Déjà vu

August 26, 2024

Back the way we came...

It had been a great weekend. I'd rather spoiled my copybook with regard to the healthy living thing, largely as a result of copious single malt whisky supplies. But I'd had a good catch up with an old friend, and we'd visited Reading, Twyford and Henley.

It's nice around these parts: commutable for London, close to the Thames, and therefore a fair bit of wealth sloshing around. It's true that we had seen quite a few other folk on two wheels, but their bike wheels tended to be handbuilt and attached to carbon frames as far as I could tell.

Being a bank holiday weekend, there was plenty of recreational and club cycling going on, and by Monday morning we were ready to get back on the road and join them.

Henley-on-Thames, home of the famous regatta. Obviously, the boats don't come up this bit.

In the UK, bank holiday mondays are the days given as extra holiday to the few souls still working in real life banks. Traditionally, they spend this time going to garden centres or DIY shops, and everyone else follows them. This means that although rush hours are quieter, the roads remain busy with recreational drivers. I'd probably not spent enough time factoring that into my journey planning. As we followed the main A4 road westwards for a good few miles, we had a constant stream of (polite, careful) cars buzzing past.

On reflection, I should have spent some time creating a more varied route, because we found ourselves retracing the exact one that we'd taken on Friday, at least for the first 60 miles. In my defence, I'd probably always seen this as a fairly utilitarian journey, and didn't want to lengthen it unnecessarily in case I was tired. But I was actually quite fresh, which just goes to show the restorative power of whisky.

Anyway, the road looked different, because I was staring in the other direction. There were for example no giant horses, or rather, there probably were, but we didn't see them because their chosen hillsides were facing the other way now. (I appreciate this makes no sense if you've not read the account of our outward journey. Suffice to say there were no hallucinogens involved; I'm a responsible cyclist).

Once we'd passed through the built up areas of Reading, Thatcham and Newbury, we were back on pleasant forested roads through what are apparently the North Wessex downs.

The North Wessex downs, which were in reality neither particularly down nor remarkably up. Just flattish and straightish. But pleasant nonetheless.

First planned stop, at around 30 miles, was the nice café we'd visited on Friday. However, we arrived to find it closed, because they'd probably gone to a DIY shop. So we took a left into the centre of Hungerford instead, to explore. We found a great bakery where fortunately none of the staff had expressed any desire for home improvements, which meant that they'd instead been busy cooking chelsea buns. So I bought one, and took it the the pretty waterside area. On balance, this was a successful stop, because another cyclist pulled over to compliment Raven on being a lovely Fairlight Strael, because he worked in the bike trade and knew about such things. We also met a nice lady by the canal, but the downside was that neither Raven nor I could actually be of any help in solving her last two crossword clues. She didn't appear to mind too much, though.

Hungerford, an attractive little place and the location of our historic crossword fail.

Setting off again, into the continued headwind, we found ourselves back on the quieter country roads that had made up the majority of our initial trip. Nothing remarkable, but some lovely English scenery, of the sort that people make into jigsaws to give to grandmothers on their birthdays.

I think this might have been Hampshire, somewhere. As usual, there were no county signs on the back roads.

When prehistoric man was making up new words, I think he must have drawn something like this on the cave wall to designate "bucolic."

It was just before Frome that our original route changed, for the first time. You might recall that I mentioned meeting an Aussie guy in Frome on that outward stretch. He'd been keen to reroute me around nearby Longleat house, where he said there was some beautiful riding. And although I hadn't been up for diversions on my 159 mile trek, it was rather fabulous to find that GPS was now sending me around exactly this detour.

Longleat is a beautiful English house and estate, belonging to the Marquess of Bath. It's famous primarily for also having a safari park. You can drive through it, which generally just results in your wipers/ radiators/ door handles being removed by the free-range monkeys. But they also have more exotic specimens like lions, tigers and rhinos. So it was with a degree of trepidation that we pulled over at the ticket booth, and I enquired if there was indeed a public right of way through the estate. "Absolutely," replied the young cashier reassuringly. "Just...", and here she paused for emphasis, "make sure you don't turn left."

We made very, very sure.

The entrance to Longleat safari park. Abandon hope all ye who enter, particularly if your car has interesting or expensive sticky-out bits.

Longleat house. The heating bills must be a bugger.

We wandered onwards to Westbury, where I'd scheduled a supermarket lunch stop, but having somehow missed it entirely, I instead finished my emergency flapjack rations and pushed onwards until I found a rather swish village shop and café at about the 77 mile mark. And because the sun was shining, we marked the occasion with an ice cream. It's been said by a fellow cycle blazer that a tour isn't a tour if it doesn't have one of those, and I'm always happy to take advice.

Village shop, with café and trendy architectual glass frontage. My local shop closed three years back, and I feel a bit jealous.

36% double cream. I looked at the ingredients. This was a really outstanding, locally-produced ice cream and what was best of all, was that they hadn't put a calorie count on it.

And that was almost the end of the day's trip: another hour's cycling to get to our budget hotel on the outskirts of Wincanton, in Somerset. It's a Travelodge... functional and clean, with no remarkable features. But it's been located close to a major route (the A303) and it's surrounded by two supermarkets, two fast food joints, and a pub, so it's more than adequate for my needs. I've deliberately not taken a picture because it's a dull, corporate building. I think I'd be excommunicated if the image randomly popped up on cycle blaze's rather nice front page montage.

So instead, I'll close with a final image of the day's digits. More tomorrow. It'll be a brand, shiny new route.

Full ride details at https://ridewithgps.com/trips/215397926. But honestly, if anyone out there was bored enough to look at day one, it's mostly the same thing, truncated and backwards.

Today's ride: 90 miles (145 km)
Total: 249 miles (401 km)

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