We have been back from Grampies Search for the Meaning of Life for about five weeks now. During that tour of Germany and six other nearby countries we earnestly searched on each day for the wonders of life and the earth that would be revealed by our route. Ninety days and more than ninety wonders later, we returned to our farm, discovering another earthly wonder: just how high previously innocuous weeds can grow given three undisturbed months of Spring.   The answer is 3-4 feet!

My response to this, since I am me, was to roll out the heavy equipment and to run around cutting, mowing, and string trimming. But the gentle Dodie, being Dodie, favoured hand digging each and every wayward plant. I am not saying that she would apologize to each one for its demise, but I was suspicious that "hand digging" meant that Steve would hand dig.  I was wrong about that, because she turned out with pitch fork and gloves and sun hat and launched the attack. Seeing that, I got out my own fork and gloves and hat, and we have been digging and pulling for the past weeks. That is not to say that the fun power equipment stayed parked. I actually mowed the grass with a "Bushhog" behind the tractor, following with a riding mower, then push mower.

Dodie, known for her tenacity on the road, kept after the weeds in the same way. Finally, the weeds had to concede defeat. This gave us the chance to look around and say "OK, what's the next challenge?".  This is when Dodie came up with the brilliant (but so well known) observation that while the Shengen Zone does not want to see us back until mid-October, there is always jolly old England, currently the refuge also of the Andersons.

But just because we could go to England, and just because the weeds seemed to have given up, was surely not a reason to launch an entire new mega tour. After all, we had just finished discovering in principle everything there was to discover on a bike tour, condensing it into a single neat pie chart. And every other Grampies tour had had its own serious goal - like finding the best Poc Chuc in Yucatan, or the best tortes in Austria. Do they have anything worth searching for in England?

Our answer to this, sure to infuriate any British readers, was "Well, maybe not, but does that stop us from just spinning around the place anyway?". One other consideration came into play. If we would go to England around now, it could soon become too chilly to be fun. So that produced the idea of doing a quick UK circle, and then beating it more or less due south, to the south of France, following which we could fly home, shiver for a bit, and think about a further warm up in Mexico.

The details of what kind of route this means will be found in the Route page, still to come. But we still have not exhausted the "why" question.  Dodie noticed that the general route resembles a lollipop, with a sweet circle in the UK, and a straight stick down through France. And yes, our attitude this time is not an urgent quest, but merely a light hearted cruise,  in parts through areas we have already scoped out in some past trips. 

This is not to say that we intend to pedal along, heads in the clouds and humming, and not scrutinizing everything we see. That's just not our way. No, we will still earnestly study and absorb every aspect of the landscape, architecture, food, crops, markets, social fabric, and people that we encounter. It's just that we are not actively searching for anything in particular, as we round the lollipop and slide down the stick to the Mediterranean, over 75 hopefully fun filled days.