Thoughts from the road - St David's onwards

Well, I guess it's just as well I didn't write this blog the day I set off from St David's and said goodbye to my David because then this post would just have been filled with gloom and doom! This whole venture has been a real adventure for me, it's been exciting, challenging, fun and a fantastic experience overall but to tell the truth it has had its downside as well.  Saying goodbye to David after a lovely week together relaxing and recharging my batteries brought it home to me all the more how much I have missed him and the girls.  The temptation to chuck in the towel and put my bike on the back of the car and go home with him was great indeed. I suppose I'd also been spoiled having my brother's company all the way from Morecambe to St David's and now I was setting off alone again, the sky was overcast and I was feeling thoroughly sorry for myself.

I'd like to say that I thought altruistic thoughts about the people in Malawi whose lives will be affected for the better by the Landirani Training Village that I'm raising funds for, but no, that wasn't the case.  Do any of you remember Ian Dury and the Blockheads?  Well, the thought that came into my head was a line from one of his songs 'Reasons to be Cheerful, One, Two, Three'.  For those of you who don't know this band, Ian Dury rose to fame in the 70s as a punk rocker and the unusual thing about that was that he was disabled by polio. However that didn't stop him from becoming a star.  So I headed out of the tiny city of St David's, not with thoughts of the patron saint of Wales in my head but the rather raucous punk rock music of Ian Dury buzzing round my brain. Well, they say God works in mysterious ways and He certainly does because this song soon got me working out reasons I have to be cheerful and here are three of mine:

• I have a supportive family and a great bunch of friends, Fb and others, who are willing me on
• there have been an amazing range of people all round the country who have opened up their homes to me and welcomed me in and there are more who I've yet to meet
• all day and every day I have this wonderful landscape to feast my eyes on - we really do live in a beautiful country 

And frankly, I hadn't cycled many miles before I had compiled a list as long as my arm and was feeling thoroughly cheerful again :-)

Another reason to be cheerful is the state of the roads in Wales.  From a cyclist's point of view their roads are excellent: the surfaces are generally good, potholes filled, cycle lanes where possible alongside main roads, well sign-posted cycle routes (or maybe I've just become more adept at spotting the signs) and quite a few of these routes seem fairly recently tarmac'ed.  All in all very impressive, 10/10 Wales :-)  

What also made cycling easy for me here was having my brother, Jim, for company.  He is a much more experienced cyclist and has this uncanny ability to cycle at a steady pace so all I had to do was slot in behind him.  Well, actually that's easier said than done for a Tigger like me.  One minute I'd be dutifully on his tail and then I'd find I'd randomly dropped back a few hundred yards and was speeding to catch up again.  Pedalling at a steady pace is evidently an art I've yet to learn!  It reminded me of the holiday David and I had cycling the length of the Outer Hebrides when I would pootle along and then suddenly whizz on ahead to see what was round the corner, double-back to tell David about the amazing view up ahead, pedal with him and then speed up the incline to encourage him that it soon flattened out, double-back again to join him so he wouldn't  give up... And then I wondered why he found cycling with me so demotivating!!! It must be hard for Winnie the Pooh to live with Tigger.

So here's hoping I can bounce my way along the remainder of the south Wales coastline and the next blog will come from England once more - homeward bound :-)