a couple beers and be able to relax with the parents.
Then we made the big journey over to France for a couple days. Spent the first night in a small town just out of Caen in some creepy looking BnB. It was a huge old house next to a church with a big graveyard. Ghosts! The next day we headed out to the coast and visited Normandy beach. We stopped at Juno beach first where the Canadians landed on DDay. It's quite weird, 69 years ago that sand on that beach was covered in blood and bullets but now it's covered in locals and tourists sunbathing and playing. Like dad said, they had DDay so the locals and tourists can sunbathe on that beach. It just felt really weird cause it really did just look like another beach. We then had a quick look around the Juno Beach Museum which was pretty interesting. The museum also shows the brief history of Canada which was really interesting to see and also what the Canadians did during the war. I think dad was pretty happy to be able to see all this. Next we headed over to Omaha beach. The place was packed with people. When went over to the section where all the headstones are, it was pretty overwhelming. I got a really weird feeling in my stomach. Just seeing the amount of white crosses there was just unreal. You couldn't even see the ones at the back! It was pretty sad to see that many white crosses in one place. Then you look down at the beach from the top of the cliff and then you just think that the white crosses behind you were looking up at where we were standing, 69 years ago. It was again a very odd feeling seeing people enjoying the beach and playing in the sand and water. Again, they did it so we can enjoy the beach but it's still just really weird cause people now were so happy and enjoying themselves in an area that was once the last place you probably wanted to be. We headed down the hill and on to the beach and looked up the big hill where the Americans would have looked and fought up. It looks a lot nicer than when it did 69 years ago. Dad and I had a little explore around and found some big canon concrete bunker things (Don't really know what they're called) and a German Pill Box. Seeing the big bullet holes in the concrete or big chunks taken out of the concrete. It was all pretty overwhelming. We made our last stop at Pont du Hoc where the Americans had to shoot grappling hooks at the top of a big cliff and climb the ropes up to the top where they met the Germans. Before the Americans landed on the beach, the Air Force bombed the hell out of the top and left giant craters in the ground that are still here today. They managed to get a few direct hits on the concrete canon bunkers too with big chunks of concrete lying around everywhere and giant holes in the concrete bunkers. It was pretty cool being able to see all that and it was a pretty humbling experience too, I really enjoyed. Stayed another night in Caen and then the next day we headed to Mont Saint Michel which is a tiny city on a tiny Island. It's also where the Tour de France finished their first Time Trial. It looked pretty cool from a distance but as we got closer you could see it was jam packed with people. There were so many people who kept stopping and taking photos and holding up traffic so I just told mum and dad to be a Belgy cyclist and just stick your elbows out and tell everyone to get out of the way! It wasn't as crowded when we got up to the church but man was it high. You just stick your head over the ledge and there's a 50 meter drop right there. Dad was too much of a wuss to get anywhere near the ledge but it had pretty good view. Too bad it was low tide cause it was all just mud flats. We didn't spend too much time there cause we were all pretty knackered so we just went and chilled in the town where our hotel was. It was nice just to chill out a bit and hang out with whanau. That's pretty much it. Won't say too much more cause the blog is pretty long as it is. Mum and dad headed off this afternoon so I will see them in 7 weeks again. Looking forward to it. It was real nice to be able to have some time off the bike, have an explore around a new country and be able to see my parents. It was a good few weeks but now it's back to business. Need to win some races to get some more money cause I'm broke as. So yea, I'll chuck up some photos from our adventure.

Thanks for reading

Nick