So believing that setting off a bit earlier (10:30 or something I think) would save us from roasting, we departed for ‘The Drum and Monkey’ in Upton-Upon-Severn, selected for its bravery in taking 2 words you don’t really associate with pubs and putting them together in one brilliant name for a pub. I can guarantee that right now, you’re picturing a little monkey in a hat, banging a drum. That’s ok, we all are.
Journey there was a breeze, despite a minor accidental detour down a tiny bumpy path populated by swathes of stinging nettles. I lost Steve for a while at this point as I was trying to wobble along carefully without getting stung. You’ll be glad to know I caught up at the other end of the path though.
Andy: “How did you get through there so quickly without getting stung?”
Steve: “I didn’t…”
He suffers for his art.
At the pub, a couple of old lads asked where we’d cycled from and on hearing we’d come from Droitwich labelled us as “f**king mental”.
In a joking way I should point out, he wasn’t disgusted or anything. Impressed probably! Steve checked his distance measurement device (probably has a better name than that I think. Bikometer?) and it turned out we’d actually done 22 Miles.
So obviously the way back would take us to 44 miles, a whole extra 4! Problem is that 50 was going to be a good milestone, and doing 44 THEN 50 is a bit lame when all’s said and done. The only option was to detour a bit on the way home, and hit 50 on this very trip. Hey at least it wasn’t the hottest day of the year at this point and would soon be the hottest time of the day right!? Also worth reminding you at this point, that up until now the longest distance we’d done in one single go was 15 miles to get to the Camp Inn, so this was big boys school.
Best bit of the journey home was accidentally joining a triathlon I think. Bit inconsiderate of them to plan a triathlon route overlapping the Gears and Beers 50 mile route, but these triathlon organisers will do anything for a bit of extra exposure. The leg of the race that we actually joined was the running bit, the cyclists were all going the other direction, so we can only assume that any casual observer thought we were completely confused by the entire concept of the triathlon and hadn’t bothered getting off our bikes once the cycle part was done, possibly with the end goal of cycling straight into the River Severn.
And so we cycled home, and we cooked in the painful, baking, relentless heat and the last 5 miles made me want to give up, dig a hole and crawl in it. Despite feeling basically OK upon arrival I nearly fainted when I got back to my cool, dark flat. Then I ate a lot of cake to recover so all-in-all a hugely successful trip!
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