Mile by Mile Blog: Days 9 - A Late Start Means a Late Finish

I have to confess to getting a bit behind with the blog, and time is still at a premium. In this post I will cover Tuesday 26th July. I will try and catch up again this evening.

The day started with a bit of a lie-in, well for some of us. Even that was compromised by the fact that there was a display team (from the Navy I think, but not sure) training with fireworks in the main hall, from 7:30 am.

Our intention was to visit the Help for Heroes office in Salisbury at lunchtime, then ride on to Bournemouth in the afternoon, then having a pub meal in the evening. Thats not quite how things panned out. Firstly, we discovered that the office we had planned to visit wasn't the Salisbury branch, but in fact in Tidworth, a few miles further North. Unfortunately there was no time to ride their so we decided (reluctantly) to visit in the bus. When we arrived there were lots of staff and they gave us a very enthusiastic reception. We spent quite some time there chatting, drinking tea and taking photos, but eventually we had top leave and return to Salisbury to resume the ride. Then we noticed that Andy had a puncture.

Back in the Sainsburys' car park in Salisbury, Andy and I fixed his bike while the others did a bit of food shopping. By the time we left it was nearly 4pm, so we felt that we really needed to crack on.

We made excellent progress, cruising at around 18 mph and were soon in Fordingbridge. A brief stop for a photo then on to meet the bus in Ringwood. Again we made good time. It was when we reach Bournemouth that the problems started. The route that I had created online and transferred to my Garmin, required us to ride through the garden of some posh house near Hurn, not ideal, in fact not happening as the gates were shut. This necessitated quite some detour. When we did eventually get back on the track, it took us to the gates of a large corporate site with security on the gate. We explained that we were trying to get to ASDA bournemouth, "Not through here lads, no chance." To be fair he did give us some directions. we set off on another detour.

Next, Mike fell off his bike. He was trying to 'bunny-hop' up a curb, not the best policy on a racing bike, then couldn't get his feet out of his cages quick enough. He was essentially OK, cut his knee a bit, but more importantly he damaged the shifters on his handlebar. They were still functioning, so we pressed on.

When we arrived at the bus we had added an extra 7miles to our journey and the time was nearly 8pm. The girls sprung into action and patched up Mikes knee, then we all piled in the van and set of looking for a Harvester. This also proved fruitless and in the end we decided to go back to the TA centre and get a Chinese takeaway.

So we ended the day having achieved our target of reaching Bournemouth. The next day would be an early start, but we would be going home...