100 miles in the sun
Yesterday afternoon I set off on a trip to Leominster at about 2pm. I’m not sure how long it took, I was taking my time to a certain extent and this was due in part to the heat: it was pretty hot. When you’re really trying to get on you seem to feel like you weigh about 50% more than you do. On more than one occasion I checked to see if my brakes were stuck on. I also know that 50 miles a day is my minimum when I get to Spain/France, and to do 50 miles in an afternoon is quite encouraging. It’s relatively flat from Birmingham to Kidderminster and I stopped off in Bewdley for a cup of tea with some friends: it was a super cup of tea. After that I only stopped twice briefly, once to eat a banana and have a bout of sunburn paranoia (I thought my face was burned and I couldn’t see it), and once to look at St Michael’s College, (where a man took my picture, above) a pretty interesting and unexpected building not far from Tenbury on the A4112 (see Flickr). I stayed in a youth hostel in Leominster and while there I watched Spain vs. Honduras and talked bikes with a cyclist from Scotland which was good, but I didn’t have a great night’s sleep due to a man whose
snore sounded like a drain, a trapped bear and a steam locomotive: in the morning he seemed very well rested.
The next day I travelled to Ludlow and spent a while wandering about aimlessly and eating fruit pastilles, looking for something to eat. I had breakfast sitting on the steps of the Ludlow Buttercross, while listening to a man playing a tin whistle. Ludlow has a very old, untouched kind of layout in places, open market squares with tiny alleyways and roads leading off: you access a huge lovely church through a tiny alley next to the man busking with the penny whistle and his dog. It seemed like there had probably been a guy sitting in that spot playing a whistle or something ever since that spot existed.
Now perhaps it was due in part to the good weather, or maybe by saying that I’m doing a disservice to the people around these areas, but everyone seemed to be in a real friendly mood yesterday. As I went into the church I heard one of the ladies who worked there talking about how lovely Alan (the busker) was playing this morning, and saying how she was singing along. Alan was playing ‘Jerusalem’ on his whistle and it was terribly off key. Perhaps the limitations of the tin whistle mean you can’t knock off a really decent version of ‘Jerusalem’, I mean, it was recognisable but a bit odd. Perhaps the lady always sang it out of key anyway. She just said it in such a cheery way. And when I talked to each of the two ladies who worked there the conversation came to the point when you would think it would end, you say as much as is expected that one stranger will to another, but they just kept on going and were terribly interesting and engaging and all. I was also reminded of a tip that the Scottish cyclist gave me the night before: churches are also really good places to cool off when you’re riding in the sun.
From Ludlow I went down the A4117 and over Clee Hill, which is a pretty big hill. It’s 1700ft high at the top but luckily the road doesn’t go all the way up. It was pretty fast on the way down though, and perhaps a bit steeper than the Ludlow side, so I felt quite lucky. I stopped a little way further on at Cleobury Mortimer where again, everyone was very friendly, and I stayed for a couple of cups of tea outside a cafe. It seemed like one of those places where everyone knows each other. Then I bumped into the man who sold me my bike as he had noticed it chained to a tree, so even I knew someone there.
From there I cycled back to Birmingham with a quick stop off at Bewdley Museum, which is a really nice place, especially in the sunshine. I feel pretty tired today but I feel like I’m getting there.
