So, another year, another cycle trip. This year we decided to travel from Bristol Temple Meads through Devizes to Reading, then up to Oxford.
This year we had another new entrant, Greg “where did I put the map” Dow – who put himself through the pain and suffering along with me, Mr Marr and Big Brend..
The expected route would take us along the Kennet and Avon Canal route – Cycle route 4, and would be 145 miles long – and although we didn’t know at the time reasonably easy.
DAY 1. Bristol to Devizes – (40 miles)
GD had arranged to stay over with me in Magor on the Friday before, so although I tried to persuade him to take the train connection to Severn Tunnel we agreed that I would pick him up from Newport. So at 3 I set off on the 11 miles down to Newport station. As I took my bike from the garage it poured. A sign of things to come?
After meeting GD and cycling some miles back home, we “happened” upon a country pub – well it would be rude not to eh? GD did actually believe that I had actually stumbled upon this pub – but none the less to get into the spirit we knocked back a couple of three beers then set off for home.
After a nice hot ruby murry and a couple more beers we decided to play a couple of ends of wiff waff. GD used to be a champion at this, but time takes its toll and I wiped the floor with him ;o) Well until he got his eye in and started to take me to task (we had played 43 games by then so my excuse was my arms had seized up and I was now blind). Then to bed….
Got the bikes in the car, and by 9:30 we arrived at Temple Meads, to be met (thank god) by Brendon and Marrsy. I had been very worried that Brendon would have forgotten/taken the wrong train/got distracted but he was there in (very) skin tight cycling gear – at least he looked the part!!
So off we went, in the first stage of the journey. I had noticed it was very hard work to start with, then realised that Marrsy had deliberately put my front wheel on the wrong way round, so once that was sorted away we went.
We stopped for “coffee” at Browns in Bath – very civilised I must say. A couple of coffees that sound as expensive as they were, and a cup and saucer of tea (I asked for a mug and the waiter looked at me with a cup (and saucer) of disdain). After a photo opportunity we set off to the canal path.
Well, there are a lot of stigs that live on the river I can tell you. They all look the same, wool jumpers in green or orange, with at least 7 holes in, brown cords or jeans, dank slightly too long hair tied up (boys and girls) and smell of marijuana. They are all sanding their “homes”, and none of them pay any tax no doubt ;o) We cycled passed hundreds of them, we also saw some folk who were pretending to be “river folk”, by attempting to look like the real ones but spending a grand a week to do it – you could see them a mile away – they were the ones actually moving the boats along the canal.
After a fairly long run, and approx 20 miles in we stopped for lunch right by the canal side in the Lock Inn ( http://www.thelockinn.co.uk/breakfast/ ) where three of the gang had the “world famous.. as seen on TV…” Boatmans breakfast – two of them cheated slightly by having a vegetarian version (whats that about!! ;o), but The Brend had the full fat meat one. (I had a couple of faggots – but that’s another story). The breakfast was HUGE – Brendon had the extra black pudding, which was massive, it was about the size of two ice hockey pucks together, but without a blink he ate it, in 4 mouthfulls. He finished before everyone and even helped GD eat all his veggie “sausages”. After food and a pint we set off down the canal path once more towards Devizes.
As this was a short day of only around 40 miles, we arrived just outside of Devizes early afternoon, so we stopped at the bottom of the 16 locks at Caen Hill ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caen_Hill_Locks ) for a breather and watched one of the boats struggle up the hill. This was the biggest, in fact probably the only hill we had all day, as we were following the canal obviously there wasn’t much in the way of grads – but we did discover on this one, that GD and hills do not mix!!! We got to the top and spent a moment chatting about the locks whilst GD caught up. 10 minutes later we were in the hotel.
After some showers we were ready to hit the town, luckily it was still early evening around 4 so we set off to the canal path to find a “nice pub by the water”. We passed a 7 day river person, who we could tell was enjoying his holiday as he was on one end of his 50 ft boat and his wife was on the other, who regaled us with tales of pubs on the river some “half an hour” away – now as his boat travels around the speed of grass growing we thought it must be close. We set off. And walked. And walked. And walked for quite a long time. After about a day, I joked to Marrsy how terrible it would be if we got to the pub and it was on the other side of the river – ah how we laughed when it was!! There was no bridge in sight, but the pub was only around 15 ft away, we toyed with the idea of trying to make an “ant bridge”, but decided to continue walking instead.
After another half a mile we came to a bridge, but Marrsy suggested there was a great pub “just down river” and perhaps we should try that – we did, it was shut.
So instead of cutting our loses, we ventured on, through a cornfield to another village, where we spotted an open pub. We sat in the sun and had a couple of beers, it was nice. Brendon told us about the time he went husky racing somewhere cold, where the dogs looked like Corgis..
We had to head back to Devizes and we took – wait for it, a bus. Yep public transport, with other public people on it. But it was a double decker, and the three Hieneken’s had effected my cycle weary body, so on we went – it was fun.
We went for a ruby, then had a couple of beers – and went to bed surprisingly drunk and tired at about 11. Greg introduced me to the brilliance which is ear plugs, and although the world was noisy, I had a reasonably good night.