"Tiny Tiny man strikes again"

Day 6

Route: Clun to Chester

Stats:

Distance: 64 miles

Time: 4hours 15mins

The Fates have had it in for the Beharrells from Day 0. Firstly, they installed an unnecessarily steep downhill section in Cornwall which, coupled with Rosie’s boundless enthusiasm and equally boundless momentum, led to a broken wrist. We now know what happens when an unstoppable force meets an unmovable object. Not satisfied with this, though, the Fates sent a tiny, tiny man (see previous entry) to puncture Joss’s back tyre. But today’s malignancies took the biscuit – they sent the tiny man back twice (once during the night and then again only a mile into the trip) to finish the job on Joss’s back tyre and then delivered him the mother of all stomach ‘flus. I do not know what Joss did in a previous life but I imagine it involved something very unsavoury. Jerry, whose van has a significance for us somewhere between the van in the A-Team and the Robin Reliant of Only Fools And Horses, was certainly on the B.A. Baracus end of the spectrum as he whisked Joss off to Shrewsbury to tend to his bicycle and to his bodily ailments. Meanwhile, Katy and Camillo struggled for conversation and for propulsion on their 32-mile traverse of the unprecedentedly flat Shropshire countryside till lunch. Conversation, reflecting the current economic climate, took a double-dip at lunch as Katy, Camillo and Joss all fell asleep in different parts of the van. We do not know what Jerry did during this golden hour but there were reports of vigilante crime-fighting in nearby Oswestry so this cannot be ruled out. Risen from their slumber, Katy and Camillo proceeded to struggle on a further 32-mile stint to Chester, “the Basra of the North-West”, although this may be a little unfair on Basra. After some more miscommunication in the Eccles family we made our way to the Backpackers’ Hostel and after settling in to en-suite rooms, we headed out for dinner. Over a well-deserved pizza, we were treated to the sight of a middle-aged man dropping his trousers at the restaurant window and demonstrating his behind to the pair of old ladies sat there. Their withered, spindly hands clawed at the glass in an effort to rejuvenate their cold hearts with the kindling heat of human contact, but alas this was to no avail. That last sentence might not be true. But the sentence before it was. Anyway, we were satisfied with our work at the restaurant and returned to the hostel content in the knowledge that we had seen the best Chester had to offer.