August 18, 2011
Raining all Day in Bath.
The rain eased on a a soaking wet Bath street and tourists walked under umbrellas. Although here before, it was many years ago and I tried finding my way around but it all looked different. Is on the lookout for tourist information. The chain was slipping on every hill and there were many of those. I had to resort to pushing the bike up the hills and I pushed the bike through the pedestrianised area. Is getting fed-up of pushing and decided to ride. A young policeman came nodding his head signaling with his raised hand for me to dismount: Saying when he'd come face to face with me, "you know it's a fixed penalty for riding on the pavement. You're an experienced cyclist I see. Don't let me catch you again."
The policeman pointed me in the direction of tourist information which now wasn't faraway. I got a city-plan on which was marked a backpacker's hostel around the corner at number thirteen Pierremont Street but, when I'd gotten that far, the street only went up to number nine. I thought there was a mistake, that the hostel wasn't there, but then looking across the street opposite I see number ten and next to it eleven then twelve.
I most be getting old, no I'm really tired. I check-in to the hostel and my leg muscles felt stiff as I tread heavily up four fights of stairs to the room. Going through the door I find a free bunk, lay-down feeling dead and soon fell asleep.
At breakfast in the hostel dinning-room a young German man laughed ho ho ho while looking at the television weather forecast. The cloud picture moving up from the south west illustrating rain all over the south of England for the day ahead. Looking out the window it was already raining in Bath. Umbrellas were up while taxis made a hissing and sloshing sound as they drove along the wet street below.
I had already decided on a rest day here, being tired and needing to have that bottom-bracket sorted out. I had already checked out the whereabouts of a bike-shop with reception. Avon Valley Cycles behind the train station; thither, I would go this morning.
I walked pushing the bike in the rain which now was falling heavily. At a distance coming out of the station in the crowd of commuters, I saw another cycle-tourer with the Ortlieb bags and suited up in bright yellow rain-jacket and trousers. Is glad it wasn't me. Today I wasn't going anywhere.
I pushed the bike in through the door of the shop underneath two railway arches. I said good morning to the assistant whom I met halfway between the door and the counter and point-out that my bottom-bracket is knackered, that I'd need a new Truvativ Bottom-bracket, but he knew already having glanced down and seen the SRAM cranks, and said I'll go and see if we've got one. When He'd gone I Look around the showroom: lots of Giant, also Marin. I look at the accessories; they stock Ortlieb bags. What's keeping him so long, I think as anxiety sets in. He is going to return after a long and exhaustive search shaking his head saying no sorry we've sold the last one. I walk around the corner made by the archway inside the shop toward the door where he went just as he returns with a small bottom-bracket sized box. He scans it and I pay twenty four pounds which makes it not as much as I thought. Back at the hostel it was easily fitted as I unscrewed and refitted the old bracket only three weeks earlier.
All day it rained and I read a book and wrote up my dairy. It stopped at six o'clock allowing me to get out and take photos and enjoy the dramatic play of light as low evening sun make an appearance through the banks of cloud and at one stage there was a rainbow over the streets of Bath.
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