After a peaceful night of sleep we both went down to breakfast. Watching the news as we ate, we simultaneously noticed one of the only other two diners making an odd noise. This wasn’t a polite cough or burp while eating; instead with every exhale this bloke was making a mad ‘Urrrgh’ noise. It was almost as if with every swallow of food his stomach was voicing its delight at another lump of food heading its way. It was the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen or heard. I can only assume his travelling companion was deaf. I couldn’t make eye contact with John as I knew I would burst out laughing and spit my Crunchy Nut Cornflakes across the room. But I could sense his thoughts which were along the lines of ‘What the fuck is wrong with him.’
We packed up and left and tried to find signs for the NCN 10 that would take us back west. We didn’t find it easily and ended up cycling past a sign and on to a busy A road for a mile or two. I had realised we were going down the wrong road and tried to call out to my brother to stop but with both of us travelling at around 20mph he couldn’t hear me. As we cycled back on ourselves I could easily hear him calling me a gobshite from behind.
Eventually we joined the NCN and headed away from the busy coast and back inland over relatively flat, quiet roads which form part of the Reivers Route (another name for NCN 10). We stopped at a village called Stamfordham (one syllable too many) for lunch to find the village was closed, for lunch. So we stood around for a few minutes thinking what a nice place this would have been for lunch before getting back on to our bikes and pedalling a few miles down the road to stop again at a place called Matfen. Happily we found a cafe that was open for lunch (crazy concept) and ordered soup, sandwiches and a slice of chocolate cake the size of my head.
I thought it was a good idea at this point to use my portable charger to give my Garmin Baghead a boost for the rest of the day. Sounds simple enough. Unfold the pannier bag, lift the charger out and the cable must be next to it because that is the logical place it would be and I’m very good at packing my bags after living out of them for a few days. Well I can only assume the cable gained sentience for 15 minutes and was slithering around the bag avoiding my grasp because I could not find the fucking thing. Only after removing everything from the bag did it show itself and after another 15 minutes repacking the bag I trudged off back to our table, sweating and more exhausted from unpacking and packing than the two hours we had been cycling so far today. John looked at me as if to say ‘What’s wrong with you’ and I muttered something about cables being alive and we left it at that.
After lunch we cycled over rolling hills and some stunning views. We loved hills so much we even went down one that ended at a farmer’s house because one of the NCN signs had spun around the wrong way. We continued to have fun with gates which had increasingly variable locks and catches. One confused me so I turned around to ask my brother how this one shuts only to find him off in the distance halfway up the next hill.
Traffic was very light as there are not too many towns once you head away from the coast and we reached our final destination of Stannersburn in the early evening.
The pub we were staying at had little separate cottages for accommodation. I continued my experiences with showers. Like my charging cable earlier in the day this shower seemed to gain sentience. It was fine as long as you didn’t move the shower head more than a millimetre in any direction; if you did it seemed to take offence and attack you with the force of a water tank the police use to break up riots.
The pub itself was nice and had that inn atmosphere, in that all the ceilings were low and I twatted my head against wooden beams a few times. The atmosphere was somewhat spoilt by the duff-duff music blasting out of the speakers. I’ve never really liked that kind of music but appreciate others do. But I think we can all appreciate the place for rave-techno-house-howolddoIsound music is not a 16th Century inn.
Placename of the day: Carrycoats, in the parish of Thockrington (which because of my mind, sounds really rude).
Daniel McChrystal 