July 6, 2015
Day 23: Heros
It's about this time that I should mention my admiration for the English and their tea.
If you have read any of my journals in the past you may think that I live and breath coffee, or more specifically lattes. And that is true, to a point. But at home I drink tea, mostly anyway.
But America sucks at tea. If you order tea in a restaurant you get a lukewarm water in a miniature teapot and a little tray thing with a selection of tea bags. While you are selecting your teabag the water continues to cool but you pour it over the selected teabag anyway because you ordered it, and after you drink your lukewarm tea you will probably get a scowl from the waiter if you ask for more lukewarm water. If you are daring enough to ask for milk you might get a creamer cup.
But in Great Britain tea rules! Damn, they know how to do tea. They bring a piping hot pot of it, and if we order 3 teas we get a BIG pot, and all the HOT water we want, plus a pitcher of milk and if you ask for MORE milk you usually get a, "certainly", or something to that effect with your new pitcher of milk.
I look forward to our tea stops all day, especially when the tea is accompanied by a scone with clotted cream, but even if it's not, I look forward to tea. We usually stop 2 or 3 times for tea during the day.
So, at home, or in places like Spain where they serve a mean cafe con leche, its coffee all the way, but in Great Britain it's all tea all the time.
And today I looked forward to it more than I have on any other day. It rained, and rained, and RAINED and kicked our asses all day. We road 55 plus miles and stopped twice. Both times I felt hypothermic by they time we were done with our break because I was soaking wet and stopping was worse than riding and keeping warm. I felt like I was absorbing water like a sponge. My shoes were sloshing...
We stayed on the main roads because the mountain road we wanted to ride would have been to dangerous.
I was never so happy to get to Llangollen and VERY happy to find a Bed and Breakfast because tomorrow is a rest day! Steph went into the tourist office to find someplace to stay and asked, "...you don't care where we stay as long as it's inside, right?" That was a big 10-4.
Except they were having a big festival and there were NO rooms in town! We must have gotten the last place for miles, that was 2 miles out of town and up a big hill, but we were glad to have it. We were so tired we ate leftover ham and cheese sandwiches for dinner and went right to bed.
"You know today kind of sucked," I told Leo. "But it feels kind of satisfying because of the condition."
"The conditions made it heroic," he said
Yes, that was it. And strangly satisfying because of it..
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Today's ride: 55 miles (89 km)
Total: 834 miles (1,342 km)
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