Yesterday would seem to have been Duncan’s disaster day. It all started of well. We arrived at Aldershot FC right on schedule and were met by Andy Nunn, the groundsman, and assistant manager Matthew Bishop. Following refreshments and photos we were give a tour of the club and in the end spent a good hour at the ground chatting with the staff who were very friendly and enthusiastic. We finally left just before 11am and made our way to the Farnborough ASDA store. This is where my problems began when a customer knocked into the bikes with their trolly. My bike went over and broke the bar end. Not a disaster in itself, easy enough to replace, but no time to do so. I decided to ride on and work around it.
After taking the boys through an industrial estate, which ended in a dead end, my Garmin had another meltdown. This happened several times on the ride today, the track simply disappeared, requiring a reboot and wasting time. (You may recall this happening in Wolverhampton).
Our original plan for the day was to try and reach Fordingbridge, but it soon became apparent that this was unrealistic. The route included a surprising number of climbs and the weather was gertting warmer. By the time we reached Phil for the first scheduled stop it was almost unbearably hot. Looking to get into the shade I stepped into mud and clogged up my cleat.
Our next stop was in Kings-worthy, where Andy bought us all posh ice-cream. Mike went for chocmint, I had columbian coffee, Andy a tub of Strawberry. Just one lick and my scoop began to part company with the cone. In a futile move to save my treat, I let go of my bike which crashed over, followed almost instantaneously by the splat of ice-cream striking pavement. Disaster! Now what I did next is something that I thought I would never do. Yep that’s right, I scooped it up and ate it. Its not something I’m proud of, but there you have it. Desperate times, desperate measures. Its amazing what you’ll do when your hungry and tired, and in need of ice-cream. (I did scrape the top layer with a paper napkin).
We found the remainder of this leg really quite tough. We were making good time, periodically but as we got closer to Salisbury the hills became more and more frequent. We were either climbing or descending, hardly ever riding on the flat. Even then our progress was impaired by a headwind. When we finally arrived we were all pretty well exhausted but we had covered 68 miles. Today we visit Help for Heroes HQ, then we ride from Salisbury to Bournemouth this afternoon, ready to visit Dean Court first thing tomorrow...
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| Matthew Bishop on Mike's Bike |
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| ASDA, Farnborough |
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