We didn’t set an alarm this morning as we didn’t want to leave the very comfortable bed at Steve’s and so we just woke when we did and we hobbled down the stairs to be greeted with mugs of tea and cereal 🙂 WIN!!!!
We chatted at the table and I was asking more questions about kites as I am itching to get a power kite as the one of Steve’s I had a go with at Newark Kit Car Show really gave a huge adrenalin rush.
Anyway Karen (steve’s wife) asked if we would like some sandwiches for the journey to worcester and of course we accepted 🙂 There is nothing better than fresh sandwiches made by somebody else.
Once again we were very slow to get moving and to get on the bikes. Steve was leaving to go on the Wales buggy run which is organised by the owners club that I own so I was a little bit gutted to not be going and this kinder put a downer on the day.
We are now heading to Cubbington to pay a visit to my friends grave who died earlier this year. Vanessa was one my internet geek friends and we use to work on projects together and generally help each other out. She died suddenly and left a huge hole in many peoples lives and she left behind a 15 year old son. So whenever I am near Coventry I will always drop past.
On the way to Cubbington we had to cycle down a busy dual carriageway and there is a cycle lane if you can call it that but it was full of broken glass and general litter which as usual Jane managed to find.
Jane starts to moan that something doesn’t feel right and I could see something in her tyre and I tell her to stop and this is what we find.
So as you can tell I was amused by this…. How Jane manages to do it beats me but still none the less the tyre did its job and there wasn’t a puncture (for once) I removed the nail and we decided that now was a good time to start looking for a replacement tyre as this one was now very damaged. The good thing was that it wasn’t on a new tyre that we nearly bought the day before.
What we didn’t realise about Coventry and Cubbington is exactly how hilly the place is, we were constantly climbing up hills and the down hill bits were not that great as we had a head on wind and the roads were full of pot holes.
We make it to Cubbington and we got to the church where Vanessa is buried and we eat our sandwiches that were made by Karen and I then walk up to the grave. I am not sure if I should have taken a photo but I know a lot of my American friends have not yet seen the grave so I have added a picture here and I hope it does not offend anybody.
After we had eaten our sandwiches and paid our respects to Vanessa it was time to head to the local pub where Vanessa was born and have a quick cheeky pint. We got chatting to the Land lady and she of course new Vanessa and bought our drinks for us which was very nice and then she got talking to us about our cycle ride and she gave us some money to put in the Help For Heroes pot and then we had numerous people come over to us and wish us luck on the rest of the journey and donated more money to the charity which is very nice and also very different to anywhere else we have been.
We head off to Worcester and we are going up and down hills and still the morale is very low, we are both very grumpy and taking it out on each other. We are aching and the roads are tiresome but at the same time very boring and the conditions are not right to be taking your mind off the road as it could turn fatal.
I have now worked out how to make drivers over take us and give us plenty of room and that is to hang out from the curb a good 3 ft and this makes drivers think that they can’t just squeeze past and that they actually have to wait for the oncoming traffic to clear and that means they overtake safely.
I am not a shy person when it comes to expressing my feelings to people who drive dangerously and being shouted at by some poor Vectra driver when he came so close to us was no different. Remember we have video cameras rolling a lot of the day so I am not worried about what you say or do as I will hand it over to the necessary parties.
We cycled through Warwick and this is a lovely town with some stunning architecture and I kinder wish that we had spent some time there as I was really interested in some of the buildings but we are working to a schedule and we had to get the miles in so we pushed on moaning all the way to Worcester.
I have never knowingly been to Worcester and my first impressions where not fantastic. It seemed to be missing a heart or possibly a sole, nobody seemed friendly. I don’t know what it was but I was not happy about staying there but that is where we needed to be so that was that.
We locked our bikes up outside an Oneils bar using all of our available locks and chains and we sat in a window seat so we could watch our bikes. As I mentioned I simply did not trust this town.
The food we ate was average and I was off the beer and just drank J2O’s, the mood was strained as we were both at rock bottom then the heavens opened and we just watched as our bikes got drenched. We needed to find somewhere to stay the night tonight and Google once again became our friend as we called round all of the local B&B’s trying to find rooms and then trying to haggle them down to get into the realm of what we wanted to pay.
Eventually we found somewhere and she moved on the price for us and offered us a nice big room and breakfast for a reasonable amount of money. We now decided to go and try and get some Travel Lodge deals for the weekend as we did not want a repeat of last weekend where it was 20:00 and we still didn’t have anywhere to sleep.
We managed to get some cheap rooms booked for Friday and Saturday and so all that was left to do was find somewhere for Thursday when we are at Brecon in wales.
About an hour passed and we headed to our B&B for the night where quite an eccentric old lady let us in and also suggested that we left our bike in the dining room for safety…. oh yes I figured crime was going to be an issue in this town.
We clambered upstairs into our nice big room had a long hot shower and fell fast to sleep.
We are hoping that tomorrow is a better day and that we start feeling a bit better about everything in general.