Next morning, and we had the Premier Breaky – we were supposed to meet up, but for a change GD was late – he had a room on his own, and we were a little concerned, but bacon, sausage, omelette and juice soon put pay to that. Marrsy did need to know what was happening, as we had text GD a number of times – Marrsy found him waiting for us in the lobby – 20 mins later than agreed, with no phone (he keeps it switch off) and also no room key. He had breakfast.
After finally getting back into his room, which was booked in the name of Brend – which GD didn’t realise, we assembled for day two. Whilst waiting for Dave we re-wrote the London tube map in a novel and exciting way to represent not only the actual course of the lines, but also their relationship to shops that sell loom bands. He arrived, we departed.
We used Boris’ super cycle highway to get out of London, which was quite good, other than we are a little thick, and once we finally got to the edge of town Dave had a breakage. We spent quite a lot of time trying to fix his chain, well, when I say we, I mean Marrsy did, Dave did highlight his annoyance that as he was still he was only getting a tan on one side, and after some time we thought about how we could get to a shop for a new chain. Then Marrsy mentioned that he had one in his magic bags. So after another couple of minutes we were on our way. Behind schedule we zoomed from the town and into the countryside, pausing occasionally to admire the view and allow poor old Mr Triathlete to catch up on his mountain bike, and before we knew it we were in a little place, called something I cannot remember (Faceache says Havering Att Bower?) for grub. Nice beer and a great beef sarnie – then before we knew it we were on our way again. The day ending up being about 65 miles which was a surprise but it was mostly flat (I think) and it all blurs into one. A couple of times I thought I would try to save Marrsys legs and took the front, every time I had to slow down because the route changed, or even at one point I had a puncture (first one in three years) – so in total I probably managed about 5 mins.
At one point during the trip we passed some children on bikes, up a slight incline, only one of the team managed to make it, as we were about to congratulate him, he stopped to wait for his mates, and instead of putting his feet down on the road he slowly tipped over towards the verge – only the verge was actually a big dip by the side of the road and he did a comedy fall into the brambles, branches and nettles – one shouldn’t laugh, but one did ;o) Dave did stop to help but he was okay, other than some nettle rash and a slight dent to his pride, it must have been tiredness but I couldn’t stop chuckling at the muppet. Although God paid me back by giving me the puncture a little later. We also went passed a long road of very exclusive houses in Brookmans Park – some very decent places there…
Then we were in Hatfield – checked in and I sat in the gardens waiting for the team to get themselves sorted – which they did – then Dave came along after we solved that all nontrivial zeros of the analytical continuation of the Riemann zeta function have a real part of 1/2 – on half a dozen beer mats, which unfortunately we forgot to collect when we left, then into Hatfield proper. Hatfield is a hole. The only bar we dared go to was inside the Mall, so after a couple we headed over to the Indian, where Dave introduced me to an African Beer which was nice, and although the Vinderloo had a health warning from the server, it was mild – but quite tasty. A little walk back and it was time for bed again.