I didn’t say but yesterday I was in a really bad mood! Firstly after paying near £300 for a service I was left with a squeaky front brake which was so annoying, it was ok the day I picked it up it just appeared yesterday morning when I was loaded up and on my way home! I should have gone straight back to the shop but it was an 16 mile detour and I would have had to have waited around for them to open and me being me and being Mr impatient I just wanted to get going but with hindsight I definitely should have gone back because I got more and more wound up about it as the day went on! It’s fixed now it just needed the brake blocks adjusting but for the money I paid I shouldn’t have had to do it! Another reason for being in a bad mood was my back was killing me, which must have been from the walking around in Bridgwater the day before and I also seemed to have developed a blister or something on my bum! Which is also really painful! I think it’s down to the new shorts I’ve got the seams are in the wrong place! So all in all yesterday’s ride was not good at all every single bump I hit hurt and every time I braked I had that annoying squeak! Today however is a good day, my back feels better, my bum still hurts on every bump I hit, but hopefully that will ease! Camping last night was also good as I managed to get a free nights camping! Nobody came to collect the money last night (possible because I wasn’t there I was down the pub!) and there’s no office so I just left! My brakes were also good today, no squeaking! The only downside today was a strong headwind which by the time I’d reached Southampton I’d had enough of and jumped on a train! Cycling the last bit from Southampton doesn’t do anything for me as i’ve done it so many times in the past and I couldn’t see any point in struggling against the wind! I met a lovely old character called Roy, in New Milton today he’s 83! He was waiting at a bus stop for his wife and called out to me as I cycled past. Turned out that he’s cycled over the Alps three times on separate occasions back in the fifties and that was on a 4 speed bike! He said he’d trained his first wife to be a speed rider and she was ranked 3rd in the country, but she ran off with one of the other trainers! He went on to say that he’d just had an operation to remove a cancerous lump and had also just undergone radiotherapy, which has hopefully killed of all the cancer! He says he gets his results in a week, which hopefully will give him the all clear. I wished him well for the future and carried on my way!
Cycle Touring England Tuesday 8th September. Stawell to Wareham. 68 miles.
Decided to use the gps on the phone today just to see how I got on. It is really good if you like using back roads and not knowing where you are! Personally I like to know where I am or at least roughly and I prefer to go the most direct route! With the gps I didn’t have a clue where I was for most of the time and it felt as though I was going miles out of my way, I was totally in it’s control! Needless to say I did turn it off in the end and used the map but not until about 20 miles from my finish. The other problem with using the gps on the phone is that it drains the battery so quickly! I left the campsite with a fully charged phone but two hours later I was down to 50%! Even when I plugged it in to my dynamo on the bike I was struggling to keep it charged, it just drains the battery so much! But it’s good to try these things, I think I’ll just use it in an emergency or when I’m lost in a city as I have been doing I just thought I’d give it a try on a long trip!
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Cycle Touring England Monday 7th September. Stawell to Bridgwater and back. 16 miles.
Only 16 miles today as I spent most of it hanging around Bridgwater waiting for my bike to be serviced which was the only reason for coming away in the first place. Can’t say that Bridgwater is a pretty place it seemed a bit run down to me with plenty of closed and boarded up shops. The old part near the church seemed ok with some old houses. But that was about it. After spending the morning meandering around the town and sitting down to rest a lot I gave in and went for a pint, after all it was midday! I was only in the pub for an hour when I got a phone call to say that my bike was ready. After picking my bike up I came back to the campsite and found I had some neighbours, funny couple both in their fifties they didn’t even acknowledge me they just avoided all eye contact completely even though they were only 10 yards away! I did hear him on the phone, he must have phoned everybody he knew telling them that they were here and that they were ok, I think it must have been their first time camping as he sounded like an excited school boy every time he spoke to somebody!
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Cycle Touring England Sunday 6th September. Whaddon to Stawell. 67 miles.
What a lovely sunny day today! Although it was a bit fresh first thing my hands and toes felt as if they had frostbite coming down some of the hills, but it didn’t take long before the sun was high in the sky and the temperature rose. I was following one of the national cycle routes today, route 24. A lovely route that more or less runs parallel with the busy A36, it passes through loads of little villages with thatched houses lining the streets. All was going well until I went through Longleat, for a moment I thought I was going to go through the safari park but thankfully I didn’t I just went through the immaculately kept grounds and past the magnificent Longleat house. Bearing in mind I was on a national cycle route so I was never really ever going to go through an actual safari park and neither did I expect the road to be closed by a locked gate with two giant logs either side of it and no way through apart from having to lift your bike over and to top it all there was another one about half a mile down the road! Another cyclist told me that their always locked and that you always have to lift your bike over! How ridiculous only in Britain do we have national cycle routes that are gated with no way through apart from lifting your bike over! I think I’ll write to Sustrans the cycling authority that look after these routes! Well after that I gave up on cycle routes and just headed down the main road! Found a lovely little campsite just outside Bridgwater for tonight, there’s only me here! Photo: Longleat House.
