A trip down memory lane

One week to the day since we started at Lands End and I am pretty astounded that we, or should say I, have made it to the outskirts of Manchester. Having had little access to a computer for the week, just my mobile phone for Twitter updates, I wanted to try and give a brief summary of the first week’s cycling.

I can’t tell you much about Cornwall or Devon. I don’t remember a lot, just looking down at the road and forming explanations in my head about why I was going to have to pull out of the trip in the first two days. But I can tell you a lot about the roads and the pathways, the flowers by the sides of the lanes and the state of our tarmac in Britain (not good). Slowly as the week has passed, the scenery has changed. The flower filled, high grassy banks in Cornwall, with pink Fox Gloves, Hedge Parsley and Blue Bells have given way to Devon’s grassy verges and then the red earth of Somerset.

I can tell you how the hedge rows seem to physically shudder when cars pass and how fat bees crawl along the hot road, squashed frequently by fast moving tyres. Of course I can also tell you about the animals, dead and alive, the badger almost perfect, lying on the grass, knocked cold by a passing car, or the fields of staring sheep, stock still except for their twitching ears. Inquisitive calves, over fed ponies in Buttercup fields, and dogs of all shapes and sizes who bark at bikes and run along side until tired or prevented by a tall fence.

I think Shropshire ‘the forgotten country’ is where I started to look beyond the roads. Void of the tourist hype and swerving holiday caravans, the county seems to be one of these places that just exists, where houses have hens and where the same dog wonders up and down the same road. I am sure that there are many things about Shropshire that are unbalanced and deprived. However it seems to me to present the opportunity of escape to anyone who cycles its roads. Perhaps it’s the farm houses and English gardens, or pigs rolling in dust or a whistling postman on his usual round, but I feel that bad things could happen in the world and the Shropshire countryside would just shrug it off and carry on.

Of course I can also tell you about the leg pain, various bruises and countless visits to the pharmacy… but I wouldn’t want you to think that the past week had been all bad. Let’s see what the next one holds.