… should that be Jennifer?

I persuaded S to come for a ride this morning, being a tad bored of cycling the same old routes with the same old company – just me and my mp3.  We met in the Square and headed off around 8:30am.  It’s always lovely to leave the route to someone else, so I just followed S…down the main road, round Brent Knoll which he meant to go up but missed the turn (darn…) over to Mark Causeway and off towards Bridgwater.  We were aiming for Pawlett Hill.  S likes hills and fancied trying a new one…there’s no accounting for taste you know 😉

On the way we came across a group of that particular kind of gentlemen who wear a certain kind of clothes and take photos of obscure things, standing by the side of the road on a bridge over something.  Was there a special LBJ (little brown job) bird lurking?  Were we going over a river?   No, a railway line.  Little neurons fired inside my brain, and it occurred to me that…yes…confirmed by a gentleman walking towards the bridge – this would be a train thing!  I convinced S to come stand on the bridge with me, and 5 minutes later the Tornado came steaming down the long straight and under our bridge.   Totally made my morning 🙂

Off we went again, pootling around unfamiliar lanes perfecting the art of the U-turn and dismally failing to find the aforementioned hill.  We did find an “up” eventually, but I’m afraid it didn’t live up to its billing (darn again… ;)).  So we headed back for home, out Cossington way and back across the levels along one of those roads that you just know is going to join up with somewhere familiar sooner or later.   Sure enough, we popped up on the Burtle road and headed back towards Mark, having a brief chat with another Tor rider we encountered.

Up into Mark, out the other side, where we took the left towards Chapel Allerton…followed by a white van.  (I’m starting to think white vans have it in for me).  There’s a bend at the bottom of the little hill there with a little bridge over water and a fairly sharp right…   Down on the drops, little bit too much speed, farm dirt (let’s call it “dirt” anyway)…and bye bye back wheel, hello road.  Instand Thud.  Right hand side of me meets road.  Hip, shoulder, head…in that order.  Hands still on drops, in vaguely foetal position.  Although I closed my eyes briefly and spent a couple of secs mentally checking I was still here and it was ok to open them again…I stayed conscious this time.  S was right there to help check me out, and luckily, considering my time frame, I appear to be pretty much ok.  Some great road rash, gonna have a kick ar*e bruise on my right thigh, and there’s a gash on my arm.  My head has a minor bruise and popped an interesting vein in my right temple…and yet again I have totalled a helmet – cracked right through again.  I think I should take out shares in Giro at this rate…but hey, they seem to do the job!

After a little while of checking me and the important things out – like the bike – we headed back.  Poor S, it’s clearly not a lot of fun watching people fall off bikes.  To be fair, it’s not much fun doing it either! *grin*.  However apart from an increased element of caution near bends on the way back – the roads were recently wet – I seemed to be ok.  And it would have been a shame to waste my favourite stretch of road, so (however ill advisedly) I put my foot down and kicked it back from Wedmore to home 🙂  I really do enjoy getting up some speed down there, though I prefer to be in front, cycling close behind someone was worrying me even more than usual, even if the drafting was helpful! 😉

Cycling time: 2:46:43
Distance: 44.67 miles
Avs: 16.0 mph
ODO: 1198 miles

S saw me to my door, in true gentlemanly fashion.  It’s hardly his fault I’m inept – (so stop blaming yourself!) – and it could have been a lot worse.  I have ten days to recover in and the bike is due to be checked by A on Tuesday anyway.  I’m all cleaned up, am a bit ouchy and am looking forward to seeing how the bruises develop but on the whole, I think I’m ok 🙂

Which is good because I’m supposed to be on the bike tomorrow morning….I guess we’ll see how I feel when I stiffen up.  Apart from that – it was a pretty good ride.  It was nice to catch up with S and I enjoyed the route.  Well…you gotta laugh *grin*.