I'm not one for keeping records or logging rides but for some reason I do like the idea of riding my bike into a new county. I've been down to Dorset a couple of times and Somerset is obviously a frequent one but I've never been all the way to Devon, so I started planning a DIY 200 to Devon. I'd more or less got the outward leg when I thought This is silly, Devon's such a big county it's meaningless to go a few miles over the border. I'll leave this and do a ride all the way down to, say, Exeter, when I've got more time and/or planning tuits. Or I could just do the Exmouth Exodus but I haven't planned a return, don't fancy riding back and have things to do on Sunday morning.
So instead, I went north. Up through Tytherington then along the A38, which was full of motor homes but finally Berkeley Road Bridge is open again. Didn't want to stop in Gloucester so road through Alney Island out to the farm shop at Over, which was slightly disappointing in terms of food but is an interesting building in a pretty landscape and a handy place. Looked at the map – yes, I'd thought to bring a map with me! – and planned a route to Newent along little lanes, only to divert along another lane as soon as I got there. Then out the other end of the town, under the old railway bridge and immediately right towards Upleadon and Highleadon and loop back towards Gloucester. Except that I spotted a sign to Redmarley, a place where I read a couple of days ago there is a surviving Chartist settlement; a sort of early Victorian squatter-builder-back to the land movement. (The OS map has this as Redmarley D'Abitot but all the road signs and signs in the village are just Redmarley. Besides, I was now off the edge of my map.
) This isn't exactly hilly country, in that there are no sizable or notable hills, but there are a lot of quite steep valleys with little rivers at the bottom. The village had been having a flower festival and a woman in the village hall was unable to sell me any tea or cake – all gone – but told me where to find the Chartist bit. It's actually beyond the village, along the main road, up the hill and then down to the left. This is what I found:
I felt like going a bit further so followed signs to a place called Pendock, not really knowing where it was. And this is what I found:
Also an old church, one of those ancient ones a couple of miles from the village:
Into Tewkesbury on one of those A roads that's so quiet you don't realize it's an A road (bet it's different on a weekday). Lasagne at the RHP. Back through Berkeley but before I got there, a car crash. There's a fairly large roundabout where the A38 joins the A419 a few miles south of Gloucester. Approaching my exit, I saw a couple of cars pulled up on the left immediately past the roundabout. Silly place to stop, I thought. Then I noticed the four or five cars stopped on the other side – these are all single carriageway roads with short sections of d.c. where they approach the rbt – stopped behind one wrecked car and a demolished lamppost. Amazingly, the lamppost had fallen entirely on the grass of the central reservation. Evidently, the crash had only just happened. As I stopped, a man got out of the crashed car and ran back in the direction he'd come from. Someone asked him if there was anyone else in the car, he ignored them but turned round, retrieved something from the car, then sprinted off again and disappeared somewhere. I walked over to the car. There was no one in it. Smoking air bags, nothing much left forward of the windscreen. No one needed help, someone was already on the phone to the emergency services, I hadn't witnessed it and couldn't identify the driver who presumably had no insurance/licence/whatever, so I got back on my bike and rode on up the slope towards Eastington. A police car screeched down the hill, sirens wailing.
After that I had a tranquil ride through the lanes, stopping in Berkeley for some chips (20p cheaper than in Bristol but not too good). It got dark and my IQ-X headlight was doing its bright but narrow and overly harsh cut off thing. Better than the 1980s though!
