A bike, a bike, an island for a bike!

"The Queen is coming by bicycle," Franz said, and the onlookers standing nearby laughed. Franz was 14 or 15 at the time, he came from Erlangen, Germany, if I recall correctly. We, my friend Horst and I, had met him in the youth hostel in Stromness, which is on Mainland, one of the Orkney Islands. Franz was travelling on his own, but that day he joined us and the three of us went on a little bike tour from Stromness to Kirkwall. It was a beautiful summer day in August and we had a lot of fun.

In Kirkwall, we watched as people suddenly lined up along the roadsides. Not on all roads, but on one of the important roads on both sides. What might be going on here? We asked ourselves - and then Franz had the brilliant idea to ask one of the people. "The Queen is coming," was the simple answer. The Queen? We couldn't believe it, but joined in.

It was a very relaxed atmosphere, even the people waiting were obviously neither in a hurry nor impatient. But we young Germans, who didn't know what to make of it, did. Is the Queen really coming now? Or had we been made fun of? In any case, someone was expected, that much was clear.

After some time of waiting and looking - is she now coming from the right, or is she to be expected from the left? - we didn't know why it was taking so long now. Then Franz suddenly had his idea, which he said so loudly (and in English) that those standing closer could hear it: "The Queen is coming by bicycle!" Since we had our bicycles visibly nearby, it was probably clear that this was not meant as an insult, but referred to the waiting and waiting...

The Queen did indeed come and was driven quite close to us, but of course not on a bicycle. So we unexpectedly and completely surprisingly got to see the Queen in the flesh, and we rode our bicycles back to Stromness.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

photo: ty-ty