I meant to put this in the main blog entry yesterday but forgot, and decided to post it as a separate 'mini blog-post' instead of editing it into the other one.
Yesterday, while we were resting by the Tees Barrage, on the way to Stockton, a chap came past us on a bike with lots of touring gear - paniers front and back and on the handlebars. Sue asked him how far he had come and, once he understood the question (his English wasn't brilliant) he said "Korea". From what we could gather, he had cycled from Korea to Laos, and then flown from there to Moscow and cycled overland from Moscow to the Netherlands, from where he had got the ferry to Harwich, and since then had been cycling round England and Scotland.
However, what puzzles me about this now, having looked at a map of eastern Asia, is that the only way to get overland from Korea to Laos is to either start in or go through North Korea. Obviously no-one from South Korea would be able to do this but I didn't think people from North Korea were able to leave very easily. It seems unlikely that someone from South Korea would fly to Laos so that he could then fly to Moscow and cycle from there.
So, did we misunderstand what he was saying to us about his journey (quite possible given his poor English and our non-existent Korean), or was he a North Korean defector who had made an epic journey to get to the UK, or perhaps someone high up in Kim Jong Un's government who is cycling round the UK on a fact-finding/spying mission? Or is he actually from Romford and was pretending not to speak much English so that he can give his friends a laugh when he gets back to Essex?
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