Thursday 12 June 2008

LONDON TO BRIGHTON

Today is the London to Brighton charity bicycle race to raise money for the British Heart Foundation. Riders follow the A22 as do I usually on the way to rowing. At the usual turn off, police guided me into a seething throng of bikes! All colours shapes and sizes (one could say that for the riders too...). I puttered along with these things darting in and around me feeling a bit like a big fish in a shoal of little ones! Getting to the reservoir was a relief. Sadly, rowing today was not great. I re-cut my hand on the spot it was cut last time and it made for a painful, wobbly session. Hard on the other girls in the boat with me all over the place.
End of rowing and silly me was thinking that the bulk of the riders will have long reached Brighton, but no. It meant a detour, part of the way on the road with more riders where I had to pull of onto the verge to let an ambulance through, and then the whole mass of bikes was stopped by police to allow me to cut across them and escape onto a road that would get me home! Bet some of them were cursing.
Home, through fields of freshly cut hay, (some of it in odd pale blue plastics bales,) through part of Ashdown Forest, and past some of those quintessential English gardens with hollyhocks, lupins, delphiniums, roses, lavender and buddelia in blossom. With the sun roof open and Blake's Jerusalem on the radio, it was pure joy.

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