"A Loot er Fun"

Day 5

“A loot er fun”

Route: Ross-on-Wye to Clun

Stats:

Distance: 46 miles

Time: 3hours 15mins

Yesterday we were treated to a fantastic day of pampering and relaxation at the Whites’. Thank you very much from all of us. And, indeed, the day of rest did everything we hoped it would. Katy woke up white as a sheet, having gorged herself on tea and sweets in a twenty-four hour glucose binge that would have felled a small elephant; she was visibly shaking at the prospect of the day’s cycle. Joss was hung over and, arguably, still drunk. Camillo complained vociferously of some unfamiliar and suspicious stomach problems. Rosie, ever one for sympathy pains, had been up most of the night gracing the bathroom. This athletic trio, this steely triumvirate, these heroes among men prepared to set off into the unknown. Indeed, it was very unknown because we had lost the relevant page of the map the previous day. Armed with the Whites’ directions, and with the navigational nous of migrating swallows, it only took us 3 panicked phone-calls to find the correct route to Leominster, one of those towns that prides itself on having a pronunciation that is totally alien to its spelling. After that we weaved our way up to a nearby village for lunch. Notable in his absence was Jerry, the tireless white van man who has been following a route rather similar to our own over the past week. Similar, but – as today showed – not obsequiously identical. A communication breakdown in the Eccles family had led to Jerry stationing himself 10 miles away and Eccles Jr was not happy now that the sugar high was wearing off and she had cycled for 35 miles on fumes alone. Not one to test Katy’s legendary patience, Jerry arrived shortly after with the sandwiches that had been very kindly prepared for us that morning by Ali White. Where Jerry goes, women often follow and, true to form, a travelling saleswoman of organic home-grown goods came to set up shop on the pitch where we were lying to soak up the midday sun. There is something about a man sat proudly at the helm of a white van that a certain sort of woman simply cannot resist. Anyway, it turned out that the length of today’s cycle was not of the Herculean order of magnitude that we have undertaken on previous days and we only had 10 miles to go till we reached our destination. Not wanting to make the afternoon’s task too easy, we all proceeded to lose each other en route, and all managed to arrive at our destination (Clun) by differing trajectories – a real testament to the options offered by the Shropshire road network. Joss, worried that he might actually make it hitch-free and on schedule, procured the trip’s first puncture by cycling over a tiny, tiny man wearing a pointed hat. To celebrate our eventual arrival, we settled  in to a local pub for some local beer and then moved on to the youth hostel for some pasta bake with some of Lloyd Grossman’s local sauce.