One Final Setback in The COTSWOLDS AONB 😭Counting The Kilometres Home..

Day 257. 82km (83685kms 7yrs)

The clocks had gone back as I slept on the top of White Horse hill so when I awoke in darkness and checked the time on my phone I wasn’t sure if I had one or two hours to wait ‘til sunrise. After a breakfast of chocolate Hobnobs – an English biscuit I’ve been missing these past few years – I packed away a wet tent. This would be my last outdoors overnight of the year though; the following day all camping gear would be hung up to dry in my parents’ garage.

So the mist was still hovering over the fields as I rode back through Uffington westwards towards Worcestershire. It turned into a beautiful blue sky morning as I wound my way between the fields and through the increasingly charming stone cottage villages. Being a Sunday the lanes were busy with runners, cyclists, dog-walkers and horse-riders. Turns out I was in the Cotswolds! I failed GCSE geography so it should come as no surprise that I had mistakenly thought I’d be skirting the outskirts rather than cutting directly through this Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. In the town of Northleach, cyclists snacked on pastries in the sun while I admired phone boxes, ivy, and the low beams of pubs (and ate some pastries myself 😆)

The road had been rolling but I’d climbed steadily all day until dropping steeply down into Gloucestershire. Here – leaning the bike to admire the view from a field – I seem to have picked up my second English puncture in four days. I can’t wait to reach Bewdley and throw these tyres in the bin. Again the pitiful output of the pump made finding the hole difficult, but I identified and removed the spiky culprit before replacing with the tube I’d mended in London.

And now with just one hour to sunset I scooted as fast as I could – all the while checking the tyre for signs of deflation – to my hosts in Elmley Castle. Mercifully, the tube held and I arrived right on sunset to my last non-family hosts of the year. As promised, the fire was going, a homemade lasagne baking in the oven. Their charming old cottage creaked as I climbed the stairs, bowing my head under the low slant of the roof into the guest bedroom. Utterly delightful.

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