Good Friday isn’t a day off for me, it’s still work as usual, although for the afternoon we do start an hour later. I even fell asleep in my car at lunchtime – I can’t really go home and go back again as it’s a 30 minute drive! One day, maybe, I’ll bike to work – probably best avoided as the quickest route would be through Overton and Whitchurch – extremely busy ‘rat runs’ at the best of times, or down the A303, and believe me that’s NOT going to happen!
I still got home at the same time as usual, only to get a text from a friend of mine. Did I want to go for a ‘wee’ ride on the bike? Yep, too right! Now I can’t tell you exactly where we went, but it involved the War Memorial park cycle route, Old Basing, across the A30 by the Hatch pub, through Mapledurwell, er somewhere, somewhere, back across the A30, somewhere somewhere, Lychpit, back through Eastrop Park, then we parted ways and I hit the one way system at the top of town. Er, yeah, ok might sound like a load of gobbledgook, but I could cycle it again without a map!! And even though the weather wasn’t warm, there wasn’t much wind, just very cloudy.
We swapped bikes in the War Memorial park, I got on his ‘Soft tail’ mountain bike, and he had a go on my Trek Lexa. It’s a good job we a roughly the same height, although I felt like a kid on a Chopper with a raised seat.
‘How do the gears work?’ We both asked each other, ‘Where’s the bloody brakes?’ He asked me.
I was laughing so much I could barely peddle to catch up. Both of us agreed we prefer our own bikes, and duly swapped back before we left the park.
Now that time of night on any day of the week would usually result in endless cars cutting through on their rat runs home, but it was sooooo quiet. It was unbelievably quiet, needless to say I would be a bit wary of cycling that way on a normal weeknight, especially on my own.
It was great to ride with someone else, even if they do snigger at me puffing up the little hills! And it was great that the roads were so very quiet. However my knees didn’t like me much when I carried the bike up the stairs into the flat, but they seem to be ok now.
So 30 days of biking is turning out to be better than I thought! I did 13.3 miles in 1 hour 7mins, although in all honesty it was a leisurely ride as both of us were chatting away, although I still had a good sweat because I was wearing too many layers!!
Ciao for now 🙂
thelonelycyclist 