Today was Monday.  Which is normally my day off exercising.  My rest day, if you will.  However GB is on holiday, and I do like cycling in company and I can always rest another day, right?  Ok, so I won’t, but that’s not the point.  Was there a point?  There might have been.  I appear to have misplaced it.

Anyway we were only planning to go to Glastonbury for coffee and convivial trivial conversation, so that practically counts as rest.  For us.  I can appreciate that cycling to Glastonbury and back may not count as rest for normal folk, but I have heard that normal is over-rated. 😛

However as ever, plans are made to be broken.  The very chilly wind appeared to be coming from somewhere North-ish, and as returning into a headwind didn’t appeal, we decided to head for the Walled Garden instead.  Straight there and back, right?

Well, first off we decided to wiggle our way there via the Webbington, and round to Winscombe that way.  Which added a hill, even if not the biggest hill going.  Still more hill than originally suggested though I’ll have you know.  From there it was Sandford, Churchill, and back lane meanderings to get to the coffee stop.  There’s a junction in Wrington where you go up Chapel Lane to the junction of Roper’s Lane and Bullhouse Lane.  Which makes GB sing “Going to the Chapel” (chapels have that affect on him) and me wonder if a Mr Roper kept bulls there were housed up there.    I do love strange road names. 🙂

The Walled Garden was, as ever,  just up the road but, shock horror, it turned out to be closed.  Definitely not a day for things going according to plan.  Was it too early?  Is Monday a bad day?  Enlightenment eluded us, and the door remained resolutely closed in our faces.  (Having checked, it would appear that it being Monday would appear to be the problem.  Monday is often a problem, in so many ways…).   Much deliberation followed, before we decided to check out Wrinton and Langford for such things, and failing that, the Burrington Inn at the bottom of Burrington Coombe.  Which, it being one of those days, is inevitably where we ended up.

Funny place.  It feels a bit like a cross between a cafeteria and a pub, with a rather funereal air.  And a tendency to make you feel as if you should be whispering.  Mind you, the rest of the clientele did have one foot in the grave, so maybe that explains it…  Ah well.  The coffee was passable, the chocolate cake less so, or so I’m led to believe.  It also wasn’t warm.  The Inn that is, not the coffee or the cake which were both, at least on the temperature front, exactly as they should be.  Anyway, interesting as this discussion of thermodynamics is, the point is that whilst the unimpressive interior ambient temperature has the advantage of making outside not that much colder, it does mean you’re proper cold when you head out into the already pretty chilly again.  It is clear I meant the interior of the Inn right?  Not of myself or my comestibles?  😉

So what’s the best way to warm up?  (Please cast your mind back to our heros’ current location when answering this question).  Yep.  Go up hill.  Or in fact up Coombe.  And that, O Best Beloved, is just what we did.

Now, I hesitate to say this, for fear of being quoted back at myself at some point (it’s very weird when that happens!).  But…ah well, in for a penny in for a pound…I actually enjoyed it.  It was scenic, the road was not only not as busy as usual, it was also dry, and I may have plodded up it with the odd gear to spare.  Apart from the last stretch at the end which is the steepest bit of course.  It didn’t feel like massively hard work.  Just work.  GB sat on my wheel all the way up, either because I was actually doing ok, or because he didn’t want me to feel like I wasn’t by hurtling off into the distance.  Regardless of his motivation in this scene, I felt really quite pleased with how I did, which bodes well.

(I like things to bode.  It’s a good word.  I also think things ought to “oom”, which would be to loom ominously.  Apparently I’m not allowed to invent words though.  But how else do you describe what heavy black approaching clouds do?  Honestly, sometimes life just isn’t fair.  But then life isn’t fair.  If it was it would be spelled “F-A-I-R” not “L-I-F-E”, and it isn’t, so it isn’t. 😉  And I don’t know if it’s “spelled” or “spelt” so I thought I’d use both to cover all the bases.  However that’s an Americanism so maybe I should be covering every eventuality instead?  Last week I used that one on eldest, for whom life is frequently not fair, and it went down a storm…  Well I enjoyed it anyway *grin*.)

From the top of the Coombe we went via Charterhouse and Tynings Farm.  Now is that “Tine”ings.  or “Tin”ings?  Answers on the back of a…actually, come to think of it, you could just leave a comment…radical concept I know.  The descent from there down to the Lillypool Cafe was a blast.  Not only that, the cafe was closed, thus showing what a wise choice we’d made by not heading for there instead of Burrington.  We’re very clever…

That just left the last steep bit up to the top of Shipham Hill to do, which is sometimes a struggle but apparently isn’t when you’re debating capital punishment, and it was then just gloriously all the way down…  Well, it should have been, but about 3/4 of the way down we hit traffic which was very inconsiderately using our road, meaning we had to curtail our downhill antics.  Yah boo sucks! 🙁

Cycling time: 2:03:52
Distance: 28.9 miles
Avs: 14.0 mph
ODO: 7253 miles

I feel very positive about the ride.  We did hills by accident, and they went surprisingly well.  Maybe that’s the way to do them?  Only I think I can probably only catch myself by surprise once.  It’s a bit like not being able to tickle yourself.  I’d probably see myself coming and tell myself to stick to the flat! *grin*

PS: if you’re still reading this, give yourself a pat on the back, I doff my cap to your perseverance and tolerance 😉  As the court jester said, “Pardon me for, on bended knees, I must confess I seek to please”…