With only a week before we left, myself and Andy went a final long ride on Saturday. The forecast wasn’t great, but in the end it was a lovely day and we stayed dry, which is always a bonus (especially this summer…).

We weaved our way through the county lanes down to Hastings, then returned via Bexhill, covering about 140 miles or so. It was a long day, no doubt about that. The undulating Sussex/Surrey countryside is beautiful to look at but you struggle for rhythm on a bike, grinding your way up a hill for 20 minutes then spending the next 2 minutes doing 60kph down the other side.

Anyway, we got back to Bletchingley (about 2 miles from Andy’s home) at about 9pm, it was getting dark fairly rapidly and, as is the way with this summer, the temperature was dropping.

Now, those of you that know that part of Surrey at all will know that Bletchingley is on a fairly decent hill. It’s not a bad climb, it’s just the last one of any ride we do, so we just don’t it to be there. It’s also on the A25, which is a fairly major traffic artery that links Guildford and Reigate to the West and Westerham and Sevenoaks to the East.

So we’re grinding our way up through the village, when a silver Nissan micra stops going down the hill and a lady sticks her head out of the window –
‘Which way do I go to get to the M25?’ – No please, or excuse me, or by or leave for that matter. It took me a bit by surprise as it was really not what I was expecting (I was really thinking about a hot bath to be honest).
‘Yeah, sure. You need to turn around and head back towards Reigate’ I reply.
‘But, I’ve already been that way and it wasn’t signposted. Are you sure it’s not further on this way?’
‘I’m pretty sure that if you head back towards Reigate, you’ll see a sign. The worst that will happen is that you will end up in Reigate and you can get the A23 from there’ The cold was beginning to kick in, and I start to visibly shiver whilst I’m talking.
‘But it’s not very well signposted, how far is it?’
I need to keep moving and so does Andy, so – ‘I tell you what, if you follow me home you can get to the M25 easily from there. How does that sound?’
She agrees. So we take a right at the top of the hill, round a couple of bends, another right – after a couple of miles Andy peels off to his home – Ciao Amigo.
I continue up the steep, windy road that creeps over the North Downs but enjoy the roll down the slope the other side (with the bloo*y micra behind me). I get to the junction at the bottom of the hill and she pulls up next to me and the window winds down – ‘Where are we going?’ comes out as more of a plea than a question.
I had, of course, neglected to tell her that I live in Wimbledon and that the M25 was a short trip down the A3 from there….

Of course that didn’t really happen. I couldn’t be that cruel. There was a conversation with a silver micra that went on far too long. But in the end I explained to her that there was a garage two miles down the road where the people were a lot warmer and less tired than myself and therefore better placed to answer her questions. I hope she found her way….

Finally, I’ll leave you with the knowledge that although the weather is miserable here, in San Diego it’s a solid 29 degrees celsius all week, not a cloud in the sky with a cooling slight

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 9th, 2008 at 3:51 pm and is filed under Uncategorized, Athlete Diaries, USA Coast to Coast. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.