yes indeedy,

I've taken a short 'time out' from the new Gaby to post the next chapter of Express, Ferried. The guys are finally off to Yorkshire but first they have to catch the ferry.

So that's that, so onto other news.

I missed my usual ride on Thursday - it was teeming down all day, instead I spent the day preparing the re-edited version of Book 2 for release (for those interested, the revision is now available for Kindle - Lulu and print editions should follow before the weekend). So instead I headed out on Friday which was grey, cold and had a threat of drizzle, better than Thursday's snow, sleet and wet but not by much! Anyhow, I set off in a sort of south easterly direction, making my way to Frome where I had hoped to get a cuppa.

I looked in vain for a café and then it started drizzling so rather than get wet and cold in Frome I decided to move on to where I knew there was a café just past Trowbridge. Of course, the wet ceased before I got clear of Frome although the temperature remained about two degrees above freezing! I managed to thaw out a little in the café, wrapping myself around a mug of tea but I was conscious of the need to get moving to get back in daylight.

Through Melksham then and up to Corsham where I joined the Bath Road, otherwise known as the A4, these days most traffic uses the motorway away to the north so I had pretty clear tarmac as I headed down Box Hill towards the Avon gorge. Bath of course, is always busy but I slipped through and finished the ride with 120km tanked and an hour of daylight left.

The quandary now was whether to ride yesterday or today, Sunday. I prefer Saturdays, fewer dawdly cars on the lanes and a better chance of finding a reasonable stop that doesn't charge an arm and both legs! There was some stuff I wanted to look at in the South Chilterns so I set off first for Chipping Sodbury which nestles below the western fringes of the Chilterns. I took a meandering route northwards to the scarp and after a bit of deep breathing reached the top, there are more climbs later but not for a while. Spotted the hillfort, then two tumuli although I missed the first of two long barrows I was looking for - oh well, another day maybe.

By the time I reached Tetbury the sun was out and whilst not warm it was quite pleasant so I took the opportunity to devour my sandwiches on a handy bench - bit early but who cares. Then it was off towards Cirencester, past Chiltern Airport (look it up), instead of going into Cirencester I turned just short to make my way to Stroud. Even after a long drop into the Frome valley (no not that Frome!) I was feeling a bit cream crackered, I fancied a cuppa but the café was full of Helicopters and the pseudo powsh so I settled for water and a picnic table overlooking the canal.

The next bit included the last major climb of the day, a couple of kilometres back up onto the Chiltern plain, not a problem - well except the combination of yesterdays ride and my early food consumption had left me a bit drained and someone had stripped the road for resurfacing for almost the full length of the climb. In places that meant no surface at all, others it was a nasty rutted and bumpy affair which made the climb doubly hard.

I was certainly grateful to get to the top and start the run back to base. After a few kilometres it was back off the Chilterns and into the lanes that fill this bit of Gloucestershire, I almost rode past my salvation, a village shop cum café where I paused for a pot of tea and a grateful change of seating. From there onward was a much easier ride, I'm even starting to recognise some of the place names, enough that I made short work of the last kilometres, topping out at 125 of them for the day - and yes, I was well cream crackered!

I'll have a couple of days off now, time to get more words down on the various projects I'm working on.

So that's about it, don't forget to get the 3rd edition of Summer Girl into your Kindle library, click on the pic to go direct.

Until next time, Wiedersehn
Mads

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