Ok, so I was going to rest.  And I did.  Honest.  Thanks to some house/dog sitting I was doing, I spent all day on Saturday (minus one emergency out of hours vets trip – don’t ask!) and Sunday morning doing very little other than being curled up in a chair reading.  However by the middle of Sunday afternoon, home again, I’d more than reached my (notoriously low) boredom threshold, and sitting around the house on my own was doing me no good at all on many levels, so I forced myself out of the house and went for a stompy hilly walk.  After which I inevitably felt much better (though two days later my shins are killing me!), and which I rounded off nicely with a couple of pints outside The Lamb when I serendipitously bumped into a couple of mates.  It’s nice when things work out that way 🙂

And then on Monday, after a little prompting from him, Alan and I did a coffee run to Fairyland to see what variety of the weird and wonderful would be out on a Bank Holiday.  It did not disappoint, there were some fabulous characters on display, and the coffee at Heaphy’s was just as good as ever, especially when enjoyed sat outside in sort of sunshine.  Sunshine that came with a killer wind of course, which we weren’t looking forward to fighting all the way home…  Still, that sunshine and the relative warmth meant that it was the first time my pasty legs have been unveiled in this country this year, which should not go un-noted 🙂

As we were preparing to leave, things started falling from the sky.  Not rain.  Nor pennies from heaven.  Nope.  Playing cards!  From up on a roof somewhere, they came one by one, until there was a little stream of them.  Maybe someone was bidding a symbolic farewell to a gambling habit…or maybe someone was just having a really bad game of solitaire…who knows?  It was the cause of quite some hilarity all around though 🙂  The first card dealt me was an 8 of spades but, arriving on the floor just as we were about to set off, was this little beauty 🙂  I crowed a little, and the leather-clad bikers at the nearby table appreciated the symbolism too *grin*.  No need to think of a lyric-related title today  – it was sent to me from on high 😉

Maybe that injection of cheerful is why the ride home turned out to be much easier than expected.  Or maybe it was the double espresso 😉  Either way it all went well, I was feeling good again, and I wasn’t wiped out afterwards, so I guess I’d rested enough.  Just as well, I don’t think I could take any more!

Cycling time: 1:41
Distance: 29.2 miles
Avg: 17.2 mph
ODO: 9539.7miles