well that's the name one of yesterdays Strava segments goes by,

a half mile stretch of dual carriageway (4 lane black top) which, quite literally, goes to nowhere. Go figure.

The weather has been fair the latter part of the week, not hot but t-shirt comfortable so after Tuesday's long ride, I set off for another longer ride on Thursday. I said it was warm, I didn't say it was dry, by the time I'd cleared Brizzle there was an almost continuous fret in the air, not enough to soak you but you were constantly reminded that it wasn't in fact dry. This continued all the way to my lunch stop at the seaward end of the Levels, at Mark.

After consulting the cartography I returned to the tarmac so of course the wet increased intensity to steady drizzle as I set off towards Glastonbury just about 9 miles away as the crow flies. Of course I'm neither a crow or averse to using less direct routes so by the time I reached the fabled town I'd covered more like a dozen miles but good news, the wet had desisted. I took a southerly loop avoiding the town itself before heading into the hills that separate Somerset and Wiltshire and on towards the Avon, stopping briefly for a cuppa and a bit of flapjack with a strange dry but very sugary texture.

Things went a little awry after Radstock. So the plan was to follow a byway for a couple of miles to Wellow where I'd re-join the cycle path to Bath, I found the start and all was well. Somehow I managed to miss a divergence in the track though, the result was a full on hike of at least a mile through hedges, around wheat fields and across stubble to reach tarmac once more. I spotted the path I should've been on some way below but there was no way to reach it from the fields I was on - maybe I'll try it the other direction to see where I went wrong sometime.

Anyhoo, It was pretty straightforward from there, a last climb of the day into Wellow then the Apple Line through the tunnels into Aqua Sulis before picking up the the Bristol & Bath back to base. 1100m climbed despite the miles across the Somerset flatlands, 166km in total so another Imperial century logged for the year.

My replacement bank card finally arrived on Thursday so on Friday I was able to do some food shopping and order some essential replacement bike parts. Yup, I've worn not just the pads but the expensive laminated front disc is worn through to the core material in a few places, not good at all. It was supposed to be next day delivery, Its now Sunday and there is no sign of the replacement.

Which brings us to my Saturday ride. I didn't want to push my luck with heavy brake use so rather than the ride I had planned, I opted for a much shorter and tamer spin. I say shorter, whilst I only got as far as Chipping Sodbury, I still managed to rack up a 100km but with just over 600m climbing and no big descents, the disc survived another day. It was a very twiddly ride, speed was low so I was out all day and managed to squeeze in another tea & cake stop - well it would be rude not to right?

Today then is a sort of rest day, I'll be cooking later but with over 420km in the legs this week, over 20 hours in the saddle, I think I've done enough exercise for one week!

I've seen a few Kindle sales the tail end of the week, not many but some at least so the dead days were apparently more happenstance than something more sinister. And once again, thank you to all the Patreon sign ups, it really is appreciated and fixed income, however small, gives some feeling of security which puts me in a better mental environment in which to work. I'll be announcing Patreon releases here in the same way Erin does and in the coming weeks I'll be adding 'product' on a regular basis.

Today of course you get a new chapter of Gaby - Ontario, entirely free of charge here on BC. Lisbet Olafsdottir serves as a bit of a recap as well as introducing Gaby's college tutor who will be cropping up quite regularly not just in this volume but in future tomes too.

That's pretty much it for today, until Wednesday then,
Wiedersehn
Madeline Anafrid